The New Truth, A Project: Truthseekers Alternate Season Nine


Chapter Three:  Welcome to the Nightmare 
By:  Wylfcynne
Spoilers:  Through S8 
Rating:  R
Disclaimer:   Many characters contained herein are the 
property of 1013 Productions and 20th Century Fox.  No profit 
is being made from the posting of this story. 
 
Summary:  "The New Truth" offers an alternative to S9 wherein 
Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, with the assistance of Agent John 
Doggett, Agent Monica Reyes and Assistant Director Walter 
Skinner, establish and lead a global resistance to the 
impending alien colonization. 
 


Chapter Three


Scully woke up abruptly, suddenly aware that 
something was very wrong.  She reached for her 
bedmate, but her hand encountered only cool percale.  
She sat up, her heart pounding. 

"Mulder?!" she called, her voice trembling. 

There was no answer.  Terrified, she got up, unaware 
of the chill on her bare arms and feet, and dashed 
next door to the baby's room.  The bassinet was empty, 
too. 

\\...omigodomigodomigodomigodomigod...\\ 

She choked back a shriek as she turned toward the front 
of the apartment.  There was a dark head showing above the 
back of her rocking chair, which was turned toward the
window. 

Relief almost took out her knees.  Panic subsiding, her 
intellect kicked in. \\It's been weeks since he had a 
nightmare or a flashback, but why else would he be up 
and out here...?\\ 

Mulder was only wearing cotton sleep pants.  The apartment 
was very cool and he was shivering as he cradled their son 
close.  The baby, she noted, was well wrapped up in the 
blankets from the bassinet.  She moved a step to one side, 
to try for a look at her lover's face. 

He was crying, his mouth distorted though no sound emerged.  
His face was wet with tears. 

Scully shuddered, then squared her shoulders and 
moved into the room.  She deliberately did not attempt to 
remain quiet.  A few steps to the right put her in his line 
of sight. 

He avoided eye contact with her and tried to dry his tears 
on his shoulder when he realized she was watching him.  
He noted uneasily that she was the same height as... Ruthlessly, 
he forced that thought away: Scully was nothing like his captors! 

But he could feel himself sweating with fear. 

He tightened his hold on his son, inarticulately aware of a 
need to protect the child from any danger.  The bitterness of 
failure overwhelmed him, then: he couldn't even handle a bad 
dream, anymore.  What could he do for his son?  Will needed a 
father with courage, a father who could stand between him and 
danger and keep him safe and free long enough to grow up, to 
grow into his power... 

"Mulder?" 

Her voice was so close that he flinched; he had been inside 
his head, and he had not noticed her approach. 

"Shh...  Relax, Mulder.  It's all right," she said softly.  
"You're cold, love.  Let's go snuggle on the couch?" 

He did not react; Scully had time to feel her fear rising 
once again before he took a deep breath and carefully stood 
up.  Wordlessly, with communication perfected over their 
years together, they arranged themselves on the couch and 
Scully pulled the blankets off the back of the couch and 
wrapped them all up. 

She snuggled close, until Mulder shifted to put one arm 
around her shoulders while the other kept Will snug against 
his chest. 

Scully sighed and laid her head on his chest beside her son.  
Her hand lay lightly on Mulder's belly, and she felt his muscles 
flinch from the contact. 

"I'm sorry I woke you."  His voice sounded rusty. 

"Your absence woke me," she said softly.  "That's my nightmare: 
waking up alone." 

He stiffened beneath her.  "Oh, my God!  I'm so sorry, 
Scully--!" 

She turned her head and kissed the nearest part of his bare 
chest.  He froze at that first touch of her lips. 

"Hush.  I know what's going on," she whispered, "and I 
know you're trying to cope.  I just wish you'd come back 
to bed after you get William." 

"It's not safe to sleep with an infant," he said distantly.  
"Babies get crushed and smothered like that every day." 

"I seriously doubt either of us would be sleeping," she 
smiled sadly.  "I don't want you to feel that you have 
to do this alone, Mulder.  I want to help." 

Warmth and affection were working their magic: Mulder 
was finally relaxing.  "You are helping," he admitted.  
"You're here.  You let me stay here..." 

"This is your home, Mulder.  Your home and your family." 

The words must have stabbed especially deeply; his 
face started to crumple.  She nuzzled closer, trying 
to divert his attention. 

His hand came up to ever-so-lightly stroke her hair 
once, twice.  "You're too good for me, Scully." 

His voice was a ravaged thing, roughened by grief and 
terror, weakened by deprivation.  She nestled closer, 
rubbing her cheek against his body, nuzzling inside
the blanket to kiss father and son where they touched. 

"You're all I want in this world and the next, Mulder." 

His hand tightened in her hair.  She leaned into his 
touch, and conversation lapsed for a while.  They were 
so good at being quiet together, that it was a natural 
thing, comforting to them both. 

It was long minutes later, and she was drowsing, warm 
and content, when she realized he was crying silently 
again.  Rather than speak, she just slid her hand across his
body and hugged him. 

"It's been months," he moaned as he fought to control 
himself.  "Why is this happening to me?" 

"I think you're finally really strong enough to handle 
it," she said gently.  "I suspect that the physical damage 
they inflicted on you was the least traumatic part.  What 
do you think?" 

He shuddered.  "I... I was dreaming of waking up in the 
coffin," he whispered.  "I can hear you talking, and 
Skinner, and Doggett...  Then dirt starts hitting the 
coffin lid..." 

She stared up at his face, horrified and not trying 
to hide it.  "You were NOT conscious, Mulder!  There's 
no way you were conscious then!  You were--" Her throat
seized up on the blunt monosyllable. 

"Dead?"  He said it for her.  "I suppose so.  I don't know 
if it's really a memory, Scully. I really don't.  It could be
something I extrapolated from your explanation of events that
I missed.  But that doesn't make it any less awful..." 

"Do darkness and small spaces bother you, now?" she asked hesitantly. 

"Not really," he shook his head.  "But the sound of dirt 
hitting the lid...?  That's bad. The smell of freshly-turned 
but very cold dirt.  The smell of the snow...  But mostly 
it's that sound...  It still echoes." 

They lay together on the couch until Mulder fell asleep and 
only then did Scully allow herself the same respite.  In 
typically contrary fashion, no sooner had they both settled
in for some sleep than Will woke up, hungry and not the least 
bit hesitant to demand what he wanted. 

Mulder woke up with a start at his son's first querulous 
and sleepy sound.  It took him a moment to be sure that 
there was no external reason for Will's distress.  It was when
the infant turned pursed lips toward his father, plainly seeking 
something upon which to suckle, that Mulder realized the issue. 

"Scully...  Scully, wake up," he called softly, rubbing his 
knuckles against her cheek. 

"Hmm...?" 

Mulder slid Will down into her arms.  Scully woke up to find 
her son rooting inside her night shirt.  She helped him find a 
nipple and then leaned back against Mulder to enjoy the 
experience. 

Mulder watched, fascinated.  Scully was not shy about 
this, and he had watched her nurse Will many times.  His 
trauma forgotten for the moment, he watched his son 
suckle.  When a drop of milk formed on the other 
nipple in sympathy, he bent his head and lapped it 
up himself. 

Scully chuckled, startled by the unexpected contact.  He 
did not just lave her nipple clean; he latched on and sucked 
hard, once.  Scully moaned, letting her head fall back
against his shoulder as the twin sensations rocketed 
straight to her sex. 

Mulder shuddered; that moan had been vividly explicit.  He 
swallowed, then bent to kiss her mouth. 

He tasted of milk and himself and stale coppery terror, 
and Scully leaned into that kiss, giving it all she had, 
determined to lick and suck all that fear away from him 
and replace it with lust. 

He pulled away, suddenly. 

"Hey," she protested. 

"I'm sorry, Scully," he murmured, turning his head away.  
"I'm sorry.  I shouldn't--" 

"You shouldn't what?" she growled. 

"I shouldn't start what you can't finish," he said 
humbly, trying to get away from her without being obvious. 

She tightened her hold on him.  "Have you lost your 
mind?  Get back here!" 

He resisted.  "Will needs you." 

Deftly she switched their son to the other side.  "Will's 
getting what he needs.  I want what I need."   With her 
free hand she grabbed Mulder by the hair and pulled his 
face back down.  She kissed him hard and he surrendered 
to her, not participating at all but letting her do what 
she would. 

Scully only put up with that for a minute.  She broke the 
kiss to study his face. "Mulder, I know you're feeling rather 
fragile, but I still need you to be you," she said gently.  
"We aren't just assigned partners any more.  We're life mates. 
 We're parents together.  And after everything we've endured 
in order to be together and raise our child, I'm not letting 
anything else stand between us.  We have to talk to each other
about what hurts and what isn't working as much as we do about 
the good and functional parts of our lives.  What do you need 
from me that I'm not giving you?" 

He was shivering, now; they were both still wrapped up in the 
blanket, and they were sharing enough skin to skin contact that 
she knew it was not a physical chill. 

"I...  I don't know if I can talk about this," he whispered. 

He was not looking at her; his eyes were unfocused and blank.  
That frightened Scully more than she cared to admit.  He 
had rarely, in their years together, been unable to face her. 

"Mulder?  I love you, and I want you to get better.  But PTSD 
is pernicious and you've been enduring its effects for years.  
We both have to work at this, but the burden is mostly yours." 

"I know," he said very quietly.  "It's just that..." His voice 
trailed away. 

"That what?" she prompted gently. 

"My perception of reality is... unconvincing," he admitted.  
"I sometimes wonder if this is living as a SuperSoldier -- 
I think I'm here with you and Will, but this is just a hallucination, 
that there's an over-mind that controls my SuperSoldier body and I'm 
totally unaware of what I'm really doing or where I am..." 

She was horrified.  "I suppose that me reassuring you 
that you're real and I'm real wouldn't help?" 

His chuckle was bitter and he was still shivering.  "Not 
to cast aspersions on your honesty, but no.  My fantasy 
Scully would do anything she could to help me figure 
this out." 

"So will the real one," she assured him. 

"I trust you, Scully.  I don't trust myself.  Too much of 
my memory of the past year is missing; I've never lost 
more than hours before, and now I've lost months!  It 
makes this all feel unreal." 

"Even Will's birth doesn't help?" 

"The fact that Billy Miles and the others took no 
action except to witness the birth makes no sense, 
so that seems to be real," he admitted.  "But if 
I'm creating the hallucination, that's what I'd 
expect, so I can't trust it!" 

Scully reached for him with her free hand, stroked 
his face gently.  He closed his eyes and leaned 
into her caress, kissed her palm. 

"Mulder...  Don't go borrowing trouble.  You're 
worrying about a paranoid fantasy that you know 
isn't true.  There's no reason for a SuperSoldier
to retain anything but the memories of the human 
host.  There isn't any real sign of personality; 
nothing that can't be explained by the retention 
of memories that the SuperSoldier  consciousness
can tap.  If there was anything of Billy Miles left, 
wouldn't he have done something to let us know?" 

Mulder shuddered.  "Maybe he was trying to, Scully.  
Maybe he was supposed to do something awful, but 
there was enough of Billy left to prevent that." 

"Maybe.  But there's no reason to suppose that 
you're not exactly what you seem to be: my Mulder." 

He was startled to realize, as she kissed him again, 
that he believed her. 

 +++ 

Christmastime in Georgetown 

J. D. Crawford parked his car, turned off the engine 
and pocketed the keys.  He reached for the door handle.  
His hand sat there on the handle but he did not move. 

\\I can't believe he's dead,\\ he sighed. \\I can't 
imagine how difficult this had to have been for Dana.  
I know if they were married I'd've heard...  I got 
an Email from Mulder just a few months ago.  He would 
have told me.\\ 

He remembered the smug tone of his informant and remembered 
how good it had felt when Colton's ASAC overheard him 
sniggering at the murder of a fellow agent and casting 
aspersions on the honor of another and of an FBI Assistant 
Director. 

\\Dana, pregnant, burying Mulder...\\  He shuddered.  
\\There's no way she could have been messing with AD 
Skinner.  If she's pregnant, it's with Mulder's child.\\   
Colton's ASAC had given him a dressing-down in front of 
the entire multi-agency task force.  It had been a sweet 
twenty minutes... Colton had deserved worse, but it was 
enough. 

He felt cold to the bone, though the December weather was 
unseasonably mild.  He had missed the funeral because he 
had been deep in an undercover operation and unable to 
travel.  He had sent flowers to the funeral and to Scully 
at home, and he had called.  She had been clearly fighting 
to maintain her composure, clearly grief-stricken and 
distraught.  He had kept the call short. 

Now, months later, he was in Georgetown at Christmas time, 
hoping to be here for his friend's lover as they spent 
their first holiday season without Fox Mulder. 

It felt a little odd; he and Mulder had not been close 
for a long time, but they had kept in touch, mostly by 
Email.  Now he felt terrible about neglecting the 
friendship.  He had known that Mulder and Scully were 
fond of one another far beyond their assigned
partnership, but to find Agent Scully had been 
pregnant had been shocking.

\\He must not have known that she was pregnant.  He would 
never have left her, never have put himself at such risk, 
if he had known.  He'd've had to be surgically detached
from her side!\\ 

Crawford scrubbed at his face briefly.  Fox Mulder had been 
kidnapped, held prisoner, tortured and murdered, probably 
by members of the gigantic international crime consortium 
that he and Scully had been investigating for years.  
Finally, he had apparently annoyed or frightened the bad 
guys once too often, and they had taken steps. 

\\Leaving Dana alone and pregnant...\\ 

He took a deep breath and got out of the car.  It had been 
months since the funeral; she had surely had the baby by now. 

\\If she managed not to lose it...\\ 

He had known several widows of agents who had been 
murdered on duty who had miscarried due to the grief 
and shock, and hoped desperately that Scully had avoided
that fate.  It would be so incredibly cruel for her 
to be so doubly bereaved... 

That was why he was empty-handed.  In his pocket he had 
a small wrapped box; it contained a framed photograph of 
himself and Fox Mulder, taken backstage at their Academy 
graduation.  Mulder was posing goofily behind 
a widely-grinning J.  D.  Crawford, and Mulder was waggling 
two fingers behind his friend's head.  If an appropriate 
moment presented itself, he would give this to Dana. 

There was no gift for the baby; if Dana had miscarried, 
he did not want to remind her. If there was a baby, he 
could go out and buy a gift later, but he did 
not want to arrive with a gift for a child who had not 
survived. 

He was not completely certain that Dana still lived here, 
but he had no place else to look.  If she didn't live here 
any longer, he'd have to go to the Hoover Building and talk
to Walt Skinner. 

His musing had taken him all the way to Dana's apartment 
door.  He took a deep breath and steeled himself, then 
lifted his hand to the bell. 

He heard it ring inside, but there was no other response.  
He knocked and waited. There was still no answer. 

"Dana?" he called, wondering if she was in there hiding 
from the world... or from the season.  "Dana, are you 
in there?" 

An elderly woman came around the corner just then, using a 
two-wheeled walker with ease and dispatch.  She had clearly 
heard him; she looked him up and down appraisingly without 
speaking.  Crawford gritted his teeth and resolved to be polite. 

"And what's your name, young man, and your business with 
Miss Scully?" 

Crawford sighed.  Every neighborhood had its self-appointed 
caretaker and this woman plainly was the one.  "I'm JD Crawford, 
ma'am," he answered.  "I found myself in town for the holidays 
and I thought I'd stop by.  Do you know where she is?" 

The old woman snorted.  "She moved upstairs to 264, in 
the back, a few months ago. Believe you me, no one was 
happier to see her move than I was!  No more strange
men coming and going at odd hours, no more shootings.  
It's been downright peaceful around here, since she moved!" 

Crawford wished he had a hat to tip.  "Thank you very 
much, ma'am.  I'll head up that way, then?" he gestured 
further down the hall. 

The old woman nodded.  "Yes.  Go up one flight and 
take the left corridor nearly to the end.  264 is 
on the right.  She hung a wreath on the door yesterday." 

"Thank you very much, ma'am."  He waited till she 
nodded and continued her way toward the exit.  Then he 
headed farther into the building. 

It did not take him long to locate the correct apartment: 
the building was laid out rather like a hotel, with 
odd-numbered apartments on one side and even-numbered 
on the other.  It was a matter of minutes before he stood 
in front of the door that had to be 264, though its number 
was hidden by a luxuriant wreath of fresh holly decorated 
with fake berries, a big red bow and some sprayed-on snow.  
Once again he took a deep breath and rang the door bell. 

He heard the chime inside, and heard a baby's querulous 
squall.  He closed his eyes in a moment of utter relief: 
even though bereaved of partner and lover, Dana was not
alone, and a part of Mulder lived on in his child. 

\\This may be a little easier than I feared...\\ 

The door swung open, and Crawford had a moment's time 
to react as he was faced with a grim-faced stranger: 
\\Ooops.  Wrong apartment, after all!\\  "Hi, I was looking
for a lady named Dana Scully...?" 

+++ 

It had been nice to relax, and lately this was the only 
place any of them ever really relaxed.  John Doggett 
jumped, startled, when the door bell sounded.  He 
glanced around the room: Monica was beside him on 
the couch; Frohike and Langley were in the kitchen 
concocting a dessert, Byers and Skinner were in chairs 
near the fireplace. Mulder and Scully were in the back 
putting baby Will to bed. 

Doggett traded frowns with Reyes.  Their little sixth 
column was all right here; their one auxiliary, Maggie 
Scully, had gone to San Diego to spend Christmas with 
Bill and Tara and their children.  Who could be at the 
door? 

With a shrug --there was only one way to find out-- 
Doggett got to his feet.  A moment behind him, Reyes 
was at his shoulder.  She took a guard's position, 
her back to the front wall and her Glock held at 
low ready, the barrel pointing at the floor between 
her feet. 

Moving silently, Skinner got up from his chair and 
came over to back Reyes.  Byers, realizing at once 
that this was outside his area of expertise, went 
to the kitchen door to keep his partners out of 
range. 

Doggett did not draw his own weapon, trusting Reyes 
and Skinner to handle any necessary lethal response.  
A brief peek through the security peephole hidden from
outside by a decorative wreath revealed a tall handsome 
black man, somber of expression and of garb.  His black 
trench coat hid most of a good but not designer-made 
charcoal-colored wool suit with a forest green silk tie. 

Still frowning, Doggett opened the door. 

The man seemed startled.  "Uh, hi.  I was looking for 
a lady named Dana Scully...?" 

Doggett reacted instantly, of no mind to let this 
man have any sort of advantage.  He grabbed the man 
by the tie and the wrist, used his own foot hooked 
behind the man's ankle and jerked it out from under 
him as he jerked on the tie and pulled on the man's
wrist. 

With a startled cry, the man started to fall.  Doggett 
twisted the man's arm up between his shoulderblades 
and shoved him face down onto the floor, then followed 
him down, landing astride, then planting a knee in 
the small of the man's back to hold him down. 

"Hey!"  The man's voice was muffled because his face 
was being mashed into the carpet. 

Reyes moved up beside Doggett and deftly cuffed the 
prisoner's hands behind his back.  Doggett frisked 
him briskly, removing a small wrapped package from 
a pocket in the overcoat, and a Glock Model 22 from 
a clip holster on the man's belt.  He handed the 
weapon to Reyes, who tucked it into her own waistband 
for safekeeping. 

Leaning a little harder onto the man's back, Doggett 
used one hand to probe roughly at the back of his neck.  
He pulled the man's shirt collar away from, looking 
for signs of metal vertebrae, though he was reasonably 
sure he would never have been able to take down a real 
SuperSoldier  so easily. 

Satisfied that there were no metal vertebrae, Doggett 
reached into his pocket for his folding knife.  He 
flipped open the Gerber E-Z-Out one-handed and 
deliberately flicked the razor-sharp edge against 
the prisoner's earlobe. 

The resulting blood was reassuringly red.  Doggett 
felt himself relax a little.  Whoever this was, he 
was human: neither a SuperSoldier, nor a Bounty 
Hunter, nor a clone.  He put his knife away and 
finished frisking the prisoner, pulling the man's 
wallet out of his pants pocket. 

"John?" 

That was Scully's voice, her tone soft and puzzled.  
Doggett looked up and had to fight not to react to the 
image of her studying him.  She was still the most 
beautiful woman he had ever seen and he could not, 
in conscience,  react to her the way his body wanted 
him to react. 

"Who is that?" she asked. 

"He's a red-blooded human named..."  He flipped open 
the man's wallet to view his driver's license.  "Jerome 
D. Crawford of Los Angeles, California." 

"Sky?!"  Scully tried to see the man's face, but it was 
turned away and he was pinned too firmly to be able to 
move.  "Sky, is that you?!" 

"Yeah."  The voice was muffled by carpet fiber. 

"John, let him go.  He's a friend of ours." 

Doggett got off the prisoner and helped him sit up.  
He made no move to unlock the handcuffs. 

Crawford looked up, drinking in the sight of her.  
"Hi, Dana." 

She smiled.  "Hello, Sky.  Merry Christmas.  John, 
let him go." 

Doggett complied, handing the cuffs back to Reyes, who 
put them back in place on her belt. 

Scully approached, offered him her hands as if to lift 
him to his feet. 

Crawford saw the still-wary expression on the man and 
woman who had taken him down so efficiently, and he stood 
up without touching Scully. 

"What is it about your friends and handcuffs?" he asked 
her, remembering how they had met and rubbing his wrists. 

Scully chuckled.  "It's just you, Sky.  You must present 
as a really scary guy." 

"Me?!"  He was about to say more, but a movement behind 
her caught his eye.  A tall man with a familiar way of 
moving was emerging from the shadows behind Scully. 
There was the unmistakable form of an infant in his arms.  
Crawford's throat closed up as he contemplated what had to 
be Scully's child and all it meant. 

Then his attention focused on the man holding the baby. 

It was, undeniably, Fox Mulder. 

For a long moment, J.  D.  Crawford could not breathe.  Then 
he straightened, drew in a long shaky breath. 

"Snake Plissken?!" He managed a creditable grin.  "I thought 
you... were..."  His voice failed him.

Mulder handed Will off to his mother and went over to hug his 
friend.  "Hey, Sky.  Long time no see." 

Crawford did not quite believe what he was seeing and hearing, 
but the touch of his friend's arms was real enough.  He hugged 
Mulder hard.  When they broke apart, after only a few moments, 
neither was ashamed to be seen blinking back tears. 

"You're just in time for dessert, Sky," Mulder said calmly.  
"C'mon in, take a load off. Give me your coat.  Find a 
seat.  Frohike!" he called as he peeled the trench coat 
off a stunned Crawford's shoulders.  "More eggnog!  With 
extra whiskey!" 

Frohike came out of the kitchen with a pitcher in one 
hand, a new bottle of whiskey in the other, and a wicker 
basket full of glasses dangling off his right thumb.  He 
raked Crawford with an appraising glance up and down, and 
nodded shortly. 

"J.  D.  Crawford, DEA.  Currently on leave after ten months 
in deep cover in the Golden Triangle and six weeks in a military 
hospital in Germany recovering." 

Crawford could only stare.  "Wha'...?  How do you know 
that?!" 

Frohike shrugged as he set the pitcher of eggnog down 
on the coffee table.  "It's my job.  Mulder, you should 
have told him when you resurrected; he was hurtin'." 

Crawford was standing by the couch; he reached for the 
arm and sat down, trying to look cool when he felt 
anything but. 

Scully took pity on him.  She sat down in her rocker 
with the baby still in her arms. "Sky, relax.  I wasn't 
lying to you when you called; I had just come from the 
cemetery and I was truly in mourning.  But three months 
later Skinner found some fascinatingly terrifying 
information... and had Mulder exhumed.  We got him to 
the hospital and we brought him back." 

Her voice was shaking just a little; Mulder moved to 
stand behind her, put his hands down on her shoulders and 
began to massage them gently.  She looked up and smiled
at him; Crawford saw the love shining in that smile and 
had to smile, himself. 

"Oh, well, in that case..." he grinned. 

Reyes laughed then and set about serving the eggnog.  
She served everyone a glassful of eggnog first, and 
then started the whiskey bottle around on its own so 
everyone could decide for themselves how much they wanted.  
Introductions followed; Crawford found himself a little 
confused about why the three civilians were present, but
said nothing.  It was pretty clear that he had interrupted 
a private Christmas party; Mulder had never had too many 
friends.  But it was unusual to see his CO here; Mulder 
had never been good at making nice with the brass.  It 
was very puzzling. 

While everyone else was settling back down, Mulder 
moved around Scully's chair to sit at her feet.  He 
leaned against Scully's knee a little, pillowing his 
head on her thigh, looping his arm around her ankles 
from behind.  Scully's hand came down to his head
and she slid her fingers through his hair in a 
well-practiced caress.

Crawford swallowed the lump in his throat; it was such 
a sweet and loving tableau, and Mulder had done it so 
unselfconsciously that it was plain that this was not 
the first time.

\\Last time I saw them, they had barely gotten as 
far as exchanging meaningful glances and the occasional 
fingertip to skin...  This is so wonderful...!\\
 
"So, how did you guys meet?"  Reyes was the one who 
offered the neutral conversational option.  "If you're 
DEA I'd suppose you didn't meet Mulder and Scully
through work." 

Crawford flashed her a quick smile.  "You'd be wrong.  
You really want to hear how this happened?  It's a 
long story..." 

Skinner leaned back in the easy chair he had chosen.  
"Go for it, Agent Crawford.  It's a good story, and 
we have no place we have to be but right here." 

Crawford swung his attention back to Mulder and 
Scully, who were both looking at him. "What do you 
think?" 

Mulder grinned suddenly.  "Sure.  Let's.  I'm in a mood 
for nostalgia."  His gaze took in the other agents.  "Many 
moons ago, when I was still an FBI agent and I'd only 
come back from the dead a couple of times..." 

"What?!"  Crawford interrupted him.  "You \quit\?!" 

Anger flashed briefly in Mulder's eyes.  "No, I did 
not quit.  I was fired." 

"What idiot would fire you?!" 

Everyone laughed at that.  Mulder answered.  "Deputy 
Director Alvin Kersh." 

"You were fired by a DD named after a chipmunk??" 

More chuckles. 

Mulder grinned and shook his head.  "I haven't decided, 
really, if Kersh is just completely without any sense of 
honor or humor, or if he's a puppet.  Either way, I'm
doing the Mister Mom thing; Scully's back at Quantico 
part-time, and John and Monica have the X Files.  It's not 
ideal... but at least I'm not completely cut off.  The work 
is proceeding, if grindingly slow." 

"And you have a child."  Crawford could not hide the 
longing and the awe he felt; Mulder smiled gently. 

"Yep.  William Fox Mulder.  Named after my dad, 
Scully's, and the suspect in the first case Scully 
and I worked together." 

Crawford frowned.  "That's a weird thing to commemorate, 
isn't it?  The criminal, I mean?" 

Mulder shrugged.  "Billy Miles isn't exactly a criminal, 
but he is the single most significant acquaintance we 
have in common." 

"That sounds like a story I want to hear." 

Mulder grinned.  "Let's do the Beltway Butcher first.  
Then we'll talk about SuperSoldiers  and alien invasions." 

"Okaaaayyy..." 

 ~~~~~~~~~~ 

Washington DC [Between Goldberg Variation- and Orison 

She had been lying in bed for hours, staring through the 
darkness at the featureless ceiling.  Her mind just would 
not stop:  it was like a panicked, terrified gerbil, racing
along at top speed, desperate for refuge, refusing to see 
that there was no escape, that she was running in a wheel. 

She was alone.  Her partner was gone.  Her mental voice 
screamed his name across the other planes, but her cries 
were not answered. 

He was still alive; she had no doubt of that. 

She had long since given up trying his cell phone.  It had 
been four days since he had left the Hoover Building alone 
to pick her up.  She had finished the autopsy of the
sixteenth known victim of the Beltway Butcher, the target 
of the task force to which she and Mulder had been assigned 
two weeks before. 

Her mind betrayed her, then, flashing her the image of the 
last of the Butcher's known victims.  Elliott Hessenfeld had 
been a financial analyst for a large brokerage firm.  He
had been wearing an Armani suit and a Rolex watch 
when he disappeared.  His body, clothed only in the suit's 
pants, had been found partially consumed by fire.  He had
been identified by the initials engraved on the watch and 
his dental records.  He had been bound, flogged with a chain, 
tortured further with knife cuts, including some that
had been deep enough to cause internal bleeding.  However, 
the cause of death had been smoke inhalation. 

\\Tortured, in agony, chained down to the wooden floor, left 
to die in a tool shed set ablaze.\\ 

She shuddered, trying to dismiss the image.  But she did 
not want to think about Mulder enduring what Hessenfeld 
had, either.  She fought those imaginings back, though it 
took all her strength. 

\\Chained down, bloody, fire roaring before him, screaming, 
crying my name...\\ 

The phone rang, and she froze. 

It rang again, and the sound made her flinch.  Who could 
be calling her? 

Slowly she reached out one hand and picked up the handset. 

"Hello?"  She heard a gasp, and recognized it at once.  
"Mulder?!  Is that you?!" 

"Scully...?" 

She stiffened at the whimper she heard in his 
voice.  "Mulder?  Where are you?" she demanded. 

He was panting, almost sobbing for breath.  "Umm...  
M Street.  M Street and... 64th. Come 'n' get me?" 

She was reaching for her clothes, holding the phone 
against her head with her shoulder.  "Where have you 
been, Mulder?  What happened?" 

His panicked breathing was not calming.  "I escaped..." 

\\Oh, sweet Jesus...!\\  "Escaped?  Mulder, what 
did he do to you?!" 

He did not answer; instead, he made a sound she had 
rarely heard from him: a moan of unbearable pain. 

"Mulder?!" 

He did not answer her this time, either. 

"Mulder?!  What happened?  What did he do to you?!" 

"He...  He..."  Her partner's teeth were chattering, 
now; it made speech difficult, and made her believe he 
was both inadequately clothed and going into shock.  The 
image of Elliott Hessenfeld's body flashed through her 
consciousness again:  Hessenfeld might still have been 
able to walk and talk when he was chained down in the 
tool shed... 

"He what, Mulder?" she asked, terrified. 

"...burned me..."  Mulder whispered, barely coherent. 

That convinced Scully.  "Mulder, I'm sending you an 
ambulance.  They can get to you faster than I can..." 

"No!  NO!"  He was instantly almost hysterical.  "I 
won't!"  He was gasping for air, still protesting. 

"Mulder, calm down!" she ordered firmly, confused at 
his vehemence.  "It's all right. I'm still here.  Just 
tell the ambulance crew to bring you to G-triple-you, 
and I'll meet you in the ER." 

"No!  No ambulance!  He's chasin' me; I have t' keep 
movin'..."  Mulder was barely understandable. 

"You'll be safe with the ambulance crew, Mulder..." 

"NO!  He drives an ambulance."  Still panting, still 
in obvious pain, Mulder was calming a little as they 
spoke.  "I'll watch for you.  Hurry up.  I gotta go; 
I'm too visible here." 

Scully flinched when she heard the connection terminated. 

"Damn him!  Damn him!!"  She cursed her partner and 
the situation in general all the while she pulled on 
her boots and put on her badge, her weapon and her coat.  
She continued to curse while she ran to her car.  After 
that she was too busy planning the fastest route out there, 
and calling the FBI's Officer of the Day on her cell phone. 

"FBI DC, Special Agent Grodin.  How can I help you?" 

"Chris, this is Dana Scully." 

"Hi, Dana.  Any news?"  Every agent in the Capitol area 
knew her partner was MIA. 

"Yeah; Mulder just called me for a ride home.  I want you 
to call DC PD and get them looking for him." 

"Why do you need help for that?"  Grodin was puzzled.  
"Didn't he tell you where he was?" 

"He's hurt, and he's running, Chris.  He says he escaped 
from the Beltway Butcher, but the guy is chasing him.  
He's going to be hiding.  But he's hurt, Chris.  I could 
tell by the way he was talking, and he admitted that the 
Butcher burned him.  I tried to send him an ambulance, but 
he says the Butcher drives an ambulance, and he won't
risk recapture." 

"God, no!"  Grodin had seen the crime scene photos of the 
first victim.  "But that's a huge break in the case, isn't it?" 

"Yeah, it is," Scully admitted as she got on the Beltway and 
accelerated.  "I want DC cops visible in the area of M Street 
and 64th so Mulder can get help if he needs it. He's not 
thinking very clearly; he's in a lot of pain.  But I think 
he'll be willing to go to uniformed cops, especially if there 
are more than one of them." 

"And I can get them there if they think they might get a 
chance to collar the Beltway Butcher," Chris agreed grimly.  
"I assume you're on the way?" 

"Oh, yeah," she agreed grimly.  "You might warn 'em I'm 
driving a silver Taurus, DC plates BTT, that's Baker 
Tango Tango, 2398.  I'm doing about eighty headed for
lightspeed." 

"I'm on it, Dana," Chris Grodin assured her, his tone 
grim.  "Good luck.  I'll be eavesdropping on DC PD radio, 
so I'll probably know what happens..." 

"If we resolve this without them, I'll call you when 
the situation is stable," she promised. 

"You want some back up of your own?" 

"No, thanks, Chris.  Without uniforms, in the dark, he 
probably won't see them as help. But it might be a good 
idea if you called AD Skinner and brought him up-to-date." 

"Will do." 

"Thanks, Chris." 

+++ 

Chris Grodin made good on his word.  In the last six 
blocks before she reached M Street and 64th, Scully 
saw no less than seven patrol units from DC PD, and 
several unmarked cars, as well. 

She slowed down as she crossed 62nd Street, and saw 
one of those plain sedans moving  toward her.  As it 
went by, the two DC detectives inside saluted and went 
on. They had recognized her license plate. 

As she came up on 64th Street, she searched the 
pedestrians on the sidewalks on both sides of the 
street.  As she approached the light, an oncoming  
car stopped alongside her.  Inside, she saw two 
detectives she recognized; Caffrey and Kasimov
from DC's Homicide unit.  They were part of the 
Beltway Butcher Task Force; she and Mulder had been 
working with them for over two weeks. 

"Agent Scully," Kasimov was driving, and stopped 
beside her, driver's door to driver's door, so they 
could talk.  "See any sign of the bastard?"  He 
ignored traffic backing up behind them in both directions. 

She shook her head.  "No.  Seen any sign of Mulder?" 

Kasimov's expression was sad.  "No, ma'am.  But we've 
got every available car looking." 

"Thank you.  You have no idea how much I appreciate 
this..." 

"Hey, Dana."  That was Caffrey, from the passenger side.  
"He's one of us; we want him back." 

"He told me the Butcher drives an ambulance," she volunteered.  
"That's why I couldn't send him one and meet him at the hospital; 
he's terrified of being recaptured." 

Both Homicide officers shuddered. 

"God, who wouldn't be?"  Kasimov made the rhetorical 
statement.  "It's a damn miracle he got away.  Any clue 
about how?" 

She shook her head.  "No.  Just that he did, and that he's 
hurt.  He's almost certainly in shock."  She glanced around 
at the dark alleys between almost every pair of buildings.  
"If he's gone down in one of these alleys, we may not find 
him till morning, and that will be too late.  It's too cold." 

The two cops traded glances.  Scully did not notice: she was 
still intent on checking every pedestrian on the street. 

"Dana?"  Caffrey's voice pulled her attention back to him.  
"Do you have a police band radio?" 

She shook her head.  "No." 

"Cell phone?" 

"Of course." 

Kasimov reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out 
one of his business cards. He handed it to her.  "Call 
us; we'll leave the line open, and if you need backup, 
or if we find him, we'll be able to reach each other." 

"Good idea.  Thanks, guys." 

"Any time, Dana." 

The call completed, they separated to keep looking.  
After a few minutes of frustration because she could 
not see down those alleys, she opened all the car's 
windows.  She shivered as the cool autumn air rushed 
in, and then leaned her head out the window. 

"Mulder!   Mulllllderrrrrrrrrr!" 

She paused to listen, shivering a little, still.  She 
had only called his name like this once before with 
such open desperation:  when she had stood above the 
buried boxcar in the canyon in New Mexico, refusing to 
believe that her partner was really dead. 

It had been so close, that time...  \\God, Albert, what 
am I going to do?  You're not here to pull him back from 
the Other Side again!\\  But this time she had not heard 
his voice in her dreams, at all. 

"Mulllllderrrrrrrrrr!" 

This time there was no answer.  She refused to consider 
that they could come this close to rescuing him, to 
getting him back safe and sound, and fail.  He was here, 
and she was going to find him. 

She was cruising at idle, her foot hovering over the 
brake pedal, her four-way emergency flashers on, her 
eyes flickering rapidly from the array of alleys and
sidewalk ahead of her and the rearview mirrors. 

It was a movement in the rearview mirror that caught 
her attention.  A man wearing nothing but dark-colored 
pants stumbled across the sidewalk to lean heavily on a street
light. He lifted his face a little, and the light revealed him. 

It was Mulder. 

Scully slammed on her brakes and shoved the gear shift 
into reverse.  With her other hand she grabbed the cell 
phone. 

"I found him.  N-for-Nancy and 65th.  Hurry." 

She did not wait to hear their acknowledgment.  Traffic 
was too heavy for her to back up, so she threw the car 
into park, and got out, automatically grabbing keys 
and cell phone, because all her attention was on her 
partner, who was sliding down the pole to his knees. 

"...Dana...?"  Even his voice was faint.

"Of course it's me." 

He looked up, and his expression visibly lightened as he 
saw her.  "Scully..." 

"I'm here."  She crouched beside him, but was afraid 
to touch him.  "C'mon.  Get in the car, Mulder.  I want 
to take you to a hospital..." 

"No ambulance!" he flared. 

"No ambulance," she agreed at once. "My car.  I 
drive.  I stay with you every second." 

He wilted with relief.  "I thought I heard your voice," 
he admitted.  "But I wasn't sure I wasn't hallucinating.  
He's out here searching for me, Scully.  He almost got 
me back once before I called you, and once right afterwards.  
I hid just in time." 

"I'm armed, and I've got backup," she assured him.  "DC 
PD has every available car out here; didn't you see them?" 

He nodded tiredly, and let her help him stand.  "Yeah.  
But the ones I saw were one-man cars...  If he can be 
an ambulance driver, why can't he be a cop?  I couldn't
risk it."  His voice was shaking. 

"Okay.  Pretty good logic for someone as toasted as you," 
she teased, though her heart ached as her experienced eyes 
began to catalog the injuries visible on his blood-streaked 
body. 

He stumbled, and went to his knees again because she was 
not strong enough to hold him up.  He stayed down, rocking 
a little, his breath coming in desperate panting. 

"Mulder?!" 

He was fighting not to voice his pain, and did 
not answer her. 

Before she could quiz him any further, an ambulance pulled 
up at the curb alongside them.  He did not notice at once; 
his eyes were closed as he fought to breathe past the pain. 

"Hey, lady," the ambulance driver called.  "Is that guy 
hurt?  You need a ride to the ER?  I've got an EMT in 
the back..." 

Scully's first response was gratitude that medical 
support was present.  But Mulder lunged to his feet 
with a cry. 

"No, you bastard!  Not again!" 

Scully remembered, then, and went for her Glock.  "FBI!  
Stop right there!  You're under arrest!" 

Before she could get all the words out or bring the 
weapon to bear, the driver floored the gas pedal, and 
the ambulance careened away at extremely unsafe speeds. 

Scully grabbed the cell phone.  "Caffrey!  The Butcher 
just tried to pick us up. Unmarked ambulance:  the right 
colors but no words on it, racing north on 65th.  Driver
alone up front, though he stated he had an EMT in the back.  
White male, about six feet, heavyset Italian or Hispanic 
body type and complexion.  No accent; pure American 
words and tones.  Black hair cropped short, dark eyes.  
Wearing a white uniform that superficially resembles an 
EMS employee, but I didn't see any of the badges that 
they have on the shoulders." 

The unmarked Homicide unit raced past her, the dashboard 
light flashing, siren screaming. 

"Thanks, Dana," came Caffrey's voice on the phone.  "Can 
you get Mulder to the hospital on your own?" 

"Yeah; he's mobile enough for that.  Sic 'em, Kevin." 

"Will do, Dana."  The telephone connection was cut, 
then, and she knew that Caffrey was on the radio, informing 
every cop in the DC area what had just happened. 

Mulder was standing, leaning against a mailbox, his face 
buried in his arms.  He was under a light, and she could 
see the vicious and bloody lash marks that covered his
back, and bleeding burns the size of her hands, blisters 
torn open and the loose skin charred around the edges. 

"Oh, my God...  Mulder?  My car's right here..." 

"Where...where is he?" 

"Caffrey and Kasimov are in pursuit," she informed him 
calmly.  "They'll run him right out of the neighborhood 
even if they don't catch him.  C'mon, Mulder.  I want 
to take care of you, and I can't do it out here on 
the street." 

He resisted for a moment, looking around restlessly.  
"He'll double back.  He's got a lair near here.  'S 
where I escaped from." 

"Won't he abandon that lair, since you know where it is?" 

"He's got tools, supplies that would be hard to 
replace.  We need to get there first. Forensics needs 
to rake the place.  I don't know his name, or anything 
useful." 

"You know a ton of useful," she informed him.  "Get in 
the car, and you can navigate us back there.  I'll 
relay everything to Kevin Caffrey; he'll pass it on 
to DC PD.  They can handle the scut work, and Caffrey 
will make sure the FBI's Forensics unit gets called.  
You just sit down here..." 

She had been walking him to the car; she helped him 
get inside, and watched as he fought not to lean back; 
he did not want to scrape those open wounds on her
upholstery; the pain was too much to face.  She understood 
that. 

"Sit still.  My kit's in the trunk." 

She was back in a moment, and she covered his entire 
back with burn dressings, and then wrapped him in a 
Mylar space blanket to try and help him keep warm. 

"Lean back slowly, now." 

He obeyed, and sighed with relief as he could finally 
relax.  She helped him get his seat belt buckled, and 
then tucked the blanket in around him. 

"Okay?" 

"Oh, yeah...  More than okay..." he whispered.  "I haven't 
been warm enough since he grabbed me." 

She watched him settle in, watched exhaustion take hold 
of him, and then raced around the car to get in on the 
driver's side, get the car started and shut the windows. 
She turned the heater on full-blast, and he smiled, wiggling 
his bare toes in the hot air flow. 

"You know what I like..." 

+++ 

They did not find the lair.  A few minutes later, when 
Scully took advantage of a red light to turn her head 
and look at her partner, she found him unconscious, 
slumped against the seat belt. 

"Mulder!"  There was no response.  "Dammit!"  She 
slammed the car into park, and reached for his 
throat, hunting for a pulse.  She found it, eventually, 
but it did little to reassure her: he was definitely 
in shock.  His heart was racing but his pulse was so
faint she could barely feel it.  His breathing was 
fast and shallow.  She fumbled for the seat controls, 
and laid him out as flat as she could.  Then she sat up, 
gritted her teeth, and put the car into gear again, planning 
her route to the nearest hospital.  The completion of 
the hunt would have to wait. 

+++ 

At eight the next morning, AD Skinner walked into 
the large conference room that was serving as 
headquarters for the Beltway Butcher Task Force. 

"Can I have your attention, please?" 

The place had been dark and subdued for four days, 
each agent hag-ridden by unspoken dread.  A newspaper  
article had outed the task force and their primary 
profiler; when Mulder had vanished, each of them had 
instantly feared the worst possible outcome:  that he had 
been taken by their quarry.  They had no data, yet, and the 
not-knowing was telling on their nerves.

"We now have confirmation that Agent Mulder's disappearance 
is case-related," he began.  "His car was recovered 
last night in Baltimore, stripped and burned.  But there
was a bit of butcher's string on the rear view mirror." 

There was a collective gasp of horror from the assembled 
agents.  All the victims' cars had been found like that. 

Skinner let them have their moment of horror. 

"At approximately the same time I was talking to 
Baltimore PD," he interrupted their thoughts before 
anyone could react, "Agent Scully got a call from 
Mulder.  He'd escaped and needed a ride." 

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then 
the room exploded into cheers, shouts, applause.  
Skinner even allowed himself a small, momentary 
smile as they got all the emotion out of their 
system.  Then he dropped the file down on the desk top. 

That small sound was enough to start them getting 
themselves back under control.  In a few moments 
Skinner had quiet and he continued. 

"Scully called in backup.  Some of you may have heard 
of a wild chase through DC last night involving a private 
ambulance?"  He saw a few nods.  "That was the Butcher. 
While Scully was taking care of her partner, DC PD, 
including Detectives Caffrey and Kasimov," everyone 
looked around and realized that two of their members were
missing, "were saturating the area.  The Butcher chased 
Mulder, and he had two near misses before Scully arrived.  
The Butcher tried one more time, and Scully tried to
arrest him.  He fled, and the chase was on.  Scully 
couldn't pursue; she had to get Mulder to the hospital." 

There was a moment of silence as the dread settled 
down over them again.  They all knew that the Butcher 
took between six and nine days to glut his need for 
pain on a victim; then he would chain the man down 
to a flammable surface and set the building on fire.  
Mulder had been missing for four days.  Every eye was 
on Skinner, and they seemed to be holding their 
collective breath. 

"He was systematically tortured," Skinner said flatly, 
"just as we've seen on the other victims.  He was 
beaten with a rubber truncheon, causing extensive 
bruising and some internal bleeding; his liver and 
both kidneys were bruised.  Cuts down his sides and
along his arms and legs made with a surgical scalpel 
required a hundred and eighty stitches to close. 

"He was flogged, brutally, with a heavy length of 
chain that had been heated red hot, resulting in five 
broken ribs and more cuts and bruises, as well as 
some smaller burns. He was branded five times 
across his back with a metal spatula heated in a 
charcoal fire.  Altogether, the doctor estimated 
that the second and third degree burns cover 
ten to fifteen percent of his body, mostly on 
his back, but also on his wrists and ankles. 

"He collapsed from hypovolemic shock and his heart 
stopped just as he was being removed from Agent 
Scully's car at the Emergency Room.  He's been admitted 
for treatment." 

"There's a shocker," someone covered his disturbed 
thoughts with sarcasm. 

"Damn..." someone else breathed the word reverently.  
"Hurt like that, and he still managed to escape?!  
Damn...!" 

The sheer admiration in that tone brought nods of 
agreement from the other members of the force. 

"Yeah:  damn!" 

It was Special Agent Callina Finch, SAC, who took a 
deep breath and spoke up.  "Sir? How long will Mulder 
be out?  We need him now, more than ever!" 

Skinner spread his hands helplessly.  "The doctors 
wouldn't commit themselves with an exact date.  It 
depends on how he responds to treatment."  He took 
a deep breath. "However, you have Mulder's preliminary 
report in your folders." 

Everyone scrambled to look, and most were shocked 
to find nine pages, single spaced, full of new information. 

"Mulder did this?"  Finch gasped.  "When, for God's 
sake??" 

"He dictated it to Scully while he was waiting to 
go into surgery," Skinner explained. "She typed it 
into her laptop while she was waiting for him, and 
e-mailed it to me from the hospital.  That's all we 
have right now.  He promised more, later; he was 
getting a little foggy." 

"A little foggy?"  Finch repeated, still skimming 
the text. 

"Yeah; you know those pre-op relaxation shots 
they give you?"  Skinner did not smile. "He was 
relaxed enough that he didn't notice the pain; 
for a while he was totally okay. But then he 
started to fall asleep.  You'll notice that it 
does get a little disjointed toward the end." 

"Doesn't matter," Finch looked up as she flipped 
over the last page.  "We have NEVER had this much 
information.  There's even a physical description 
of the Butcher in here!" 

+++ 

"Mulder, you can't!" 

Moving with exquisite care, Mulder shrugged his shirt 
on over his bandaged body. "Doctor Schaller agreed that 
I can rest and drink lots of fluids at home as easily 
as I can here." 

"But you aren't going home, are you?" she asked. 

"That is a rhetorical question, isn't it?"  He 
buttoned the shirt slowly.  He was doing everything 
slowly.  The trauma specialist had warned him that 
everything was going to be difficult and painful 
for a while.  His coordination was shot; that was 
the legacy of the electric stun gun that the Butcher 
had used on him, first to capture him, and, later,
as the first act of torture. 

Electric shock was a familiar injury, though he tried 
to avoid recalling the details of his capture by David and 
Invisigoth's brainchild.

\\After all, I may very well be the only person on the 
planet dumb enough to have gotten himself captured, held 
hostage and tortured by a trailer trash computer...!\\ 

But the tremors he was currently experiencing, and the 
impaired coordination, were familiar to him because of 
that past experience, and he knew they would fade with
time, because they had faded before. 

His partner sighed.  "Yeah.  I know you, Mulder.  I 
suppose you want me to drive you back to the Hoover." 

"Well, I can't drive."  He held out one hand and let 
her see the tremor.  "And I have no idea where my 
car is.  Or my driver's license.  Or my wallet.  Or 
my keys." 

"Your car was found yesterday morning in Baltimore, 
stripped and burned, with the significant bit of 
string on the rear view mirror.  It's in Impound 
there, awaiting Forensics, last I heard.  Your keys 
were in it.  Your wallet and your weapon were not." 

"He's got 'em."  That was a flat, emotionless statement. 

"We figured," she nodded.  "Your weapon's been posted 
on NCIC as stolen.  There's been surveillance on your 
apartment, just in case he comes by looking for you." 

He shuddered, and she flinched. 

"I'm sorry."  She moved closer, put her fingertips 
on the back of his hands. 

He slid his hands up her arms to her shoulders.  "It 
doesn't hurt that much." 

"Liar." She looked up to meet his eyes, saw the stress 
there.  "You need to rest; you're in no shape to be 
reporting in!" 

He shook his head.  "I'm all right.  Not a hundred 
percent, but okay.  I can do this." 

"You have to do this."  She understood but nothing 
could make her approve. 

"Yeah, I do." He straightened with visible effort.  
"I can't go home till we catch the bastard.  And he 
won't want to go on till he finishes with me.  He's 
never failed before; I don't think he's going to be 
particularly forgiving." 

"I want you to stay here in the hospital," she 
protested quietly.  "You need to rest, you should 
be under observation..." 

He grinned at her.  "Like you're going to let me 
out of your sight?  C'mon, be realistic here.  
There's no place safer, for both of us, than ISU's 
sub-basement stronghold." 

Scully sighed, knowing he had won.  "Skinner moved 
the Task Force to the Hoover Building when you were 
taken--he wanted everyone under guard.  But you're 
right as far as that goes:  it's the place where 
you're safest from him.  But who's going to
protect you from yourself?" 

He threw her a small, almost shy smile.  "That's 
your job, Scully.  Debunking, rescuing, arguing, 
bandaging..." 

She smiled back.  "Sounds like my job description's 
been enhanced," she observed. "Do I get a raise to 
cover all these extra responsibilities?" 

His smile was replaced with an expression of 
focused intensity.  "Scully, Bill Gates couldn't 
afford to pay you what you're worth to me."  
His arms went around her in a gentle hug. 

Scully let herself melt against him, rested her 
cheek against his chest, relieved to hear his 
heart's regular beat and his body's reassuring 
warmth.  She was afraid to hug him back for 
fear of hurting him, and the ever-analytical 
part of her brain noticed the weakness in his 
hands and arms, the slight sway of his body 
as his balance wavered. 

"Sit down." 

"I'm all right," he resisted.

She stepped back far enough to glare up at him.  
"Mulder, thirty-six hours ago your heart stopped 
in the ER!  You've been tortured for four days, 
and you lost a third of your body's blood supply 
due to internal and external bleeding!  You are 
NOT all right!" 

"Scully, stop it," he growled.  "I'm fine." 

"You're NOT fine," she snapped.  "You're better; 
you're not in the same time zone as 'fine!'  And 
the only way I'm letting you out of here is in a 
wheelchair, which we will take with us, and you 
will use!!" 

"I can walk!" 

She took another step back and planted her fists 
on her hips.  "Mulder!  You can feel how wobbly 
you are.  Imagine how much those broken ribs 
will hurt when you fall." 

"I'll be careful." 

"You know better than that.  You aren't walking 
anywhere for the next few days if the chair can 
get you there." 

"Scully..."  He heard the whine in his voice, 
and grimaced.  He hated it when she reduced their 
relationship to this.  He knew she was right; he 
just hated the idea. 

"Mulder.  I'm not relenting on this.  If you want 
to go to the Hoover, that's the price.  Or I withdraw 
my endorsement, and you get re-admitted." 

"I'll sign myself out," he riposted stubbornly. 

"And walk to work?"  She refrained from smiling.  
"Besides, you can't get in without an escort; you 
have no ID." 

"Jaime would let me in."  He knew he was just being 
stubborn, but he was not ready to surrender, yet. 

"Jaime might," she agreed.  "But he would rat you 
out to Skinner, and you'd end up back here under 
guard, or in a safe house, incommunicado.  You 
know Skinner; he'll do it."  She gentled her tone.  
"You want me to help you, Mulder?  Then LET me!"

There was a long stretched-out moment.  Then his 
shoulders sagged.  "All right, all right.  God, you 
can be SUCH a hardcase...!" 

"I learned it from you," she grinned.  She had tied 
his sneakers for him, because he could not bend over 
that far.  She offered him his leather jacket.  "Here.  
It's windy and cold, and you're depleted. You're going 
to feel the cold, today." 

She had to help him get the jacket on.  Then he reached 
out for the door frame to steady himself. 

"Weak?  Dizzy?" 

"Yeah..." His eyes were closed. 

"This is why most people stay in the hospital 
when they're hurt!" 

But the expression he turned on her was haunted.  
"Scully, I have to catch him.  I have to stop him. 
He may come after me.  But he may not.  And, after 
losing a kill, he's going to be really vicious to 
the next victim.  I've got to stop him." 

She could not argue with that. 

+++ 

She commandeered a wheelchair from the hospital, put 
it in the car, and they went to work. 

She parked in a handicap space right by the elevator in 
the parking garage, hanging a temporary permit from the 
rear view mirror.  Mulder climbed out and walked slowly
toward the doors. 

"Mulder." 

He turned to see her unfolding the wheelchair that she 
had taken out of the trunk. 

"Jeez, Scully!  I can stand up in an elevator!" 

She sighed as she pushed the wheelchair toward him.  
"Mulder, you have a finite amount of energy you can 
divert from healing.  Do you plan to use it to walk 
down hallways or find the Butcher?" 

Expressed that way, he could no longer argue.  Carefully 
he lowered himself into the chair, and eased himself back. 

Scully adjusted the foot rests.  "Now, behave yourself, 
or I'll tie your ankles down." 

He flinched. 

Scully realized with a pang of guilt what she had 
said, conjured the image of her partner tied down 
on a tabletop, struggling against the bonds as the 
Butcher approached with a red-hot chain swinging 
from his hand.  "Oh, my God...  I'm sorry!" 

He shivered, pulled his jacket snug, and then let go 
of it because the action hurt.  "'S okay." 

"No, it's not.  I'm supposed to know better than that." 

"Hey."  He reached for her hand, and she let him have 
it.  "You couldn't've known those were his exact words..." 

She was horrified.  "Oh, my God!  I'm so sorry!" 

"Don't overreact, Scully."  He wanted to smile at her, 
but she had moved up behind him, and he could not twist 
around to see her.  "I'm not having flashbacks; at least, 
not yet."  His eyes went vacant.  "If I do, maybe I'll get 
better visuals of the lair.  There were a few times when 
it hurt so much I just blanked.  It left a few holes in 
my memory, and I hate when that happens.  I'm used to 
unbroken skeins of events; when there're breaks it 
upsets me." 

He flinched a little when gentle fingers laced through 
his hair. 

"Just relax, and don't think about it," she advised, 
pushing him forward when the elevator doors opened in 
front of them.  "And keep your hands in-board.  You can't
push this thing; it'll stress your ribs.  Just sit there 
and enjoy the ride." 

"Yes, ma'am." 

+++ 

It was just past eight-thirty on Sunday morning; there 
was almost no one in the building.  The Butcher Task 
Force met every morning, weekends included, at eight
sharp. They would just make it before the meeting 
broke up. 

Scully was a little surprised at how much work it 
actually was to push her partner around like this. 

\\On the other hand, he usually lets me push him 
around any way I want.  I have to start being nicer 
to him.  I'm the only one who ever is!\\ 

She pulled up and stopped outside the conference room.  
Mulder tipped his head back so he could smile at her, 
albeit upside down. 

"Thanks for the ride, honey.  What's the fare?" 

"Promise me you'll listen to me when I tell you it's 
time to take a break for food or rest," she said at 
once, coming around so he could see her without 
straining anything. 

He considered.  "All right.  Promise me you'll leave 
the chair in the hall." 

She considered.  Then she smiled.  "You want to make an 
entrance, don't you?" 

He grinned sheepishly.  "Knowing Skinner, he'll have 
'em all convinced I'm dying.  I think it's wishful thinking, 
on his part, sometimes..." 

She chuckled.  "He doesn't want you dead, Mulder." 

"Only if he gets to do the deed himself..."

"All right.  Hang on a minute while I lock the wheels..." 

+++ 

"Any further questions?"  Skinner asked the group. 

Agent Crowell, at the back of the room, lifted a hand.  
"What's the latest word on Agent Mulder?" 

Skinner's eyes dropped to his shoes.  "Rounds are at eight; 
when they're done, I'll get a call with an update.  Last 
night he was listed in satisfactory condition, resting
comfortably." 

"They lied." 

Everyone stared at the figure in black leather and 
denim who walked into the room, followed, as usual, 
by a smaller, red-haired, shadow. 

Skinner swallowed hard.  He had not seen Mulder since 
he had gone to the hospital in response to Agent 
Grodin's phone call.  He had had only a glimpse of 
his agent, still unconscious in surgical recovery. 

Mulder looked as if he had lost a fight with Mike Tyson 
in a cement mixer. 

\\Nice analogy, Walter!\\ he castigated himself.  
\\What really happened is worse!\\ 

Before he could actually open his mouth to say anything, 
someone in the back of the room began to clap his hands.  
In a few moments the entire task force was standing
and applauding.  There were no cheers, and no whistles; 
just quiet, dignified applause. 

Mulder had no idea how to react.  He let this 
oh-so-very-rare! sign of peer approval wash over 
him, and hardly felt Skinner's hand supporting 
him until he started to sway, and Skinner grabbed 
him by the upper arm, inadvertently digging his 
fingertips into the freshly-stitched cut that ran 
from Mulder's armpit to his elbow. 

Scully moved very quickly, shoving a chair behind his 
knees and catching him, carefully, by the elbow on the 
other side.  He fell into the chair, and had to close 
his eyes while he caught up on his breathing. 

The applause had stopped when Mulder went down; the 
room was dead silent. 

Skinner decided to fill in the silence and divert all 
the eyes that were staring at the wounded agent. 

"Agent Scully, it was my understanding that your partner 
was going to be hospitalized for several days.  Tell me 
he's not out AMA." 

Scully was standing close beside him, her fingertips 
brushing lightly across the upturned palm of his 
hand.  "He was released conditionally, sir." 

"What are the conditions?" 

"That he minimize his physical activity, eat and 
drink a lot, that he rest and let himself heal." 

"Why is he here?" 

Mulder opened his eyes and glared up at his boss. "Don't 
talk over me like I'm not here," he growled, the aggression 
he was trying to project a bit undermined when he had to 
pause for breath in the middle of the sentence. 

"And why are you here, Agent Mulder?"  Skinner fixed 
him with an icy stare. 

Mulder stared back defiantly.  "I work here." 

"You're in no shape--" 

"Sir.  Profiling is thinking.  I can do this.  I have 
to do this." 

Skinner heard the desperation in his agent's tone, 
and let his own tone soften.  "And you couldn't do 
it from the hospital?" 

"Sir.  The Butcher is not a man who accepts defeat 
graciously.  No one's ever gotten away from him 
before.  He's either going to focus all his energy 
on getting to me, or he's going to go out and find 
someone to replace me.  Possibly several someones.  I
want him to focus on me; I don't want innocent 
civilians suffering at this man's hands because 
he can't get those hands on me, again.  But I 
really don't want to get taken, again, either.  This 
is the safest place for me to be, as well as the 
best place from which to find him--all the resources 
are here." 

Skinner nodded slowly.  "For once, I totally agree 
with you, Mulder.  But you will rest, and you will 
eat.  Agent Scully--" 

"Yes, sir."  She turned to her partner.  "See?  I've 
got backup." 

Mulder let his head fall back lightly to rest against 
her belly.  "You don't need backup, Scully; you're the 
toughest guy in the room." 

A ripple of amusement reminded him that they had an 
audience, and he straightened a little, refusing to 
be embarrassed. 

She grinned faintly at him. 

"I guess we missed the morning briefing, sir," he 
turned the conversation back to the matter at hand. 
"Anything new?" 

"New to us; not new to you," ASAC Finch grumbled 
good-naturedly.  "Damn, Mulder--!" 

He shrugged, and a flicker of pain went across his face.  
"That's not exactly how I'd express it," he replied, 
"but it'll do." 

"Mulder, did you have breakfast yet?"  Skinner asked. 

Mulder sighed, knowing what was coming.  "No," he admitted. 

Skinner scanned the room, picked out a junior agent that 
he knew he could trust to babble the moment he was out 
from under his supervisor's eyes.  But not to babble too
much... the kid had learned some discretion.  He had 
a serious case of hero worship of Fox Mulder.  He would 
talk down in the cafeteria, and the rest of the building 
would hear what Mulder had done.  It annoyed Skinner no end 
that there were so many people in the building, fellow agents 
who should have known better, who had no respect for Agent 
Mulder at all.  If ignorance of his accomplishments and work 
ethic was the issue, this might go a way toward addressing 
what Skinner saw as a serious issue.

"Agent Calvaneso."  His voice was crisp.

"Sir?" 

"Go down to the cafeteria and bring up two bacon-and-egg 
breakfasts and a dozen doughnuts.  Get a pitcher of orange 
juice if they'll give it to you." 

"Yes, sir!" 

"Chocolate doughnuts," Mulder grinned.  "Glazed sour 
cream chocolate doughnuts." 

"Yes, sir!" 

The moment the door closed, Skinner turned toward 
Scully.  "Can he have coffee?" 

She grimaced.  "It won't keep him from sleeping; he's 
too wasted for that.  I suppose small amounts won't hurt."  
She felt his flare of annoyance and turned on him.  
"You are not tanking up on caffeine, Mulder.  When 
you're tired, you are going to go down to the lounge 
and sleep.  And on Tuesday at three you have a check-up 
back at the outpatient clinic." 

Mulder sighed.  "Remind me." 

"Don't worry.  I will." 

He grinned at her. "I know." 

Scully left Mulder alone long enough to retrieve the 
wheelchair from the hallway. 

"Mulder?  C'mon; this has got to be more comfortable, 
and you can shove it around with your feet, rather 
than getting up." 

He did not respond.  She could see that his eyes were 
not focused and frowned. "Mulder?" 

He blinked, and he was back.  He made a face at her, 
but moved, slowly, to stand up. "I hate it when you're 
right, you know." 

"I know." 

He settled into the wheelchair carefully.  "I hate to 
admit it, but it is more comfortable than those chairs," 
he smiled at her.  Then he turned the wheelchair, using 
his feet as she had suggested, grateful that he did not 
have to twist his body, looking for Skinner. "Sir?" 

Skinner had been watching their by-play.  "Yes?" 

"I need a press conference ASAP.  Can you set it up?" 

+++ 

"They're ready any time you are, Mulder." 

"Thanks, Mickey." 

The other agent backed out and shut the door.  So, 
the news cameras were ready.  Mulder was dressed in 
Scully's favorite of his suits: a charcoal grey Armani.  
His shirt was absolutely white, and the tie was a soft 
green watered silk that made his eyes look like emeralds.  
Scully swallowed hard.  She had argued that he could not 
represent the FBI in his black denim and leather jacket, 
although she rather liked him in his casual clothing.  
They had sent four agents to Mulder's apartment with a 
list of items to bring back for him. 

They had sent four so that the Butcher would not even 
try to take one of them. 

Agent Braun came into the lounge.  "Here's your stuff, 
Mulder.  Anything else we can do for you?"  He laid a suit 
bag across the desk top, and set Mulder's familiar toiletries
kit beside it. 

He shook his head.  "No, thanks, Hank.  That's great.  
Thank you." 

He let Scully push him in the wheelchair down to the gym, 
but refused to let her into the shower room.  He desperately 
wanted to shower, but he knew better than to risk it. Not 
only did he have nearly two hundred stitches on his arms 
and legs, he also had five large burns on his back.  The 
very idea of standing under a shower made Mulder cringe.  
Much as he wanted to be clean, he was not yet ready to 
risk that kind of pain. 

Somehow, Scully had figured out his problem and solved 
it without saying a word. When they arrived at the men's 
locker room Mickey Bender was already there, waiting
for them.  Mulder studied him speculatively. 

Bender shrugged.  "You can't take a shower and I don't 
suppose you can really move much," he explained.  "I can 
give you a hand with the more painful stuff.  Then we'll
come back out here and Scully can check you over and 
reapply all your bandaging. That okay with you?" 

Mulder nodded.  "Sounds like a plan, Mickey.  Thanks." 

Scully let herself relax slowly as the two men moved 
off into the shower area.  She had put a sign on the 
outer locker room door asking people to stay out.  Mulder 
was as casual as any other guy about locker room 
etiquette; he had told her some carefully expurgated 
stories of his high school and college experiences.  
But he was still almost Victorian in the level of 
formality he tried to maintain toward her.  She 
understood why; they were trying to maintain a 
professional relationship under the stress of a 
long-term and very intense friendship, a great deal 
of travel together and a tremendous amount of 
shared pain, grief, and fear as well as an equal 
amount of mutual dependency and trust. 

She had asked Mickey Bender to meet them down here.  She 
had been concerned that Mulder might have ignored the 
warnings about getting his stitches wet: he was as 
fastidious as a cat about his personal hygiene and 
she knew he was miserable with the limitations imposed 
upon him by his injuries.  She was even more concerned 
that his burns, especially, not get infected.  She did not 
like to cause him any more pain than absolutely unavoidable, 
but her real worries were for his health, not his comfort. 

She could not hear the men: the shower room was at the far 
end of the locker room and she set her medical supplies 
near the entrance.  She was a little uncomfortable about 
being in the men's locker room at all, so she was glad not 
to have to penetrate that inner bastion. 

When Mulder came out he was laughing and joking with Bender, 
but he was walking slowly and she could see lines in his face 
that had been carved there by pain.  He was wearing boxers 
and a light cotton robe that he had left hanging open.  She 
knew that was because he did not want to put any pressure 
on his back.  Mickey Bender was similarly dressed, but his 
robe was snug and belted tightly. 

"How are you doing, Mulder?" she asked softly. 

He sighed as he sat down on the bench where she indicated 
she wanted him.  "As well as can be expected.  It's great 
to be even this clean, but you have no idea how badly I
want to take a shower." 

She smiled.  "Oh, I think I can imagine that.  I remember 
listening to you whining in Raleigh; you couldn't even 
stand, yet, and you were demanding showers." 

Bender looked puzzled.  "What happened in Raleigh?" 

Mulder smiled ruefully and his hand moved over the old 
bullet scar in his thigh.  "I got shot," he said carelessly.  
"They kept me in bed for more than two weeks, Mickey; I
was ready to go stark raving mad by the time the doctors 
were convinced I'd done enough healing to sit up 
without my femoral artery exploding." 

Bender whistled soundlessly; it was pretty clear Mulder 
had come within a breath of dying that time. Then he 
chuckled reminiscently.  "Reggie Perdue told me once 
that you started wearing designer suits after a case 
where the SAC sent you to the dump with the local 
uniforms because you were wearing a cheap suit and 
wouldn't mind if it got ruined." 

"That's a lie," Mulder growled, being careful not to 
react to the butterfly-light touch of Scully's hands 
on his back.  "It was a Brooks Brothers suit; he was 
just jealous.  I went in the next day wearing Armani 
and he stopped harassing me.  He was wearing a department 
store suit; he'd sent me out there intentionally because 
I was wearing an expensive suit.  The upgrade trumped 
him and he had to shut up." 

Scully, her hands and eyes focused on her work, was 
listening.  She chuckled, then. "Who was it?" 

"Joey Mattioli; Des Moines office.  Why?" 

"I want to send him a thank you note from the female 
population of the US," she teased.  "You always look 
good, but in Armani...?  Hmmm...!" 

She was behind him so she did not see how her comment, 
especially the wordless part of it, affected him.  Bender 
did, but, knowing the tightrope that they walked and
the rules they skirted cautiously, he refrained from 
the first thing it occurred to him to say: 'bet you 
like him better out of the suit, right, Scully?' 

Mulder closed his eyes and forced himself to calm 
down.  It only took a moment; he was too depleted to 
follow through on that impulse, anyway... 

Bender shook his head.  "Well, I'm going to get 
dressed and get upstairs.  I want to be in the audience 
when you get to the podium." 

Mulder managed a grin.  "Okay; see you later." 

Bender disappeared back into the locker room to get 
dressed out of Scully's view, and then went out the 
far doors.  The partners were alone. 

Scully inspected all his wounds, and all the stitches, 
and carefully and thoroughly dried them.  She reapplied 
the antibiotic salve, and then the bandages.  It took her 
quite a while, because she was taking extreme care not 
to hurt him. 

He finished getting dressed, grateful for her 
business-like help with his pants and his shoes and 
socks. Then she tied his tie for him.  She finished her
ministrations by combing and blow-drying his hair. They 
went back upstairs in silence.  When they were outside 
the conference room she fussed a little, straightening 
his tie, smoothing his hair.  Finally she stepped back. 

"There.  Knock 'em dead," she grinned. 

"Oh, yeah."  He hated the necessity of this, but he would do 
whatever it took to catch this suspect.  He stood up slowly, 
and gestured toward the wheelchair that was waiting near 
the door.  "Don't let that get too far away." 

"Don't worry."  She watched him walk out into the hall, to 
the conference room where the cameras were set up.  She tried 
to keep herself from trembling, but it was very difficult. 

+++ 

"...in conclusion, I want to warn everyone in the Capitol 
area to be wary.  He chooses his victims by their cars, 
by their suits, by the Rolex on a wrist.  He takes his 
victims by ramming from behind with the ambulance he 
drives, and hitting the driver with a stungun when he 
walks up, and the driver rolls down the window to exchange
insurance information. 

"He isn't very bright, but his technique has worked well 
on seventeen uninformed victims, including myself.  The 
easiest way for you to defend yourself against him is to
not drive alone.  You don't want to be his next substitute 
for the daddy he has never managed to talk back to, much 
less hit back." 

When Mulder paused, the reporters called out questions.  
The loudest one was the one he answered. 

"Agent Mulder, is that how he got you?" 

Mulder smiled faintly.  "Yes.  We believe that he targeted 
me after the news reports identified me because he was trying 
to handicap the Task Force assigned to capture him; in fact, 
he has made our job tremendously more simple.  I've seen his 
face.  I could pick him out of a line-up.  As soon as I match 
the face to a name, he's ours." 

"Agent Mulder, we understand that the Butcher maltreated 
you much as he did the other victims. How clear can your 
memory be through that much pain and, inevitably, fear?" 

Mulder grinned. That question was planted; he thought 
he detected Scully's skilled touch.  "Doesn't matter 
what I felt like," he shrugged casually.  "I have a 
photographic memory.  Everything I've ever seen, in 
my whole life, is still accessible.  I CAN'T forget
anything.  Believe me, I've tried."  He looked around. 
"I guess that's all for now.  We'll have updates as 
further information becomes available. Thank you." 

He waved casually, and walked out with his own free-swinging 
stride, the very image of the capable, professional Federal 
agent.  That lasted until he was outside in the hall and 
the door was closed. 

He put his hands up against the wall, leaned his forearms 
against it, rested his forehead against the cool plaster. 

"Mulder?  Sit down." 

As she spoke he felt the soft leather of the wheelchair's 
seat nudge gently at the back of his legs.  He sank down 
into the chair and let his head fall back against her body. 
Her hands left the handles on the back of the chair and 
moved up to cradle his face briefly.  His eyes stayed 
closed but he luxuriated in the caress. 

"You need to rest.  C'mon..."  She let go of him, and 
began pushing the chair down the corridor. 

He was too exhausted to even notice when she went 
right by the conference center and headed for their 
temporary office, down past the assistant directors' 
offices.  She pushed the chair through their office 
and through the connecting door to the lounge. 

"Mulder?  Mulder...?"  He did not respond.  "Mulder?" 

He blinked at her groggily.  "Hmm?  Scully?" 

She frowned; his voice was faint, and his eyes were 
glazed. 

"C'mon, G-man.  You need to take these pills." 

He blinked, and realized that she was holding out one hand 
while her other hand held a glass. 

He reached out to accept the medication, and watched, as if 
from afar, as his hand trembled.  Scully helped him drink 
from the glass to wash down the tablets.  The glass held 
cold milk, and he drank it all.  He let her take his jacket 
off him, unfasten his tie, and open his cuffs, setting his cufflinks 
aside with the matching tie clip.  Then she opened his belt and 
slid it out of the belt loops.  Clumsily, for his fingers were a 
little numb, he unbuttoned the pants. 

"Switch to the couch; lie down." 

He simply obeyed.  It was easier to obey than think.  He 
lay down, very cautiously, on his left side; the two broken 
ribs on that side were not as painful as the three on the
right. 

\\Hmm...warmer...\\  He realized as he felt her fingers 
against his chin that she had thrown a blanket over him. 

"You're safe, Mulder; you're fine.  You're just exhausted.  
You worked too hard today. Now you take a nap." 

"Scully...?" 

"I'll be here, Mulder.  I promise.  Go to sleep." 

++++

Skinner stuck his head in.  "Agent Scully?" 

She looked up from her laptop.  "Sir?" 

Her boss's attention slid off her to focus on her partner.  
"Is he all right?" 

She glanced at him.  "He's asleep, sir.  The press conference 
took every bit of energy he had.  He collapsed in the hallway 
outside.  I got his medication into him and I got him to lie 
down.  Hopefully he'll stay asleep for some time." 

Skinner swung his attention back to her.  "You didn't want 
him out of the hospital, did you?" 

She shook her head.  "No, I didn't.  But he correctly pointed 
out that he's safer here than he would be in the hospital.  
Infiltrating the Hoover Building is not something we
expect the Butcher to try." 

Skinner nearly smiled.  Then his attention went back 
to his sleeping agent.  "Did you hear the conference?" 

She nodded.  "Most of it." 

"After he left, it got wild.  Several of the noon news 
reports included analyses by physicians speculating on 
the exact nature of his injuries.  The cameras did pick 
up the gauze wrappings on both of his wrists, and the 
burns on his hands." 

"The self-inflicted ones, you mean?" 

Skinner's jaw dropped.  "What?!" 

"He used the Butcher's torch -- the propane torch he 
used to ignite the charcoal, that he had been threatening 
Mulder with -- to burn his ropes off."  Scully lifted 
her eyes up to Skinner's. 

The Assistant Director was stunned.  "I thought he was 
phobic about fire." 

"He is." 

Skinner reacted as if he had been sandbagged.  "Oh, 
my God." 

"Exactly." 

"Is he really all right?" 

"I hope he will be."  She let her eyes drift to study 
her partner's still form.  "He's expecting post-traumatic 
stress reactions.  He's even counting on the flashbacks,
hoping they will fill in places where his much-vaunted 
memory has failed him: places where, as he put it, it 
just hurt too damned much, and he blanked." 

Skinner shuddered from head to foot.  He had his own 
nightmares, and he had suffered from flashbacks and 
other symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome,
himself.  But all his nightmares had been based on 
combat scenarios: times and places when he had been 
free and armed, capable, at least, of trying to defend
himself.  Mulder had been a prisoner, all too aware 
of his fate once the identity of his captor had become 
clear.  Yet he had held off his own fear -- an 
uncontrollable phobia -- to free himself and escape. 

"You should know," he said then, his voice harsh as 
he fought to suppress his own distress, "that I'm 
recommending him for the Medal of Valor.  This is well 
above and beyond the call of duty..."  He thought he 
saw pleasure in her eyes, but he could not be sure. 

"He won't see it that way, sir," was her answer.  "He 
believes that he is just doing what he is supposed to 
and is expected to do.  He was assigned to profile and 
assist in the capture of the Beltway Butcher. And he 
will do that." 

"We don't expect twenty-four hours a day, seven days 
a week, crawl-out-of-the-hospital-to-the-office 
dedication, Agent Scully." 

She shrugged.  "It's all or nothing; Mulder doesn't 
do things halfway." 

"I've noticed that..." 

They both smiled, then, and cast worried looks at the 
subject of their discussion, who was lying half on his 
side, half on his stomach, his left arm dangling off 
the edge of the couch, sleeping so hard it seemed unlikely 
he would notice if a bomb went off in the room. 

"Stay with him, Scully," Skinner said finally.  "That's 
your assignment: to take care of him.  Anything else is 
secondary to that.  You're his bodyguard, too; we don't 
think the Butcher will try to get in here, but you and 
I know that he won't put up with hiding here for long." 

"I know.  And I'm worried about that," she admitted. 

"And if there's anything either of you needs, tell me." 

"We need a gofer," she said at once. 

"I'll assign you Calvaneso; that's the one of the reasons 
he's on the Task Force: to be a gofer and watch how the 
pros work." 

Scully smiled.  "Do you really want him emulating Mulder's 
working style, sir?  He's already got hero-worship in his 
eyes." 

Skinner looked away, chewing on his lip.  "I know.  But 
if he gets to spend some serious time with Mulder, he'll 
see the pain Mulder's in.  He needs that rubbed in his
face: Mulder may be the best investigator in the Bureau 
at the current time; the pair of you have the highest 
solve rate in the Criminal Division.  The kid has some 
great potential; I want him to live long enough to realize 
some of it.  But there's a price, and I want him to see 
what it is before he trips over his own feet heading for 
a door labeled 'Hero' and gets himself killed." 

Scully could only nod.

+++ 

Mulder slept solidly, and everyone stayed away so as not 
to disturb him.  Scully stayed in touch with the investigation 
via e-mail and cell phone, confident that her voice would
not disturb her partner's rest.  She shook him every four 
hours and made him take his meds, but he did not wake 
up for hours. When he did, awareness came slowly and
reluctantly.  He moved incautiously, and cried out in pain. 

Scully was at his side instantly.  "I'm here.  It's all 
right--" 

She had slept in a lounge chair beside him, taking 
short three- and four-hour naps so she could keep track 
of his medication schedule.  She had changed her clothes 
and sent her gofer, young Kip Calvaneso, for the cafeteria 
for food that she could keep in the lounge:  doughnuts, 
cookies, popcorn and, inevitably, several snack-size 
bags of unhulled sunflower seeds. 

She put a hand on his shoulder to calm him.  "Lie still." 

Slowly, he fought his way back to consciousness.  "Scully...?" 

"Of course me," she smiled.  "Are you all the way awake?" 

"I think so." 

"Then remember you have broken ribs on BOTH sides before 
you try to move, all right?" 

He shuddered.  "There was a moment there, before I woke 
up all the way, when I thought I was home, and it was 
all just a particularly detailed nightmare." 

Scully moved closer and helped him swing his feet to the 
floor and sit up.  It concerned her that he did not resent 
or resist her aid.  He sat still for a moment, clearly resting, 
then scrubbed at his face wearily with both hands.  Then, moving 
with the same deliberation of movement that he had shown yesterday, 
he stood up and headed toward the restrooms. 

As the door to the men's room closed behind him, she got 
out her cell phone, dialed her newest speed-dial code. 

"Kip?  He's awake.  Bring up breakfast, would you?" 

"Yes, ma'am!" 

She hung up the phone with a sigh for the constant 
perkiness of the young agent. 

Mulder was taking enough time in the men's room that 
she was beginning to worry. But then he came out, and 
she smiled.  He had washed up and brushed his teeth; he
had not shaved again, because shaving irritated the 
scorch marks on his face.  He had admitted, eventually, 
the day before, that the Butcher had played games with 
the propane torch, aiming it at his eyes, playing the 
flame along his jaw, just to elicit Mulder's phobic 
reaction.  The minor burns from that were still visible.  
It was his own struggles against his bonds that had caused 
the rope burns that marred his wrists and throat. The 
day's-worth of stubble made him look rakish and dangerous, 
and Scully had to swallow hard to suppress the stab of 
longing she felt for him. 

"How do you feel, Mulder?" she asked, standing up and 
reaching for his prescriptions. 

"Swell," he grumbled.  "Stiff." 

"Are your wounds stiffening, or is it the muscles underneath?" 

"Both."  He sank carefully onto the couch again, letting 
his head fall back, closing his eyes.  "How long did I sleep?" 

"Eighteen hours." 

He lifted his head and opened his eyes.  "That explains 
that.  And I'm not even going to bother asking why you 
let me sleep that long." 

"It's 7:00 Monday morning, Mulder; Kip is bringing up a meal.  
You've got an hour to get yourself put together before the 
morning briefing." 

"Did anyone find the lair, yet?" 

She had to shake her head.  "No, not as far as I know.  I 
expect that if they had, I would have been told." 

+++ 

After breakfast, after the morning briefing-- which had been 
singularly frustrating for everyone, since there was no new 
information-- Mulder sat in the conference room, going through 
all the photos of all the suspects, looking for the man whose 
face he knew so well, now.  He did not find it.  He started on 
DC PD's mug books, sent over at Scully's request while he slept. 

Scully started calling up violent and sex crime arrest records 
on NCIC, filtering them for the man she saw driving the 
ambulance, and then forwarding them to him to be checked. 

"Mulder?" 

"Hmmm?"  He did not look up from his work. 

"Lunch time, Mulder." 

"Leave it here," he muttered, clearing a space on his desk, 
but not looking up from his work. 

"Mulder!" 

Startled by her sudden vehemence, he looked up.  "What?" 

"Get up, Mulder."  She was standing only a few yards away, 
her fists on her hipbones. 

He frowned, confused. "Why?" 

"Because you've been hunched over that desk for four 
hours.  It's time for your meds, and lunch, and for 
you to stretch out a little.  You were complaining of 
stiffness this morning.  It's only going to get worse 
if you don't move around." 

"You don't want me to walk," he pointed out, still puzzled. 

"I don't want you to walk far," she agreed.  "How about 
a wheelchair ride down to the cafeteria?  We'll leave the 
chair in the hall, and you can walk your own tray to a table." 

He paused to consider.  "What's the hot lunch, today?" 

"Chili," she grinned. 

He grinned back at her.  "Sold!" 

"I thought so." 

+++ 

"Yo!  Rad!  You white bread mutha!  Rad!!" 

The voice punched through the crowd noise in the 
Hoover Building's sixth floor employee cafeteria 
like a searchlight through the night sky.  Everyone 
turned to look at the tall, lean African-American 
man wearing black jeans and a colorful dashiki-style
shirt with a visitor's badge.  He was walking purposefully 
through the crowd, and the people separated to let 
him through.  Each man was relieved when the stranger 
went by without noticing him. 

The place went dead silent when the big man swept Fox 
Mulder up into a bear hug. 

"Been a long time, Rad!" 

Dana Scully very calmly set the end of the barrel of 
her gun against the skin underneath the man's left ear. 

The big man froze. 

"Let go of him.  Now." 

The big man let go.  Mulder staggered, fell into the 
nearest chair, and collapsed down on the table, his face 
buried in his arms. 

Scully spared a glance at her partner, keeping a portion 
of her attention on her prisoner every moment. 

"Mulder?  You okay?" 

There was no answer. 

"Mulder...?!" 

Bender moved up and efficiently cuffed the strange 
man's hands behind him. 

"I've got him, Agent Scully." 

She nodded her thanks, holstered her weapon, and hurried 
to her partner's side, where she bent over him, her hands 
infinitely gentle on his shoulders. 

"Mulder, are you all right?" 

She saw him surreptitiously wiping tears of pain off 
his face onto his shirt's cuff, and relaxed a little. 
She took a step back when he slowly straightened in 
the rigid cafeteria chair, and moved forward a little 
so his back would not come in contact with it. 

"Yeah," he spoke faintly.  "I'm okay." 

"You're sure?  Can you breathe all right?" 

He straightened a little more, carefully flexing his 
body.  "Yeah.  Nothing's shifted.  I'm okay." 

She shivered, and ran one finger across the back of 
his hand. 

Finally he lifted his head and faced her.  He managed a 
smile, though it was shaky. 

She could see that his eyes were still clouded with 
pain, but neither of them put it into words. 

Then Mulder turned to face the prisoner Agent Bender 
was holding.  "So, Sky, is that how you always greet 
old friends?"  he asked mildly. 

The dashiki rippled as the man shrugged, wincing when 
he tugged on the steel cuffs. "Hellation, Rad, what's 
goin' on, here?  What the hell have you done to yourself 
this time?" 

Mulder's eyes focused more clearly, and only then did 
he realize that the man he had called Sky was handcuffed.  
He grinned, and looked over at Agent Bender. 

"Mickey, thanks, but you can let him go." 

"But, Mulder--!" 

"Honestly, Mickey.  He didn't come here to hurt anyone.  
We're old friends.  He just got carried away with the 
excitement of the moment." 

"You're sure?"  Bender hesitated. 

"Sky?" 

"Honest, I just wanted to say hello," the big man nodded.  
"I'm sorry if I upset y'all." 

Bender shrugged, unlocked the cuffs and removed them. 

"Thanks, Mickey." 

"Any time, Mulder.  Any time." 

Mulder looked up at the stranger, and smiled.  "Sky, 
meet my partner, Agent Dana Scully, and Agent Mickey 
Bender of VCS.  Guys, this is Jerome Duwayne Crawford,
JD to most people, and 'Sky' to his old classmates 
from Quantico." 

"Pleased to meet you both," Crawford said earnestly.  
"And sorry.  Damn, Mulder, what did I do?" 

Mulder closed his eyes and shook his head once.  "Not 
your fault, Sky." 

"C'mon, Mulder," Scully spoke up again, then.  "Let's 
get you back to the office.  I want you lying down 
for a while." 

It was a mark of how much pain he was in that he 
only grinned wickedly at her, but said nothing, even 
when he saw that somehow she had gone out into the 
hallway and retrieved his wheelchair, and now expected 
him to use it. 

"C'mon, Sky."  Mulder stood up slowly, and wavered.  
He caught himself on the table with one hand, and 
straightened slowly.  Bender walked around Scully 
to Mulder's other side.  Mulder silently allowed 
Bender to help him sit down.  Scully let Bender
push the chair as they left. 

The crowd parted respectfully to let them through. 

In the elevator bay, Mulder found the energy to smile 
up at the VCS agent. 

"Thanks, Mickey.  Go finish your lunch.  I'll see you 
in the office later." 

"Shouldn't you go home, Mulder?" Bender asked worriedly, 
as he yielded his place to Scully.  "You don't have 
to be here, at all, you know.  You are entitled to 
time off." 

Mulder leaned his head backward against the familiar 
comfort of Scully's body, and closed his eyes. "No," 
he said very quietly.  "I have to catch him.  I'll 
be back upstairs in a little while." 

Bender and Scully traded eloquent expressions.  When 
the elevator arrived, Mulder did not move when Scully 
pushed the wheelchair aboard.  He did not squander his
waning energy by doing anything.  He just sat there, 
his eyes closed, his hands limp in his lap, his head 
resting back against Scully's body as he had become 
accustomed to doing. 

"Are you all right?" she asked him. 

"Yeah."  But his expression betrayed his pain. 

The elevator doors tried to slam shut on Crawford 
and Scully did nothing to stop them. He had to put 
out a hand to catch them.  His hand was nearly 
pinned, but then the doors bounced apart, and he 
got inside. 

Scully glared at him, but said nothing as she let 
go of Mulder with one hand to push the button for 
the third floor. 

Crawford's eyes widened.  The third floor was 
Administration; only the bosses had offices on three. 
But he said nothing. 

The ride was silent.  The elevator music was enough 
to hide the tiny aspirated moans that were escaping 
from between Mulder's clenched teeth.  But when the 
elevator stopped, the little jerk made him cry out. 

"Mulder?" 

But he was going limp in the wheelchair.  Scully grabbed 
and managed to keep him from slipping out of the chair, 
but she could not lift him.  She was trapped; if she let 
go, Mulder would slide to the floor, and with all the broken 
ribs he had, she could not allow that. 

"Agent Scully?" 

She glared at Crawford as he moved up to stand 
beside her.  "What?" 

"Let me take him." 

"No." 

"Please?  It's obvious he needs you; don't risk hurting 
yourself trying to shut me out. I'm already punished.  
Let me make amends." 

It took her only a moment to realize that she had no choice.  
Crawford could carry him; Crawford looked like he weighed 
more than the two of them put together. 

"All right.  Be careful!" 

"I promise." 

Moving very cautiously, Crawford lifted his old 
classmate's limp form, and cradled him like a baby. 
Scully bit back her protest, and settled for hurrying 
toward the office pushing the empty wheelchair in 
front of her. 

Crawford followed her, unsettled at how light his 
old friend felt in his arms. 

The office door that Scully pushed open had a 
temporary sign on it: 

BELTWAY BUTCHER TASK FORCE 
CO:      AD W.  Skinner 
SAC:      SA C.  Finch, VCU 
Behavioral Science:  SA F. Mulder, SAC-XFD 
Pathology:      SA D. Scully, XFD 

Investigation Team: 
SA  M. Bender, VCU 
SA  A. Kelly, VCU 
SA  M. Chretien, Richmond 
SA  F. Brown, Richmond 
SA  E. Ellis, Baltimore 
SA  C. Calvaneso, Baltimore 

Crawford could only wonder what 'XFD' meant, but the 
rest of it was pretty damn clear. His buddy had 
significantly moved up in the world.  Special Agent 
in Charge was always a recognition of accomplishment, 
and to be SAC of a permanent unit rather than of a 
temporary task force, was telling. 

Shoving the wheelchair out of the way to one side, 
Scully led him past the work stations and the array 
of file cabinets through another door into what was 
obviously a lounge.  Several couches, several easy 
chairs, and a full service coffee alcove, with coffee, 
tea and hot chocolate available. 

"Put him here."  She indicated a couch already equipped 
with two pillows and a blanket. 

He bent to lay Mulder out flat, and she interrupted him. 

"Not on his back.  On his side.  Left side." 

That fit the way the couch was made up; he laid his 
friend out and she helped adjust the way Mulder lay 
until she was satisfied he would be comfortable when he 
awoke. 

Still ignoring Crawford, Scully opened Mulder's shirt 
and unbuttoned his cuffs, moving with extreme care to 
keep from disturbing him.  This was not unconsciousness; 
she believed he had just fallen asleep.  She did not 
believe he was in any condition to be working, so every 
moment he slept was a good thing. 

Crawford was shocked to see the bandages on his friend's 
wrists.  He looked a little more closely, and saw the 
bruises, and the rope burn on Mulder's neck, where it had
been hidden by his shirt collar. 

"My God!  What happened to him?!" 

"Do you watch the news?" 

"Mostly." 

"He escaped from the Beltway Butcher Friday evening.  He'd 
been captured on Tuesday."  Scully explained as she adjusted 
Mulder's pillow. 

Crawford gritted his teeth.  His friend had been in 
the hands of a sadistic serial killer for nearly four 
days.  He could only stare, horrified, at the myriad 
cuts and slashes, as well as inflamed and angry red marks 
that were plainly burns, on Mulder's face, throat, and 
forearms.  He could see the bulkiness of more bandages 
under the fine cotton fabric of the dress shirt, and he 
realized that he could not see the more serious damage 
on Mulder's body. 

Burns. 

"Oh, my God," Crawford whispered.  "Those are burns!  
Is he all right?  Really?  You know about his fire phobia?" 

Scully threw an appraising glance at him.  "Yes," she 
said shortly.  "He's dealt with several arsonists since 
we've been partners, not the least of which was a 
pyrokinetic who tried to kill him by luring him inside 
a building that had been painted entirely with
accelerants." 

"...Scully...?" 

She turned back toward her partner, and the fingers 
of one hand slipped through his hair.  "How are you doing?" 

"I'm fine." 

That was code, and Scully suppressed a sad smile.  He had 
refused to take the painkillers before he ate lunch, 
she knew, because he had been planning to at least try
to walk back to the office afterwards. She found the 
bottle of painkillers among the assortment of medications 
she had lined up next to the coffee machines.  She 
shook out a pair of the caplets, and hunted in the 
little cooler for a carton of milk. 

"Here.  Take these." 

He obeyed without so much as a murmur of protest; when 
he tried to hand it back to her she refused it. 

"Drink it all." 

It frightened her a little that he did so without arguing 
in the least.  She took the empty carton from him and 
offered him a water bottle.  He took a swig and then 
set it on the floor beside the couch. Then he lowered 
himself back down onto the pillows and made himself 
as comfortable as possible. She thought he was going 
back to sleep, and was about to get rid of their guest 
when Mulder spoke. 

"So, Sky; is DEA boring you?  Come to get your old job 
back?  You'd stand a better chance of getting through 
the interview if you'd review the dress code."  His eyes 
were a little unfocused, and his voice was faint, but 
his words were clear. 

Crawford chuckled, and then startled Scully by dropping 
to sit cross-legged on the floor beside Mulder. 

"No, I do a lot of undercover infiltration work; I haven't 
worn a suit to work in years.  I'm not sure I even own one, 
right now." 

"Lucky..." 

"Clothes horse." 

"Wild man." 

Crawford grinned.  "I'm here to testify in budget 
hearings.  We need money to fight drug cartels that 
make a million dollars a minute, 24/7, all tax free.  
But the bean counters here in DC want us to account for 
every paper clip."  His smile faded.  "Why aren't you 
in a hospital, Rad?  Seems like you should be." 

Mulder made a face.  "Scully's a doctor; she can keep 
me running..." 

"You can barely walk, Rad.  What's so important that 
you can't take a couple of days of sick leave?  If I 
know you, you've got months saved up." 

Mulder let his eyes close; he was tired, and the freshened 
medication was making sleep very tempting. When he spoke 
he did not bother to open them.  "I'm profiling this case, 
Sky.  Usually I have to work from crime scenes and 
victims' remains.  This time I'm a victim, myself.  I saw 
him, I could pick him out of a line-up.  He even explained
parts of his ritual to me." 

Neither listener had to be told that he had been both 
student and teaching tool at the same time. 

"I have to catch him." 

That toneless statement was eloquent and Crawford swallowed 
hard.  

"This lunatic has captured, tortured and murdered sixteen 
men in power suits in twenty weeks," he said very softly.  
"How'd you get away?" 

Mulder blinked at him sleepily, and faked a careless shrug.  
"I freaked completely when he came at me with a propane 
torch.  He decided I wasn't worth cuffing.  I burned through 
the ropes while he was napping, and got the hell out of 
there." 

Crawford grinned, nodded approvingly.  "Good man." 

"Gutless, craven man," Mulder corrected him bitterly.  
"I should've arrested him, then. But all I could think 
about was getting away from him." 

"Rad, you can hardly handle yourself," Crawford's tone 
was gentle.  "If you'd tried to bust him, chances are 
he'd've just taken you prisoner, again.  And then 
everything you'd learned about him would've been lost." 

"If he'd been in custody, it wouldn't've mattered," Mulder 
growled. 

"Sure it would."  Crawford shook a finger at him.  "If 
you'd busted him, and he'd taken the Fifth, the most 
you'd've been likely to get a conviction on would have 
been Kidnapping and Assault First on a Federal Officer.  
His lawyer would claim that all similarities between 
your guy and the Beltway Butcher were coincidental 
or your guy was intentionally copycatting.  With 
a good arrest by the task force, based on a solid profile
from you, plus real physical and forensic evidence, 
you'll take him down as a serial killer.  Isn't that 
what you want?" 

"Well... yeah..." 

"Rad.  Stop it.  You aren't God; you aren't even the Holy 
Ghost!  You're just Spooky Mulder, and you can't save everybody.  
You can only do so much." 

Mulder stretched carefully, a faint smile slowly spreading 
across his face.  "God, I've missed you, Sky. Are you happy 
at DEA?" 

"I have been," Crawford admitted.  "If they try to kick 
me up to Admin I won't be.  You seem to be doing all right, 
here.  Your own division?  Must be nice.  But what does
XFD stand for?" 

"So, Mulder, when are you going to explain?"  Scully 
changed the subject. 

He frowned at her, puzzled.  "Explain what?" 

"Why your friend calls you Rad and hugs you hard 
enough to displace broken ribs." 

"Not that hard; the ribs are fine, Scully.  They're 
no worse, anyway." 

"Okay," she conceded the point.  "'Rad?'" 

Crawford grinned.  "Fox Mulder.  F. M.  FM Radio.  Radio.  
Rad.  Radical, sometimes." 

"A lot of the time," Scully threw her partner a merry 
smile, which he returned.  Then her expression cooled 
a little as she studied the bigger man.  "'Sky?'" 

"Skyhook," Mulder answered.  "He can't do a slam dunk 
to save his life, but he can do a lay-up that looks 
like he has wings and gravity doesn't apply to him." 

"Basketball," Scully shook her head wearily.  "I should 
have figured.  It's about as much fun to watch as tennis 
or ping-pong..." 

Crawford smiled slowly.  "What's your favorite spectator 
sport, Agent Scully?" 

"Football," she grinned.  "Big muscular men wearing 
tight spandex pants, running around and sweating." 

"Ooo, Scully," Mulder smiled tiredly.  "You're turning 
me on." 

"Big sweaty men in spandex turn you on, Mulder?" she 
grinned at him.  "That explains a lot..." 

Mulder stuck his tongue out at her. 

Scully grinned. 

He grinned back. 

Her smile changed from merry to concerned.  "Relax, Mulder.  
You're supposed to be sleeping." 

His smile faded away.  "I'm not going to sleep, Scully.  
There's too much to do..." 

"So?  Profiling is mostly thinking.  You lie there with 
your eyes closed and think.  You talk; I type.  We get it 
done without you collapsing and spending the next four 
days in the hospital on various IVs and total sedation." 

Mulder stared at her for a moment, but he knew she was 
serious; he'd been indulged so far because they both 
knew that he was the best chance law enforcement had to
identify and locate the Beltway Butcher.  But if he 
abused the opportunity by abusing his body further, 
she would play her trump card and have him hospitalized.  
She could do it, and she would, and Skinner would back 
her up. 

"You don't play fair, Scully." 

"All's fair in love and medicine, Mulder," she misquoted, 
her eyes twinkling at him. 

Mulder threw a glance at his friend.  "See what I have to 
put up with?" he pretended to whine. 

Crawford folded his arms across his chest and grinned.  
"You love it, and you know it." 

Mulder turned his attention back toward Scully, and 
his expression softened.  "Yeah, I do." 

There was a moment of silent communion between the pair, 
then Mulder settled back a little and closed his eyes 
obediently.  Scully brushed the hair off his forehead. 

"So, the two of you were close at Quantico?" she asked 
softly. 

Crawford grinned.  "Roommates.  I helped him with anything 
that used numbers and he taught me how to lie to psychologists 
and fool polygraphs.  He finished first in the class.  I was fourth." 

Scully tried to suppress a grin.  "So how'd you end 
up at the DEA?" 

Crawford shrugged.  "I'd been in the field for four 
months.  I was still at my First Office, working on 
an Organized Crime task force with Miami-Dade.  They 
needed somebody who didn't look like a Fed to do some 
contact work.  I grew up on mean streets in Detroit, 
and I could talk the talk.  Once out of the awful JC 
Penney's suit that was all I could afford, I looked 
street enough.  Job went well.  DEA liaison to the 
Task Force made me an offer.  It was more money, more 
undercover, and less Old-White-Guys office politics.  
I took it." 

Scully sighed softly and glanced back at Mulder, who 
seemed to have succumbed to the painkillers and fallen 
asleep. 

"Neither of us ever did a First Office assignment," 
she said softly.  "I went right to teaching at Quantico 
after I graduated..." 

"...And he went to Violent Crimes, where Bill Patterson 
stole him and refused to give him back." Crawford studied 
his friend's partner for a moment, and decided there was
a lot more than just partnership at work, here. \\Jeez, 
what was my first clue?\\ he grumbled to himself. \\But 
this is good.  Rad needs someone to care about him and
take care of him, and it sure looks like she's elected 
herself.\\  He nerved himself for it and spoke quietly.  
"Agent Scully?" 

"Yes?" 

"What's XFD stand for?" 

"X Files Division." 

He grimaced.  "Okay.  What's an X File?" 

Scully explained that, briefly.  Then she looked thoughtful.  
"Sky, do you think DEA would lend you back to us for a 
while?" 

Crawford blinked.  "I dunno...maybe.  Probably?  I'm in 
between assignments.  I was done testifying this morning." 

Scully blinked.  "You testified in front of a Congressional 
sub-committee wearing that?!" 

"Sure," he shrugged.  "I wanted to shake the white bread 
up." 

"You've done that, I'll bet!" 

"Probably," he agreed.  Then his smile faded.  "What did
you have in mind for me, Agent Scully?" 

She pointed toward her motionless partner.  "He needs 
a bodyguard." 

"Why does he need another?" Crawford asked quietly.  
"He's got you, doesn't he?" 

Scully pinned him with a look so intense that he 
nearly flinched.  "He does," she agreed calmly, 
fully aware of what she was implying.   "But we 
aren't joined at the hip. If I get called away to 
Quantico, for example, to autopsy another victim 
he'll probably want to stay here, to keep working 
on his profile, to look for the perp's face." 

"He'll be safe, here." 

She nodded.  "I know he will.  But if he gets an idea, 
even if it's in the middle of the night, he'll go check 
it out alone.  He won't wait for me; he prioritizes 
catching the UNSUB higher than his own physical safety.  
If you're there, you'll go with him, and he
won't fit the victim profile anymore." 

"I'll call you, too."  Crawford studied his sleeping 
friend.  "He'd really go off on his own? Even hurt 
like this?" 

"He's done it before," she shrugged. 

"You're his partner; that's not right." 

That was a searching question, but Scully had no 
qualms about answering it... and she wondered how she 
had come to trusted this man so implicitly so soon. 

"Sick, hurt, exhausted... means nothing.  He has to 
catch the bad guys and make the world a safer place 
for the weak and helpless."  Scully shrugged.  "He 
thinks he's protecting me.  I'm female.  He's a 
gentleman.  No matter how hard I try to retrain him,
he still tries to protect me.  I think it's in his 
bones.  He can't fight it; I've about given up
trying.  That's who he is, and I really don't want 
to change him..." 

Crawford frowned.  "He does it to protect you?  That's 
silly; you're a trained agent!" 

"He's a foot taller and seventy-five pounds heavier," 
she said with a wry smile.  "I'm as good a shot as he 
is, but I can't out-run a man, or out-fight one 
without resorting to weaponry, and I'm not always 
successful.  When I was kidnapped, I..." 

"You?!"  Crawford stared.  "That should've been 
on the news!  How come I never heard about it?" 

"We never released it," she shrugged.  "I was MIA 
for twelve weeks, and I have zero conscious memory 
of that time.  I don't know who had me or exactly 
what they did to me.  I know a couple of the results: 
I have a few nasty nightmares, and I
need a particular sort of microchip in my neck to 
keep me from developing cancer." 

Crawford could only stare.  "Where could you find a chip 
that could to that inside a human body?!" 

Scully shrugged.  "He stole it for me out of a 
Pentagon storeroom." 

Crawford swallowed hard.  "He stole it.  Out of 
the Pentagon?!  Our Pentagon?!  Our military?!"

She nodded.  "Yes.  Scary, huh?  The old song and 
dance about the evils of the military-industrial 
complex takes on a whole new meaning when you 
shuffle in the wild cards of the good aliens and 
the bad aliens.  If the human terms 'good' and 
'bad' really apply to them, which is debatable." 

Crawford stared at her.  "Aliens.  You mean from 
outside the country." 

She shook her head, smiling faintly.  "Outside the 
atmosphere.  Outside the solar system, probably. We 
really don't know where they're from.  But they seem 
to both have designs on our planet, and to not be 
omnipotent, since they need local quislings to
make their plans work."

"Is that what you do?" he asked, awestruck.  "Fight 
those quislings?" 

She nodded.  

"'Aliens?'" he had to ask.

Scully shrugged.  "I'm not convinced about the aliens; 
Mulder is.  As far as fighting the conspirators, it's 
almost not relevant.  The organization is worldwide 
and very well-funded.  Our time is split about 
seventy-thirty.  Seventy percent focused on this
Consortium and thirty percent on other crimes 
against humanity, mostly serial killers and other 
monsters that hunt people." 

Crawford blinked.  "'Monsters?'" 

Scully settled back in the chair near her partner's 
head, and nodded.  "Monsters. Vampires. Werewolves.  
Flukeman." 

Crawford was beginning to feel like a parrot.  
"'Flukeman'?" 

"Best we could figure that one out, a Russian ship 
was out in international waters off New Jersey.  The 
ship had been used to dispose of some of the contaminated 
waste from Chernobyl.  One of their sailors somehow got 
significantly contaminated, and either jumped or was pushed 
overboard.  He mutated, in his own form, into a human
sized version of a liver fluke.  He killed several people 
by implanting larvae in them.  It was a little like the 
movie ALIEN," she said thoughtfully.  "When the larvae were
mature enough to leave the host, the expulsion killed 
the host.  It was quite nasty, and we didn't manage to 
kill it; he got away.  Well, half of him got away." 

Crawford swallowed hard.  "Half?" 

"He was bisected by the hatch to the sewer line.  Mulder 
dropped it on him when he had tried to kill the head of 
the local water treatment plant." 

"So he died." 

"Possibly.  Probably.  Hopefully.  Depends on how many 
of the attributes of the fluke he had assimilated.  Flukes 
can regenerate amputated portions of their bodies, and it
was the head end that escaped.  He may be alive out there 
in the ocean off New Jersey." 

"Another reason to avoid the Jersey Shore,"  Crawford commented. 
He studied her intently for a moment. "You're not serious." 

Scully shrugged.  "I don't care if you don't believe 
me.  I'd show you the file, but it was lost in the 
fire, with over fifty years of documentation and 
evidence on alien encroachment and things that go 
'bump' in the night."  She was not going to tell 
this man, almost a stranger, that Mulder had electronic 
copies of all the files stashed safely away, with the 
help of the Gunmen, in two different bank safe deposit 
boxes. 

+++ 

Scully passed her request up to Skinner, who asked 
the Director for permission and got it.  The DEA 
had no hesitation about lending their Agent Crawford 
to the FBI for a short-term bodyguard detail. One 
of the Butcher's earlier victims had been a friend of
the DEA's Mid-Atlantic Regional Operations Director.  
Once he knew who Crawford would be guarding, he gave 
his wholehearted and instant support. 

Scully, unaware of the connection, was a little 
suspicious of the DEA's readiness to cooperate, 
and she suspected the agency might have an ulterior 
motive.  But Mulder trusted Crawford, so she tried 
not to be too suspicious of the big man. 

"Dana, relax.  He's a good guy!" 

"He was a good guy when you knew him," she conceded.  
"You knew him for four months, twelve years ago.  
Pretty shaky ground, if you ask me." 

"I am asking you," Mulder pointed out.  "If you feel 
that way, why did you request him?" 

"Because you trust him, and I want to," she admitted.  
"I like him.  I don't want him to be a bad guy.  I just 
have to stay aware that he may be." 

"He would never turn his coat," Mulder was sure.  "He's 
the best." 

She studied him intently for a moment.  "You profiled him?  
Recently?" 

Mulder nodded, and tossed her a folder.  A glance 
told her it was Crawford's DEA dossier.  "Mickey called 
for this when he showed up.  I'm even more suspicious 
than you are, Scully. He's clean.  His record at DEA is 
almost spotless, and he hasn't been lying to us.  He's 
still the good guy who tried to teach me calculus at the 
Academy.  He's just tougher and smarter, now." 

Scully knew that detecting falsehood like that was a skill 
associated with his profiler's ability to read people 
and grasp their motivations and goals.  So she relaxed 
a little, and they focused on the hunt for the Beltway 
Butcher. 

+++ 

The nightmares started on the third night. 

They had rearranged the lounge to suit themselves, and
the ADs had not said a word. Two of the couches had been 
dragged into the far corner, where, sitting at right
angles, they squared off a small private space.  Scully 
had moved in a small table that she used as a desk, 
with two chairs, so they could eat there.  It was not 
much privacy, but it was enough.  The others who worked 
on the floor had been very polite about not using the 
lounge except during normal working hours.  They had 
occasionally come in to find Mulder asleep under his 
partner's watchful eye, but had kept quiet enough, out
of respect for what he had endured, that his sleep was 
not disturbed by those occasional visits. 

Mulder was sacked out on his couch, as comfortable, he had 
assured Scully, as he would have been at home.  Scully 
was sleeping on the other couch, but when Mulder started 
whimpering in his sleep, the sound disturbed Scully who was 
decidedly not as comfortable as she would have been at home, 
snuggled in her queen-size bed under her favorite down quilt. 

Mulder was moving restlessly, deep in REM sleep, and she 
frowned.  He was dreaming, and she was sure that was a bad 
thing. 

He was panting, now, gasping for breath, plainly in pain.  
Scully got up, knelt beside him.  "Mulder, wake up..." 

She reached out to touch his shoulder, to shake him 
lightly. 

Mulder screamed at her touch, flinching violently from 
the contact. 

"Mulder!  It's me!" 

Panting desperately, Mulder stared at Scully for a moment, 
visibly reorienting himself. Then he wilted, burying his 
face in his arms. 

"Mulder...?" 

He did not respond to her.  He was shivering, and fighting 
to get his breathing under control, but the panic reaction 
had made him move without any concern for his injuries,
and now he was in pain. 

+++ 

Assistant Director Jana Cassidy stumbled down the hall.  
She had been out of town for a month, attending her 
grandmother's funeral and assisting her own mother 
in dealing with the legal inevitabilities of being 
executor of the will.  Her plane had landed an hour
ago, and she had a briefing scheduled in two.  All 
she was hoping for was a functional coffee maker, 
so she could get some real caffeine into her system 
before her own division heads met with her in her 
office to update her.  She had two hours, and she
needed a shower, too... 

She pushed open the door to the AD's lounge in time 
to hear a familiar voice moan, "God, Scully...!" 

Cassidy froze.  She could see a man on the couch in the 
corner.  His back was to her, but even in this dim light 
she could see that he was not wearing a shirt; his shoulders
were bare.  She had recognized his voice, too. 

\\That's Fox Mulder!  What the hell is going on here?!\\ 

Even as the thought became clear, Mulder threw back 
his head.  He was breathing hard, and Cassidy could see 
the movement in front of him, nearer the floor, that was
another person; from the glimmer of red hair, that other 
person was Mulder's partner, Dana Scully, kneeling on 
the floor in front of him. 

\\Of all the NERVE!\\ Cassidy fumed.  \\It's bad enough 
that Mulder thumbs his nose at authority at every possible 
moment, but to turn the AD Lounge into a love nest !\\  She
stalked across the room with every intention of causing 
coitus interruptus with all possible distress, before 
writing up both agents for censure. 

But as she came around to get a better view, she was 
stunned into immobility. 

Mulder's body and left thigh were streaked with blood.  
Wide elastic bandaging wrapped around his body was 
stained with fresh blood.  Scully was on her knees in
front of him, replacing torn stitches in his thigh.  
He was panting from pain, not arousal. 

"Oh, my God--!"  The words were jarred out of her. 

Mulder's eyes were closed, and he did not look at her; he 
was trying to maintain some control over his pain.  Scully 
looked up and glared at her. 

"Do you mind...?" 

Assistant Director Jana Cassidy fled. 

+++ 

A little while later Mulder was cleaned up and re-stitched, 
asleep on his couch, snugly tucked in. Scully was cleaning 
up the medical detritus when Skinner knocked and peeked in. 

"Scully?" 

"C'mon in, sir." 

He walked across the room cautiously.  "I understand you 
were interrupted a little while ago." 

Scully smiled faintly.  "AD Cassidy seemed somewhat 
startled..." 

"She thought the two of you were in here um..."
He hesitated. 

"Acting inappropriately?" Scully suggested politely. 

"Yes," he nodded with undisguised relief. 

"Even if Agent Mulder and I had a relationship like 
that, it would have been far too risky under present 
conditions, sir," she grinned faintly, amused at his 
discomfiture.  "We're getting interrupted too often 
to have any confidence in our privacy." 

Skinner nodded slowly.  "That's why you're dressed 
like that?"  He nodded at the floor-length dark green 
satin robe she was wearing over matching pajamas.  Her 
feet encased in matching slippers, she was completely 
covered except her hands and her face.  Her business 
suits were more revealing. 

Scully nodded.  "Yes.  I refuse to sleep in my clothes, 
but I agree that neither Mulder nor I would be safe at 
home.  Our connection is too commonly known; if the Butcher
wanted Mulder, he could easily get to him through me.  
I won't risk putting that kind of stress on Mulder, 
now." 

"Speaking of your partner," Skinner said quietly, "how 
is he?  Jana said she saw a lot of blood..." 

Scully blinked at the use of AD Cassidy's given name.  
"He's all right.  He had a nightmare, and pulled out 
some stitches, flexed his ribs badly.  He was in a lot 
of pain. But I gave him his medication, fixed the 
stitches..."  She let her voice trail off as she
glanced at her partner, soddenly asleep.  "I sneaked a Valium 
tab into the handful of
pills he takes.  He didn't notice." 

"So he'll be out for a while?" 

"I expect him to be stirring around lunch time." 

Skinner nodded thoughtfully.  "Why don't you take a break, 
then, too, Scully.  The two of you have been on this case 
24/7 for days.  You both need a break." 

Scully laughed shortly.  "I can't leave him like this.  Not 
without telling him."  She wanted to add an explanation of 
Mulder's wounded psyche, but was suddenly uncomfortable 
about exposing her partner and, inevitably, herself. 

"You've been totally focused on your partner and on 
this case from the moment it hit the news," Skinner sighed.  
"Just take a break from it, Scully.  If you don't want to
leave, invite someone in to visit with you.  Think about 
something else for a few hours. Clear your head.  God 
knows it will all be here waiting for you when you get 
back!" 

She studied him for a long moment.  "You're serious." 

"Absolutely." 

She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. 

"What?  C'mon, Scully..." 

"Do...do you think we could sneak my mom into the 
building past the press and then back out again?" 

Skinner squared his shoulders.  "Scully, do you think 
you're talking to amateurs?  Of course we can do that.  You 
sit tight, here, and I'll send someone out to get her." 

She smiled at him, and he was startled to see how fragile 
that smile was.  "Thank you, sir." 

+++ 

An hour later Scully had had time to run down to the 
gym and grab a shower, wash her hair and get back up 
to the lounge.  She had hurried because she did not 
want to be out of earshot of her partner if he woke 
up early.  Dressed in dark grey slacks and a scarlet 
silk blouse, she had not yet shrugged on her jacket.  
Her nylon-encased feet were stuck into her slippers.  
She was making fresh coffee and considering what to
ask the cafeteria to send up for breakfast when there 
was a knock on the door. 

"Dana?" 

"Mom!" 

The door opened and in a moment she was in her mother's 
arms.  Dana found herself hanging on for dear life and 
sobbing.  It was some time before she could get herself
under control enough to talk. 

"Oh, God, Mom, I've missed you...!" 

Margaret Scully held onto her daughter and let her 
cry.  "I've been home, sweetheart. You could have 
dropped by any time." 

Scully pushed herself away from her mother, glad she 
had not yet put on her makeup. She smiled wanly.  "No, 
I couldn't." 

"Is that why I'm here, now?" 

Scully frowned.  "Didn't AD Skinner explain?" 

"I haven't seen him.  An Agent Bender and an Agent 
Franklin came to my door and asked me to accompany 
them here to see you and Fox.  They didn't say anything
about why, just that Assistant Director Skinner 
had sent them to ask me to come." 

+++ 

Margaret Scully stayed for three hours, learning 
more than she had ever cared to know about how the 
FBI worked and how it treated her daughter.  She left 
before Mulder woke up because Scully insisted. 

"It's dangerous for you to be seen here, Mom.  This 
suspect hasn't targeted a woman yet, but that could 
change in a heartbeat if he feels threatened or sees 
a way to regain his machismo by hurting Mulder again.  
Indirect pain would work.  Please, Mom." 

Being out of her personal comfort zone, Margaret 
yielded and left the building, this time in the 
company of two different agents. 

+++ 

Three days later, Scully was ready to start emulating 
the Butcher, herself, though she fantasized about 
targeting a few of the other agents on the Task Force, 
and several who were not, just because their personal 
quirks that were driving her crazy. 

They were all thoroughly frustrated.  Skinner was beginning 
to feel like a lion-tamer who'd forgotten his whip and chair. 

Mulder was doing significantly better; but he was 
always tired.  As his body healed, his mind recovered 
the energy to throw the horrors of his experience back 
at him.  He had hardly had three hours of sleep in a row 
since that one long eighteen hour stretch. Much to their 
dismay, the sound of any male voice --even Skinner's or 
Sky's-- was frequently enough to trigger a nightmare 
if he overheard it in his sleep.  Only Scully's
voice could wake him up out of the nightmare.  He had 
awakened several times to find himself sobbing in her arms, 
whimpering his terror, with his wrists crossed as if bound. 

She had not allowed him to be embarrassed.  She had, 
instead, sent Kip down to supplies for another couch, 
which she had him set up in their office, so the ADs 
could use their lounge, again.  Mulder needed the 
privacy of their own office, a place where only he 
and Scully spent time.  He was even a little wary 
of letting Crawford into that private space, but Sky's 
undisguised horror at what had been done to his friend 
and his staunch support had done a lot to keep Mulder 
on an even keel. 

The investigation was stagnated.  Despite everything 
Mulder could rake out of his memory, nothing was enough 
to get an ID on the Butcher.  He had not taken a new
victim, and there had been no suspicious activity near 
Mulder's apartment.  A convoy of three cars and nine 
agents had taken Mulder to his checkup on Wednesday at 
the outpatient clinic. 

Thursday, Friday and Saturday had inched by with a lot 
of work being attempted but without progress or success.  
There were no abandoned cars found with the telltale bit
of butcher's string dangling from the rearview mirror.  
There were no missing person reports that fit the description 
of the Butcher's typical target.  Agents with Polaroid
cameras had gone through all the morgues and all the recent 
admissions in all the area hospitals without finding anyone 
who fit the description of the Butcher. 

Even Mulder was beginning to think the unthinkable. 

Scully stared at him when he broached the topic.  "You're 
kidding, right, Mulder?" 

Crawford, equally shocked, kept quiet, watching the two 
spar.  He had learned, over the last few days, how much 
their discussions, sometimes mistaken for arguments,
clarified the situation for everyone. 

He shrugged as he settled back on his couch in the lounge.  
"There hasn't been any sign of him for nearly a week, Scully.  
This isn't the guy I was profiling: he wouldn't have given 
up and he was escalating when he caught me.  Something's 
happened to him.  If we can find convincing evidence that 
he's dead, we could all go back to business as usual." 

"You don't think he's run away, do you?" 

He shuddered.  "No.  I don't think he's afraid of being 
caught.  I think he's interested in maintaining his freedom, 
but I don't think he's capable of restraining himself from
violence for much longer.  He's been escalating, and my 
escape infuriated him." 

Scully remembered the man she had seen so briefly 
that night, and nodded.  He had been red-faced with 
rage when she had drawn her weapon and attempted to arrest
him.  "Could he have just left town?  He had your 
ID, so he knew you're an FBI agent, so he couldn't get 
beyond your jurisdiction, but maybe he was willing to 
get out of DC." 

"You've been keeping the entire Metro area up-to-date, 
haven't you?" 

"We've been involving the local FBI offices," she answered 
him carefully.  "The local PDs are given all the advisories, 
but we haven't gotten anything back from most of them.  
And VICAP is still voluntary; they don't have to share 
information with us." 

Mulder looked thoughtful.  "Maybe we should call around, 
see if anybody's found something that they aren't certain 
fits in, something they don't want to bother us with..." 

Scully grinned at him.  "How very adroit, Mulder." 

He grinned back at her.  "You catch more flies with honey 
than with vinegar." 

"Good idea.  Sky can help." 

Crawford grinned.  "So can Mickey and Kip.  Let's use the 
task force office.  There's a phone bank in there." 

"Okay."  Mulder did not argue when Crawford brought him 
his wheelchair.  They went upstairs to the task force 
office together and started the process of checking 
with every police department within a hundred and fifty 
mile radius of DC. 

+++ 

Scully paused between phone calls to stretch.  She had 
been keeping watch on her partner, and she knew he was 
just about done.  He was moving very slowly, and he
had been staring blankly at his phone for several 
minutes, making no attempt to dial again. 

"Mulder?" 

He did not react. 

"Mulder."  Her voice was marginally more sharp. 

His reaction was a flinch; a small one, to be sure, 
but definitely a flinch.  All Scully's interior alarms started 
sounding.  He looked up toward her, but his eyes were not
focused. 

"Quittin' time?" she asked gently. 

"Yeah.  Help me?"  His voice was almost inaudible. 

That got everyone's attention.  Previously he had always 
tolerated her aid, had subtly resisted.  He had never 
asked for help before.  Crawford and Mickey Bender 
frowned worriedly.  Kip Calvaneso was frozen in the 
doorway; he had just gone for fresh coffee. 

She glanced at the others.  "You guys finish the 
calls, okay?" 

"Sure, Scully.  Go take a nap, Rad."  Sky sounded 
totally normal. 

Scully threw him a grateful glance, but Mulder did not 
appear to hear.  He was limp in the chair, his head 
resting back against Scully's body as she pushed the 
wheelchair down the hall toward the elevators. 

Once they were alone in their own office he leaned 
on the right arm of the wheelchair but made no move 
to get up. 

Frightened, now --he had been improving, and this 
appeared to be a relapse-- Scully knelt in front of 
him so she could see his face.  Her hands were on 
his knees. 

"Mulder," she spoke very softly.  "What's wrong?" 

He looked down at her and shuddered, looking away.  
"I'm scared." 

She was shocked at the admission.  "Scared?  Of what?" 

"Of him.  I'm scared to find him, Scully.  I don't 
want to ever see that face again."  His voice 
was barely audible, and Scully was not reassured. 

"You'd be a fool not to be afraid of him.  He nearly 
made you his seventeenth kill, and he hurt you very 
badly before you outsmarted him and escaped." 

He avoided looking at her.  "What if I'm blocking out 
his face?" he blurted.  "What if I've just passed right 
by his photo and never recognized him because I'm afraid 
to see him?  He's still out there.  When he kills again 
it will be my fault... and I don't think I can live 
with that..." 

She settled on the floor in front of him, and took both 
his hands in hers.  His hands were cold, and she rubbed 
them until they were warm again. 

"Whatever he does, he is responsible for, not you.  And 
I don't think your subconscious would protect you from 
a little fear just to protect a killer.  Maybe all this 
silence just means that he's a little stronger than we 
suspected, and he's fighting the compulsion because 
he really, really wants to finish with you before he 
goes on to new victims." 

He shuddered.  "You have no idea how much that terrifies 
me," he admitted in a low voice. 

"You aren't alone.  Between me and Sky, and the rest 
of the team, even if he could penetrate building security, 
he won't get near you." 

He was fighting back tears, and did not answer her. 

"Mulder, you were expecting Post Traumatic Stress.  This 
is it.  Accept it; you knew it was coming..." 

He crumbled, physically and emotionally, into her arms. 

Scully caught him as he half-fell out of the wheelchair 
to huddle in her lap, sobbing. 

The door opened, and Kip stuck his head in.  "Agent 
Scully, Assistant Director Skinner wants-" 

"Out!"  Scully snapped, throwing him a glare powerful 
enough to scorch him. 

He fled. 

Mulder cried himself to sleep in her arms.  She did not 
try to move him off the thinly carpeted floor. When she 
was sure he was asleep, she pulled a pillow down off the
couch --she had to stretch to reach it-- and slid it 
under his head as she slid out from beneath him.  A 
blanket was suddenly handed to her, and she looked up, 
startled, to see Skinner's solemn face.  She covered 
Mulder where he lay, and accepted her supervisor's 
silent offer of a hand up off the floor. 

"When...?  Oh.  Kip called you, didn't he?" Scully 
realized. 

Skinner nodded.  "He was frightened.  I was just worried.  
Is he okay?  What happened?" 

Scully walked to the back of their office.  "He's too 
uncomfortable on the floor to sleep long, and he'll need 
help to get up," she explained, her voice soft.  "Coffee, sir?" 

"No, thanks.  Scully, is he okay?  What happened?" 

Scully went to her desk and tested the contents of her mug: 
she had made a sort of cafe mocha by stirring a packet of 
hot cocoa mix into a cup of coffee.  Unfortunately,
that had been some hours before.  Only after she tested 
it and made a face at the taste of the beverage long gone 
cold did she turn and face her supervisor. 

"Let's face reality here, sir," she drawled.  "Fox Mulder 
hasn't been okay since November 27, 1973. Sometimes he can 
pretend he's okay with great success, but it is pretense." 

"That didn't look like pretense," Skinner observed gently. 

"No.  It may have been a panic attack.  Remember I told 
you he was expecting Post Traumatic Stress reactions?" 

Skinner nodded grimly.  He remembered his own. 

"He has been anticipating having nightmares.  The first 
two nights he was too tired to do much more than minimal 
dreaming.  But he warned me that when they started they
were going to be bad."  She looked up and pinned Skinner 
with her eyes.  "He underestimated that a bit." 

Skinner shuddered.  He knew that she was sleeping here 
in the building, unable to leave Mulder alone.  Crawford 
was staying at a hotel only a half mile away, and only
leaving when ordered.  Skinner had caught him sleeping 
in chairs in the conference room twice.  "I thought Mulder 
was napping more.  Catching up?" 

She nodded.  "I knew it would surface during waking hours.  
It was only a matter of time.  The self-recrimination and 
guilt just got the better of him." 

Skinner was floored.  "Guilt?  Recrimination?!  For what, 
for God's sake?  He's--" 

"Shh!" she snarled, and Skinner backed down.  Scully kept 
going.  "He's so scared of being that man's victim again 
that he's afraid his subconscious might let him bypass
the guy's ID photo because the man's face is so much 
a reminder of what he suffered." 

Skinner opened his mouth to reply, then closed it.  "Is 
that possible?" he asked finally. 

Scully shrugged, put down her coffee, and hugged herself.  
"He thinks so, and he's the psychologist. But I don't 
think fear is enough of a motivator.  Guilt is stronger 
in Mulder.  I don't think he would, even subconsciously, 
protect himself at someone else's expense." 

Slowly, Skinner nodded.  "I've seen the self-destructive 
side of Mulder's personality before.  And he's always had 
more guts than brains.  I think you're right." 

"Well, right now, he's scared to death," Scully pointed 
out.  "He thinks that's dominant, right now, and he hates 
it, and he's ashamed of it." 

"Everyone's ashamed of being afraid," he reminded her. 

"He knows he's not like anyone else.  He just doesn't always 
see that as an asset." 

"That's our failing, not his," Skinner said softly.  "We 
have the responsibility to show him how much we value his 
presence in our lives." 

Scully stared at him.  Skinner squirmed, a little uncomfortable 
under her steady stare. They both heard the timid knock on the 
office door, and Agent Calvaneso's hesitant question. 

"Agent Scully?  Are you here?" 

"Yes, Kip what is it?" 

The young man entered hesitantly, as if expecting her to 
bite his head off again. "Have you seen the AD?"  Then 
he saw Skinner standing up.  "Sir.  They've found another 
body." 

On the floor, Mulder moved, and was immediately the center 
of everyone's attention. He sat up with some visible 
difficulty, and blinked away sleep.  "Let's go--" he 
sighed as he fought to stand up. 

Scully planted herself between him and the door and 
glared down at him.  "Sit back down, Mulder! You're not 
going anywhere." 

He stared up at her.  "Scully..." 

"You are not going out there, Mulder," she repeated.  
"You're wounded, you're exhausted..." 

"Scully...!" 

"I'm not letting you go out there.  Forget it.  You can 
work from photographs.  You're staying here, where you'll 
be safe!" 

He took a deep breath and marshaled his arguments.  "I 
don't want anyone dying in my place," he protested quietly. 

"I don't want anyone dying," she growled at him.  "But if 
anyone gets put at risk, it will not be you!" 

Mulder looked to their supervisor for back-up. 

Skinner shook his head.  "Forget it, Mulder.  We aren't 
risking your life for something as trivial as a 
seventeenth body." 

"A dead person is never trivial!" Mulder spat. 

"Agent Mulder, there is no valid reason for you to examine 
that crime scene in person," Skinner said flatly.  "I'll 
get you a satellite uplink so you can have live remote 
feed from the scene.  You can direct the agents on-scene 
as you will; you will have the digital video and stills 
to study after the fact.  You are far too valuable to the 
Bureau for us to risk your life on such a low-priority 
exercise."  He held up his hand to forestall Mulder's
heated protest.  "Stop.  You are correct; each person's 
life is infinitely valuable.  I do not want to de-value 
this latest victim.  But neither will I de-value your 
life.  We will keep you safe, Mulder, because if we lose 
you, the murderer goes on, and more people die." 

Mulder was shocked.  No one had ever told him, up front 
and with authority, that the Bureau really valued him for 
his contributions to the public good.  He knew he had
been used to improve the Bureau's public image, on occasion, 
but this was different. Rendered speechless, he could 
only stare as Skinner ordered Scully to stay with him
and left to take command of the crime scene himself. 

+++ 

It was hours later when a commotion out in the hall 
disturbed Mulder out of a fitful sleep. 

"What the--?" 

Scully, who had been curled up in the easy chair beside 
him, sat up tiredly.  The noise had awakened her, too.  
"I don't know." 

The argument out in the hall got louder, and the 
partners recognized Skinner's voice.  The other 
voice was less familiar. 

"Damn it, sir, he deserves to know!" 

"He doesn't need to know this," Skinner growled.  "Don't 
you think Mulder's been through enough? Cut the man a 
little slack, here...!" 

The other voice came right back.  "He deserves to know, 
and you know it.  He's--" 

"He's awake!" Mulder raised his voice. 

There was silence in the hall for a moment.  Then the 
door opened, and Skinner leaned in.  "Mulder?" 

"Yes." 

"Why are you awake?" 

"Because people are arguing loudly and talking about 
keeping something of some significance from me," Mulder 
growled, refusing to yield to his supervisor's glare. 

Skinner looked away.  "I'm sorry.  I didn't want to tell 
you..." 

"Tell me what?" 

The other man stepped forward, then.  "I'm Sandy Kelly," 
he introduced himself. "Mickey Bender's partner.  We 
supervised the crime scene investigation of the latest
body." 

Mulder nodded.  "All right.  Cut to the chase." 

"There was a note pinned to the body with your badge," 
Kelly said quietly. 

Mulder swallowed.  The Butcher's victims were all naked 
when found, so the badge had to have been driven into 
flesh.  "Go on." 

"It greeted you by name, and warned that no one you 
know is safe." 

Mulder fought back the guilt and terror that swept 
through him.  "Any ID on the body?" 

Kelly had to shrug.  "Not yet.  Fingerprints and dental 
records pending." 

"There's nobody you know on the missing list, Mulder," 
Skinner reminded him.  "I put guards on the families of 
all Task Force and ISU agents, everyone in the Coroner's
Office, and on your mother and Mrs. Scully.  Did I miss 
anyone you want covered?" 

Mulder wilted back against the couch, then bent and 
scrubbed at his face.  "I'll let you know," he said 
calmly, his voice low and rusty.  "I was dreaming of 
a woman screaming for her baby.  Now I'm scared." 

Kelly stared at him.  "Mickey and his wife Lauren 
had a baby three weeks ago." 

Skinner was reaching for his phone when it rang. 

+++ 

Mulder was in the Task Force's main office, studying 
his relationships board, pacing back and forth, full of 
nervous energy.  Mickey Bender's wife Lauren and newborn
daughter Alia were missing; their FBI bodyguards were 
dead, stunned from behind and their throats slit. 

Mulder would not allow Mickey to be excluded from 
the action.  Scully had given him a sedative when he 
could not stop crying, and they let him sleep it off 
on one of the couches in the lounge. 

"I don't think Lauren and the baby are in much danger 
right now," he announced to the room in general.  "Killing 
women isn't what he does." 

"Then why did he take her?" Scully played Devil's 
Advocate, since no one else in the room had the nerve 
to address 'Spooky' Mulder under these circumstances. 

He stopped pacing to face her.  "He's going to want to 
trade her and the baby for me." 

"Not likely!" Skinner growled. 

Mulder glanced at him.  "Two innocent civilians, one 
a newborn?  We don't have a choice." 

Scully swallowed hard; she could only agree, but the 
thought was horrifying.  "So how do we arrange this so 
he doesn't kill you this time?" 

Mulder smiled slowly, and Skinner shivered.  It was not 
an ordinary smile: there was something about it that 
chilled him to the bone.  He watched as Mulder picked 
up the nearest phone and dialed for an outside line. 

"Hi.  It's me.  Turn off the tape." 

Skinner and Scully stared at Mulder, surprised.  When 
Skinner glanced at Scully for an explanation, she shrugged, 
her smile widening as she began to speculate. 

"I believe you've met Mulder's friends the Gunmen?" 

Skinner nodded shortly.  "Why, though?  Why now?" 

Before Scully could reply, her cell phone trilled.  
Frowning, she pulled it out.  "Scully." 

"Ah, Agent Scully," an unfamiliar voice purred in her 
ear.  "Let me speak to Agent Mulder, please." 

A thrill of terror went through her.  This was the voice of 
the ambulance driver; the voice of the Butcher, himself. 

"Agent Mulder's on another line," she said calmly.  "Can 
I help you?" 

"No, I must speak to Agent Mulder," the voice lost its 
affability abruptly. 

"He's not available at the moment.  Would you like to 
leave me your number?  He'll be able to call you back 
shortly." 

"No, he won't," the voice snarled.  "I'll be busy killing 
Lauren Bender.  Now put him on the phone!" 

Scully kept her composure with an effort.  "I believe 
Agent Mulder is free, now.  Just a moment."  She held 
the phone against her body and faced her partner. 

He had heard most of her side of the conversation and 
he was frowning; he did not like the tension he could 
see in her.  He started toward her.  "Scully?" 

'It's him,' she mouthed the words. 

Mulder understood at once.  "Hang on a moment, Fro'," he 
said into the phone he held.  Then he set it down and 
reached for the cell she held.  "Mulder," he said
cheerfully. 

Skinner and Scully watched as Mulder listened.  He 
flinched at the first words spoken, but his back stayed 
straight and his voice did not waver when he replied.  
Mulder was careful not to antagonize the man because 
he had Mrs. Bender and the baby in his power. 

"Okay," he said finally.  "I'll be there."  He pushed 
END and let himself sag against the wall for a moment. 

"Mulder?"  That was Skinner; Scully had not bothered 
to speak, but was standing close beside her partner, 
her hand featherlight on his. 

Mulder took a deep breath and forced himself to 
straighten up. 

"Surprise; yes, that was our suspect," he said calmly.  
"He wants to trade Lauren Bender and the baby for me." 

Skinner nodded warily.  "As you predicted.  Where and when?" 

"10758 Maplewood Road, Bellington, Virginia, 7pm tonight." 

Skinner nodded thoughtfully.  "I'm calling HRT." 

Mulder let himself relax a little.  The Hostage Rescue Team, 
also sometimes called the Hostile Response Team, was the 
FBI's SWAT unit, ninety-one of the toughest men in
law enforcement. 

"Can they get there in time?" Scully asked. 

Mulder glanced at his wrist and made a 
face.  "Dammit, the bastard took my watch, too!" 

Sky Crawford, who had showed up while Mulder was on 
the phone with the Butcher and had kept quiet, chuckled.  
"So we'll add another count of robbery when we book
him," he drawled.  "It's not four o'clock, yet, but 
where's that town?  I never heard of it." 

Kip Calvaneso looked up from his computer.  "Driving 
directions are complicated, sir, and this site estimates 
that the trip will take ninety-five minutes from here.  
That doesn't leave us much time." 

Mulder picked up the office phone again.  "Fro', how fast 
can you get here?"  He listened.  Then he went to the 
printer and scanned quickly through the travel directions
that Calvaneso had printed out. "Meet us at County Road 
237 and Simpson, just over the Virginia State line.  
Sixty to sixty-five minutes." 

He hung up and stretched carefully.  Then he turned 
toward Scully.  "Let's get this show on the road." 

Scully did not move.  She was frozen, staring at him. 

"Scully, it'll be all right; I've got a plan." 

She shuddered, cold to the bone. 

+++ 

County Road 237 was a two-lane blacktop, the kind of 
old trucking route that predated the interstate highway 
system and survived because it went through small towns 
that the interstates had bypassed. The intersection of 
Simpson and 237 was just outside Loudon County, where the 
hostage exchange was scheduled.  It was marked by a tractor 
and farm equipment dealer, a boarded-up fruit stand, a 
cornfield and a cow pasture. 

The quintet of FBI fleet sedans parked neatly along the 
edge of the fruit stand's lot looked only slightly less 
out of place than the battered old Ford Econoline van that 
the Gunmen had driven. 

Inside the van, Frohike and Langly were working fast and 
efficiently with Jewelianna Olivencia of Technical Support.  
Mulder was slowly re-buttoning his shirt.  Scully was
standing outside the van, watching him through the open 
sliding door and destroying her manicure. 

Finally Mulder climbed out of the van and joined her.  He 
put his hands on her shoulders lightly. "Scully, relax.  
Please.  This'll work.  It'll be all right." 

"How can you say that?" she snapped at him, pulling free.  
"How do you know he won't just shoot you?" 

"He won't."  Mulder was totally confident.  "He needs to 
kill me the way he killed the others, or his pattern isn't 
restored.  That's why he needs me back: to restore the pattern.  
Serials are slaves to their kill ritual, Scully.  You know 
that.  If he has any choices, he'll try to maintain the ritual 
as best he can." 

She shuddered and he hugged her.  "The Gunmen are good at 
what they do and I'm wired.  I'll be okay." 

The Gunmen had brought three layers of tracking equipment 
and Olivencia had supplied FBI standard to make a fourth. 

Four homing beacons, each on a different frequency, had 
been swallowed.  Three more, each on three more different 
frequencies, were glued to his scalp, masquerading as hair.  
Three more, on yet more different frequencies, had been 
carefully threaded into the cuts on his arms and legs, 
underneath the stitches. Olivencia had been stunned at 
the technology represented by the hair-fine filaments
that the Gunmen proved were just as effective at the 
short distances available to them at the site.  The 
briefcases contained the tunable receivers that they 
calibrated, checked and re-checked.  There was almost
no chance that all ten of the covert homers could fail 
or be discovered, or that all three receivers would fail. 

"He isn't likely to be able to discover and/or block 
all of this, Agent Scully," Frohike assured her.  He had 
finished his work and stepped out to join them.  "And 
any of these receivers can pick up any of the homers.  
We aren't going to risk losing him again." 

She shuddered.  It had been very hard to insert those 
wires inside his wounds, since the whole point would have 
been negated if the Butcher was made suspicious by new
stitches.  She had had to hurt him, and the memory of 
it still bothered her. 

"Stop it," he spoke to her gently.  "He's going to hurt 
me.  I'm resigned to that.  But then you and Skinner and 
Sky and the guys in HRT are going to swoop down and
rescue me, and everything will turn out fine." 

+++ 

They saw no sign of HRT; Mulder was reasonably sure that 
the HRT unit had gone in by helicopter and were already 
in place, surrounding the house.  They were experts at 
skulking and sneaking. 

"He didn't say anything about coming alone?" Skinner asked
for at least the third time since they had left the corner 
rendezvous. 

"Nope.  Probably knew I wouldn't, no matter what.  He 
knows I'm an FBI agent." 

"Mulder?"  Scully waited until he turned to face her.  "You 
said he didn't use handcuffs on you because he based a value 
judgment on your phobic responses?" 

Mulder nodded shortly. 

"Why does it frighten me so much that he isn't trying to 
isolate you?" 

Mulder looked thoughtful.  "I suspect he has very little 
respect for law enforcement at the best of times," he said 
slowly.  "As far as we know, his other victims were all
civilians.  So his only real data on law enforcement is me.  
I was no more difficult to capture than any of his other 
victims, I presented poorly, but I escaped; I recovered
physically quickly and  taunted him on television, but we
still haven't caught him. Conflicting messages." 

"So how will he deal with that contradiction?" Skinner 
asked from the front seat. 

Mulder gnawed on his lip.  "If each fact had equal value, 
it might very well be a paralyzing conflict," he said slowly.  
"He caught me and he hurt me.  I haven't caught him, and 
he's got a plan in place that includes hurting me more... 
so I guess he's ahead on points." 

"I don't like this, Mulder." 

Mulder forced himself to relax and close his eyes.  
"Neither do I, sir.  But we can't let anything happen 
to Lauren or the baby." 

Scully forced herself to sit still.  There was nothing 
she could say, after all.  'Protect and Serve' was why 
each and every one of them had chosen law enforcement 
as a career. 

+++ 

The address on Maplewood was an old farmhouse set back 
from the road, surrounded by vacant and weedy pastures.  
The barn was shaky-looking and its main door was hanging 
ajar.  Lightning had taken down a tall sycamore tree in 
the side yard and it had fallen on the back of the house.  
Mulder decided it must have happened early in a thunderstorm, 
since the fire had stayed small.  The house had a damaged 
roof but was still fairly sound and might remain so for 
years. 

The fleet sedans parked in a neat row on the street out 
front.  Skinner, in the last car, made sure an especially 
thick patch of shrubbery was hiding him from the house, and
cued his portable radio. 

"Lieutenant Dunbar?" 

The static was squelched so low it could not be heard 
in the back seat.  "On location and ready, sir." 

"Roger that," Skinner nodded.  "Stand by; operation about 
to commence." 

"Wilco." 

Skinner turned to study the two agents in the back seat. 
"How do you want to play this, Mulder?" 

Mulder shrugged.  "He'll tell us what to do to get Lauren 
and the baby back.  Until they're safe, we do what he says." 

"And not a moment longer!"  Scully snapped. 

The chirping of her cell phone brought silence.  She picked 
it up and hit SEND. "Scully." 

"Not you!" 

Wordlessly, she handed the cell phone to her partner. 

"Mulder."  He listened intently for several minutes, then 
hit END and handed the phone back to his partner. 

"Well?" the AD demanded. 

"Just like some old Cold War prisoner exchange," Mulder 
explained.  "I start up the driveway.  Lauren and the baby 
start down the driveway.  Ideally, she gets to the curb
about the time I get to the door." 

"No," Skinner said calmly.  "You are NOT to put yourself 
back into his hands, Mulder. When you reach Lauren, you 
stop.  Act as a rear guard for her, or stand and taunt 
him into coming out and into range.  You aren't going 
inside that house!  That's an order!" 

"Sir..." 

"You will not give him the opportunity to use you as 
a hostage, Mulder."  Skinner was implacable. "This is 
about removing all choices for him but surrender.  You 
understand me?" 

"Yes, sir."  Mulder wilted a little, leaned back into 
his seat and scrubbed at his face. "He's got my weapon, 
remember." 

"That's why you're wearing body armor," Scully reminded 
him gently.  "Now go fake him out of his hostages.  I 
want to go home." 

The other agents in the other cars emerged when Skinner 
did.  The plan had been discussed, by radio, the entire 
time they had been on the road from DC.  Everyone knew 
what to do. 

The grim-faced agents, all wearing Kevlar under their 
suits, lined up across the frontage and then spread 
themselves more thinly, so they could watch the back 
of the house in case their UNSUB bolted. 

The last agent out was Mulder, who suddenly seemed both 
tired and unsure.  He moved slowly, with evident pain 
and Scully frowned.  "Mulder?" 

He was not yet facing the house; he was leaning on the 
car.  "I'm okay, Scully.  This is for him, not for real.  
He's watching." 

She swallowed hard, and then went to him, put a concerned 
hand on his back, the other on his wrist. "Are you sure 
you can do this?" 

"I'm sure." 

She stepped back with visible reluctance.  "Go for it."  
Instead of thinking about how scared she was, or he was, 
she glanced over at Mickey Bender. 

He was standing, pale but steady, right beside AD Skinner.  
He was terrified, but he refused to be left behind. 

Mulder walked down the edge of the swale and stopped 
at the end of the driveway. "On your mark!" he called 
toward the house. 

Fully twenty separate seconds elapsed before the front 
door opened and a woman became visible there.  In her 
arms she cradled her newborn daughter, who was squalling 
and waving her arms around. 

Mulder studied Lauren Bender's face intently.  She was 
terrified, certainly; so was he. But she was not wavering, 
and her back was straight.  She had not surrendered to her
fear, yet. 

Scully scanned the hostages, looking for injuries.  She 
did not see any, and allowed herself to relax fractionally.  
There was a possibility of a happy ending here. 

Laura smiled tightly when her eyes caught Mulder's.  "Set?" 
she called, her voice trembling only a little. 

Mulder nodded, then flinched slightly when a third 
voice, from the house, snarled, "Go!" 

The first step was the hardest.  He heard someone behind 
him pull back the slide on a Glock to load the first round, 
and relaxed a little.  It was wonderfully reassuring to 
know that he had a team behind him. 

The second step was easier. 

Lauren was moving more quickly than he was; she was in 
better shape and she had the baby to think about.  That 
was fine with Mulder; the farther she came the safer they
would both be. 

The driveway was gravel and Mulder did not want to fall 
on it, so he was careful as he limped along. The limp 
was feigned but effective: it was why he was moving so 
slowly, and his slow pace was helping Lauren move father 
away from the house. 

It was becoming more and more difficult to move.  The air 
felt as if it was becoming thick as molasses. He puzzled 
at that sensation, worried at it like a dog with a bone. 
Something about this entire setup felt very wrong.  He 
felt tension growing in his gut, in his back and body.  
The urge to turn and run back to the safety of the car 
where Scully and Skinner waited was powerful and becoming 
more so with every step he took. 

There was something wrong about the house.  He studied it,
analyzed it, but could not put his finger on the wrongness.  
It was just there. 

By this time, Lauren was only a few yards away, and he 
could see that she was staring at him with desperation 
showing in her eyes.  He could hardly force himself to 
move through the wrongness, but somehow he managed to 
smile at her.  She was too upset to smile back, but it 
was clear that she had something to say.  As they approached, 
Mulder spoke first, keeping his voice very 
soft so the Butcher would not hear. 

"Is he really in there, Lauren?" 

She nodded.  "Don't go in there, Agent Mulder.  He's got 
a bomb set up; it's big enough to demolish the house." 

That crystalized his decision.  "Run, Lauren; Mickey's 
waiting for you." 

"But...!" 

"Run!  Now!" 

She ran. 

A howl of rage came from the house, followed, as Mulder 
had expected, by gunfire. He turned to follow Lauren, 
hoping that he could interfere with the Butcher's aim by
offering two targets.  Given the choice of killing the 
woman, who meant nothing to him, or killing Mulder, 
his escaped prey, surely he would aim at the agent... 

Scully wanted nothing so much as to be out there with 
her partner.  Her best friend was out there in the open, 
voluntarily walking toward his enemy, willing to offer 
himself up to death by torture in order to save a woman 
and baby he had never met. 

There seemed to be no way for her to keep him safe; 
she knew that if she screwed this up, Mulder, Lauren 
and the baby would die. 

Her teeth ground together so hard that Skinner glanced 
at her, startled.  He could not see her fingernails punching 
holes in her palms. 

When Lauren started to run, Scully gasped.  The plan was 
breaking down. 

Gunfire brought out the expected response from the 
watching agents: they began to return fire, hoping to 
give Lauren and Mulder some cover. 

Lauren flung herself into her husband's arms, sobbing, 
just as Mulder went down hard on the gravel driveway and 
did not move. 

"Mulder!"  Scully abandoned her post and ran forward. 

Skinner made a grab for her, missed and started after her.  
He had only taken one step when the house exploded. 

The blast knocked Scully off her feet and flung her 
backwards several yards.  When she could move again, 
she found that she was covered in debris.  She rolled 
over and found that it was just a thin layer of wood 
splinters and dust.  She brushed it all aside without 
difficulty and sat up. 

Her head hurt and felt thick.  She blinked, trying to 
clear her vision, and slowly realized that she was 
watching Skinner and the other agents struggling out 
from under debris just as she had done.  She looked the
other way and saw a skirmish line of HRT agents coming 
out of the woods.  Between them and herself was the wreckage 
of the house, burning. 

There was nothing left of it that was recognizable. 

Nothing. 

A cold drench of adrenaline shoved her to her feet, sent       
her stumbling toward the house.  "Mulder! MULDER!!!" 

Sky Crawford looked up a few minutes later and saw Scully 
struggling to move chunks of debris that were larger than 
she was.  He limped over to help her.  In a few moments 
the rest of the team from headquarters was taking down 
the pile.  It took them only a few minutes to uncover 
Mulder's still form. 

Scully dropped to her knees beside him and her hands 
went to his face and throat, seeking a pulse, while her 
eyes roved over him, evaluating his condition. 

Looking over her shoulder, Crawford was worried: his 
friend had been awfully close to that blast. 

"Get me an ambulance," Scully ordered, not bothering 
to look up to see who acknowledged the order. 

Skinner was reaching for his cell phone when a hand on 
his arm stopped him.  It was the HRT CO, Lieutenant 
Dunbar, who had just joined the group.  His men were
guarding a perimeter that included the burning house, 
the debris field and their cars. 

"Our transport is two minutes away, sir," the lieutenant 
offered quietly.  "And it has the range to get him to 
Walter Reed." 

Skinner shook his head and smiled grimly.  "His favorite 
team of trauma specialists are at Northwest Georgetown," he 
commented.  "But that's a good idea, Neil.  Call your pilot 
in, and thank you." 

Lt Dunbar backed a step so he would not inadvertently salute; 
he had been a Marine, too, and Skinner inspired that sort 
of thing.  He pulled out his radio and took a few more 
steps away so he would not disturb the others. 

"Mulder, lie still!" 

They all turned at Scully's sharp command, to see Mulder 
trying to sit up.  He was plainly in pain, and it was 
Skinner on one side and Crawford on the other who helped
him sit without further stressing his broken ribs.  
Crawford sat down behind him, back to back, to offer 
some physical support. 

Mulder sighed as he leaned against his friend.  "Thanks, 
Sky." 

"You're welcome.  How bad are you?" 

"I'm not hurt at all," he insisted.  "I stepped in a 
pothole and fell, and getting up hurts.  I decided staying 
down couldn't hurt as much.  Then the bomb went off and I 
was stunned for a little while.  My ears are still ringing.  
That's all.  Really." 

And it seemed that he really was telling the truth, 
Scully realized.  There was no blood but from a minor 
scrape on the back of his hand. 

The helicopter's arrival made further conversation 
difficult.  Skinner made his decision instantly.  He 
pulled Scully close so he could talk into her ear and 
she could hear him. "Take the chopper; get Mulder 
back to Quantico."  He knew the chopper would not get
a flight clearance into downtown DC to land at the 
Hoover Building.  "He doesn't need to suffer through 
the drive back.  Take Crawford.  I'll call the crime scene 
technicians out here to do the wrap.  Mulder's off-duty 
now; do you want leave, as well?" 

She nodded.  This was a good plan; the hospital was much 
closer to their homes, saving driving time after the doctors 
cleared Mulder for release.  She did not think he was badly 
hurt, but he had been too close to that explosion for her 
peace of mind. "Thank you, sir.  Maybe I can get him to 
take the time to heal properly." 

Skinner grinned.  "Maybe.  Good luck!" 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

"And that was all," Crawford concluded the tale.  "Case 
closed but not cleared by the death of the prime suspect.  
I rode back in the chopper and drove them," he waved at
the partners, "back to Dana's apartment after he was 
checked out at the clinic at Quantico to make sure that 
he hadn't been hurt again.  The next day the DEA called
me back, and I was gone." 

The listeners were silent for a moment.  It was Scully who 
smiled wickedly.  "You missed the chaos of the next few days." 

Crawford frowned.  "'Chaos'?  Why?  What happened?" 

Scully traded glances with Mulder, who shrugged.  "I wrote 
it up as an X File and filed it under unsolved.  Then I 
took two weeks medical leave." 

"Why?"  Crawford was confused, now.  "What was unsolved?  
Mrs. Bender's deposition must've been pretty damning, 
and the guy had your cell phone and your weapon.  How was he 
not the Butcher?" 

Mulder sighed.  "Oh, he was the Butcher; there's little 
doubt of that.  But we never found his body, we could never 
identify him, and therefore we couldn't clear the case." 

From her chair Reyes leaned forward, frowning, clearly puzzled.  
"Wait a minute.  Our crime scene people couldn't find any 
trace of the body in the rubble of that house?  Not one trace?" 

Mulder shook his head.  "Nope.  Not one iota of organic remains 
were ever identified." 

"That's impossible." 

Mulder could only shrug helplessly. 

Doggett snorted.  "It's not impossible; it just means he 
sneaked out the back way while everyone was watching you 
and Mrs. Bender." 

Scully smiled thinly.  "If only it was that simple.  No, 
remember, John: Neil Dunbar was up in the trees with two 
dozen HRT agents.  They had had scopes on the house for an
hour before we even arrived.  Mrs. Bender testified 
that the man who grabbed her and her infant from her home 
and took her there remained with her the entire time, and he
literally shoved her out the door to walk down the driveway.  
All he talked about the entire time was how much he was going 
to punish Mulder for having the audacity to escape from him.  
It was clearly the Butcher, and he had no opportunity to 
escape from the house.  Yet, he was not there.  It was an 
apparent paradox that everyone involved found extremely 
frustrating, but it was never resolved." 

"And you just let it drop, Mulder?"  Byers was puzzled. 

"I went home and slept for three days," Mulder answered 
readily.  "I really wasn't in any shape to do anything else 
about it.  When I did come back to work, the case was 
closed.  I did pull it out every now and then; there's no 
such thing as a cold X File.  But some of 'em do get cool... 
especially when there's no new data." 

Langly, sitting on the floor at the far end of the room, his 
back against the wall, grimaced.  "Here's a new idea for you." 

Mulder turned to look at him. 

Langly met his eyes unflinchingly, uncharacteristically grim.  
"What if this Butcher was a SuperSoldier?" 

Someone in the room gasped. 

"If the bomb was to cover his escape and end your pursuit... 
he would have lain hidden in the rubble until he reconstituted, 
and it wouldn't have taken him long."  Langly was talking 
fast, as if he expected to be interrupted or contradicted.  
"Once it got dark, he could have sneaked away.  Whatever 
agents were guarding the site while it cooled off weren't 
expecting anyone to be escaping from the site, so they 
wouldn't have been watching for that.  By the time the 
crime scene guys could go in the next morning, he'd 
been gone for hours." 

Mulder, Scully and Skinner all stared at one another. 

"That's reasonable," Skinner muttered. 

"That's terrifying," Scully said finally. 

Crawford could only stare.  "Maybe to you it is...! 
'SuperSoldier?  Reconstituted'?! Someone tell me what 
the hell you're talking about!" 

That earned him a round of soft chuckles. 

"Remember Scully explaining to you what we did on the 
X Files?" Mulder inquired. 

Crawford nodded.  "30% man-eating monsters and 70% 
preventing alien colonization. I wasn't sure I could 
believe that, but there was too much going on right 
then to make an issue of it." 

"A SuperSoldier is, to the best of our ability to 
determine it, a genetically altered human," Scully 
took up the explanation.  "Our best information to 
date is that certain people were abducted, subjected to 
involuntary gene therapy that uses, contrary to all 
human logic, a lethal virus.  The virus kills the host. 
Just before the host dies, the introduced genes are 
activated and perform major alterations on the body: 
tremendously increased strength and speed, including 
replacing at least part of the bone structure -- 
specifically the vertebrae-- with what appears to be a 
malleable metal that remembers its intended structure 
and returns to it as soon as possible.  Then the body 
reconstitutes around it... and the SuperSoldier  is back.  
We haven't found anything that will kill one permanently.  
Billy Miles fell several stories off a building and
landed in a garbage truck that compacted him; a few 
hours later he was seen perfectly well, alive and healthy.  
They're relentless, but they don't seem to have any
augmentation of the intellect.  Thank God." 

Crawford considered.  "Is that why they abducted you?" 
he asked his friend softly. 

Mulder shuddered.  "Yeah, we think so.  And we still 
aren't sure why it didn't work. Billy was recovered as 
a three-month floater, but after a day in the hospital 
he just sloughed off the damaged tissue and stood up 
healthy and... a SuperSoldier .  I'd been just as dead 
for just as long... but I just woke up.  I heal 
unnaturally fast, but I'm not invulnerable and I don't 
have the visible vertebrae.  It doesn't make a lot of 
sense." 

"Maybe it does..." Scully spoke softly.  "You've had both 
the Black Oil and the vaccine for it; you've been exposed 
to the green foam virus twice.  Maybe those changes
interfered with whatever it was that caused Billy Miles 
to become a SuperSoldier ." 

Mulder leaned his cheek against her thigh.  "Maybe.  That 
does seem reasonable..." 

"I'm confused again," Crawford sighed.  "Black Oil?  
Green foam?  C'mon, have pity on me, Rad!" 

Without relinquishing his contact with Scully, Mulder 
gave him a brief --and necessarily incomplete-- summary 
of the pertinent history.  It only took a half hour, with
interruptions and interjections from the others. 

"Do these bounty hunters feel pain?"  Crawford asked, 
fascinated.  "What about the SuperSoldiers? 

Mulder shrugged.  "We don't know." 

Doggett interrupted them.  "So why would the Butcher 
have deliberately blown up the house and let himself 
burn to death?  Just so you wouldn't catch him?" 

Mulder frowned thoughtfully as his mind raced.  "Hmm... 
maybe so we'd stop chasing him.  But he must have been 
an early model, or he wouldn't have been acting like a
serial killer.  His intellect was unimpaired, but he 
was clearly psychologically damaged." 

"But couldn't that have been because for some reason 
they started with a defective human subject?" Reyes 
suggested thoughtfully. 

Byers chuckled.  "Some poor hapless alien was sent out 
to abduct a suitable human and he brought back A. B. 
Normal the nascent serial killer." 

Mulder laughed.  "Let's hope he got fired for that 
goof-up!" 

"But if this is true... maybe they can be subverted?" 
Skinner offered. 

Mulder glanced at Skinner, startled at the very idea. 
"Billy never spoke.  It was never clear if he understood 
words addressed to him.  He certainly retained some
comprehension or he wouldn't have been able to follow 
Scully as effectively as he did. When we compared 
notes after Will was born we realized that he may 
have had some kind of tracker --or some kind of extra 
sensory input we can't define-- that was irrevocably 
focused on her... or on Will.  The way Billy and his 
coterie of shadows disappeared after Will was safely 
born still doesn't make any sense to us." 

It was Doggett's turn to comment.  "Knowle Rohrer is 
one of those things, too," he said very quietly. "He 
functioned --functions!-- perfectly well as an operative.  
He can hardly be distinguished from the man he once was." 

Mulder nodded slowly, cognizant that Doggett had lost 
a friend in the transformation process.  "Two castes of 
SuperSoldiers?" he suggested.  "Officers like Rohrer 
and Agent Crane and cannon fodder like Billy?" 

Doggett nodded.  "Maybe.  Billy was only barely functional 
on a human level;   Rohrer is.  So there is something 
fundamentally different." 

"Billy Miles was a multiple abductee," Scully suggested.  
"Maybe Rohrer wasn't?" 

Doggett shrugged.  "We don't have any data on Rohrer's 
life." 

"Maybe we should acquire some," Byers said quietly.  "I'll 
work on it." 

"If they retain that much of their original individuality, 
maybe members of that officer class, at least, could be 
convinced to defect?  Or, at least, to refrain from actively
opposing us?"  Reyes inquired. 

Scully frowned.  "I don't think I could ever bring myself 
to trust one, either way." 

"Was the Beltway Butcher ever heard from again?"  
Frohike asked. 

Disturbed by the level of unease the topic stirred 
in him, Mulder got up to pace.  "If the Butcher 
was a prototype SuperSoldier and a serial killer, 
then he's still doing it, and will continue to do 
so till we find a way to kill him and all his kind." 

Scully snorted. 

"Dammit," Mulder grumbled.  "I know!  There isn't any 
way to speculate on that. They're so much stronger than 
humans that we've never managed to identify anything
that can kill one." 

"There wasn't any reason why Callina Finch shouldn't 
have closed the file," Scully pointed out quietly. "I 
would have, in her shoes.  There was no reason to believe 
that the suspect was not dead.  Occam's Razor says he's 
dead.  So she closed.  That means that his MO and 
signature are archived rather than in the active 
file at VICAP. New searches would not have access 
to it." 

Mulder stopped pacing and grinned at her.  "Maybe we 
should put it back in and see what happens." 

Scully looked thoughtful.  "I wonder what I'd get if 
I searched on missing persons after fires or building 
collapses or floods and similar untenable situations..." 

"I'll do those for you, Scully," Langly volunteered.  "I 
can make those search engines sit up and beg." 

She nodded.  "All right.  Thanks." 

"Include suicides, Langly; include any reported death 
without a body," Mulder suggested.  "If the original 
human subject was a serial killer, he's not going to 
change his pattern.  If the SuperSoldier he became is 
some kind of defective model, he may very well continue 
to follow a human pattern rather than whatever alien 
awareness he possesses.  If he stayed at least that 
human, we should be able to identify him through that 
pattern.  If he doesn't, we won't; we don't know enough 
about the aliens to predict their behavior." 

Crawford frowned.  "How much humanity remains in one 
of these SuperSoldiers ?" he asked. 

Scully shuddered and Will, disturbed by her distress, 
began to whimper.  She cuddled him closer, crooning 
wordlessly, and Mulder returned to kneel beside her 
close enough to add his low rumble to her voice, 
underscoring Scully's presence with his own.  Will
calmed quickly and even waved his hands toward his 
father.  Scully smiled and handed the baby to his father. 

"Here.  He wants you." 

Mulder accepted, cradled the baby carefully, and settled 
back down on the floor where he had been. He spent a 
few moments greeting his son, offering a finger to be 
held, crooning gentle sounds that the others could barely 
hear.  Will smiled gummily and held on tight, his eyes 
focused on his father's face. 

No one else spoke or even thought about anything else: 
the sight of Fox Mulder, alive and healthy, cradling his 
own naturally-conceived son was so incredible that they 
all paused to savor it, even Scully, who had seen it 
every day since Will's birth. 

After several minutes of babytalk, Mulder sighed and 
leaned back against the chair. He ignored the fact that 
he was the focus of the attention of everyone in the room. 

"Enough.  It's Christmas.  Let's talk about you, Sky.  
Frohike said you're just out of the hospital?  What happened?" 

Crawford shrugged and relaxed a little, himself.  "My 
cover got blown and I got shot," he said casually. Then 
his expression darkened.  "I haven't been notified 
officially but I'm getting a choice of a desk or a 
medical retirement.  I'll never get my field status
back." 

Mulder frowned, visibly studying his friend.  "Why?  
What happened?" 

Crawford shrugged again.  "I got machine-gunned, Rad.  I 
got two chipped vertebrae, lost my spleen and half a 
lung.  My hearing's down forty percent on the left side.  
I can't pass the physical any more." 

"I'm sorry."  Mulder could not help but feel a twinge 
of guilt: he had survived much worse treatment than 
that, and he was whole and intact, and fully capable of
continuing his work.  His only lingering damage was 
psychological.  He had been dealing with PTSD most 
of his life and knew he was quite capable of continuing 
to do so.  Sky Crawford had lost his life's work. 

An idea sprang to life, full-grown, and Mulder saw Crawford's 
expression change when he noticed the shift in Mulder's 
body language. 

"What?" 

"Can you still shoot, Sky?" 

"Damn straight!" he growled the answer, nettled. 

"Can you still drive?" 

"How do you think I got here?" 

"Did you leave anyone behind in LA?"  Mulder heard 
the others stirring as they realized he had something 
in mind.  Scully's hand came down on his shoulder and 
he knew she had already caught on. 

Crawford shook his head.  "No.  I've been working 
long-term deep cover assignments. There's no way to 
maintain a relationship through that." 

"Kids?" 

"Not that I know of.  Probably not; I tried to be careful." 

"Want to move back here?" 

Crawford paused for a moment, thinking hard.  "'Back?'  I 
never lived here except for those sixteen weeks at Quantico."  
He waited, but Mulder did not comment, staring at him 
intently.  "Sure.  And do what?" 

"Join the resistance?" 

Scully found herself grinning at the stunned expression 
in Doggett's eyes.  Skinner was frozen.  It was Reyes 
who chuckled out loud.  The Gunmen were whispering
among themselves. 

Crawford stared at Mulder.  "Resistance?" 

Mulder waved inclusively at his guests.  "This is the 
human resistance, DC chapter. We're here to resist 
the impending destruction or enslavement of our 
species by alien invaders and preserve our homeworld 
for its native species.  Ridiculous as it may seem, 
there are humans opposing us, as well as Bounty Hunters 
and SuperSoldiers and black worms and God alone knows 
what else.  Want to enlist?" 

Crawford swallowed hard.  "You're serious, aren't you?" 

"Serious as a heart attack, Sky," Mulder nodded.  "Scully 
and I have both been abducted and subjected to experimentation.  
Both of us lost our sisters to the human consortium of 
quislings.  Hundreds if not thousands of other people have 
suffered such fates.  The situation is escalating; we 
don't have an exact timetable, but it's an easy guess 
that things will come to a head sometime before Will 
reaches adulthood.  He's significant to their planning, 
somehow.    We're not going to stand aside and let them
take us without a fight.  We may not succeed, but we'll 
go down swinging." 

Crawford looked up at Scully, who looked just as serious 
as her mate.  No one was laughing, he realized. 

"You think these are the people who kidnapped Samantha?"  
The story of Mulder as the bereaved brother had made the 
rounds at Quantico; all his classmates had heard it. 

Mulder nodded.  "And used her like a lab rat until she 
was fourteen," he said harshly, "when she determined to 
end it by trying to escape.  She left a diary." 

Crawford did not inquire further; Mulder's utterly emotionless 
expression was all he could handle of that.  Mulder's eyes 
had gone flat and gray, and Crawford could not look at him. 

"Jesus."  He took a deep breath.  "Can we fight them?" 
he asked.  "I mean, their aircraft have been flying 
circles around ours for decades; they have interstellar 
travel. They're way ahead of us in physics, technology 
and, it appears, the biological sciences.  Is there any 
real hope?" 

"We don't know how to kill a SuperSoldier yet," Reyes 
said calmly.  "The Bounty Hunters have a weak spot at 
the base of the neck in the back.  When you kill them you
must hold your breath and get away ASAP; as the body 
foams away, a particularly nasty virus is released." 

Crawford looked puzzled.  "A virus?  From the body?" 

"Apparently," Mulder nodded.  "The first time it happened 
to me it must have been just a marginal exposure; it was 
just painful and my immune system defeated it in a few
days without significant assistance.  The second time was 
overwhelming: nothing would have saved me except Scully 
knew what to do and had the strength of personality to 
override the better judgment of an entire US Army medical 
ER." 

"Doesn't surprise me," Crawford's eyes twinkled as he 
took in the tableau presented by the couple and their 
infant. 

Frohike raised his glass.  "Then, my friends, let us 
welcome the latest recruit: welcome to the nightmare, 
Agent Crawford!" 

Everyone clinked their glasses together, and even Will's 
little voice was part of it as they all toasted the new 
combatant. 

+++ 

Crawford went back to California the next day.  He went 
directly to his office from the airport and met with his 
supervisor, Manfred Warner, who confirmed what Crawford
already had surmised: his medical evaluation had come 
through and was damning. 

"You don't have to resign or retire, Crawford," the 
older man reminded him.  "We can boot you to an 
administrative or support position.  You could 
train new agents; your kind of experience is hard 
to come by." 

"I know how hard it is, Mannie," Crawford growled.  
"Most of the guys who've been where I've been and 
done what I've done are dead." 

"We thought you were dead, JD," Warner said quietly.  
"We were planning your funeral when the hospital in 
Bangkok called." 

Crawford shook his head.  "No, I'm going to make a 
clean break; well, relatively clean. I'll take the
 medical retirement, Mannie.  I've got an offer in 
DC, so I won't be too bored." 

"What agency?" 

He grinned.  "I'm going private, Mannie.  A friend 
of mine is organizing some people and he asked me to 
sign up.  I agreed." 

"Organizing for what?" 

Crawford shrugged, not inclined to elaborate.  "He's 
ex-FBI; I'm ex-DEA.  I imagine the rest of the recruits 
will have similar histories.  I promise it's not illegal; 
we're not going to assault Fort Knox or anything." 

Mannie chuckled, but he still looked worried.  He stuck 
out his hand.  "Well, I hope you know what you're doing.  
It's been an honor serving with you, JD.  Don't be a 
stranger." 

"Oh, I don't imagine I will be."  He paused, considering, 
and decided it was worth it. Scully had been emphatic 
that they needed informants and tipsters in order to get
enough data to make accurate extrapolations of the 
enemy's plans and focus, and he had served with Mannie 
Warner for more than a decade.  "I'd appreciate a head's 
up on a few things your teams might encounter..." 

Mannie Warner looked puzzled.  "What sort of things?" 

"When you hear of a death and when the pros go in to 
recover the body there is none. Any case of a guy apparently 
surviving the unsurvivable, like he's bulletproof without
body armor.  Any stories of bodies that show anything like 
black worms crawling out of the eyes, nose, and ears.  
People with black oil swirling in their eyes, or entirely black
eyes: no whites at all.  Anybody who does something despicable 
with utter boldness, then is found nearby shaking, hysterical, 
claiming they don't know anything about the last several 
hours or days." 

The other man stared at Crawford.  "Sounds like stuff we should 
forward to the FBI's X Files Division." 

Crawford grinned. 

"Oh, my God," Warner moaned.  "You roomed with Fox Mulder at 
Quantico, didn't you?" 

"Yepper." 

"I heard he got killed in the line of duty last year.  
Who's running the shop, now?" 

Crawford's grin got wider.  "Mulder's not dead; they 
resurrected him, but some dickhead Deputy Director fired 
him over some minor insubordination.  Mulder's gone private, 
and I'm going with him." 

Warner just shook his head, and Crawford knew that his boss 
-- ex-boss, he reminded himself-- thought he was speaking 
of an undercover operation.  There was no point in correcting 
him, and insisting on the actual truth might make Warner 
doubt his choices or how serious he was about collecting 
that information. 

Crawford realized suddenly that this is the sort of thing 
that Mulder had had to deal with for years. 

Warner went back to sit down behind his desk.  "Tell Mulder 
he's got allies out here, JD." 

Crawford cocked his head to one side, puzzled.  "Mannie?" 

"When they recovered Mulder's body up in Montana last year, 
one of the survivors with the cult was my stepdaughter 
Summer Shanahan," he replied softly.  "She told us everything 
that she remembered. She wouldn't lie; the story was pretty 
brutal.  She thought Mulder was dead, though." 

Crawford swallowed hard.  "He was," he confirmed it 
baldly.  "His partner buried him next to his mother 
and tried to go on.  But then AD Skinner got a tip 
and had him exhumed.  A week in the hospital and he 
was fine.  He's home, and he and Scully have a baby son." 

Warner could only stare.  "They exhumed him and he 
recovered?!  Must have dug him up pretty quick, right?  Or 
he'd've smothered." 

"He was in the grave for three months, Mannie." 

There was a moment of silence as they stared at one 
another.  "How could that be, JD?" 

Crawford shrugged helplessly.  "I don't understand it, 
either.  But I trust Mulder; he and Dana would not lie 
to me.  So, somehow, it happened." 

"Okay..." Warner relaxed back in his chair.  "Summer 
told us some pretty weird and off-the-wall things when 
we got her back.  I'll believe it.  Unless I learn why 
I shouldn't." 

Crawford laughed, startled.  "You want to come with me?  
Mulder says getting people to buy in as far as you is 
the hardest part." 

Warner leaned back in his chair.  "When you're settled 
give me a call.  I think I'd like to meet the famous Fox 
Mulder." 

Crawford grinned widely.  "I can arrange that, Mannie."  
He held out a hand. 

Warner got up and walked around the desk to shake 
Crawford's hand.  He walked the ex-agent to his 
office door.  "See Eunice for the paperwork, JD.  
I gotta call Cadre and see if I can replace you." 

He waited until Crawford was talking to Eunice, the 
unit's administrative assistant, before he turned to 
go back inside his office.  The door closed behind 
him and JD Crawford never saw the odd shape of his old 
CO's neck and upper spine. 

=*= 

end