Lil_gusty
lil_gusty@hotmail.com
 

Classification: SA

Keywords: none

Rating: R

Spoilers: Ascension

Thanks: as always, to realb and Karri

Feedback: please, to lil_gusty@hotmail.com

Distribution: not that you would, but you could.  Just let me know.

Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me,
they belong to Mr. Chris Carter, lucky bastard.

Summary: "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute?"
(From "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder)

<><><><>

When she woke up, the first thing she noticed was the cold.  So,
so cold.  Then the pain: in her legs, arms, back, face.  It hurt
to blink and to try and open her eyes, so she didn't.  All of
this was nothing new, so she lay still, and listened.

Soft beeps, and muffled footsteps and voices from somewhere not
too far off.  The smell was distantly familiar, and after a few
moments, she registered an IV in her arm, a heart monitor stuck
to her chest.

A hospital.  She was in a hospital.  What had happened that they
were done with her?

She swallowed dryly, and winced at her scratchy throat - wincing
hurt, too, she discovered.  God, did anything not hurt?

Against her body's wishes, she opened her eyes and immediately
shut them again; the bright light from the window hurt, and she
turned her head reflexively, murmuring a "shit" as she realized
that hurt, too.

The beeps from the heart monitor increased a little.  She licked
her lips.  No one was in the room with her, so she pressed the
call button for a nurse.

Four button pressings later, one finally showed up.  "Oh!"  The
nurse exclaimed when she realized her patient had woken up.
"Glad you could finally join us."

"Huh?"

"My name is Nancy.  Do you know where you are?"

"Hospital."  Her throat was raspy; God, she was so thirsty.

"That's right.  You're at Georgetown University Medical Center.
Do you know what happened to you?"

Yes.  Terrible things.  The last thing she remembered...

"The guards taking me back to my room after the tests..."  and then
darkness, until waking up here, in pain, thirsty, and a little
confused.

The nurses immaculately sculpted eyebrows puckered.  "A policeman
found you unconscious in the driver's seat of a car."  She said
slowly, warily.  "That was five weeks ago."

Her eyes opened a little wider, despite the sun and the pain.
"Five weeks ago?"

Nancy nodded.  "You've been in a coma ever since.  The doctors
have run every test they know to on you, and you seem to be fine.
You showed some signs of being...beaten and starved, but you're
doing much better now."  She smiled as she said the last part,
indicating that, in her perfect little nursing world, a patient
was awake and everything would be fine.

Instinctively, she raised her arm -a challenge, she realized -
and touched her cheeks, her nose, her forehead.  They felt
swollen, and tender, and her nose sent a sharp jolt of pain
through her spine and down to her toes.

"Be careful," Nancy cautioned, helping her put her arm back down
on the bed.

"Can I have some water?  Please?"

"Sure.  I'll get you some, and I'll page your doctor."  She
turned away, water pitcher in hand, then turned back.  "Ma'am?"

"Yes?"

"When you were found, the police couldn't find any ID on you, and
the license plate and vehicle registration number on your car
turned out to be false.  You've been listed as a Jane Doe.  Do
you remember your name?"

"Yes," she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the
world.  They should've known who she was, regardless.  There were
people looking for her, surely her description would've been
given to all the local hospitals, law enforcement would've been
on alert...  "Dana Scully.  I'm an FBI agent."

Nancy took a step back.  "Oh."

Scully blinked once.

"Is there anyone I can call for you?"  Nancy didn't believe her.

"Yes, my partner.  My mother.  I can give you their numbers."

"I'll bring you back some paper when I bring the water," she said
placatingly, turning again and walking out of the room.

This wasn't right...surely the FBI had used all available resources
to search for her.  Kidnapping an agent was a federal offense.
Officers from here to California would have a photo and
description of her.  This wasn't right at all.

Nancy came back a few minutes later with a full pitcher of water,
a pad of paper, and a pen.

The water stung as it slid down Scully's throat, but it felt
good.  She was so, so thirsty.

"Thank you," she whispered, and gestured for the paper.

Nancy handed it to her.  "I've paged your doctor.  He should be
down in a minute."

"Thank you," she repeated, scribbling.  "Call him first, Mulder.
Don't call my mother unless you can't reach him."

"Okay," Nancy said, smiling a little less reassuringly, then
disappearing again.

Mulder would be close.  Surely he wouldn't be out on a case...he'd
be here in a few minutes, then this whole thing could be
explained.  Until then, she lay back against the pillows, wincing
as her body conformed to the mattress, and closed her eyes to
wait.

<><><><><><>

He was expecting Diana to call and let him know what time to pick
her up at the airport.  Or to tell him that it would be another
few hours, days, weeks.  These trips to Europe were getting
ridiculous.

"Mulder," he said tersely, in the middle of writing their latest
field report.  He always got stuck doing them nowadays.

"Is this Fox Mulder?"

Well, obviously.  "Speaking."

"My name is Nancy Chambers; I'm a nurse at Georgetown University
Medical Center.  Um...I have a patient here who asked me to contact
you...?"

He put down his pen.  "Who?"

"She was listed as a Jane Doe.  No ID, been in a coma for five
weeks.  She insisted we call you, though."

No telling what nutcase had seen him on one of those UFO shows
the History Channel was so zealous about.  "Did she give a name?"

"Yes, Dana Scully.  She said she was with the FBI."

His lips started to tingle, and he swallowed a lung full of air.

"Sir?"

"Can you give me a description of her?"  He asked slowly, making
sure the words came out sounding right, and not warped and ripply
and backwards.

"Um, she's small.  Red hair, blue eyes..."

He was already on his feet, his phone tucked between his ear and
shoulder.  "How is she?  Is she okay?"

"She's fine.  She's lucid, coherent, aware of her surroud-"

"Tell her I'm on my way, okay?  Tell her I'll be there in ten
minutes."

He hung up before there was a reply, six steps from his car.

<><><><><><>

The world was moving in fast-motion, but he was the only one who
knew it.  Everyone else seemed to be going slower, getting in his
way, keeping him from knowing.

"Dana Scully, is she here?  Is she a patient here?  What room is
she in?"

The woman behind the desk looked up at him quizzically.

"I got a call from a nurse, her name was Nancy, saying that a
Jane Doe asked to see me.  I need to know what room she's in," he
said urgently.

The woman made a sour face and typed something into the keyboard.
"We have a Jane Doe in room 412, sir -"

"Thank you," he called, almost to the elevator.  When it didn't
arrive fast enough, he ran into the stairwell.

403, 405, 407, 409, 411, 412...he pushed open the door, and held
his breath.

Nancy was right, she was tiny.  Tinier than he remembered.  Her
skin was pale, making her long hair look like fire, and making
the yellow and black bruising stand out enough to make him
nauseous.  Those bruises were fresh, which meant something - or
someone - had recently put them there.

She was resting, and he'd startled her awake.  Her eyes were
huge, and her body was taunt, poised to run and hide.  When she
saw that it was him, though, she relaxed, and smiled slightly.
"Mulder, thank God you're all right."

Well, that certainly wasn't the reply he'd been expecting.
"You..." he said in awe, floating towards the bed cautiously.

"I was afraid they went after you, too."

He paused, cocking his head like a confused puppy, then bobbed
his head up and down, sinking into the chair beside her.  "Who?"

"The men that took me, after Duane Barry."

He nodded, still confused, but beginning to understand.

"What's the matter?"  She finally asked.  "Mulder?"

"Scully..." he shook his head, disbelieving.

She reached out a hand to him.  "What?"

He eyed her hand warily, then slowly stretched his arm out to
meet hers.  Their fingers touched, twined, and he held on
tightly.  "Scully," he said again.

"Mulder, what?  Did something happen to you, too?"

He shook his head, beginning to lose control of his emotions as
the implications of this settled in on him.

"Mulder, you're scaring me.  What happened?"

To her, he realized, it was late December of 1994, or maybe it
was barely 1995 by now.  She probably didn't notice that his
sleeves were rolled up and that he came in without a coat.

He took a deep breath, swallowed some tears, and redirected
himself.  "You just don't know how happy I am to be talking to
you."

She smiled again, not as widely as he'd seen her in the past.
The bruises must've made it painful.

"What happened to you?"  He finally asked, raising his hand to
hover over her face, afraid of hurting her.

She flinched and leaned away from him as she intercepted his
hand, holding it still and away from her before pressing it
gently against her cheek.  "The guards, I guess.  When they were
angry, they weren't very nice."

A little shutter went up his spine - is that what it had been
like all this time?

She didn't let go of his wrist.  "Did you call my mother?"

"No.  Not yet."

"Mulder, the nurse...she didn't believe me when I told her who I
was.  They thought I was a Jane Doe.  Didn't the Bureau send out
APB's?"

He nodded, looking down at the spotless tile between his shoes.
"Yeah, they did."

"Then how come no one recognized me?"

He bit his lip, snatching his hand away so he could ring them
together in his lap.  "Scully...things...I think things are
different from what you realize."

He heard her stiffen.  "What do you mean?"

"Do you know what today's date is?"

She almost answered automatically, caught herself, and licked her
lips.  "No."

"Today is a Tuesday, Scully.  Tuesday, April 8th...2003."

 There was no reaction for a moment, just stillness and quiet.
Her eyes gradually opened wider, and her lips parted slightly.
"No...Mulder- "

"You've been gone...for almost nine years."

Her jaw fell open, then, and her hands covered her mouth in
horror.  "No!"

"Scully," he took her hands, sitting in front of her on the bed.
"It's okay.  Everything will be okay."

"Mulder, no!  I can't...it can't...no!"

He didn't know what to say to reassure her that everything really
would be fine in the end.  Instead, he just sat, clutching at her
hands and watching as she shook her head and searched for an
argument.

After long moments, her eyes filled with tears, and her voice
broke, then whispered, "nine years?"

He nodded sadly.

"That's why they didn't recognize me."

Again, he nodded.

"Mulder...what do I do?"

He took a deep breath and sucked on his bottom lip thoughtfully.
"I don't know yet, but we'll figure it out.  The first thing we
need to do is call your mother, then let Skinner know so he can
start...paperwork."

Her eyes refocused on his.  "Paperwork?"

"You were declared dead after a year.  We'll have to get that
reversed."

"A year?"

He closed his eyes briefly and nodded.  It seemed like too short
of a time to give up on someone, but he couldn't tell her how her
mother had wanted it at three months, that he'd been the one who
kept pushing and pushing for them to wait and keep looking and
just a little longer, Mrs. Scully, please, it's too soon.

Her shoulders started to shake, and she slipped her fingers from
his, wrapping her arms around her body.  "I'd like to see my
mother."

"Okay.  I'll go call her."

And maybe between the hallway and the payphone, he could figure
out what to say.

<><><><><><>

"Hello?"  Her cheery voice answered.  She had no idea how her
world was about to change.

They hadn't spoken in months.  Up until then, she'd called him
every few weeks to check on him, see how life was.  She'd known
how difficult Scully's disappearance had been for him- it had
been difficult for her, too - but her motherly instinct just
wouldn't let him mourn in peace.  When he'd told her about Diana,
and their plans, she'd taken a hint he hadn't meant to give, and
left him alone.  "Mrs. Scully?  It's Fox Mulder," he managed, his
hands and lips shaking.

She was surprised; Before, the only time he'd called her had been
to report that there was still no new on the whereabouts of her
youngest daughter.  "Fox?  Hi, how are you?"

How was he?  He was certain that he'd wake up from this dream any
moment now, and his world would go back to normal.  "I, um, I
have some news."

Her voice lowered a notch, picking up on the seriousness of his
tone.  "What is it?"  There was no reason for him to be giving
her any news.

"I'm at the hospital in Georgetown."  Deep breath.  "Dana's here.
She's alive."

There was only silence on her end for a few shaky breaths.
Finally, "Fox..."

"She's asking to see you," he added helplessly.  He couldn't
image how this felt for her.

"She's awake?"  She asked incredulously.

"Yes, but according to a nurse, she's been in a coma here for
five weeks."

He heard her struggling for something to say.  "Fox...what do I
do?"

Why did people keep asking him that?  "Just get here as soon as
you can.  I'll stay with her until then."

"All right.  I'll...I'll call you once I get a flight."

"Okay."

She hung up without another word, and he closed his eyes and bit
his lip to keep from crying.

<><><><><><>

Scully had the TV on CNN - catching up, he assumed.  There was so
much she'd missed that wouldn't be on any news show.  So much of
life - her own, her family's, his.  Would she even recognize her
world as habitable?

She and Samantha had become twin ideals for him until three years
ago.  In his mind, if he kept turning over every stone he
stumbled on to, kept searching, kept hope, he'd find them.  His
beautiful, annoyingly snobbish little sister, a perpetual eight
year old in pigtails and her nightgown, and Scully, his stubborn,
brilliant partner, wrapped in her trench coats and frumpy suits.
They were frozen in time, waiting for him to rush in and rescue
them.  In his mind, they had been well treated during their
absences, and were more than ready to launch themselves back into
his life and resume their previous roles.  No psychological
trauma, no evidence of malnourishment and beatings, no pale skin
and weakened muscles.

But Samantha had died in 1979, and his life spent searching for
her had been a waste of time, which meant that Scully
disappearing had been for nothing.  He'd not been able to rectify
that, how so much had been sacrificed for what turned out to be a
lie.

The easiest and most plausible assumption was that Scully had
died shortly after she'd disappeared, and that some random hiker
would find her skeleton after a good rain up on Skyland Mountain.
Eventually, he'd started to believe it, and he'd started his
weekly pilgrimage to the memorial headstone her mother had
insisted upon.  Weekly became every two weeks, which became every
other month, and finally tapered off into only on her birthday.
He supposed, and her mother agreed, that it was a part of the
natural grieving and healing process.  Normal.  You don't forget
them, but you can't continue to let them be the center of your
life, either.

So his twin ideals were laid to rest years after their respective
deaths.  He moved on.

After Diana had come back into his life, she'd helped him to
steer a more directed course.  She'd been there when he found his
sister, and was there when he finally moved Scully's case file to
the inactive drawer in his office.  As soon as her assignment in
Europe was completed - whenever that happened to be, and
sometimes it seemed like it would never happen - they'd planned
to close the X-Files, drastically cut back on their hours spent
at work, and get married.  That, he knew, was all normal too.

He stared through the glass window at Scully, and wondered if she
could ever understand that, right now, she didn't fit into his
life, but he would make a place for her.  It would just take some
time.

This wasn't normal.

There were tears rolling down her cheeks and, when he saw them,
he pushed open the door and sat on the bed in front of her.

Again she tensed, and relaxed, when she saw it was only him.  "I
can't believe this," she sighed, turning off the TV.  "So much
has happened...so much has changed."

She didn't know the half of it.  "I called your mother.  She's on
her way, and she'll call when she had a flight."

"A flight?"

"She moved to Texas a few years ago to be closer to your
brother."

Again, Scully shook her head.  "I guess that's what happens in
nine years," she said after a few minutes of pitiful shaking.

"She had a hard time, losing your father, and then you, so close
together.  She's doing better now."  Those words sounded
encouraging in his head.

Scully looked up at him and the tears that had pooled in her eyes
spilled over, a sob escaping her throat.  Ashamed and
embarrassed, she wiped her face with the sheet and looked away.

"She still misses you, though.  So do I.  We haven't forgotten
you."

Laughing slightly, she nodded.  "Yeah."  She didn't believe him.

"Scully?"  He hated to do this now, but he had to know.  "What do
you remember about all this?"

She wrung the sheet in her hand, squeezing it tightly.  "I think
they must've kept me unconscious most of the time.  I knew I had
been there for a while, but I didn't know it had been nine
years."  Her voice broke again, and she cleared it, not admitting
tears.

"They, who?"

She started shaking harder, and he took hold of her shoulders,
keeping her steady.  "Um...men.  Doctors.  I don't know.  I
remember voices more than faces."

"What did they do to you?"  He murmured.

Her hands went to her temples, massaging like her head ached
terribly.  "I don't know.  I remember them taking me into rooms
and bringing me back to my room.  They would hit me, sometimes."

By the looks of the fresh bruises, the old ones, and the scars,
it had been more than sometimes.

"Once, I swear...I woke up and I was pregnant."  She smiled sadly.
"I don't know how that would've happened, though."

No, they both had an idea.  He bit his lip and looked away,
disgusted.

This had always been something he'd been afraid of for Samantha:
years of tests and torture and not knowing what had been done to
her without her consent.  In his nightmares, when he found her,
she was frightened and broken, keening as doctors who were trying
to help her injected her with a sedative so they could examine
her.  Sometimes, Scully had been Samantha, and he couldn't
rectify that image with the one he remembered of her: tough,
strong, take-no-bullshit.  It didn't fit, and yet here it was,
sitting in front of him, pale and shaking.

"Do you know where you were?"  He finally asked, just filling
silence.

"No.  It was like a jail.  There weren't any windows and there
were guards everywhere.  I saw them kill people who tried to
escape."

That caught his attention.  "There were others?"

"Yeah.  I never got to talk to them, but everyone I saw was a
woman."

Was it some kind of breeding camp?  A brothel for the men that
organized these abductions?  Why hadn't he ever thought of this?

"I didn't see Samantha, Mulder.  I looked for her.  I'm sorry."
Another tear, another angry swipe at her bruised cheek.

"She's dead, Scully.  I found out a few years ago."

She huddled back into her pillow, pulling the covers up as a
shield.  "Oh," she said as if her heart finally shattered with
that admission.  "I'm sorry," she added belatedly.

"Me too."

There was silence for a few long, tense minutes.

"Mulder," she finally whispered, not looking at him.

"Yeah?"

"If, um...if you thought I was dead, that means you weren't looking
for me, doesn't it?"

He sighed slowly.  This was so hard.  "Yeah, it does."

She huddled some more, sliding lower into the bed and covering
her face with the blankets.  "Oh."

"Scully...there's so much that needs to be explained.  Right now,
you're just overwhelmed...and so am I, and so is your mother.
We'll need some time to process all this before we can start
talking about it.  But we will, and everything will be all right.
Okay?"

When she didn't respond, he stood up, and walked to the door.
"You need to rest right now, though.  I'll be out here."

Still no response.  He closed the door on his way out, found a
chair near her door, and sat down to wait.

<><><><><><>

On a slow day in Mulder's office, she'd picked up an issue of
"The Lone Gunmen."  There was an article about how the government
knew of POW's still in Vietnam.  Of course, by now, they'd been
declared killed in action.  Their families had moved on; parents
had mourned, wives had remarried, children had grown up.  She'd
been fascinated by this, though, and had wondered what she would
do if her father or brothers had been one of these POW's, if
she'd ever be able to tuck them into the past and move on with
her life.  She wondered if she'd somehow know that they really
weren't dead, if she'd have a feeling that proved to be true.
And how would she and her mother deal with them suddenly being
alive again?  Tortured and imprisoned in the name of their
country while they went about their lives, happy and unaware?
How would her father or brothers deal with it?

What was it like to be returned to a world that had forgotten
you, or were just as happy to have you dead than for you to be
alive?  She supposed that now, she knew.

Some nights when she wasn't weak enough or in enough pain to
loose consciousness, she'd let the blood drip down her throat,
let the semen ooze onto the floor beneath her, and wonder if
tonight would be the night that Mulder came to rescue her.
Escape had been out of the question ever since the first time she
saw a guard suffocate a woman by holding her broken jaw closed as
another guard raped her.  Just moments before the woman had run
from her room three doors down from Scully's, whispering to the
others as she passed that she was getting out, for them to follow
her.

They'd left her body in the hallway for all the inmates to see.
A warning.

As ridiculous as it sounded, she was probably safer there than
she was if she escaped.  It was fall, or maybe by then it was
winter, and she would freeze or starve to death, or maybe just
die from exhaustion before she made it to a phone to call
someone.  And if she was good, they wouldn't hurt her.  That was
the way it worked.  They were only violent if she fought them,
but sometimes pain reflexes and moans were interpreted as a
struggle.  She'd have to do better about hiding them, that was
all.  Play the part of the good little inmate until Mulder found
her and rescued her, took her someplace safe and then shot every
one of these men that had hurt her.  It would be any day now, she
had been sure.

Every night before she fell asleep, her last thought was of what
she'd say to him when she saw him again.  "Thank God you're here.
I've been waiting for you.  Take me home."  It gave her hope that
she'd eventually get out of there.  It gave her something to have
faith in, to believe in, to keep her from trying to escape just
so she could die.  It was the only thing those men couldn't take
away from her: her dreams.

Mulder had just taken them away.  Now, she had nothing, and she
regretted not making them kill her nine years ago.

<><><><><><>

Mrs. Scully looked near hysterical when she finally arrived at
the hospital nearly twelve hours since he'd called her.  She
walked up to Mulder, swallowed a cough, and asked him, "where is
she?"

"She's sleeping down the hall."

She started walking in that direction and he followed her.  "Is
she all right?"

"A psychiatrist just left about an hour ago.  He said she
wouldn't say much, but she's showing signs of severe emotional
trauma.  Physically...she looks bad."

"What's happened to her?"

He wondered how he should reply to that.  "I don't have an answer
for that yet, but I'm working on it."

Mrs. Scully stopped at the closed door of room 412, her hand
poised above the handle.  "Fox?"  She looked back at him.  "What
do I say to her?"

He shrugged.  "That you love her and you missed her, I guess.  I
don't know."

She nodded tightly, then went inside.

<><><><><><>

Fox had been wrong; Dana was awake, and staring out at the bright
lights of downtown DC.  "Dana?"  She asked cautiously, easing to
sit beside her, placing her hand on her daughter's back and
stroking lightly.

The bruising bothered her, and Dana's nose was crooked.  What had
she been through in these past few years?

Her daughter continued to stare out the window, jerking and
tensing when the hand touched her, and not relaxing.  "Dana, it's
mom."  She just didn't know what else to say.  "Will you talk to
me?"

No response, but tears collected in Dana's eyes.

"Baby, I'm so sorry, what they did to you..." the hand moved to
caress her face, but Dana flinched away, burying her face in her
pillow.  "But I'm glad you're safe now.  I missed you so much."

Dana's back started to shake and heave; she was crying quietly.
Mrs. Scully looked back at Fox, standing in the doorway.  She
shrugged, and he hung his head sadly.

The three remained like that for almost twenty minutes before she
stood, bending to kiss her daughter's shoulder.  "I'll be right
here, Dana.  I'm not going to leave."

Fox met her on her way to the door.  "I don't know what to do,"
she confessed.  "I never imagined this...what do we do?"

"I don't know.  Just be here, I guess.  I don't think there's
really a precedent for this."

She nodded.  "I have to call her brothers.  Will you stay here
with her?"

"Yeah."

After she left, Mulder went and claimed her seat beside Scully,
deciding not to touch her, to give her some time to regain her
personal space.

"Scully...I don't know what you're feeling right now, but I know
you have to be confused.  So are we.  We don't know how to handle
this, and I'm sure you don't either.  We're gonna have to do this
together, and you're gonna have to be the leader.  If you tell us
what to do, we'll do it.  Just say the word."

If she was listening, she didn't give any indication.

"Scully?"

"Leave me alone," she said into her pillow.

Well, he'd said he'd do whatever she asked.  Reluctantly, he
stood, smoothing the covers over her body.  "Okay.  We'll be
right outside.  If you want to talk to us, just let us know, and
we'll be here."

He and Mrs. Scully took turns sitting outside her room for nearly
a week.  Diana was back on US soil, wondering why her fiance was
spending all his time with a dead woman, and Mrs. Scully needed
to go back home and help her daughter-in-law with a baby that was
due any day now.  Scully never asked to see them, so they left
her alone.

<><><><><><>

Another week, at least, in the hospital.  Outpatient psychiatric
care for a year.  Close contact with her family, a strong support
system, people to help her get back on her feet.  That was what
her doctors recommended, yet Scully signed herself out anyway,
refusing it all.

She hadn't asked for him, but he stood uncertainly at the door as
she dressed anyway.

She just brushed his shoulder as she walked past, not glancing at
him.  He followed her.

They didn't speak until they reached the taxi that she'd called.
The driver standing by the door, waiting to put her bags in the
trunk.  There were none, and with a suspicious eyebrow-lift, he
climbed behind the wheel.  Scully followed suit, slamming the
back passenger door and saying something to the driver he
couldn't hear.

The driver glanced at Mulder, and he held up a hand: not yet.  He
opened the door, and sat down beside Scully.  "You can stay with
me as long as you want, until you can find your own place," he
offered.  If you want," he hurried to add.  "We can do this
together, Scully."

She squeezed herself close to her door, as if she could melt
through it, unable to get far enough away from him.  When she
spoke, her chin was high, and her back was straight.  "Kathy."

"What?"

"I'm changing my name to Kathy."

He reached a hand towards her, and she cowered away.  "Why?"

"Because Dana Scully is dead."

"No she's not.  Not anymore."

"Well, maybe she should be."

She didn't flinch as she said the words, and he wondered if she
truly believed them, or if it was just the PTSD talking.

"I'm dying my hair.  Black."

He rubbed his forehead, a dull ache starting to build there.
"Why?"  He asked again.  The more she talked, the more he was
beginning to realize that he didn't know this woman and, despite
what he liked to believe, he never really had.

"Because I'm tired of looking like Peg Bundy."

"Scully, you don't have to do all this.  This is still your life.
It'll just take a while for it to feel like it."

She chuffed a laugh.  "Maybe I don't want it to."

"Where are you going?"  He asked her as an afterthought.

"I don't know."

He nodded, not really understanding, as he reached for the door
handle and climbed out of the car.

It drove away two seconds later.  She didn't look back at him as
the taillights faded into the early morning air.

He had a feeling he'd be laying flowers on her headstone tonight
even though it wasn't her birthday.

<><><><><>
Part 2

Salem, Missouri seemed like as good a place as any, and she'd
been seeing the signs since just outside Richmond, anyway.  It
was like they were calling to her, so she answered, and pulled
into a place that looked abandoned for four in the afternoon.

The manager, a greasy man who reminded her vaguely of that man,
Frohike, raised his bushy eyebrows as she walked through the
door.  Probably thought she was lost, or looking for someone.

"Help ya?"  He asked, grinning around his yellow teeth.

"I'm looking for work.  Anything you've got will be fine," she
answered simply.  Her diction made her sound out of place, she
knew, but she really didn't fit anywhere, so it didn't much
matter.

"We're always lookin' for girls.  C'mon in."  He motioned her
over to a table with a beefy hand.  "Jennie!  Drinks!"

A girl, maybe twenty, and wearing only an apron, jumped to
attention.  She set two frosty mugs of amber in front of them.

"On the house," the evil Frohike assured her.  "So tell me, what
brings you to these parts?"

She shook her head, staring vapidly at Jennie and two other girls
- that's all they were, girls - as they sauntered around the bar.
Business in places like these must not pick up until dark.  "Just
needed to get away.  I'm running out of money."

What little she'd had had led her here: Mulder didn't want her to
get far.

Evil Frohike nodded, seeming to understand.  She was probably the
standard around here.  He took a gulp of his drink.  "You ain't
runnin', are ya?  No boyfriends or pimps out lookin' for ya?"

"No."  That, at least, was the truth.

He stood, downing the rest of his drink in a hurry.  "What's your
name?"

She stood, too.  "Kathy."

"Deb!  Watch the counter.  Kathy and me's goin' to my office for
an interview."

<><><><><><>

"Fellas like the little 'uns.  You'll do real nice," he murmured,
moving his hand up her shirt.

She closed her eyes.

"Most of 'em like a little participation."

Taking the hint, she obediently stroked the rapidly hardening
bulge just behind his zipper.  His breathing increased, and he
squeezed one of her breasts roughly.

She bit her lip.

"Good...good...mm, that's nice."  His fingers found her zipper at
her side and jerked it forcefully.  He pulled her pants - nice
pants, dressy pants that probably went with a jacket and silk
shell at one time, like something she would've worn to work -
down to her knees, taking her panties with them.  His hot hand
moved up the inside of her thigh.

She thought of Mulder's hand on her cheek just after her father
had died.  She was glad her father was dead.

His breath hit her neck in short, wet pants.  "You clean?  No
diseases?"

She nodded, turning her head away.

"On the pill?"

Again, she nodded.  It wasn't necessary, anyway.  She doubted
that she could get pregnant after what had been done to her.

He was parting her lips with his cock, making vague sounds of
pleasure.

She reached down and guided him inside her, wincing as he
stretched her too much too soon.

She thought of the ocean at sunrise, of iced tea instead of root
beer, of Christmas trees after New Years.  Blood spilling on a
white cross.  Her father being proud of her.  The look on
Skinner's face when he found out his murder suspect was a giant
bloodsucking worm after all.  Bubble baths.  Soft beds.

He laid half on top of her, breathing heavily.  After he calmed,
he got up, tugged his too-tight trousers over his ample hips, and
turned away.

"You can start tonight.  Pay's six-fifty an hour, free food and
drink.  Go get yourself somethin' to wear, be back by six."

<><><><><><>

There was this guard - the others called him Randy - who would
always trade fresh water for blow jobs.  Every night, it seemed,
she ended up on her knees, begging indirectly for something to
drink.  He was gentle; he would stroke her shoulders and gather
her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck.  Underneath that,
he was hungry and loved to prey on the vulnerable.

That's what this reminded her of.

"What's a pretty li'l thing like you doin' in a place like this?"
A man asked as she past, sliding his hand up the back of her
thigh to tug her hips closer to his chest.

"Waitin' on somebody like you," she forced.  This diction fit her
style, and she was beginning to pick up the vocabulary, too.

He grinned at his friends, all leering and whistling, not yet
having snared their meals for the evening.  Turning back to her,
he shook a cigarette out of a pack, lit it, and took a long drag.
He probably thought he made the act look erotic, and indicative,
but it repulsed her.

"Got one for me?"  She asked in her best sugary-sweet naivete.

"Oh, I got somethin' for you alright," he answered, handing her
the cigarette.

His friends erupted into applause and vulgar name-calling as he
slid out of the booth and followed her to her room.

"You deserve better than this," he told her as he moved long and
slow inside her.  "Girl like you could get five hundred a night,
easy.  I know how to hook you up."

She pressed her face against his chest, not smelling the prison
or the testing rooms or her own fear-sweat on her clothes in her
mind.

He pumped faster.  "You in?"

She nodded, and he exploded, moaning some approximation of her
name.  It was close enough.

<><><><><><>

He'd done what he could, which admittedly wasn't much.  Two days
after he and her mother had spent hours standing over her
tombstone, he'd called the cheapest of the local motels.  One
said they had a guest matching Scully's description, so he
cleaning out his savings account and left the money in an
envelope for her at the desk.  Inside, he'd put a note saying to
please, please call him if she needed anything, and that he would
be waiting to help her however he could when she decided to
return home.  If she got the envelope, she'd not let him know.
He'd shrugged, straightened his shoulders, and went on.  He had a
life to live, too, after all.

APB's were a week later, when Skinner had come to ask him how she
was.  It hurt him to say she'd left, and that he hadn't done
nothing, so he did something.  After that, he didn't know what
else to do.  Maybe she'd come home when she was ready, or maybe
he'd get a call one day asking him to identify a dead body.

Diana answered the phone and, with a frown, passed it to him.
"Missouri Task Force officer," she said, her hand covering the
receiver.

He took it from her without an expression.  "Mulder."

"Agent Mulder?  This is Jim Downing with the Missouri State
Police.  I was told by my superior officer to contact you."

"Yeah?"

"We found your missing agent, Dana Scully.  Got her in state
prison in St. Louis."

He stood, leaving his dinner to cool on the table as he went to
pack.  "Prison?  What for?"

The man cleared his throat.  "We led a bust on some prostitution
rings the other night.  Got her for solicitation."

He sighed, knowing something like this was coming. "Is she okay?"

He hesitated.  "She's pretty beat up, but her HIV and drug tests
have come back negative so far.  You coming to get her?"

"Yeah, I'll be on the next flight out.  Thank you."  He hung up
the phone, dragging his suitcase to the door.

"What was that about?"  Diana asked, clearing their dinner that
wasn't.

"They think they've found Scully.  I gotta go get her."

"Fox, wait."  He stopped, turned, and did as she'd asked.  "If
she wanted you to find her, she would've let you know somehow.
Maybe this is how she wants it."

"She doesn't know what she wants right now," he answered,
calculating flight times, driving times, and how much bail would
cost.

She walked up to him, rubbed her hands up and down his arms
soothingly.  "I know you feel responsible, but you did all you
could.  You offered to do more.  She didn't take it.  This is her
fault, now."

He shook his head.  "I'll call you," he said, walking out of
their apartment without kissing her goodbye.

<><><><><><>

To maintain his sanity, he didn't imagine what she might look
like.  He was shocked by what he finally saw.

Her hair - black, though not completely, and her roots were
showing - hung limp and stringy down her back.  It, and the rest
of her, probably hadn't been washed in a week.  She was
emaciated, pale, and shaking, black and purple bruises molting
the skin of her wrists and around her eyes.  He thought she
might've been asleep, but when the guard fit the key in the lock,
she snapped awake, looking ready to run and fight if only she
weren't so weak.

When she saw him, she rolled her eyes, and curled back into a
ball on her bunk.

"Let's go, Scully," the guard said to her, and she lumbered to
her feet, rubbing her eyes like a sleepy child.

The other women watched her with contempt as she stepped outside
the bars.

"I told you: that's not my name," she said when they reached the
front desk.  Her voice was hoarse, and he imagined her screaming
and screaming and screaming for help that never came.

The guard gave him a look that said, "this is your problem now,
buddy," and signed her release papers, then walked away.

They stood toe-to-toe, but she wouldn't look at him.  Finally, at
a loss for anything else to do, he took her by the elbow and led
her outside.  "I'm taking you to a hotel, then we're going to the
airport.  You have a choice: you can go to Texas and stay with
your mother or you can come back to Washington with me.  If you
haven't decided by the time I call Delta, I'm choosing for you."

"I need a cigarette.  Do you have a cigarette?"  She asked,
ignoring him.

If she made him choose, he wouldn't let her mother see her like
this.  He'd had a hard enough time thinking of something to say
when he called her on the plane down here, and had settled for,
"we found her.  I'll call you when I know more," on her machine.
He'd purposely called when he knew she'd be at church, praying
for her daughter.

He only rented one room, but he wasn't planning for them to stay
overnight anyway.

She sat heavily on the bed, or maybe she collapsed, he wasn't
sure.  He set the bag down next to her.  "There's some clothes
and toiletries.  Take a shower, get cleaned up.  We'll get
something to eat on the way to the airport."

She rubbed her arms furiously.  "Will you get me some
cigarettes?"

He tilted his face to the ceiling, practicing for defeat.
"Yeah."

There was a machine in the motel lobby he'd noticed.  If he went
while she was in the shower, he could watch their door and make
sure she didn't try to run.

<><><><><><>

It was her third in a row, and she didn't seem to be slowing
down.  The lights from the approaching cars blinded him, and he
kept looking at the white line near the edge of the road.

"Have you decided?"

"Decided what?"  She asked, her voice flat.

"Your mother or me?"

She scoffed a laugh, and took a long drag.

"All right, then.  You're coming home with me.  You're sick,
Scully, whether you realize it or not.  Post traumatic stress at
the least.  Rape trauma, physical trauma, survivor's guilt.  I'm
thinking private therapy at least once a week, group therapy once
a week, a low-dose anti-depressant, a support system.
Stability."  He'd done some research about how POW's are re-
introduced into society, talked to some military psychologists
about their techniques, success rates, recovery time.  "It'll
work, Scully.  You just have to give it some time."

She flicked the dead cigarette out the open window, pulled
another one out of the pack.  "Maybe I don't want to waste the
time."

"It's not a waste of time!"

"It is to me."

<><><><><><>

She was asleep this time, he was sure.  He got her a Diet Coke as
the stewardess passed anyway.  He remembered she liked to drink
those.

He pulled the airphone from its holder on the back of the seat in
front of him, swiped his credit card, and dialed his number.

"Hello?"

Her voice instantly soothed him, and he wondered how to tell her
this.  "It's me."

"Hi, Fox.  How's Dana?"

"Not good.  I'm bringing her home with me, and she'll need a
place to stay."

Diana sighed and tried to sound generous.  "Okay."

He closed his eyes, wondering when the last time he'd slept was.
"It won't be for long, hopefully.  It's the least I can do."

"I know.  It's okay," she assured him.

"We'll have to push the wedding back.  Not until she's better; at
least a little bit."

Another sigh.  Sometimes it seemed as if they'd never get there.
"Okay."

A few more sentimental exchanges and he hung up, swiping his card
again to call Maggie Scully.

She was awake beside him now, tears in her eyes.  "I never meant
to ruin your life," she said soundlessly.

He shook his head, moved a hand towards her face.

She jerked away, against the window.  "Don't.  Don't touch me."

He nodded; another thing he should've known.  "I'm sorry."

He didn't ever think he could say it enough.

<><><><><><>

Diana met them at the airport.  He was still leading her by the
elbow, still afraid that she'd run if she got the chance.  She
was tolerating it, barely, and he'd learned that slow,
telegraphed movements and soft voices worked best.

"Scully, this is Diana Fowley," he introduced.  Diana stuck her
dainty hand out, and smiled widely.

Scully stared at her shoes that were too big; he hadn't known
what size to get, so he did his best.  As usual, his best wasn't
good enough.

"Fox has told me a lot about you," Diana tried, tilting her head
and searching for eye contact.

At his given name, Scully scoffed another laugh.  "Fox?"  She
mimicked to herself.

Diana gave him a weird look, and he shook his head.  "Let's get
you home," he decided to say, moving the action along.  Scully
didn't move until he moved her, seeming a million miles away from
the world.

He sat in the back with her as Diana drove them home.  She closed
her eyes.  In another world, at another time, this might have
been normal: getting off a plane with him and being chauffeured
around some paranormal-stricken little town by the sheriff.
Except in that world, in that time, they'd be exchanging case
notes, theories, and making juvenile stabs at each other with
words.

In this world, in this time, they sat in silence, and she let the
motion of the car lull her to sleep.

From the rearview mirror, Mulder's eyes met Diana's, and she
could see the pain there.  Guilt.  What if this had been
Samantha?  Would he have let her get into a taxi and drive out of
his life?  Would he have let her sell her body on the streets
like it was the only skill she had left?

No.  So why did he let her do it?

She didn't awake until they were almost up the stairs.  Mulder
was carrying her, and he sat her down a high, soft bed that
smelled safe and clean.  She vaguely thought she might be
allergic to those scents.

He bent to the foot of the bed to pull a quilt over her, thinking
she was still sleeping.  When he reached her shoulder, he saw her
eyes were open, glued to the window at her side.

He sat down on the bed, his head in his hands.  "Will you talk to
me?  It *will* help, Scully."  No answer.  "You have to talk to
someone."

Nothing.  He'd not really expected anything, anyway.

"Well, you can listen to me, then."  He bit his lip.  "I don't
blame you if you hate me, and I don't blame you if you hate your
mother.  We did what we had to in order to go on - and we had to
go on.  We had to live our lives, Scully, and, to do that, we had
to let you go.  I know...I know you can't understand that right
now, but I don't know how else to explain it.  We did what we had
to.  We did what anyone else would've done."

No, not what anyone else would've done.  Mulder would've moved
Heaven and Earth to find his precious sister, but he wouldn't
lift one goddamned finger to look for her.  In truth, he was
probably glad to have her out of his way; another obstacle, gone.

"I know your mother has been seeing a therapist to try to make
sense of all this, and I've been talking to psychologists and
psychiatrists, trying to figure out a way to help you.  But the
truth is it won't do any good unless you want it to.  Unless you
want to start living your life again, the best therapists in the
world won't do a damn bit of good."

Didn't he get it?  God, didn't he see?  He *was* a fucking
psychologist, couldn't he understand this?  Her life - the person
she was professionally, privately, her friends, family, co-
workers, everything that had made her who she was, everything
that had defined her existence, made it distinctly her - was
gone.  The places in peoples' lives she'd inhabited had been
sealed closed.  She was gone, and everyone had moved on.  There
was nothing left for her here, *nothing.* What the hell was she
supposed to do?

He looked back at her to see if she was listening, and it didn't
appear that she was.  He might as well be talking to the wall.
"But we still have lives to live, too.  We couldn't stop them
because you died, and we can't stop them because you came back."

She closed her eyes again as he stood, let her tears slip into
the pillowcase as he closed her door.

Later, after it was dark, she changed her clothes and stepped out
of her room, tip-toed down the stairs, and searched for the front
door.

Mulder was sitting at the kitchen table, watching her silently.
Their eyes locked for a long moment.

He didn't move or speak as she opened the door, and left.

<><><>End<><><>

All you pokers-for-a-sequel don't get too excited.  I've had the
idea for this story for a while, but had no context or background
for it.  The Blue Girl universe seemed like as good a place as
any.

Website: geocities.com/lil_gusty
Feedback would be nice to lil_gusty@hotmail.co

<><><><>
Part 3

Fern Creek, Kentucky.  It wasn't far, but it was far enough.  She
hadn't had any more money, anyway.  The only way she'd gotten
this far was hitchhiking.

She half expected Mulder to be the next one picking her up - he'd
clench his jaw closed, wanting so badly to give her another
sermon about how he didn't know what to do, her mother didn't
know what to do, that they were all in the same boat together,
and that if she jumped in the shark-laden waters, they were
jumping in after her to save her.  Never mind that they might
lose a limb, or a life, for a life that wasn't worth saving.

He hadn't picked her up, though, so she kept thumbing, kept
moving whichever way her driver happened to be headed.

Of course they'd all wanted to make conversation, just being
polite.  She answered the questions like, "where ya headed?"
"what's a pretty little thing like you doin' out here all alone,"
and the omnipresent, "gotta be careful; lots of crazies out
there."  They gave up after a while and left her to her silence,
watching America the Beautiful whizzing by from her window.

Crazies didn't much scare her, anyway.  Not when she'd been
through the hell that was the last nine years.  Nothing could be
worse than that.

No: being released was worse.  This life?or unlife?was a
thousand times worse.  At least at that place, she still had her
belief that someone gave a damn about her, that someone was
desperately searching for her and wouldn't give up until he
rescued her.  How stupid of her.  How naive and childish.

Kathy, unlike Dana Scully, had no high school diploma, social
security number, or driver's license.  The only jobs she seemed
to be qualified for were ones that didn't require her to wear all
of her clothes, but those jobs paid, and if she were going to
carve out a life for herself, she desperately needed some money.

Vegas Nights was just off the main highway running south away
from Fern Creek.  Their marquee said "help wanted," so she took
it as a sign.  It didn't take the manager but four minutes and
sixteen seconds to decide she was hired.  She'd counted; it kept
her mind off things.

His name was Jeff, and he liked to drink.  He also liked to have
his favorite girl close, and gave her a place in his bed every
night.  Six days earlier, he'd even convinced her to abandon her
black hair phase in favor of blond, only it turned out dishwater
brown and she hated it.  He hated it, too, and left her bleeding
on the bathroom floor.

It didn't seem to matter much in the dark, and the club was kept
softly lit with footlights and cigarette smoke.  She slowly made
her way across the stage towards a table circled with drunk,
rowdy men.  The drunker they were, the more they tipped.

If she was being romantic, she might say that she knew the exact
moment he walked in the door.  The air changed, got thicker, or
maybe it was those pills Jeff had asked her to take earlier.  She
thought she could feel him.  She stumbled, twisted her ankle in
the high-heeled sandal, and grabbed the closest pole to steady
herself.

From behind the bar, she saw Jeff sneer and mumble a curse.

The men she was arousing thought it was part of the act, so she
pretended it was, insanely embarrassed to be doing it in front of
him.  She could feel him watching her, but his gaze didn't drop
below her shoulders.  She could feel the way he looked at her: a
little shocked, a little ashamed, and a lot disappointed.

She couldn't concentrate; the stage was rippling underneath her.

The music stopped and the men were devastated.  The other girls
made their way off stage, but she was jerked by an angry grip.
"What the FUCK was that?  Huh?  What the hell happened?"

She was dizzy, couldn't get her balance.  The words she was
trying to say, "I'm sorry" were lost in a thick haze in her mind.

Jeff jerked her closer to him, hard up against his chest.  "You
don't mess up my shows, got it?  Stupid slut?" and he pushed her
away roughly.  Without something to stabilize her, she landed
hard on her ass.

Frustrated, embarrassed, ashamed, and too sick to think of
anything else to do, she just sat there, staring at the dirty
floor between her legs, and willed herself not to cry.  Around
her, girls were seeing to their favorite customers, Jeff was
serving drinks, and Mulder stood watching her silently at the
door.

<><><><><><>

The bruises could be easily hidden by make-up, and she'd
perfected the art of hiding the ones on her face.  The ones on
the rest of her body she didn't worry about.  No one much paid
attention to what she looked like, anyway.

The knock on her door made her jump: Jeff didn't like her smoking
cigarettes - said they were for five dollar street-corner whores,
that she was better than that - and she rushed to put it out in
her Dixie cup of Wal-Mart wine.

He was probably bringing by another of his "best customers,"
which meant she'd either spend the next hour on her knees or her
back.  She was hoping for knees; she was too sore for anything
else.

"Come in," she said quietly, standing and putting her back to the
door.  Underneath the thin robe was a sheer white negligee Jeff
had bought for her during her first week.  She'd blushed as she'd
pulled it out of the bag, and he told her how beautiful she was
when she was embarrassed.  He could be flattering and insulin-
worthy sweet sometimes.

The air in her room was frigid to her, but she let the robe pool
at her feet, pasted a seductive grin on her face, and turned
around to meet her next customer.

Mulder.

She might've known.  "What can I do for you?"  She asked in her
most innocent little girl voice.

Just as she'd imagined, he clenched his jaw and shook his head,
looking away incredulously.

She exhaled forcefully, frustrated, and picked her robe up,
gratefully wrapping it around her shivering body.  As she sat,
she reached for her pack of cigarettes and lit one, savoring the
first long, calming drag.

When he finally looked at her again, it was with sad puppy eyes,
the ones that had gotten in her trouble with superiors a few
times Before.  Now, they hardly phased her.  Kathy didn't do
emotions like Dana Scully had.

"Your ankle okay?"  He asked, as if it was just another day in
the Perfect Life of Fox Mulder, staring a calmer, more relaxed
man as himself and Diana as his beautiful, intelligent fiancee.

She held her last puff of smoke.  "Yeah."

"What about this?"  He pointed towards the yellow-promising-to-
turn-black bruise peaking out from the three-quarter sleeves of
her robe.  "Does he do that often?"

"I screwed up the show," she told the stringy-haired waif in the
mirror.

He shook his head, walking further into the room and closing the
door.  "I'll take that as a yes."

Take it however you want, she thought.  Take it and get out.
"It's his club.  He gave me a chance and I said I could do it."

He bit his lip, pensive.  "Amanda said you'd been here almost two
months," he began, coming to stand behind her, searching for her
eyes in the mirror.  "You know what else has happened in those
two months?  Your sister-in-law had a baby.  Her third, a boy.
They've all been boys, but they're gonna keep trying for a girl.
Personally I think she'd be happy cutting her losses, but your
brother is insistent.  He says hello, by the way."

She flicked the ashes into her wine.

"Actually he doesn't.  He says for me to go to hell, and that's
about it.  He blames me for this."  Mulder sighed, clearing a
space on the broken, stained couch to sit.  "Do you blame me,
Scully?"

Scully?  Who was Scully?  She picked up her bottle of foundation
and started on the bruise molting around her jaw.

"I do.  I keep thinking...Before, the next lead I'd received, the
next piece of evidence I'd found or the next contact I'd talked
to would've led me to you.  Then we wouldn't be here.  I had
leads.  I had evidence.  I had contacts, but I just gave up.
Nothing else had worked out, I was no closer to finding you than
I was the day you were taken?just like Samantha," he added
wistfully.

For a short moment, she was sure he was going to cry.

"She was dead all these years, Scully.  I spent my life searching
for something that was never there to find.  I was afraid of the
same thing happening again: that I'd spend the rest of my life
searching for you only to find out you'd been dead and that it
was all for nothing.  I-I couldn't do that, Scully."

Her hand was shaking.  She was cold.  She needed something?a
drink or something.

"But I could've found you," he whispered, finishing his
monologue.  He shifted against a broken spring at his back, gave
up, and slouched forward to his knees.

The heavy pulse of the music vibrated through tiny room, filling
the stuffy silence.

"How did you find me?"  She finally asked him.

"Someone must've seen your missing person's poster.  They're
supposed to be in all the post offices, government buildings -"

"You put out posters?"

"You were missing, you're a person."

She scoffed a laugh, rubbing her eyes exhaustedly.  Jeff's party
hadn't ended until six this morning, but that was early for them.
She'd been serving drinks and filling syringes, checking pulses
on the rowdier guests, remembering the first time she'd put an IV
in a real person or took a patient's vitals.  She stuffed that
memory into the dumpster inside her mind.

"We wouldn't do all this unless we wanted you to come home," he
stated firmly, tired of repeating it to her.

"We?"

He sighed.  "Me, your family, your mother?we miss you, we're
concerned about you.  It?it wouldn't be so bad if you'd just
contact us, call us, let us know you're all right -"

"What am I supposed to say?  I got a new job at a strip club and
my manager is letting me live with him as long as I let him fuck
me?"  She snapped, reaching for another cigarette.

He caught her wrist, and she jumped, snatching her arm back.

"Don't.  You.  Fucking.  Touch.  Me."

He watched her light another one with huge frightened eyes.  He
swallowed nervously.  Some psychologist he was.  "Just tell us
you're safe, tell us that you're trying -"

Her eyes snapped to his, locking on.

"- trying to get your life back together," he finished.

"Does this look like a life to you?  Does this look safe?  Does
this look like something I can report to my mother?"

He shook his head slowly.  "Then why are you here, Scully?"

"God," she murmured, dropping her head into her palm in
disbelief.

"Just show us - show me - that you're trying.  Show me that you
want help."

"I DON'T WANT ANY FUCKING HELP!"  She screamed.  "And I CERTAINLY
don't want any from YOU!  I needed your goddamned help for nine
fucking years and YOU NEVER CAME!"

There: she'd said it.  It was out.  It was real.  Adrenaline
pulsed through her veins, accelerated by the nicotine, alcohol,
and whatever was in Jeff's pills.

The maddening beat of the music paused and was replaced by her
heavy panting, his quietly repressed breaths.

They both jumped when her door swung open, hitting the wall hard
and bouncing almost half-closed again.  Jeff walked in, weaving
on his feet from alcohol.  When he saw Mulder, he stopped,
blinked a few times to clear his eyes, and stood a little
straighter.  "Wha's this?"  He asked, looking so hard at her that
she turned her head away in fear.

When it became clear that she wasn't going to respond, Mulder
did, already hating this man.  "We're just talking."

"Just talkin'?"  Jeff mimicked, swaggering towards her.  "Kathy?"

She swallowed and looked at the floor.

He moved closer.  "I don' like people 'just talkin'' to my girls
without me knowin' about it."  His eyes shifted from the tiny red
roots on Scully's head to Mulder's angrily squinted eyes.  "I
heard yellin'.  What was you yellin' about?"

Mulder looked at her, waiting for her to tell this man to fuck
off, to stand up for herself.  She didn't.

"Kathy, baby..." he murmured to her, his voice dripping evil oil.
"Wha'ssa matter?  This man bein' mean to you, baby?"  She jumped
again when he found her arm, stroking it lightly.  He tipped her
chin up to his face, but she wouldn't look at him.  "You can tell
me, baby.  I can make it all better."

His lips were close to her ear now, grazing, murmuring.  From
beneath her closed eyelids, tears began to slide down her face.
She still didn't say a word and that, more than anything yet,
worried Mulder.

"That's enough," he jumped in, taking Jeff by the arm and tugging
him away roughly.

Jeff was shorter, though not by much, but he still had to look up
to sneer at Mulder.  "Who're you?"

"The guy who's gonna kick your ass if you don't get out of here
right now," he sneered back.  There were all sorts of crimes
being committed here, and he knew that all it would take to get
Jeff out of his face was flashing his badge, but he hoped it
wouldn't come to that.  Scully would have to be arrested if it
did.

"You listen to me, man," Jeff said, poking his finger into
Mulder's chest.  "This.  Is my.  Club.  If anybody's gonna kick
anybody's ass, it's gonna be me.  Got it?"

He knew Jeff couldn't find his own ass if he had to, so he
smirked and reached towards her.  "C'mon," he told her softly,
taking her trembling wrist between his fingers.

Jeff was having trouble following the conversation and his train
of thought at the same time.  "She's not free, man.  You gotta
pay first, then you can do whatever you want."

Beside him, she moaned, stifling a sob.

"She's free from you, you son of a bitch," Mulder mumbled under
his breath.  He tugged Scully's wrist, ready to prove that
assertion, but she wouldn't move.  She sat still on the very edge
of her chair, staring at the floor and biting her lip in
confusion.

"Scully, c'mon," he repeated.

She shook her head, tears dripping and making clean spots in the
dust at her feet.

"I don' think she wants to leave with you," Jeff teased, sliding
an arm around her shoulders.  "Too bad.  She's a tight one."

He moved to nibble at her neck, and she leaned away, whispering,
no, to him.

In the next breath, he had her up and pinned to his chest.  "What
did you say to me?  Did you tell me NO?  YOU DON'T TELL ME WHAT
TO DO, BITCH!"

Mulder already had his gun aimed at his head.  "Let her go."

She shook, but otherwise she didn't move.

He shoved her away violently, and she hit the wall, sliding down
it limply until the floor caught her.  "You're FIRED, bitch!  Get
out of my club!  Goddamned WHORE!  YOU!"  He screamed, meaning
Mulder, "get out of here before I call the cops!"  He lumbered
out of the room, slamming the door as he left.

Her knees to her chest, Scully cried quietly.  Mulder put his gun
away and took a deep breath.

He knelt in front of her, pulling her hands away from her face.
"C'mon, Scully.  Let's go."

She shook her head, wiping the tears off her face roughly.

"Yes.  We have to," he insisted, pulling her up.

"Just leave me alone," she moaned.  "Just go.  He's serious,
he'll call the cops.  You'll just make it worse if you stay."

"Worse for me or worse for you?"

Her voice was shaking.  "Look, you've already gotten me fired.
Just go.  Please," she pleaded, eyes closed, head bowed in
defeat.

For half a second, he remembered the look on Diana's face as he'd
left their apartment early this morning.  Pity: she'd pitied him.
She thought he was chasing a ghost, just like he had been with
Samantha.  Searching for someone that didn't want to be found.
He almost left her standing there, shaking and slowly crying.

Almost.  He'd have to call her mother, tell her he'd let her go
again.

"No.  C'mon."  He pushed her in front of him and steered her
towards the car.

<><><><><><>

On their way to the motel, he'd called Scully's mother to check
in, give her a little good news.  She asked to talk to her
daughter, and when he'd handed Scully the phone, she'd shook her
head and leaned against the window, feigning exhaustion.

She collapsed onto the bed, fighting with the comforter until she
was buried underneath it, only the very top of her head visible.
He sat down beside her, head in his hands, and began to speak
softly, not knowing if she was even listening.

"You're right, Scully.  I didn't help you when you needed it."
He paused.  "But I can't help you if you don't want it.  I'm
sorry.  It's just?you don't belong in a place like this.  You
belong at home?"

She surprised him by answering, her voice muffled and soft.  "I
don't have a home.  I don't have anything.  Everything I had,
everything I was, is gone."

He shook his head, reaching to his neck.  From underneath his
collar, he pulled a fine gold chain.  "Not everything."

As if he was unearthing a thousand year old mummy, he peeled back
the covers until he could see her eyes.  Her necklace.  She'd
ripped it from her neck when she was in the trunk, leaving a clue
for him: back when she was certain he'd find her.  That was all
such a long time ago.  Tears threatened her eyes, so she closed
them.  They burned.

His tears were in his voice.  "Your mother asked me to give it to
you when I found you.  It's not the same chain?I got yours fixed,
but I needed a bigger one.  I've been wearing it, holding it for
you."

She shook her head.  "I don't want it," she whispered.

He bit his lip.  "Why not?"

"Because?"  Memories flooded her, and she let her dam open a
little, letting one trickle in.  "My mother gave that to me when
I was fifteen.  It was supposed to be a reminder that God was
always with me, that I should never lose hope because He was
watching and listening and waiting to help me.  It was a reminder
of the person I was supposed to be.  But I don't?I-I don't
believe that anymore."

A tear slid across the bridge of her nose, over her eye, and into
the sheet.  She shivered.

"God wasn't with me in that?place.  I don't?I don't believe that
He would've let those things happen to me.  God wouldn't let
things like that happen.  I don't believe in that anymore.  And
now?this person I've become?my mother would be so ashamed of
me.  And my father?I am so glad he's dead.  I couldn't stand to
have him see me like this."

He reached towards her just as she sniffed, and she looked up.
He froze.

"I'm not that person anymore, Mulder.  That," she pointed to the
necklace, "belonged to her.  Not to me."

Her eyes were liquid blue, and he was drowning.  "Maybe?maybe you
should keep it, so that when you find her, you can give it back
to her," he said slowly, hoping the words made sense to her.

He thought she would agree for a long moment, then she shook her
head and looked away again.  "I can't."

He kneeled in front of her, looking up into her battered face.
"Yes, you can.  Scully, you've just been through an incredibly
traumatic ordeal, one I can't even begin to comprehend.  Your
life?that life you had before you were taken is gone forever.
You'll never get it back, but you have pieces of it.  You have
me, and your mother, and your job when you're ready?you have
this," he gestured to her necklace.  "You can put those pieces
together again."

Her hands were shaking.  God, she was so cold.  Mulder's warm
fingers slipped into her tight fists, gently settling the long
chain into her palm.

She took a deep breath, squeezing his fingers between hers.
After a moment, she collapsed forward.  He caught her, settling
her head against his shoulder and wrapping his arms around her
trembling back.

They sat, the only people in the world, holding each other as
lifelines.  That's what they were: neither of them was the same
person they'd been, and the only thing they had tying them to
that life Before was each other.  He was tirelessly clinging; she
was just getting a good foothold.

<><><><><><>

When she awoke, eyes swollen and burning, he was asleep in the
chair with his head on the table.

She was desperate for a shower, or a long, hot, sweetly scented
bubble bath to ease her sore muscles and bruises.  The running
water would probably wake him, though, and then they'd have this
whole teary scene again.  She just wasn't up to that right now.

Her necklace was still tucked tightly into her palm, and as she
sat on the bed, she contemplated whether she should take it with
her or whether she should leave it with him.

If she took it, it was a commitment.  She had to put a life
together for herself, she had to try to make it as much like her
life Before as possible.  She had to go back to Washington, maybe
go back to the Bureau teaching.  No, probably not.  She'd never
pass the psych evaluation.  It was possible for her to get a job
at a county or hospital morgue, but that was a step below what
she was used to.  Her father had warned her that there weren't
many respectable career options for a specialty in pathology;
that's all he had been concerned with.  Not her personal
happiness or fulfillment, but how easily she could find a job
that guaranteed her a good reputation and how quickly she could
make a lot of money.  He had even been disappointed when she'd
told him of her teaching position at Quantico.  Nothing had ever
been good enough.

Not that he would've approved of her recent career.  He'd never
recognize her as his daughter.  She wasn't.  She was Kathy, the
girl without a family or a past.

It was entirely freeing and entirely frightening.  If she
continued as Kathy, with the dirty dishwater hair, she could be
anyone she wanted to be, do anything she wanted to do.  She
wouldn't have to worry about what others thought of her or how
they might miss her.  If she wanted to be the oldest girl at a
club, she could be.  If she wanted to beg on the streets, she
could.  She had no standards, no goals, nothing she was too good
for.  None of that much mattered anymore.

If she took the necklace, she'd always be comparing what was to
what had been.  Her job would never be her field agent status;
her friendship with Mulder would never be the exhilarating
challenge and exclusive trust; her life After would never be her
life Before.  It would be easier to not even bother, to not even
try to get it back.  If she left, she'd never mourn what could
never be again.

Dana would take the necklace; Kathy would leave it.  She sat
rubbing her fingers over the chain, considering.

He had worn it all these years.  He had said he had been holding
it for her - waiting on her.  No.  He had been waiting on Scully,
his strong, intelligent, independent, take no bullshit partner.
He had never considered getting a broken, frightened, desperate,
and alone shell of a woman back instead.  No matter how much
therapy she went to, no matter how much stability and help Mulder
wanted to give her, she would never be that Scully again.

She stood, dropping the necklace quietly onto the table beside
his head, resisting the urge to sift her fingers through his
hair.  He could be dedicated and caring to the extreme; she'd
seen hints of how deep his empathy could go when her father died.
She hoped Diana knew how lucky she was to have this man love her.

She opened the door, looked back at him in the purple hints of
dawn that snuck into the room, and left him.

Kathy had a life to live, too, just like him.

<><><><><><>

When he awoke, the first thing he noticed was that his neck hurt
like hell.  The second was that his back did, too.

He sat up, wincing and cursing himself for doing something as
stupid as sleeping like a bored fifth grader all night.  Scully
had deserved the bed more than he had, though.

Scully; he wondered if she was awake yet.  He painfully turned
his head towards her, and looked to the bed.  It was empty.

He jumped out of the chair to sift through the messy pile of
sheets, like she could be hiding in there and he wouldn't know
it.  He checked the bathroom, walked outside, to the lobby, and
back again: no Scully.

Back inside the room, he noticed a sharp glint from something on
the table.  When he inspected it, her found her necklace sitting
where it should've been the first thing he saw when he opened his
eyes.  Dammit.

He should've known she'd run if she got the chance, but after
last night, he'd thought he'd convinced her to stay.  He'd said
everything he knew of to say, even the harsh reality of the life
she remembered being gone forever.  He'd tried every trick he
knew and it still didn't change anything for her.  It still
didn't convince her that there was enough left of the life she
knew to come back to it.

But, in the end, maybe she just didn't want to.  Maybe she didn't
think it was worth it.  He wondered how he'd feel if he had been
in her place, if he'd be able to accept the naive help of his
mother and a partner who he barely knew outside work.  He'd
trusted her above anyone else, he'd respected her and enjoyed her
company, but was it enough to call him back to a life that had
ended nine years before?

Maybe it wasn't.  Evidently, it wasn't.

He picked up her necklace, watching the delicate cross slide back
and forth on the chain.  What bothered him most was that she
hadn't taken this with her.  It was almost symbolic of her giving
up on anything, even the meager existence she'd managed in the
past few months.

He'd given it to her as a lifeline and she'd rejected it.  Now,
the only thing he knew to do was to go home, wait, and hope that
she would come to him.

He picked up his overnight back, opened the door, and left the
room.

<><><><><><>

Her life wasn't a puzzle, but if she were comparing it to one, it
was as if she was sifting through the few pieces that were
presented to her, setting the edges to the side, then starting to
arrange them in groups of the same colors or patterns.

One pile for her family: Phone calls at work from Melissa,
wanting to catch up on all the time that had passed while she
searched for herself in the New Age.  "Tell me about him," she'd
said once, coyly.  Dana hadn't know who "him" referred to until
she heard Mulder slap a file-folder down on his desk in disgust.
Missy giggled, Dana blushed, and they acted like sisters while
Mulder watched her curiously.

No, no, no, you belong in the Mulder pile.  She mental shifted
the piece to its proper place.

Tara having her second miscarriage and Bill calling her late at
night to ask medical questions, worried that he'd never be able
to provide an heir to the Scully name.

Her mother starting to smile again, then immediately looking
guilty, like she wasn't supposed to be happy without Ahab.
Distantly, she wondered if her mother ever smiled while she had
been dead.

Missy was off to where ever it was she went again, Bill was at
sea, Tara had given him three perfect sons, and her mother had
moved to be with her new family.  She probably smiled all the
time, now.

One pile for her memories of Mulder and what they were: partners,
yes.  She was just starting to feel that he trusted her.  He
trusted her enough not to tell her where he was going and what he
was doing, but enough to depend on her when he got in over his
head and needed a last minute rescue.  Scenes from Puerto Rico
flowed through her mind.  "...I still have you..."

He'd said it with an almost reverence, and she'd likened that
moment to that first time she'd seen the smile melt off her
mother's face as the reality returned that her husband was gone.
Like they'd just remembered an important part of themselves that
wasn't there.  Her mother felt it: the emptiness that Dana had
heard in Mulder's voice that day.

Mulder wasn't supposed to smile without her.  Dammit, he was
supposed to need her like he did in Puerto Rico, like he did in
that travel agency when she'd come to him like an angel in the
darkness, bringing him a candle of truth.  He wasn't supposed to
find someone else to take her place as his partner.

One pile for her career, the thing that had seemed most important
Before: Thirty pushups was the requirement for both males and
females.  She'd rejected the notion of doing the "girl" ones, on
her knees instead of on the balls of her feet.  Her biceps
burned, her chest was leaden, but she was almost there.  The
instructor had already failed the only other female in her class.
Twenty-seven, the look on Bill's face when she passed this "basic
training" that was more difficult than the Navy's...twenty-eight
shocking the male cadets that surrounded her, arms crossed,
waiting for her to collapse...twenty nine, getting her badge at
the graduation ceremony.  One more.  Thirty, hoping her father
would come to watch her and be proud...

He hadn't.  He'd had an emergency meeting at the Pentagon, but
congratulated the space of wall directly beside her head before
he'd left to go.

Mulder said she still had her job when she was ready.  She was
weak, unsteady; she'd never meet the physical requirements.
Whatever they'd done to her at that place had left her with a
fine tremor in her hands and she wouldn't be able to carry a gun.
Mentally...she shook her head, letting the idea be flung away.
She would never get her job back.

She'd felt more pieces being dumped on her every time Mulder had
found her and dragged her back home, messing up her neat piles of
colors and confusing the middles with the edges.  Now she had to
start all over again.

No more family in this one, no more Mulder, no more career.  Just
memories of the jail-place, of beatings and metallic water and
giving blow jobs for some fresh, dizziness and fear, wondering if
today was the day he would rescue her.

She had enough money in her pocket for a ticket across the
Mississippi.  It was a start.
 

<><><><>

Book 4

A life was a hard thing to start when one only had a fake first
name.  No social security number, no driver's license, no high
school - let alone college - diploma.  No savings account, no
credit card, thirty six dollars in cash, and the clothes that she
was wearing.  No, not much at all to account for - how old was
she supposed to be now? - thirty nine years.  The world hadn't
changed much in the nine years that she'd been gone.  Life was
hard enough when one had a family and friends for support, a
decent education, and the resources to try and assemble a career.
Without those things, it was damn near impossible.

Nine years.  God, it was like such a long time, yet, to her, it
only seemed like a few months.

Prostitution had seemed easy, accessible.  All you needed was
your body.  You didn't get a W-2 from your pimp, and no one
really cared what your last name was or what you majored in in
college.  It was fast money.  It was reliable.  It was
consistent.

And it scared the hell out of her.  Every night, she would wake
up screaming with memories of what they had done to her.  Piece
by piece, she was starting to assemble a narrative of what it was
like there, and the more she remembered, the more she wanted to
forget.

Intellectually, she knew that if her most recent occupation was
sparking her memories, she should either find a new job or seek
an outlet for what was buried inside her mind.  Realistically,
she knew her only other job prospects were begging and
panhandling, and finding someone to talk to was out of the
question.

Mulder, she'd thought at first.  He'd love to know what it was
like for her, what it could've been like for his sister, for
hundreds of other women.  He'd love to find that place and kill
every single man there, then return each of the women to their
families.  After what she'd been through, though, staying there
might be preferable to coming back to a life which didn't want
you back.  And Mulder didn't much care anymore about what men who
worked for the government were doing to innocent women in the
name of science.  And no one else, not her mother, or any of her
family, would believe what she had to say.

Begging and panhandling it was, then.

Only she had no idea how to do it, and the first man that leered
at her called her back to her easiest and most accessible option.
She'd gotten into the car with him, she'd gone into a motel room
with him, she'd let him take off her clothes and touch her.  When
he asked her to get down on her knees, though, she couldn't do
it.  It was too much like what she had done at that place, it was
too familiar and real, it brought it all back.  She couldn't do
it, no matter how much money he was offering her.

He'd shoved her against a wall and she'd started screaming
hysterically; she'd scared him.  He'd called her a crazy slut,
zipped his pants, and left her crying and gagging in the motel
room.  Alone.

After a couple of hours, she'd calmed to the point that she could
get dressed, crawl to the phone, and dial a number.

<><><><><><>

It had been an exhausting day, but every day with a rookie
partner at the BSU was exhausting.  Ever since the alarm had gone
off that morning, he'd looked forward to crawling into bed with
Diana that night, pulling her close, and turning his mind off
until Monday.

Four months ago, he'd rescinded the APB's he'd put out on Scully.
He'd asked that all the missing person's posters be removed.
He'd explained to Skinner what had happened the last time he saw
her, that there was nothing more he knew to do.  Skinner frowned,
told him a Vietnam story about coming back to a culture that had
no idea its soldiers were murdering thousands of innocent women
and children in the name of democracy, and how he'd holed up in
his parents' garage for months, stoned out of his mind, before he
finally decided to straighten up and start living life again.

It didn't make him feel any better.  Scully was still out there,
alone and vulnerable, and there wasn't a damn thing he could help
her do about it.  He'd considered handcuffing himself to her the
next time he found her, forcing her to come back to DC and seek
help.  If he did that, though, he'd be no better than the men
who'd held her against her will for years, forcing her to do
things she didn't want to.

In the end, there was no right answer.  He just did the best he
could and hoped it all worked out in the end.

The phone rang just as he snuggled in against Diana, and he
wanted to let the machine get it.  He could probably handle
whoever it was - and it better not be that stupid, cocky, punk-
ass partner of his - in five minutes and go right back to sleep.

Still, he sighed as he answered the phone.  "Hello?"

There was no sound for a moment.  Then a staticy, quivering,
"Mulder?"

He sat up slowly, pressing the phone against his ear.  "Scully?"

She sniffed, exhaled, and swallowed.  "Yeah.  I, um..."

"Scully, what is it?  Are you okay?  Where are you?"  All came
out in a jumbled rush.  He was on his feet again, searching for
the clothes he'd just taken off.

"I'm in Michigan.  I don't know where, I..."  She stopped, sniffed
again, then sobbed, "Mulder, I need your help."

"Okay.  Scully, it's okay.  I'm here, okay?  I'm right here," he
tried to assure her, gathering his gun, cell phone, and wallet.
"I need to know where you are."

She was hyperventilating.  "I don't know...I don't know the name of
the town."

"Okay, can you give me a phone number?"

"Um...734-555-0524.  I'm in a motel room."

"Are you alone?"

"Yes," she whispered, her voice thick with tears.

He paused in the middle of his bedroom.  "I'm on my way.  I'll
trace the number and be on a flight as soon as I can.  Just stay
where you are, all right?  I'm on my way.  Scully?"

"Okay."  She didn't sound "okay" at all, and he hated to hang up
on her.

"Stay by the phone and I'll call you when I get a flight.  Just
stay there, don't run," again, he didn't add.

She was taking deep, slow breaths to try to calm herself down.
"Okay."

"Okay."

She didn't respond, so he hung up the phone, immediately picking
it back up to call the Bureau to get the number traced.  River
Rouge, Michigan.  Just outside Detroit.  American had a flight
leaving in forty minutes; he could make it if he drove like hell.

Diana put her hand on his arm as he reached to put the phone
down.  "Was that her?"

For years, "her" had become synonymous with Samantha, and there
had been many nights just like this one, where he would get a
call about a skeleton being found that matched her description,
or of another lead concerning her current whereabouts.  If they
were discussing Scully, she was called by name, and there had
been just as many nights spent rushing out to follow up a lead of
a red-haired Jane Doe in a morgue.  Lately, the two had become
switched.  "She" was now Scully, and every thought, action, and
reaction he had centered around her.

"Yeah.  She called me."  He was stating the obvious, he knew, but
it was such an important thing that he couldn't let it go
unnoticed.

She just nodded, not seeming to understand.  As much as he
realized he didn't know Scully, Diana had never known her at all,
and didn't know that Scully asking for help was rarer than a
solar eclipse.

"I have to go get her."

"Is she gonna come back with you this time?"

He shook his head, shifting his feet nervously.  "I don't know."

"Fox, I'm just tired of seeing her hurt you.  I know you want to
help her, but there has to be a line.  If she's just gonna run
away again- "

"I have to go," he interrupted, pressing a quick kiss to her
cheek.

Thirty five minutes.  He could make it.

<><><><><><>

It was dark outside, and she didn't turn on any lights.  She
preferred it dark anyway.  In the corner of the tiny room, behind
the bed, she sat hugging her knees to her chest, shivering and
jabbering to herself about how it was all right, she was safe,
they weren't coming, it wouldn't happen again, it was all right,
she was safe...

And she was slowly crying.  What a fool she was to think she
could ever do this by herself.  And what a fool she was to think
that Mulder could help her.  Mulder, who's beautiful fiancee
probably helped him pack his bag and kissed him goodbye before he
left.  She shouldn't have called him.  He'd not come looking for
her again, which meant he'd not wanted to find her.  He'd given
up, deemed her a lost cause, and went on with his life.  If he
even came this time, it would only be to turn her in to the
police for prostitution, what he probably suspected she'd been
doing, and get her out of his life forever.

There was no life for her anymore.  She might as well just accept
that the world had declared her dead nine years ago and go along
with it.  Everyone would certainly be better off.

But God, she wanted her life back.  Nine years in hell and it was
all she dreamed about, all she hoped for.  Why couldn't she just
be happy that it was over and that she was free and start living
her life again?  She dropped her head to her knees, and let a
long, keening sob escape her throat.  Mulder called and said he
would be here any time now, and he always kept his word.  God,
she wished he'd hurry.

She jumped when someone started pounding on the door.  She kept
still, waiting, listening.

"SCULLY!"

He pounded again, and she stumbled towards the door, her knees
achy and her feet asleep from being still for so long.

His hands were on her shoulders immediately, one searching for
her face while the other steadied her.  "Are you all right?" He
asked, his voice nervous.

She nodded furiously, closing and locking the door behind him.

He found the light switch and exhaled slowly when he saw her:
even thinner than before, black bruises underneath her eyes, a
constant, fine tremor in her body.  She looked and smelled like
she hadn't showered in days, and her clothes hung off her frame
in rags.

"Jesus Christ, Scully."  He tipped her face up to his and she
shook away, clenching her eyes closed.

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not," he insisted.  "Are you hurt anywhere?"

"No.  I'm okay."

"Then why'd you call me?"  He asked almost angrily.

Her eyes opened wide, and she took a step back.  Foolish.
Stupid.

"If you're fine, then why'd you call me?"  He clarified, taking a
step towards her.

"I don't know," she tried.  "I thought- I thought you- "  She
backed into the bed and stopped, unable to run any further.

"You thought what?"  He asked her softly, one hand on her arm.

She looked down, ashamed.  "I thought you could help me," she
whispered.

He nodded, stroking his thumb over her dirty, pale skin.

"I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have dragged you out here in the middle
of the night.  I'm sure Diana's angry."

"No.  She's just...she said she doesn't want to see me get hurt
again."

She glanced at him from underneath her eyelashes.  "Is that what
I do?"  She asked in a tiny voice.

"Every time I come out here to bring you home and you run away
from me...yeah, that hurts, Scully."  There was no anger in his
voice, just sadness and exhaustion.

She bit her lip, thinking.  "I shouldn't have called you."

"No, you should have."  He turned her face towards him again.
"I'm glad you did, but I want you to tell me that this time will
be different.  That the next time I turn my back, you're not
gonna disappear again.  I can't help you if you don't want to be
helped, Scully, and it hurts when I try to offer you help and you
reject it over and over again."

Her chin started to quiver, and she tried to hide her face.
"Then why you'd come?"

"Because," he sat down on the bed, pulling her close to him so
that they were nearly eye to eye.  "I still care about you, and
nothing will ever change that.  No matter how far you run,
that'll never stop."

She sniffed, trying not to cry.  "Mulder, I can't do this...I
can't- "

"Do what?"

"I can't pretend to be something I'm not.  You remember the
person that I was, but I, I can't even remember who that person
was anymore.  I don't know how to be her.  I don't know what to
do...I can't do anything...I can't- "

"You need help, Scully."

She wiped the silent tears off her face, nodding.

"Are you willing to accept that now?"

She nodded again, emphatically.

He exhaled.  "Okay.  You took the first step by calling me.  I
don't think you realize what a big step that was."

"Don't give me all that psychological bullshit," she mumbled.

He grinned.  "It's not bullshit, but if that's what you're
looking for, you'll have to find it someplace else."

"What do you mean?"

He slid his hands down her arms until they met hers.  "I mean,
you're not the only one who needs help.  I've been talking to
someone in the Army who has experience treating rescued prisoners
of war.  He's helped me understand some of what they go through
when they return home, some of the same things you're going
through.  He's willing to work with you...if you want."

She sighed.  "I don't know."

"You have to talk to someone, Scully.  Someone with an objective
perspective on this.  Your mother and I...we need this, too."

Her brow furrowed and her teeth gnawed at her lower lip.  "Okay,"
she finally whispered.

"Okay," he agreed, squeezing her hands in his.  "Why don't you go
take a shower.  I brought you some clothes and things," he
gestured to the bags he'd dropped just inside the doorway.

She nodded, taking the one he offered her.

"Can I call your mother, tell her you're coming home?"

She stopped, her head turned slightly away from him, on her way
to the bathroom.  "Yeah," she said softly, then closed the door
behind her.

<><><><><><>

It was late.  No, wait...he looked at his watch...it was early.
Ungodly early on a Saturday morning when he was supposed to be
sound asleep with his fiancee spooned around him.  Instead, he
sat in a cold motel room, listened to Maggie Scully's phone
ringing, and waited for Scully to emerge from her twenty-five
minute long shower.

Some things were more important than sleeping late on weekends.

"Hello?"  A sleepy voice answered, finally.  He was almost ready
to hang up.

He spoke softly, gradually waking her up.  "Mrs. Scully, it's Fox
Mulder.  I'm sorry to call so early."

"No, it's all right, Fox.  Is something the matter?"  She'd
learned after Kentucky not to get her hopes up and ask about Dana
- invariably, she was always disappointed.

"Yes.  Um...Scully called me.  We're in River Rouge, Michigan.
She's okay, she's just scared."

Her mother exhaled a sigh of great relief.  "Oh, my God."

He bit his lip, thinking.  "She says she's ready to come home and
get help.  I guess that begs the question, though, where is home
for her now.  In DC with me, or Texas with you?"

"Fox, I know you've done a lot for Dana, and we're all grateful
for everything- "  Yes, he was sure that included being
indirectly responsible for letting her daughter rot away in some
unknown, unnamed hellhole for nine years while he healed up all
his psychological wounds. "-but I think she should be with her
family.  It would be too hard for you to care for her, with work
and, um-"

"Diana," he supplied.  She could never remember her name, just
that it was similar to her daughter's.

"Diana.  It's too much, Fox.  And we can be there all the time,
when ever she needs us.  I just think it would be better if she
came here."

He closed his eyes.  Logically, those were all good arguments.
He'd never considered Diana's reaction or that he was working
eighty-plus hours a week.  He would never be able to give her the
full time attention, patience, and dedication she needed.  In his
gallant romanticism, he was willing to do whatever it took to
help her, even if it included taking a leave of absence and
moving out of his and Diana's apartment and into someplace that
he and Scully could live together.

Not that that would ever work.

"Well, I haven't talked to her about it yet.  Ultimately, I want
the decision to be hers.  She needs to get back some control over
her life; I don't want to force her into anything," he finally
said.

"Where is she?  Can I-?"

"She's taking a shower.  I'll have her call you later, once she
makes her decision."

"All right."

There were several seconds of tense, staticy silence between
them.  Behind him, the shower continued running.  He wondered if
he should check on her.

"I better go," he told her mother.  "We'll let you know."

"All right, Fox," she repeated.  "Thank you."

He nodded, not thinking a "you're welcome" was appropriate.

<><><><><><>

"You ready?"  He asked her as she tugged the jeans he'd brought
her higher on her hips.

She smiled slightly, but there was no happiness in it.  "Unless
you have a belt."

He shook his head, and followed her out the door of the motel
room.

She was doing better now than she had been earlier.  Her hair was
neatly combed behind her ears while it dried, the dirty blond
looking mouse-grey and making her pale skin pop against her
reddened cheeks and sunken eyes.  Still, the clothes he'd
brought, while a little too big, made her look normal.  She'd
stopped shaking, but she gratefully took his leather jacket when
he'd offered it to her against the morning chill.

They could be any happy couple on their way home after a
vacation, he thought as he pulled out onto the road.  Nine years
ago, they could've been a pair of FBI agents on their way home
after a case.  Now...he didn't know what they were other than
desperate.

"You hungry?"  He asked, his voice flat, as they passed a
McDonalds.

"Not really," she answered, just as flatly.  Her head was leaned
back against the seat, her eyes closed.  He knew she didn't get
any sleep last night, but then again, neither had he.

"I called your mother."

Her eyes popped open, her neck stiffening.  "What'd she say?"

"She said she wants you to come stay with her so you can be close
to your family."

Nodding, she leaned her head back again.

"I think that's the best idea," he continued.  "She and your
brother, your sister-in-law, can give you round-the-clock
support.  Being a part of a close family relationship can give
you stability and consistency."

She was looking at him now with large, watery blue eyes.  "What
about you?"

He kept his eyes on the road, studiously not meeting her gaze.
"My life is my work, you know that.  I couldn't give you the
attention you deserve."

"And your fiancee wouldn't like me being there," she added,
turning her head to stare out the window.

"That's true, but it wouldn't matter.  If I knew you'd be better
off with me, it wouldn't matter what she thought."

"I called you.  I didn't call my mother," she said quietly.

He popped his neck, thinking, only an hour more to the airport.
"I know."

She nodded silently.

"But I think, and your mother agrees, that it should be your
decision.  If you want to come back to DC with me, you're more
than welcome to.  If you want to go to your mother's...that's fine,
too.  Whatever you want."

I want not to be like this, she thought.  I want not to have to
stay with other people.  I want my own place, my own home, my own
LIFE back.  "Okay," she said instead.

"We've got a little bit of a drive ahead of us.  You think about
it, and we'll get your ticket when we get there."

She leaned her head against the window wearily, letting the cold
of the glass send shivers down her spine.  She pulled his jacket
tighter around her, closed her eyes.

After a moment, he turned the heater up and the radio down low;
some rock station that wasn't annoying.  "Kids today, huh?"  She
heard him say years ago.

She wiped at her tears with shaking fingers, then dozed off into
a light sleep.

<><><><><><>

They'd had no schedule, so he'd sat in the parking lot with the
car running, heater on high, and watched her sleep for almost a
half-hour before she'd woken up.

"Nice nap?"  He asked her as she rubbed her eyes like a child,
embarrassed.

"Yeah," she mumbled.

"We have some time.  You can rest for a little while longer if
you want."

She shook her head.  "I want to talk to you."

Any sleepiness he'd been feeling melted away.  "Okay," he said
carefully.

She cleared her throat and folded her hands in her lap, giving
herself something to focus on.  "You said you'd talked to someone
at the Army?"

"Yeah."

"What'd he say?"

He hesitated.  "What do you mean?"

"What did he say about POWs that's like...this?"  She clarified.

"Well, the two situations are inherently different, really.
Soldiers are given training to help them mentally prepare for
what they may have to endure if they're ever taken prisoner.
Mainly it's a specialized form of resistance training, survival
skills, and hostage negotiation.  All of that helps them remain
strong and hopeful while they're captive.  You didn't get any of
that, though."

He paused, and she cleared her throat again, trying not to lose
focus.

"It helps them during their captivity, but it really doesn't
prepare them for their release and re-assimilation.  Many ex-POWs
suffer from over-exposure from all the media attention,
depression, anxiety; the nation expects them to be calm and
courageous, but they can't be all the time and that's difficult
for them.  For those that were captive for many years, they may
return to lives that are radically different from those they
left, and that can also cause depression and anxiety.  They
withdraw from their families, may indulge in self-destructive
behavior.  They feel that no one can really understand what
they've been through, so they internalize their feelings and let
them eat away at them - nightmares, panic attacks, and flashbacks
are all common."

He paused again, noticing tears starting to drip down her cheeks.

"Often times, their families and close friends unwittingly make
things more difficult by pushing them to talk, or assuming that
they don't need to and leaving them alone.  In a few cases, where
they've been assumed dead or missing, families may have mourned
them as dead...Scully..."

"So this is normal?"  She asked, swiping at her cheeks.  "All of
this..."

"No.  There's no standard for this.  There are just similarities
between the soldiers he treats and you.  He did tell me that the
worst thing we can do is to treat you like you're unwanted, which
is exactly what we've been doing.  We didn't mean to, it's
just...Scully, you have no idea what all this has been like for us.
I know...I know you've been through a lot, but so have your mother
and I.  You disappearing nearly destroyed both our lives, and
we'd been putting them back together the best ways we knew how.
This just opened up those wounds again.  I'm not saying we wish
you'd never come back, but that it's been just as hard, if not
harder, than when you vanished."

"Tell me."

"What?"

"Tell me.  Tell me what it was like for you.  Tell me what it was
like for my mother."

Their eyes met, and held, for long seconds.  She blinked, but
never wavered, so finally he had to, bowing his head until it
touched the steering wheel.

"Do you know how I found out about Duane Barry abducting you?"

She hesitated, then shook her head.

He closed his eyes, remembering.  "I heard it on my answering
machine."

"I left you a message," she say slowly, each word its own
sentence.

"You left me a message screaming for me to help you.  That was
the last thing I ever heard you say, 'Mulder, I need your help.'
Everywhere I went, every time I closed my eyes, no matter what I
did.  For years, I heard that in my head.  It was the first thing
I thought of in the morning and the last thing I thought of at
night: you, begging me for help, being dragged from your
apartment - because of me."

He stopped, breathing heavily, waiting for her to tell him that
it wasn't his fault.  She didn't.

"Your mother was already at your apartment when I got there.  She
said something about having a dream where you were taken...I don't
know how she knew, but she kept asking me, over and over, where
you were and who took you.  I didn't know what to tell her.
Those were the same questions I'd been asking for twenty years
and I didn't have an answer then...and I don't have an answer now.

"We found Duane Barry on top of Skyland Mountain.  Your car was
still running, and he was no more than a thousand yards away,
laughing, going on about how he was free and they weren't going
to take him again.  It must've just, you must've just disappeared
then, that must've been just a few minutes after they took you,
and if I had made it up the mountain a little faster, I could've
stopped it.  Later, when I was interrogating him, he...I...something
happened, and I got angry and started choking him.  He died a few
minutes later..."

Beside him, she was still, her eyes glazed and unseeing.

"Not long after that I discovered that my new partner, Alex
Krycek - do you remember him?"

After a few seconds, she nodded.

"He was working with the men who took you.  He was supposed to
stall my investigation, but when I discovered his secret, he
fled.  Skinner re-opened the X-Files to try and find him, but
that never worked out.  After that, I was a mess.  I didn't
sleep, didn't eat.  I would work whatever cases they threw at me
during the day, then be up all night going over your file, trying
to put together the clues and evidence.  The Bureau had their own
investigation going, but after a while, they hadn't found
anything new and the case was de-prioritized.  I kept searching,
but after a while, I couldn't do it anymore.  The exhaustion, the
anxiety started effecting my health and I had to...I had to stop.

"I never gave up, though.  Every new case that crossed my desk, I
examined it as if it could be the key to unlocking your
disappearance, just like I did with Samantha.  Leads became fewer
and fewer, and those that I did get never panned out.  There was
just...nothing.  Nothing."

"But you kept going?"  She asked softly, still not looking at
him.

"Yeah, I kept going.  It got easier, after a while.  I never
forget, I could just...push it away for a few hours."

She swallowed.  "What about my mother?"

He sighed.  "She's...she kept a lot to herself, just like someone
else I know.  We would meet every so often and she would ask if
I'd made any progress.  Every time, I'd have to tell her no.  One
day she gave me your necklace and told me to give it to you when
I found you...but a few months later, she called and asked me to
help her...pick out your...tombstone."  He bit his lip, taking
several deep breaths.  "I told her it was too soon to give up,
but she was in so much pain.  She just wanted it to be over - not
for you to be dead, just to have some closure.  I convinced her
to wait a year, but I thought even that was too soon.  I couldn't
let her hurt anymore, though."

"Did you miss me?"  She asked suddenly.

He looked at her.  "Yes.  Very much."

She smiled bitterly.  "I missed you, too."

He wanted to reach out to her, to grab her and tell her that no
matter how long he explained things to her, she could never
understand what it had been like.  There were no words to
describe that kind of pain and guilt.  It was trivial to even try
to find the words.  Instead, he sat still, watching her as she
let the tears drip off her chin.

"We better go," he finally said, turning off the ignition and
opening his door.

Silently, she followed, and they walked into the airport
together, miles apart.

<><><><><><>

The bright-eyed American agent looked at them.  "How can I help
you?"

According to the monitors, there was a flight to Houston in fifty
minutes, and a flight to Washington in an hour and a half.
They'd stood together, watching planes take off and land until
she'd finally said she was ready.

"Where to?"  He asked her quietly, credit card ready.

She bit her lip, looked down at the floor, and stifled a scream.
"Houston."

He nodded.  "Two tickets on your next flight to Houston, please,"
he told the girl.

"You're coming with me?"

He steered them towards their gate.  "Yeah, just to make sure you
get settled in okay.  We can find you someone to talk to, work
out getting your identity back.  Your social security number's
been reactivated, and your death certificate has been
invalidated, so you should be able to get a drivers license and a
job, if you want.  Maybe not right away, but eventually."

She still wasn't looking at him.

He stopped them, brushing his hand lightly down her arm.  "Is
that okay?"

"Yeah, I just thought you'd want to...get home.  Diana must be
worried."

He frowned slightly.  "It's okay.  I'll call her when we land."

She nodded, her shoulders starting to shake.

"It's okay, Scully," he murmuring, pulling her close to him.
"You're almost home."

She took a deep breath, and steadied herself.  Somehow, she
doubted she'd ever get there.

<><><>End<><><>
 

He saw her mother before she did.  She was smiling, craning her
head to see over the throngs of people.  In her world, her
daughter was home and all would be right with the world.

When she saw them, her smile fell away, and was replaced with
what looked like a nauseous frown.  She swallowed whatever she
was feeling, and took a step towards them, silently asking him
with her eyes what had happened to her baby girl.

"Scully," he said to her quietly.  She was watching her feet like
each step required concentration and didn't even know her mother
was there.

Undaunted, her mother excitedly closed the distance between them
and pulled her close, wrapping her arms around her back as if she
was afraid she'd escape.  Scully stiffened, and he heard her
gasp.  She kept her arms at her sides, looking uncomfortable and
afraid.

Her mother, realizing her daughter wasn't enjoying their reunion,
released her, stepping back and taking her face in her hands.
With her thumbs, she brushed at the dry tear tracts on Scully's
face.  "Dana...I'm so glad you're all right.  I was so worried.
We all were.  I'm so glad you're home."

Scully kept staring at her feet, unmoving.

"Look at you.  You're so skinny..."  She laughed uncomfortably,
and Scully started sniffling again, stifling tears.  "And your
hair..." she moved her hand to touch it lightly, and Scully
flinched away, taking a step back.

This was wrong.  He should've prepared her for her mother's
reaction, and her mother for how Scully would be acting: distant,
cold, terrified.

Not knowing what else to do, her mother pulled her close again,
though not as tightly, looking to him for an answer about why she
was acting this way.  "Aren't you glad to be home?"  She asked as
she stepped back again, linking hands with her daughter and
tugging them towards the chairs nearby.

Scully didn't answer, huddling further into his leather jacket.

He looked at her mother with stony eyes, trying to relay to her
that Scully wasn't as excited as she was and not to force her.

"Well, I guess we should get going.  We have so much to do," she
said, not understanding his communique.  "Are you coming, Fox?"

"For a little while," he nodded.

Her mother smiled slightly, then refocused on her daughter,
leading them towards the exit.

Over her shoulder, Scully glanced at him, begging him to do
something.  Instead, he followed them silently, and Scully
dropped her eyes and concentrated on her feet again.

<><><><><><>

She'd wanted to sit in the backseat, and her mother's
disagreements were silenced when Mulder had opened the rear
passenger door for her, nodding for her to sit.

They thought she was sleeping.

"Fox, I don't understand," her mother kept saying.  "Why is she
like this?"

She heard his hair scrape against his collar as he shook his
head.  "She's just unfamiliar with all this.  It'll take some
getting used to."

"Getting used to her own family?"  Her mother shrieked, then
glanced in the rear-view mirror to ensure that Scully's eyes were
still closed.

They were.

"It's been nine years.  During that time, the only people she saw
were guards and doctors and every time they approached her, it
was to hurt her.  She's used to being hurt by people.  She'll
need some time to re-learn that not everyone is like that," he
explained sadly.

"But I don't understand.  She knows she's safe now..."

"I can't explain it, Mrs. Scully.  It's a normal reaction,
though.  Just try not to be too forceful.  Let her take the lead.
If she doesn't want physical contact, then respect that.  When
she's ready, she'll let you know."

"So I can't even touch her?"

He hesitated.  "Not unless she invites it."

"For how long?"

"I don't know.  It depends on...alot of things.  It could be
days, it could be months."

"Months?"

He nodded, shifting his eyes to the rear view mirror to look at
her.  She could feel it.

"I don't know if I can do this, Fox."

"If you don't, then who will?"  He asked carefully.

The car was stopped, and she felt them look at each other.  After
a moment, a light must've changed, and they started moving again.

No one.  Not Mulder, certainly.  He was too busy, pawning her off
on her mother, too anxious to get back to his perfect life with
Diana.  If her mother didn't help her, then no one would.  Then
she'd be alone, really alone this time, not just the alone that
she created by running away.  It didn't matter if she stayed or
if she ran, she'd be alone, only this time, there'd be no one
looking for her or waiting for her to come home.  There was no
home for her to come to.  There was no reason to.

"I just don't understand," her mother repeated for the third
time.

"I know," he answered wearily.

Traffic moved around them.  Car noises soothed her, lulling her
deeper and deeper into a light relaxation.

"What's she been doing all this time?"  Her mother asked a few
moments later.

He hesitated again.  "I don't know that I should tell you.  You
may not want to hear."

"I want to know where my daughter's been," she said firmly.

He sighed.  "The first time I found her, she was in a jail in
Missouri.  They'd arrested her for prostitution."

"WHAT?"

She stiffened, lanced out of her trance, and held her breath to
keep from crying.

He continued quietly.  "The second time was in Kentucky.  She was
working in a nightclub and living with the manager.  He abused
her, and he may have introduced her to drugs.  I don't know what
she's been doing since then."

"Fox, how could she do something like that?  She knows better
than that."

"I don't know.  She may have thought that was her only means of
earning money- "

"But," her mother swallowed, upset.  "Selling herself on the
streets?"  She whispered, as if someone might overhear.  "I don't
understand how she could do something like that!"

"It's complicated, Mrs. Scully," he said, clearly upset as well.

"Well, I want to know!  I want to know what made her do something
like that!"

Her mother was angry, ashamed.  She should've known.  From her
quiet hole in the back of the car, she opened her mouth and let
her voice shake.  "I'm sorry, Mom."

Two pairs of eyes snapped to her.  Mulder's were sad and
apologetic, her mother's were terrified and shocked that she'd
gotten caught.

She wiped her cheeks, not looking at either of them.  "I'm
sorry," she repeated, wrapping her arms around her chest to stop
shaking.

No one spoke for a long time, but they kept watching her, her
mother's eyes flicking from the road back to her, to the road
again.

"It's okay, Scully.  It's over now.  Right?"  Mulder finally
said, his eyes searching for hers in the mirror.

She turned her head towards the window, not answering.

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

<><><><><><>

This was the part of growing up she most looked forward to:
approaching their new house in their new base with their new
neighbors waiting to be played with.  All four little red head
would scramble over each other in the back of the station wagon,
eager to see what their house looked like, if it had a big yard
or a bay window.  When it stopped, they would clamor out, legs
stiff and achy from the drive, and run up the stairs.  She and
Missy had to beat their brothers if they wanted the best room,
and once it was called, the decision had been made.  It didn't
matter if Bill had pushed her into the stair rail or Missy was
too afraid of messing up her hair to actually run.

Not that it much mattered.  In another year or two, they'd be
moving again, and the cycle would repeat itself.

But with each new house came a new set of people to meet and make
friends with.  None of them knew who she was, and she liked it
that way.  She could be anyone she wanted to be: the tomboy who
always tagged along with the boys for baseball after school, the
dork with the good grades and teacher approval, the pretty girl
with Missy's make-up and borrowed skirt, the flirt, never without
a male companion, the loner, who never spoke to anyone or smiled.
She had been all of them at one time or another, and each time
she moved, she'd developed another identity to go with her name.

Maybe that's why she'd wanted to change her name so badly.  Dana
Scully had too much attached to it.  Kathy had nothing, could be
anything.  That was a freedom that Dana Scully hadn't had
recently.

There was no joy in this drive, though.  As her mother turned
down an unfamiliar street, she remembered that they had only been
stationed in Corpus Christi for a few months, not even long
enough for her to get use to whatever persona she'd developed.
Houses that were much nicer than the ones they'd lived in - each
one a little different from the others; unique - passed by
slowly.  Kids and dogs played together outside, one woman washed
her car.  Her mother waved at the woman as they passed, and the
woman waved back.

The car slowed, turned again, and lurched to a stop in front of a
house with a kiddie swimming pool in front.  Her mother glanced
at her in the mirror, smiled sadly, then said, "We're here."

Both she and Mulder opened their doors, but Scully was so tired
she never wanted to move again.  Her bones ached from shaking so
much, her eyes were swollen and burning, and she couldn't get
warm.  She needed a cigarette.

Mulder paused beside the car, watching her carefully before
opening her door for her, offering his hand to help her out.  He
took the bags her mother got out of the trunk, and waited,
letting her mother be the first to the door.

"I've got a room ready for you," she said, just making
conversation, filling silence and awkwardness.  "You can wear
some of my things until we can go shopping.  Maybe we could do
that tomorrow, or later this week?"

She looked over her shoulder at Scully for an answer, but one
wasn't forthcoming.  Behind her, Mulder shook his head.

"Whenever you're ready," she said belatedly, climbing the stairs
up to the porch.

The front door opened, startling Scully into stillness and almost
making Mulder run into her.  A blond woman with an infant on her
shoulder stood in the doorway, watching the precession with a
wary smile.  "Dana," she said longingly, her eyes getting teary.

Her mother continued up the steps and into the house.  Scully
stood still.

"Come in.  Lunch is almost ready," the blond woman continued.
She smiled again at Mulder, beginning to feel uncomfortable.

Her mother reappeared, taking the infant from the blond woman.
"Dana, you remember Tara, don't you?"

Scully scoffed a laugh, turning her head away.  Of course she
remembered her own sister in law, she wasn't amnesiac.

"Meet your youngest nephew.  His name is Jacob and he's only four
months old," she cooed, more to the baby than to her.

Scully wouldn't look at either of them.

"Well," her mother decided, sounding angry.  "Fox, this is Tara,
Bill's wife.  Tara; Fox Mulder."

Mulder nodded and Tara smiled.  She was always smiling.

"Let's go in," her mother continued, leaving her and Mulder
standing at the bottom of the steps as the rest of the family
went inside the house.

"Scully," Mulder said to her softly.

She bit her lip, closing her eyes.

"Scully," he said again, encouraging her.

Slowly, she nodded, and walked into the open door, where the
smell of warm vanilla and tuna salad sandwiches waited.

There was a red-headed toddler on the floor in the living room,
engrossed in a children's television show that she didn't
recognize.  He looked up at them as they entered, then stood and
ran into the kitchen.

Her mother came down the stairs.  "Dana, come and see your room,"
she told her, waiting until both she and Mulder were at her heels
before climbing the stairs again.  She led them to the last room
at the end of the hall, just across from the nursery.  "It's
Mathew's, actually, but he'll sleep in James' room for now.  The
only thing is the bed; do you think you'll be comfortable here?"

She gestured to the single bed covered in a racecar bedspread.
The walls around it were tacked with paper versions of road signs
and a poster of some NASCA