by S. Esty
Windsinger@aol.com
 

begun 7/6/95, completed 9/98

Disclaimer: These characters belong to Chris Carter and Ten-
Thirteen Productions but I hope it's okay if I borrow them a
little. If you like this, CC, I'd be happy to write for you.
Just send me an e-mail.

Synopsis: Let us return to the days of yesteryear when Scully's
abduction, bounty hunters, clones and cancer are still far in
the future. It's the morning after the Jersey Devil case, Scully
is dismayed to be given a temporarily reassignment while her new
partner, Fox Mulder, does some work for VCS. Lots of FIRSTS in
this one for these two. PG13 for some violence and occasional
adult topics.

Author's Notes: This is part of Revelations. Of the 8 total
parts this was started 4th and finished 7th but,
chronologically, occurs first. At one time I had 5 parts in
progress at one time. Like the name of this series (which I
sweated bullets over back in June 1995 before the episode
'Revelations'), the shape of this story and its situations were
decided in July 95 way before Grotesque, Book I of Just the Two
of Us, and Book III of All Hallow's Eve, so if you see a few
similarities with some scenes - well, that's probably because
there are. In any case these situations are not the core part of
this story. The shape of the story was also decided before the
wonderful fanfic Oklahoma. My original inspiration for Mulder
profiling actually from the much older fanfic 'Machine of
Intentions'. In this story, however, I try to take a middle
ground. Though Mulder psychotic is interesting to read, I have
tried for something more realistic. (Okay, large amounts of
laughter here, I'm sure.) After all, they do have 7 more years
of X-files to get through.
       While all of REVELATIONS takes place in first season (still
my favorite with a few exceptions), DAWN begins *really* early,
late in the afternoon after the death of the Jersey Devil.
That's about episode 5. For that reason and because there are
still 900 pages of REVELATIONS to go, just the seeds of
relationship are being planted here. For culmination you have to
read the rest of the series. (Yes, part 3: The Vacation *is*
coming.)
       NOTE 1: I'm also detracting a few times from CC's official
timeline (whatever that is). The 'Official' guide says Mulder
didn't get out of Quantico until '88 and started the X-files in
'91. I thought I heard at the beginning of the series the Mulder
was a ten year veteran of the FBI. I'm assuming about 6 here but
it's not really important. I have the Jersey Devil occurring six
weeks into their partnership. Also, I have the very last scene
from the episode happening the afternoon after the 'Devil's'
death and not a week later as CC has it. There's a scene I
really like which I'd have to delete if I changed the timing, so
I won't. I'm the author and I'll allowed to do that. <g> Yes, and
though people have given me grief about it Mulder has a bedroom
which he needs for Just the Two of Us. (Wait, I just heard that
Mulder's apartment gets a bedroom in season 6! Just ahead of my
time, I guess. <VBG>)
       NOTE 2: For those Revelations fans who thought Part I would
be about our heroes trip to the Everglades where they run into
the bugs and skunk from The Box, my apologies. This is something
entirely different. There is also not much connection between it
and the rest of the series other than it occurs in the same
universe. In Book I of Just the Two of Us Mulder has a nasty
flashback about something that happens here and there is one
other reference but it is so obscure I couldn't find it if I
tried, but it is something about being Scully's being carried in the
rain. There... I don't think I've given away too much. Enjoy and
thank you for your patience.

REVELATIONS 1: DAWN (1/30)
by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)
Begun 7/95, completed 9/98

Chapter 1

       As the two solemn men exchanged glances, Dana Scully felt
certain that she understood every word of their silent language.

       "Someone's made a mistake here," the senior agent shot to
his junior.

       "We acted on a computer flag, sir," the younger agent
seemed to say. Even his eyes were defensive. "Her field of
expertise, her transcripts and her sex fit the profile perfectly
for what we need. You know that the Fifth Floor is worried about
complaints of discrimination."

       "But she's a shrimp! Do you want her responsible for
protecting YOUR back."

       "She's a lab rat. She won't spend that much time in the
field, not until the fireworks are over anyway."

       "She still has to go through basic training. That should
give a few of the instructors apoplexy. And just look at her!
With a face like that how many terrorists do you think she's
going to be able to intimidate?"

       "So she's good looking. If the letters of recommendations
from her medical school are any indication, she's the consummate
professional."

       "And how many senior docs and professors did she have to
sleep with to get references like that? Well, let's get on with
it and hope we're wrong. Since we sought her out, we have no
choice but to accept her application if she decides to apply."
 
 

Monday, October 11, 1993
4:30 pm

       An irritatingly familiar ringing overlapped the senior
agent's last speech, but it wasn't Dana's alarm clock from her
apartment nor her travel alarm. It was a telephone whose bell
stopped abruptly in the middle of its third ring. Forcing
herself fully awake, Dana found with dismay that she wasn't at
home. She had fallen asleep with her head on her *desk* and the
phone that had rung belonged to her partner, Fox Mulder. Mulder,
even now, was leaning his long body way back in his chair and,
feet braced against his desk, was talking softly into the
receiver. Even as he spoke his one eyebrow rose in apology that
the call had awakened her.

       Just as well, Dana thought. She needed to uncramp her
muscles and she hadn't really wanted to take in the rest of the
dream, anyway. She knew that little scene by heart. Every sly
glance, every unspoken inflection. Hadn't she relieved it on and
off for almost four years whenever things went bad? And she knew
why she dreamed it now. They'd messed up. A woman was dead. No,
*she'd* messed up. Mulder had believed that the 'devil' was a
living, breathing 'person' from the beginning.

       She had not believed him. Oh, she had known there would
turn out to be something 'out there' in the woods. There was
always at least a grain of truth in Mulder's theories. Dana had
just not expected to find what they did. Even now she wasn't
sure quite what they had found. Did it really matter in the end
where the woman came from? She had lived, she had died.

       Dana looked over at her partner; he was just replacing the
receiver. His face was dark, depressed, fatigued, unshaven, and
dirty. They had come directly to the office from New Jersey, not
interested in staying in that town a moment longer. Without
jurisdiction and considering the animosity between Mulder and
the police chief, Dana had been given no access to the body.
Another reason for coming home. Besides they had work to do.
There had been a death, jurisdiction or not, and so there were
papers to file and questions to answer, not only to the
authorities but to themselves.

       "Tell me that I don't look as bad as you do," she murmured,
groggily.

       Even though the slight smile that came to his lips never
reached his eyes, it was something. "You can never look as bad
as I do. Why don't you go home and get some real sleep."

       "No, I want to finish this. I will take a shower, however."
She stood up, stretching, her eyes going to the wall clock.
Three hours. She'd slept three hours with her head on her
keyboard. She probably had 'T', 'Y', 'U', 'I' imprinted on her
forehead. "Why don't you get cleaned up, too, Mulder. It'll make
you feel better."

       "I doubt that."

       "Take a turn on the cot then for a few hours." She cocked
her head towards the rear of their shadowed office.

       A curt shake of his dark head. No, she didn't think so.
That would be too much to expect. Unkinking muscles, Dana
retrieved her emergency travel bag and her clean, spare suit
from the utility closet in the far corner of the office and
trudged off to the gym.
 
 

       It was in the whirlpool after ten minutes of floor
exercises that Dana's mind finally began to unwind and the
vision of that poor woman's body, naked and wildly beautiful
among the leaves, began to spin out. Had she messed up? Her
subconscious obviously thought so and, thus, The Dream. Why
couldn't the phone have rung five minutes sooner. How she hated
that dream.

       Sitting in the steaming, bubbling water, Dana retraced the
last few days. If she had believed Mulder sooner, stayed with
him in Atlantic City and foregone her godson's birthday party,
would the outcome had been any different? It would have kept
Mulder from a weekend in the drunk tank. But would that have
helped the woman? Mulder certainly had tried his best. There was
only so much one person can do when heads and hearts are closed.
The Atlantic City authorities had just wanted their town clean.
Okay, now it was clean. It was the police force that was dirty
now.

       Dana let her hand come down flat on the surface of the
forming water with a *SPLAT!* The effect was about the same as
kicking a trash can and you didn't have to order a new one.

       Damnit, but she was a competent, respected professional.
She couldn't allow every job-related tragedy to depress her.
That kind of spiritual paralysis didn't do anybody any good.
Hadn't she learned that lesson the hard way years ago in medical
school? Guilt! ARG! She was probably catching it from you-know-
who. You just did better next time, you just tried to anticipate
the problems faster.

       Dana decided she'd been soaking long enough. Besides, the
thoughts coming to the surface weren't all that cheerful. Work
helped. In that she and Mulder were alike. She pulled herself up
the steps and out of the enticingly warm water to shiver her way
to the showers.

       But was this guilt she was feeling or inadequacy? Was her
problem related to the fact that Mulder had seen so much more
than she had? No, that road wasn't any more useful than the
guilt. There was no point in trying to keep score with Mulder as
to who could think up weird explanations first. That was
Mulder's specialty. She had her strengths, too. Partners needed
to complement each other and in that she had nothing to feel
insecure about. She'd gotten her M.D., hadn't she? And in
forensics, yet. That was still a tough field for women to break
into. It certainty wasn't one of the more accepted and 'gentler'
specialties which women physicians were supposed to go into like
obstetrics, pediatrics or family medicine.

       Then there had been the traps she had had to negotiate to
get through the FBI academy. The instructors had been wickedly
demanding largely because of her size, as the two recruiters had
feared, but two years post graduation and her record was
exemplary. Her marksmanship was nearly the best in the national
office. Easily higher than Mulder's. Her technical skills in the
morgue and lab had won her numerous commendations. Her
relationship with her superiors was good. It didn't hurt that
she had never refused a assignment nor questioned an order other
than a truly asinine one.

       So why did she still feel - incomplete - not just about
this case but about her life? What more did the world want from
her? she demanded as she stood under the shower head and
scrubbed the taint of Atlantic City out of her scalp.

       As if in answer her mother's voice seemed to echo off the
tile walls. "Okay, Dana... So what now?"

       Dana sighed. Oh, she remembered that conversation. It had
been held four months earlier. The well-beloved voice had kept
low so her father wouldn't hear. Dana could still Margaret
Scully as she walked towards her holding a copy of Dana's fourth
commendation and the bottle of wine. The little document
extolled Special Agent Scully for a streak of insight and some
precise forensics work that had led her coworkers to the door of
some of those terrorists the recruiters had thought she would
never be able to intimidate.

       "What do you mean?" Dana had asked back.

       "Where do you go from here? Dana, I know you. You're
constantly pushing yourself. Setting new goals. Okay, you've got
their attention. Now what?"

       Dana had smiled over the rim of her wine glass. "You always
know, don't you?" Unlike her father, her mother had always been
able to read her moods. Sometimes the woman knew her mind better
than Dana did herself. It was uncanny. Her Celtic background,
her mother joked.

       "You get this restless look in your eye. I've been noticing
it growing for weeks. Hmmm... but now I see that it's a little
settled down today. What have you done?"

       Dana put her glass down, becoming serious. "The work's
good, Mom, but I feel so cut off. I'm just a supporting player.
If I'm lucky, I'm driven out to a crime scene and can get down
on my hands and knees and gather evidence for myself, but
usually I only process other people's work. Often I don't know
how a case starts; most of the time I'm never told how it ends.
I think I could do better."

       "You want to see the whole picture." Margaret Scully should
have been smiling but she wasn't. She knew where this was
leading. "You're talking about going into the front lines, field
work. Dana, even I know that's dangerous. Isn't just being in
the FBI dangerous enough? Your father -"

       Dana's eyes shut involuntarily. "Dad needs to learn, this
is my life."

       Dad. Her Ahab. He had been against her career choice from
the beginning. A gallant product of his generation, Bill Scully
felt duty bound to protect his daughters even if neither of his
daughters wanted his protection.  Sister Melissa was off
somewhere with her crystals and organic food. Dana, the
ambitious one, craved the challenge of working within the
system. Both would have been more than content to just feel they
had their father's support and acceptance.

       "Your father thought your forensics work was bad enough,"
her mother saying. "Now this. He'll see all that education going
to waste."

       "I'll still spend plenty of time in the lab - they're too
short-handed in the sciences to let me out permanently - but
I'll be attached to a different department. And I'll get a real
partner - hopefully someone who is more open minded and has less
years than old Doc Alexander. Best of all, I'll get a chance to
work on my own cases once in a while. Beginning to end."

       "This partner..." Margaret began, her frown bringing out
the lines around her mouth. "You have no idea who you're going
to get. Maybe it'll be some hot shot who likes to go in guns
blazing."

       Dana could see reasons for her mother's worry. She had
concerns of her own, but she also felt a tingling sort of
expectant anticipation. The way Christmas used to be. Could that
big box in the corner be full of school clothes and books again?
Or did it conceal something wonderful? Something that could
change her life? Something - or someone - who could restore some
of the passion for life and knowledge she had somehow lost over
the years? "We'll just have to see, Mom."
 

       Dana turned of the shower and reached for her towel. Well,
the powers that be had complied with her request. What was the
old adage? 'Be careful what you wish for?' Six weeks before
she'd been given Fox Mulder for a partner. Fox Mulder. Mr.
Creepy. The agent who had been dubbed 'Spooky' even as far back
as his academy days. Brilliant, everyone agreed, but a few cards
short of a deck. When she had walked into the cluttered hole
some called an office, however, and come face to face with those
penetrating, mocking hazel orbs through the lenses of his wire-
rims, something had stirred inside her.

       If this was Christmas morning, there were no school clothes
and books under that wrapping paper. Definitely not. At least
the scenery was going to be pleasant. Fox Mulder was far better
looking than his official picture which was so very grim and
nerdy. Physically, he also appeared at least a half a decade
younger then what she knew was his actual age. In other words,
not so far from her own age. Far too young to have been with the
Bureau for six years. He was well-tested. Too well tested some
said. Some said broken and not put back together quite right;
however, still a blazing, though unpredictable, talent.

       This was her new partner. She had been assigned to the X-
files. When she heard through the grape vine about what was in
the wind, she had to dig in some pretty obscure places just to
find out what the X-files were.

       To put it bluntly, what she had learned had dismayed her.
Within five minutes Fox Mulder had moved in her estimation from
shiningly eccentric to just plain weird. And what was it they
wanted her to do? Validate his work? How can you validate probes
into beasts and monsters, aliens from outer space and the
paranormal? Or were they really asking that she *invalidate* his
work. Maybe this wasn't going to be such a great career move
after all?

       "Calm down, Dana," she told herself then, and was still
telling herself weeks later. "Concentrate on his technique and
learn something." She would if she could find a consistent one.
"It's not like this job has to be forever. Besides, it's only a
two-person department. If you can't distinguish yourself there,
then you're in the wrong profession." Over the previous two
years Mulder hadn't been able to keep a partner for longer than
six weeks. Some had barely lasted six days. If she could hold on
for six months she'd probably be on the bureau's short list and
could write her ticket anywhere.
 
 

       As the weeks went by, five cases were tackled and five
cases more or less successfully completed. Not nice and neat by
any means, but Dana knew that no other team could have done as
tenth as well. On the good days, if she ignored the very messy
loose ends, that fact gave her a quite satisfying sense of
accomplishment. Nor had she any reason to complain about her
desire to get out into the field. She had presented herself the
first day with every intention of laying down the law about not
being shuttled off to the lab, but she never had the chance, nor
had there been a need since. Before she could turn around she
was on a flight to distant Oregon. She had ruined three pairs of
shoes on that trip and one of her favorite suits. Working with
Fox Mulder was proving to as expensive as it was exciting.

       As Dana began aggressively to work on her newly washed hair
with blow drier and curling iron, she realized that she wasn't
as sure about her future as she had thought a few weeks before.
She had expected Mulder to have sent her packing by now, either
that or had expected to find herself tearing at the walls in
frustration. Neither seemed to be happening. She was fairly
content with the work and though Mulder grumbled some, he was no
worse than other moody men Dana had worked with.

       So was this going to work or not? Was she in for the long
term? How long was too long in a job like this. She felt on the
fence, a position she didn't like. She realized that she wanted
to make a commitment, either to this assignment or some other
and quickly. That was just the way she was. One hundred and ten
percent or try something else. Dana realized that she was
waiting for a sign, a revelation. From Mulder? From herself?

       Leaving the gym with hair still slightly damp, Dana headed
up to her desk by Pathology, her 'official' desk, to gather her
mail and phone messages. She and Mulder needed to have a talk
about the future of their partnership.

       But not today. A woman had died today.

~~~~~~

Monday, 6 pm

       "I have to show Mulder these eventually," Dana said to
herself. "No time like the present, I guess."

       With a sigh of resignation, she thanked Dr. Alexander,
picked up her brief case containing the precious file, and
headed for the main Bureau building from the annex where the
morgue was located. The old pathologist had proved amazingly
useful. He didn't have to be. She had left his department. It
must be tough to lose one of your shining stars, but he had
never complained. In fact, Dana realized, he acted as if he had
expected it. Today, it turned out that he had an old friend, who
had an old friend, who had a daughter in the medical examiner's
office of the Atlantic City police department and so within
hours of the autopsy on Jane Doe being completed, Dana had the
results in her hands. The folder Dana carried contained other
lab results as well. Ones she had requested days before. Taken
together - well, she knew what Mulder would pick up on.

       Dana groaned.

       Mulder had been out when she had stopped by the office on
her way to the morgue to return her travel bag and retrieve her
brief case. Maybe he'd gone home to sleep. He certainly needed
it. Looking the way he did and being a member of law enforcement
community, his weekend in the Atlantic City drunk tank must have
required constant vigilance. Not a very restful situation. Dana
almost smiled. She was certain that he'd managed to make it
through with his virtue intact, however. She'd certainly have
been able to tell if he hadn't. Plain exhaustion, therefore,
should have induced him to go home. Dana hoped so. If he had,
she wouldn't have to show him the file she carried until
morning.

       Taking a deep breath for luck, Dana breezed into the
office. She hoped to find it empty.

       It wasn't.

       Mulder was standing by the file cabinet. He turned as she
entered. He looked surprising good. He'd obviously followed her
lead and taken a shower and shaved. He wore clean suit pants and
a crisp, white shirt and tie. He looked as fresh as if it were
first thing in the morning.

       Until you looked at his eyes, that is. There was no flame
in them. On the table was the distinctive envelop from the FBI
photography lab. Mulder had borrowed a camera from Dana's old
University of Maryland instructor, Dr. Diamond, and shot a roll
of film before they left the scene. The film lab had worked
fast. So that was the reason for the dead eyes; Mulder had just
filed away the evidence of his failure.

       She handed him the file, no longer dreading his reaction.
Any reaction would be better than the zombie-like nothing she
was seeing. He took it without the alacrity she had expected. He
was that tired.

       Briefly, she sketched the most notable autopsy findings for
him. No use going into cause of death, but they had found human
bone in the digestive tract. "They did allow Dr. Diamond to
examine the body. He found no prehistoric bone structure or
physiology." No response from Mulder even though the findings
must have been a blow to his theory.

       "They have also released the report on the medical exam of
the male body." She told him.

       Mulder listened. A spark, just the tiniest spark, was
beginning to kindle. "There would have been offspring."

       Inwardly, Dana sighed. True to form, Mulder had picked up
on exactly what she had thought he would. "The medical exam of
the female's uterus showed that she may have given birth," she
admitted, reluctantly.

       "It all makes sense... " Mulder was up, reaching for his
suit coat as his mind began to spin out a new theory. "She was
just protecting her children, Scully. The male dies and the
females comes out of the woods in search of food." This wasn't
Mulder's old self, not completely. He was still moving too
slowly, but the tinder was catching. Dana had no doubt that very
soon that mind of his would be back to running at its normal
speed, which was way beyond that of all but a few other geniuses
which Dana had ever met. He amazed her almost as much as he
infuriated her. But how was he doing physically? He'd barely
slept in days. He'd almost had his lungs taken out by the
'devil' and then he'd refused her advice and bled his way
through the long chase in the woods. Would this be the day when,
with his mind clicking along, his body would run - figuratively
or literally - smack into a brick wall?

       "Mulder," Dana found herself blurting out, "will you do me
a favor? Will you just go out and have a beer, take the day off.
I'll cover for you. Take some time for yourself."

       But he was already airborne, the flame of the idea
bandaging this new pain. "Sorry, but I've got an appointment at
the Smithsonian with an ethnobiologist. I can't wait to tell him
about this."

       Just then the phone rang and Mulder took the call, then
casually handed the receiver over to her without comment. Dana
was startled to find that the caller was Rob, the pleasantly
boring estate planner she had been out to dinner with once. He
asked if she and her godson wanted to go to the circus with he
and his son. Dana froze. Out of the corner of her eye she saw
Mulder striding away from her without a backwards glance.

       He couldn't have known who was on the phone but must have
guessed. There had been no recrimination from him that twice she
had left him to work alone in New Jersey while she pursued
*normal* activities, like helping out at her godson's birthday
party, and then when she went out on that date with Rob. Mulder
had asked once for her to cancel but there had been no pressure.
It was as if he had given his approval for her to go ahead and
take the time and have a real 'life'. Then why was Dana still
standing here hesitating while Rob was waiting for an answer? If
she truly wanted some chance at a normal life, the answer was
obvious. But all she saw was Mulder, alone, strolling
magnificently onward on his quest to find his zebras and
aardvarks among the plowhorses and stray dogs of the world. To
all appearances he seemed completely disinterested in whether
she was with him or not.

       Damn the man, anyway!

       She caught up with him as he was filling out a requisition
for a car. For some silly reason, surprising him cheered her. Up
until that moment she wasn't certain that she'd made the right
decision.

       "Where are you going?" he asked as she matched him stride
for stride towards the door to the garage.

       "With you to the Smithsonian."

       You couldn't have told from his body, which didn't hesitate
for an instant, or from his prickling wit that followed, but
something flashed in his eyes at that moment, a warm, bright
light.

       "Don't you have a life?" he inquired. Dana didn't really
hear the rest of their banter. They were just playing off each
other as they liked to do. What she would always remember was
the way he looked down at her as she held the door. In that wry
smile of his was such hidden... pleasure. That was the only word
Dana could use to describe it. He would never have said so, but
it was obvious her decision to come along had pleased him.
 

       The Bureau's car pool issued them yet another black Taurus
and Washington rush hour traffic was just as maddening as
expected. Mulder's appointment was at the Smithsonian's
sprawling storage and restoration facility in the Maryland
suburbs. If they had been headed for the Smithsonian's Museum of
Natural History, there would have been no need to requisition a
car. The long, gray Federal-style museum was literally across
Constitution Avenue from Chez Hoover.

       Dana recalled one incident later. As she was fastening her
seat belt and Mulder was driving up the ramp from the
underground garage, his head turned as he followed something
with his eyes for a few moments.

       "What is it?" she asked, turning around just in time to
catch a glimpse of the hand-painted sign.

       His eyes had turned forward, his brow furrowed in thought
again. "Some sick-o has put up a score board. 'Hunter - 6, VC -
0'. The Hunter must have laid another one at our door step while
we were gone."

       "That's the serial killer who's been abducting joggers and
dropping the bodies in the parks around D.C.? The VC boys had
better find him soon."

       Mulder nodded almost imperceivably. "They'd better."

       "Don't you ever miss working with Violent Crimes, Mulder?
All the publicity surrounding a really big case?"

       "No," he said immediately. "No, I don't miss VC and, no, I
certainly don't miss the publicity."

       Dana wanted to know more about his time profiling for the
Behavior Science Unit. He'd been brilliant. The stories she had
heard.... But his emphatic response left her no way to easily
assuage her curiosity.

       His soft tones flowed into the pause, "So tell me about
your date and this - Rob. Having no life of my own, I've
forgotten what it's like."

       So she smiled as they merged into traffic and proceeded to
tell him what she could remember about estate planning, acting
as straight man for his barbed wit. Only later did she realize
that the true intention for his question had been to change the
subject.

* * * * * * * *
Tuesday, October 12, 1993
1 a.m.

       "Wake up, Scully, we're here."

       "Huh?" Dana stretched like a cat and tried to recall where
'here' should be. New Jersey again? Kentucky? Maine?

       "Party's over. I've pulled up next to your car," replied an
amused voice.

       This time Dana jumped into something like wakefulness. She
remembered now. She'd fallen asleep as Mulder drove back from
their meeting with Dr. Harold Everett, the Smithsonian
ethnobiologist.

        Mulder stood by the open passenger door and made of point
of waiting with exceptional patience while Dana looked for a
lost shoe she must have kicked off. "I didn't know you could be
such a lush, Scully."

       "My falling asleep? I'd hardly call two beers being a lush
and that was hours ago. It's just been a long... long day."

       That it had been. The reminder of the morning's tragedy
sobered both their moods.

       Having finally located all of her possessions, Dana
accepted, after some hesitation, Mulder's proffered hand to help
her get out of the passenger's seat. Dana was struck as she
always was by his manners. They were almost old-fashioned in
their deferential attitude towards women. So much so, in fact,
that she still had to take a firm grip on her radical feminist
side each time he escorted her to and from one meeting or
another. She was almost used to it now. It was just one more
part of all the incongruous pieces that made up Mulder.

       "I had a good time tonight," Dana started, then realized
that the words and the way they were standing alone in the dark,
made it seem like they'd been out on a date or something. The
problem was, Dana *had* had a good time. Hastily, she added,
"Where did you find Harold Everett? In a hobbit hole?

       Mulder smiled one of the most genuine smiles she'd yet
seen. Clearly, he had enjoyed himself as well. "Oxford actually,
many years ago. We were two displaced Americans. He's one of the
most well-read men I know."

       "He must be a hundred and ten. I guess he's had plenty of
time." Dana didn't add that in her estimation Mulder came a
close second and at a third the age.

       By this time Dana had managed to find her keys and had the
driver's side door of her own car open. She leaned against it
now, enjoying the cool darkness of the Washington air. "I have
to admit that I didn't expect a pizza party."

       Across from her Mulder leaned against the Taurus, hands in
pockets. "You didn't seem to mind."

       "Of course not. Did you think I would?"

       As a response, Mulder hesitated longer than she would have
expected. "When Harry started pulling out the beer, I was
concerned."

       "Did you think that I was as straight-laced as all that?"

       His feet shifted uneasily. "You take things pretty
seriously most of the time."

       Unexpectedly, Dana found that the comment hurt. In truth,
she was all too aware of the nicknames she'd gotten in college
and since. Most had to do with cold, stationary objects.

       "I hope I don't, not all the time," she found herself
saying, "but then you only know me from the office." She decided
to take the leap; it seemed as good a time as any for breaking
new ground. "So what kind of person are you when you're not at
work?"

       "Worse," he replied. Standing in the shadows as they were
and with his head down, Dana couldn't quite make out what kind
of smile he gave her. Wry, ironic or shy?

       Maybe, Dana warned herself, this was enough for one night.
"It's what, one-thirty? Someone should show up at the office for
work tomorrow." Before she could do more than throw her
briefcase onto the passenger's seat of her own car Mulder was
beside her holding out a large flat box.

       "Here, take this. Harry gave me the leftovers. By the way
you were enjoying it, you should have it."

       "No, you take it. You probably don't cook -"

       "Who says I don't cook? I just don't feel like it often.
Besides, I have two boxes just like this one in my refrigerator
from my last two evenings at home. It's getting crowded." He
offered it again. "Go on. I could tell that you haven't had
pizza for months."

       She shrugged, sheepishly. "Well, weeks anyway."

       Rather than argue till dawn she took it and with nothing
left to be said, she pulled out of the lot with a wave. His
dark, lean form stayed standing beside the car pool's Taurus,
until she was out of sight.

       Dana drove with a surprisingly light heart. She wasn't even
sleepy. Whiffs of the box's contents spiralled up towards her
from time to time during her drive home. It brought to her
memories of the evening the three had spent. Three friends, just
talking. The original discussion of the poor 'beast' and its
origins wandering off onto other subjects.

       "Another piece of pizza, Dr. Scully?" Harold Everett had
asked somewhere around midnight, his toupee slightly off center.

       "Thanks," she said taking it and sitting back on the top of
the professor's desk in his tiny cluttered office. "Call me
'Dana'." She remembered looking over at Mulder, who was rapidly
turning pages in a book he had restlessly picked out of the
anthropologist's bookshelf. "*He's* the only one since medical
school who calls me Scully."

       Mulder looked up a little blankly, most of his mind still
processing all those theories on the development of
socialization in primitive man he had just scanned. He pushed
his glasses back up on his nose. "'He?'"

       "You, Mulder. You're the only one who calls me 'Scully'."

       "That's your name, isn't it? Careful, you're going to drip
sauce on your suit." He replaced the book. "Scully, why don't
you describe the beast woman's physiology to Dr. Everett. You
have a better grip on the vocabulary than I do. Did you see any
evidence that would support that her evolutionary development
was other than Homo Sapiens?"

       The memory was a good one, an excellent one. In fact if
Dana had caught a look at her reflection in the rear view mirror
at that moment she would not had recognized herself. Her face
was lit with a good-natured smile. The unexpected meeting of the
minds had been more enjoyable than any but two or three dates
Dana had ever had in her whole life. The three of them had
traded ideas, thrown open countless books, unrolled diagrams,
flashed slides up on the scientist's wall and ate pizza until
well after midnight. Dana had had more fun and had her ideas and
her intellect challenged more thoroughly than she had in years.

       And then there was Mulder. The extent of his encyclopedic
knowledge never ceased to amaze her. Gifted or not, he still had
to come across the information someplace. So here Dana was with
two brilliant men and both had listened to her, asked her
opinion, and took what she said seriously, like a colleague,
like a friend.

       Arriving at her apartment, Dana sat for a few minutes on
the top step of the small porch in front of her building and
watched the stars. As the cool breeze lifted her hair, an
astounding revelation came to her. After years of chasing the
diploma, then trying to fit herself into the FBI mold of a
forensic pathologist, she had finally found the easy acceptance
and intellectual equality she had longed for.

       She had found a place where she felt she belonged.

                                    * * * * * * * *

       Entering his small, utilitarian cave of an apartment,
Mulder for once wished that he owned more lamps. His mood was
that good. At first, he hadn't been so sure about Scully coming
with him to see Harry. He was still uneasy about her reactions
to his theories, but as he introduced the two he had felt an
unaccustomed surge of pride. "Harold Everett, this is my
partner, Dr. Dana Scully."

       'My partner.' He didn't use the term loosely. He felt safer
with her at his back. Not since Reggie could he say that about
any of the others that had been assigned to him. The better ones
had been so useless, he might as well as been alone. Those were
in the minority. Most had been detriments, down-right dangerous.
He would have been better off alone. But not Scully. She was
stubborn, she was opinionated, she was infuriating, but she was
also smart and fearless. She had the guts to stand up to him, to
challenge him, which he knew he needed. She'd even waded in to
debate with the old professor over the finer points of the
affect of modern civilization on Darwin's theory of Natural
Selection. Mulder knew few post-graduates who would have dared
try.

       Scully would do. She would do very well.

       Content, he tossed aside jacket and tie and he sank back
into the folds of his leather couch with a glass of ice water
and idly began channel switching. That was when he noticed that
the message light on his phone was blinking.

       The muscles in the back of his neck began to twitch. A hard
lump of foreboding formed in his stomach and settled in as if it
intended to stay.
 

~~~~

Tuesday, 9 a.m.

       Dana should have been tired the next morning. She wasn't.
She didn't stab at her alarm clock too violently when it wailed
at her, didn't swear when she found a run in her stockings,
didn't grumble at Washington traffic. Her foot was light on the
steps as she entered the building. Her smile and step were
confident as she negotiated the rabbit warren of cubicles on her
way to her desk near Pathology to get her mail.

       Dana realized with rather a shock that she was actually
looking forward to the day. This assignment with Fox Mulder was
definitely not turning out as she had expected. She was not just
an observer, she was rapidly becoming a part of the team, and in
many ways 'Spooky' Mulder was maybe not so spooky after all. He
just had his eyes open a little wider than most people.
Suddenly, Dana wanted to know more about the brain that was
behind those eyes.

       Her smile broadened. Some of the people she passed returned
her smile warmly. On others the grins were brittle, a little
cruel. None of that hurt today. She didn't even care that they
must be reading a kind of smug pride behind her smile. Let them
see. Even a week before their looks would have bothered her. Not
today. Today was the first day of a... different life. Yes,
different. Could one night of pizza and conversation make such
a change? She had wanted a sign. Something to get her off the
fence. Could she have found it in a greasy triangle of cheese
and tomato and bread and in a pair of approving hazel eyes?

       Anything was possible. She worked on the X-Files. Now she
just hoped that Fox Mulder would be ready to deal with Special
Agent Dana Scully in full sail.

       She was ten steps from the door to the stairwell that would
take her down to the basement when she was forced to dump a
little wind from those sails. George Dempshaw. Small tendrils of
anger drifted up entangling in her good mood. George Dempshaw
was an analyst who had asked her out once over a year ago. She
had refused him then, she would refuse him now six times over
now. He stepped casually into her path. The expression on his
face was somewhere between a sneer and a leer.

       "Dana, hear you got yourself a hot little assignment. You
and Spooky staking out aliens under the stars. Must be...
stimulating."

       "So nice to see you again, too, Agent Dempshaw," Dana said,
trying to force a neutral tone into her voice but certain it
still came out cold, "but if you'll excuse me I'm late for
work."

       "Right, I heard. In the basement. Now exactly what kind of
work does go on down there?"

       Dana's eyes narrowed. "We fight off the rats mostly... very
*big* ones."

       That broke the man's sneer. He laughed brightly, looking
again like the young man she had nearly dated. "Yeah, I've heard
that about the bowels. Guess it also keeps you off the tour
route. Wouldn't want to public to really see what their dollars
are paying for."

       Feeling the steam begin to rise, Dana pushed past the
laughing man to finally reach the stairwell. She let the door
shut firmly behind her with satisfaction. Dempshaw thought he
was going places. He'd better just get out of the way and watch
her dust. Professionally, Dana was already seeing results. Maybe
being linked with the X-files and Mulder wasn't going to be the
disaster she had feared. The man who had assigned her, Section
Chief Blevins, was satisfied with her reports. Also, she thought
smugly, he was more than a little dismayed. Instead of debunking
Mulder and his work, she had been - if not legitimizing it - at
least putting enough of a scientific slant on it that much of
what the new team uncovered could no longer be entirely
dismissed.

       He didn't think she would be able to do that. That was what
surprised them and that was simply delicious.

                                    * * * * * * * *

       Agent Fox Mulder sat at his desk trying to drink coffee
without his hands shaking. He should have gone to sleep like a
normal person the night before. He shouldn't have flipped on his
answering machine. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have heard the
message from Associate Director Walter Skinner asking Mulder to
call him back immediately. Anytime.

       Skinner? Why would Walter Skinner be calling him? Mulder
had worked directly under Skinner a time or two but only on a
case by case basis. His impression was of a competent, humorless
man, ex-military all the way. No nonsense went on on his watch.
Skinner had been a rookie Associate Director for the Violent
Crimes Section during two of the torturous years Mulder had
worked there. During the two years since Mulder had been allowed
to concentrate on the X-Files - which had been shelved under
Blevins because no one knew where else to put it - Mulder had
seen Skinner very seldom. There was one thing Mulder could say
about Skinner - to his knowledge the man had never jeered openly
at any of Mulder's wild theories. That put him in a rather small
and select group around the Bureau.

       Now this resident of the fourth floor - not quite the fifth
floor but close enough - wanted lowly agent Fox Mulder to call
him back. 'Anytime?' Mulder grinned in wicked anticipation. To
be given 'carte blanche' to call an Associate Director at two in
the morning... that was an opportunity just too tempting to pass
up.

       "Should have waited until morning," Mulder moaned to
himself, rubbing his temples as if he could erase the tension
headache that was already building. The voice of the man on the
tape, however, had had that 'and I mean *now* tone' which Mulder
had heard before. "If I had waited until a - still irritating -
but more reasonable hour like five a.m., I could have gotten at
least a decent night's sleep." At least what passed as a decent
night's sleep for him, Mulder admitted.

       Surprisingly, Mulder was sleeping better than he would have
expected, certainly better than before a certain someone had
walked into his office. What he had forgotten was how different
it felt to have someone at his side who had half a brain and
some guts. What he had forgotten was how it felt not to be so
totally alone.

       At that moment, the door to the X-Files office opened and
that certain someone strolled in. Mulder had to shake himself.
The room, the air itself, suddenly had an energy missing before
her arrival. Mulder's brow furrowed slightly as he studied her.
Here was a puzzle. He lived for puzzles and here was definitely
one. What was different today about Dr. Scully? As usual her
short legs were pumping nearly fast enough to keep up with even
his long-legged pace. She was trim and professional and as
perfectly put together as always. Then the difference came to
him. Her smile. Inwardly he groaned. It was that perky Pollyanna
smile which was new. She glowed with a happiness he found
painful. It bounced off his bad mood like hundreds of little
sharp knives.

       All right...

       Mulder knew that his partner had passed up a second date
with that divorcee she'd met. Had she found a replacement
already? When had there been time? She couldn't have gotten home
from their meeting with Harry any earlier than he had which was
about two A.M. It was barely nine now. Had she met someone in
the elevator?

       Then a thought nudged unbidden into his mind. The nap on
the way home had done her good. She had been wide awake as they
stood talking by her car. There had been those pauses and she
had seemed reluctant to leave. Had she been expecting something
more? Something from him? Impossible. Still there had been
moments that had been uncomfortable, like a first date. Would
she had come if he had asked her out for coffee and dessert some
place? Should he have? Restless, maybe she hadn't gone directly
home but detoured by the divorcee's house after all. Maybe she
had even gotten some. A second internal groan. That was all he
needed - all those satiated vibes. Not today... bad any day, but
definitely not today. Mulder could only take just so much
happiness swirling around him and he had definitely just gone
over his limit in the first twenty seconds in her presence.

       Now here she was placing her brief case on the evidence
table which she had carved out of the clutter of his office to
be *her* desk. She turned to him with her that smile still
intact. He winced. "Morning, Mulder. What's on the agenda?"

       Mulder considered. Dana Scully was standing in front of him
excited and clearly eager to get to work on whatever weird
science she thought he was going to introduce her to today. Yes,
he had made the right decision back there during his long early
morning negotiation session with Skinner. It might just be
possible that he could keep a partner longer than a few weeks,
but only if he was able to steer her away from certain cases,
certain cases like the one Skinner had just cohered him into
accepting.

       "World to Mulder," she said, perkily, even as she briskly
waved her hand in front of his face to get his attention.
"What's on slate this morning? Back to trying to tie the
outbreaks necrolytic acne in Tennessee to shiploads of
irradiated vegetables?"

       Mulder blinked, coming with reluctance into the here and
now and not even picking up on the joke. "Nothing for us."

       No one would ever say that Dana Scully wasn't quick.
"Nothing for... us. Meaning nothing for the two of us? Meaning
nothing for me?" she asked with a sudden edge to her voice.
"You're working solo?" Mulder realized with consternation that
from her tone she seemed not only surprised and disappointed but
- hurt? Hurt? Disappointed? Maybe he should reconsider...? The
tension headache that had been building since two a.m. almost
immediately took a few additional turns until he felt slightly
nauseous on top of everything else that had gone disastrously
wrong with his life during the last seven hours.

       Should he - ? No, impossible. Nothing to be gained and
everything to lose by exposing her too soon.

       Mulder wrapped his long fingers more tightly around his
coffee mug, hoping that that way she couldn't see the return of
the old tremor in his hands. "Associate Director Skinner called
me last night. Like a third string running back for the
Redskins, I've been traded." His smile was thin, brittle and not
convincing. "I've been asked to profile the Hillendale Hunter
for Violent Crimes." He forced a smug expression. "They've been
through two profilists already and - nothing."

       Scully's eyes raised to his, narrowing. She was better than
he thought. She was suspicious. "I didn't think you did that
sort of thing anymore?"

       He shrugged, but his shoulder muscles were currently
bunched into huge, rigid knots and he knew the action looked
unnatural. "They've been known to come crawling to 'Spooky'
Mulder when they can't find the end of their tails. Besides,
before they let me leave the VCS mainstream, Blevins and I came
to a little 'understanding'. Every once in a while I have to pay
the rent on this place." His hand gestured, taking in the
cluttered office.

       "This is one of those times?" Dana asked, still stunned.

       "They've reached a dead end and the authorities REALLY
don't like upper middle class people being found butchered on
Congress's front yard."

       To prove his point, there were two new and impressively
tall piles of folders stacked on the corner of Mulder's desk.
Carefully, Dana pushed them to the side and sat down. She was
not particularly alarmed by his announcement. Not yet anyway. On
the contrary, she sensed a challenge. Mulder was one man she
could work with. She had managed to turn his course more than
once. Granted, she had never stopped the voyage but she had
altered the heading. Maybe that was why he had taken to running
out of her as he had at Ellens. Maybe he recognized that there
was a real possibility that he could cave in under her merciless
logic. She could be thankful for one thing. With his new
assignment still sitting in neat piles in front of him, he
wouldn't be going anywhere soon. For Mulder, a chain and a
padlock were far less of a deterrent to wandering than the job
and his duty.

       "Listen to me, Mulder. I want in on this. The local news
has been full of this case for weeks. Besides, I've been hearing
for years about how uncanny your VC profiles are."

       "'Uncanny'?" Mulder said with a kind of brittle humor.
"That's not exactly the word I've heard used to describe them."

       Dana closely studied this new partner of hers for the first
time that morning. There was something dark about him that
couldn't be explained by not enough sleep. He was... troubled.
Oh, no, another mood and just when she had thought she had seen
them all. Mulder could be irreverent, enthusiastic,
unpredictable, single-minded. To authority figures who got in
his way he could be assertive, cold, acerbic. She had also seen
the injured side, the side that had bled to see the pain in
Kevin Morris, who, Mulder theorized, had seen his sister
abducted.

       This, however, was a new side to Fox Mulder. Did it have to
do with the case? A notion stirred in Dana's brain. Mulder had
opted out of the VCS, the crown jewel in the FBI's crown, and
for what? Just for the X-Files?

       "Mulder, I've had the standard profiling course so I
understand the basics. I've also worked with profilists from
time to time in association with my forensics work. I'd
appreciate a chance to see the process from start to finish."

       No expression in those eyes now. Whatever darkness she had
briefly seen there was gone. His eyes were as blank as one way
mirrors. No windows onto the soul, not this morning.

       He was frowning. "This is not a classroom exercise. You
don't know what it takes."

       "Mulder, I want to see you work."

       "Profiling is something I do alone. Besides, I'm not
pleasant company after day three."

       "Mulder, I know about working under stress. I've felt it in
myself. Sometimes you feel that if anyone says just one wrong
word to you, you'll explode into a million pieces. Maybe I can
help."

       The blank eyes were seemingly not enough. A wall had sprung
up which was almost visual and its breath was icy.

       "Scully, just drop it."

       The itch in Dana's head had become an alarm. Was this what
other agents called intuition? If so, it was a new experience
for her and it warned her to back away and not just with stop
signs - with sirens and klaxons and foghorns and all in
dissonant seconds and sevenths. Carefully, she slid off the edge
of his desk and returned to her own. She should do just what he
asked. She should drop it, give in and go, but that wasn't Dana
Scully's style. Attack was her style! How dare he decide just
like that when she wasn't wanted or needed on a case!

       "Mulder, if we're going to continue to work together I need
to work with you under as many different circumstances as
possible so that we can get to know each other better. And I'm
talking about sharing both our strengths and our weaknesses."

       "I always got an 'F' in sharing," he told her dryly.
"Besides, didn't you know? I'm not allowed to have weaknesses.
Spooky isn't allowed to fail."

       "Mulder, please. There's nothing I would like better than
to see you tear apart all of their theories and come up with
something out of nothing."

       "Not... this time." His voice had risen sharply, almost
angrily. If the investigation went on for too long, if it got
intense, theories weren't the only things which were going to
tear apart. "Besides, I think if you check your e-mail you'll
find Blevins has assigned you to teach some classes at Quantico
for the next week." His face was so distant, so cold. Nothing
like the Mulder Dana thought she knew.

       Glaring at him Dana stood up and furiously swung towards
the door as if she would leave him then and there but something
passed over his face when he thought she had turned too far to
see. Indecision. Reluctance. Loss.

       It was enough to tempt Dana to give it one more try.
"Mulder, you need me."

       The vulnerability passed as if it had never been there at
all and the hard glint returned in force. "'I need you?' You've
been with the FBI for two years, most of the time standing in
front of a corpse or bent over a microscope. I've spent nearly
six years in the field."  His eyes were like green stones. "Pray
tell, how do I need you?"

       Dana couldn't speak to those eyes. Though cruelly put, all
he said was true. Mulder had breezed through college and his
Ph.D. program at Oxford. He was one of the youngest ever to
enter the FBI academy and far and away the youngest profilist to
be snatched up by the Violent Crimes Section after his
accelerated graduation. What help could she be? It wasn't as if
he needed her to guard his back. This time he was joining a
fully staffed case. Not a little 'life on a shoe string'
investigation like the X-Files. VC, especially if Skinner were
involved, could call down more fire power than a marine assault
unit if they choose, not that Mulder would need that. As the
profilist, Mulder would most likely be sequestered ninety
percent of the time in a room, shoulder high with affidavits,
autopsy findings, trace evidence analyses, lab reports, video
taped interviews and background checks on all the victims and
suspects. She thought she could help but probably no more
competently than a dozen others who had spent years working on
similar cases.

       Dana became aware that neither of them had spoken in some
time. When they needed to talk they talked, for hours, but they
were equally as comfortable with silence when either of them
needed it. Dana had spent so many contented hours working in
this room. Reading, studying, writing analyses and reports.
Mulder was a restless worker but she found somehow his pacing,
seed cracking, and paper crumbling almost soothing. When it
wasn't she could always go upstairs. Now, however, the quiet was
as safe and relaxing as a minefield.

       He broke first. "Why were you assigned here?"

       Why was he asking her this? Why now? Though they had never
spoken of it directly, they both knew. "To assist you. To add
more structure to your investigations -"

       "Oh, is that all how he put it to you?" Mulder had risen
and was advancing on her. "Do you think, Dr. Scully, that I
enjoy reading your reports? That I enjoy seeing the 'spin' that
you put on my work?"

       Dana stood her ground. "No one has ever disputed your being
able to close a case. It's your explanations that are a little
hard for management to accept."

       "The work is the work. Well, I've have more than enough
eyes looking over my shoulder and jerking my chain lately, Agent
Scully, so please, take advantage of the opportunity and relax
your watch."

       The clawing sarcasm was unlike him. Something snapped in
Dana's head. "Am I being dismissed, AGENT Mulder?" she inquired,
something like a growl in the back of her throat.

       As his partner's anger flared to meet his own, Mulder
realized that he had gone too far, way too far. And it wasn't as
if the anger had been against her at all but was just a symptom
of his helpless frustration. But Scully didn't know that. She
didn't know him well enough. She was not one of the macho,
thick-skinned, Clint Eastwood-wannabes that populated so much of
the VCS. He had insulted her, he had bungled everything but
good. This - whole scene - had been designed to give her an easy
way out, to allow her to walk away without guilt. In a twisted
way he had been trying to protect whatever good opinion she
might have of him. Destroying it had never been his intention.

       "Scully, I didn't mean -"

       But Dana Scully was seeing red now and would not be
placated. "Maybe we'd better just stop this discussion before
more things are said which we don't mean."

       They glared at each other, the unspoken mired in the ether
between them like mud. She waited for an explanation, an
apology. He was forced to give her what she had asked for which
was silence because an explanation would have been worse.

       Damn literal males! Dana swore under her breath. "Very
well, Agent Mulder, but before you throw me out, let me at least
change your bandages."

       He stood for a moment, confused, unable to follow this
rapid turnaround in topic. Then the ache in his side came back
to him. His personal reminder of his beautiful but very dead
'devil'. Having Scully play doctor was the second to the last
thing he wanted right now, the last thing being that she would
stalk out as angry as she was.

       Frowning, he removed his suit coat and slowly began to
unbutton his shirt as she retrieved the medical kit she kept
under her desk. He had learned quickly that she loved to doctor
and having him to take care of made up for all the patient
contact she was missing being a forensic pathologist. As he
raised his T-shirt, she lifted the bandage. Mulder hissed as the
new scabs caught on the gauze. The deep gouges where the Jersey
Devil-woman had take a hunk out of his side less than twenty-
four hours before were still red and fresh-looking.

       "Mulder, are you keeping this dry?"

       "Would you rather I didn't take a shower?" he grumbled.

       "You could try taking a bath."

       "You haven't see the bottom of my bathtub, have you?"

       "I've not had the pleasure." Frowning, she opened her kit.
If their first few weeks together were any indication, she was
going to need to get a larger kit just to keep Mulder in gauze
and tape and antibiotics. "Okay, sit on the edge of your desk
and lean back so I can bandage this again."

       She was not gentle because she didn't feel like being
gentle, but Mulder gritted his teeth and refused to utter a
sound.

       Once the last strip of paper tape was applied to his
smooth, pale skin Dana began repacking her kit. She was angry at
herself and him for this total ruination of a day which had
started out so splendidly.

       Able to think of nothing else to delay the inevitable, she
asked, "Do you want me to come back?" The question cut into the
silence like a very sharp knife.

       Confused, Mulder looked up from where he was attempting to
retie his tie without a mirror. "What?"

       "Do you still want us to work together," she rephrased
irritably, "or are you going to ask for another partner?"

       "No!" That more vulnerable emotion that wasn't anger was
back, the one she had caught a glimpse of before only stronger
this time, nearly panic. "Of course I want us to continue to
work together."

       His obvious sincerity went very little towards soothing the
rejection Dana felt. "You just don't trust me to work with you
on this particular case," she summarized with a voice like
flint.

       Fox Mulder, who seldom found himself at a loss for words,
faltered. "Scully, trust has nothing to do with it," but she was
already out the door, in fact, had nearly run out and never
heard his attempt at an explanation. Nor did she ever know how
strongly a part of him wanted to stop her. That part, however,
got his feet only as far as the doorway where he stood listening
to the fading sound of her steps, the distant opening and
closing of the door at the top of the stairwell, and the silence
that followed.
 

~~~~~

Tuesday, 10:30 a.m.

       Dana held tight to her anger as she flew up the stairs. It
was either that or admit to the tears that were far too close to
the surface.

       She would not, she would not, she would NOT! allow Fox to
Mulder make her cry. She was an FBI Special Agent, a forensic
pathologist, and a grown up! He was... he was just a man! A
brilliant, talented, troubled man. Sometimes gentle, sometimes
impossible. A man... and a friend. That's what hurt. She had
thought he was her friend or was on the way to being so. From
their very first case she had gotten the impression that he was
lonely - not in a pathetic sort of way but in a Mulder sort of
way. He seemed to truly appreciate the company, even the
arguments - most of them anyway. Could she have read him so
wrong?

       Furious, Dana totally ignored her desk near Pathology to
storm her way directly to the fourth floor like a small
hurricane. Strangely enough, she found Section Chief Blevins and
Associate Director Skinner together in Blevin's office. Dana
fixed her eyes unblinkingly on Skinner as she entered. He was
the one to blame, the one who had called Mulder in on the Hunter
case. She didn't know him well but had heard that he would
probably be bumped up to Assistant Director very shortly and,
therefore, not a man to irritate if you valued your career. On
the other hand, rumor had it that he respected agents with a
certain amount of fight in them. As he rose to offer her his
chair, he returned her accusing glance with a steady one from
which she could read nothing.

       Tearing her eyes away from Skinner, Dana turned to Blevins
who was, after all, both her and Mulder's direct report. So who
was the real villain here? He must have allowed this. The
sullen, graying Section Chief was coolly business-like. He had
noticed her wary perusal of Skinner. "Anything you want to say
can be said before Associate Director Skinner. I assume you've
come about your re-assignment?"

       Dana realized that that was all she really could complain
about. Not about Mulder's being reassigned, only herself. It
made her argument shakier. "I'd like to know why I'm being sent
down to Quantico, yes. Have I failed somehow?" Despite herself
she felt her lip curl derisively. "Did I write a report on a
case that was not sufficiently damning to Agent Mulder's work?"

       Blevins leaned back in his high backed leather chain and
steepled his fingers. "Agent Mulder is senior agent in your
office. Why don't you ask him?"

       "Agent Mulder is not exactly in the mood to be forthcoming
with information at the moment."

       "So it's that way already, is it?" Blevins asked. The man's
comment was presented as if he smelled something distasteful.
Dana's gut response was to jump to Mulder's defense. There was
no love lost between Blevins and Mulder, that had been clear at
the beginning, but before she had time to speak, Dana saw out of
the corner of her eye an expression on Skinner's face that was
almost sympathetic. By that time Blevins was speaking again,
"Under the circumstances, Agent Scully, I think you should know
it all. You're being given work at Quantico because they could
use the help - and because Agent Mulder requested it."

       From his position standing back lit near the window where
he thought he wouldn't be noticed, Skinner frowned.

       Incredulous, Dana felt her legendary calm slipping. She
realized her mouth had fallen slightly open but no sound came
out at first. "He what?" She had assumed that her reassignment
had been order by Blevins after 'trading' Mulder to VC. She had
been furious with Mulder for agreeing, but had never thought for
a moment that it had been his idea.

       Sensing her consternation, Skinner stepped in. "I asked for
Agent Mulder's assistance. Your 'temporary' reassignment was a
prerequisite for his accepting this case. The Investigative
Support Unit needs him on this, Agent Scully, and relations are
strained enough between the ISU and Mulder that they don't beg
unless they're really desperate. You only need to listen to the
six o'clock news to know that the Maryland and Virginia police
are stymied over these incidents. The investigation is dead in
the water and bodies are still being found. They need Mulder
and, since I've been assigned the thankless task of managing
this fiasco, so do I."

       "But I'm his partner. He says he works alone when he
profiles. That I can understand, I can stay out of his way. But
certainly there must be something I can do to help. At least
I'll be available if he does need me." Wasn't that what partners
were supposed to be there for?

       Skinner's impressively bare dome moved ever so slightly.
"You'll have to take my word on this, Agent Scully. I've worked
with Agent Mulder before under similar circumstances. If he
wants you at a distance, then it's for the best."

        Dana stood up, her eyes blazing at both men. She knew when
she had been dismissed - and for the second time that day. Very
well, she would leave, but sooner or later there was going to be
hell to pay.

       She had her hand on the knob of the office door, her back
as straight as if someone had put an actual iron spike up her
spine, when Skinner's distinctive voice called her back. "You
haven't said so in so many words, Agent Scully, but we are aware
of Agent Mulder's propensity for going off lone wolf. I won't
say don't worry, but we'll do everything in our power not to let
that happen."

       Dana turned back for just a moment. She raised her chin and
let it nod just the tiniest bit before sailing out, moving
quickly before her face betrayed her. As angry as she was, she
did not want Mulder hurt and, yes, she realized that that was
what had gnawed at her from the first - that she would not be
there to pull him back in, to protect him. Where had those
feelings come from and how had Skinner known before she had
known herself?
 

       Skinner's frown deepened as he looked at the door that had
closed behind the furious young woman. He had heard that Agent
Scully was a bit of an iceberg. One would never have gotten that
impression from this encounter, but then the woman had just
received what she could only perceive as a professional slap in
the face. In her place he would feel the same way. He had not
agreed with Mulder. Skinner had offered to bring the man's new
partner in on the case in any capacity Mulder wanted. He had
been shocked by the younger man's absolute refusal.

       Bad idea leaving your partner in the dark, out of the loop,
Skinner thought. It would probably mean a crisis of trust
somewhere down the road. Besides, one day 'it' might happen on
an X-Files case and then what would she do? Out there,
somewhere, all alone with him and without anyone for her to turn
to.
 

       With her steaming anger quickly turning glacial, Dana
snapped up an empty copier paper box and threw in a few personal
items from her desk near Pathology. Within ten minutes of her
meeting in Blevins' office, she had removed herself from Bureau
headquarters. Those she blew past in the hallways were left
wondering whether the female version of Jack Frost had just made
an early visit. She didn't return to the basement. All she
needed which she didn't have, she would buy, borrow or steal
from the academy.

                                    * * * * * * * *

       It was too quiet.

       Mulder paced before his desk, hands deep in his pocket. She
had been gone thirty minutes, long enough to realize she had
left her brief case behind. Scully didn't forget things like
that. She wasn't coming back.

       His cluttered cave of an office was as large as it had ever
been, which had never seemed large enough - until now. Slowly,
he closed his eyes. What he saw was not blessed darkness. A
huge, empty hole seemed to have opened up right in front of him.

       What a fool! He couldn't image how he could have conducted
a meeting worse. Another triumph to record in his scrapbook of
disastrous social faux pas. Great, just great. In Dana Scully he
had seen the best partner potential since Reggie Purdue and now
he'd gone and alienated her but good. Scully would probably
never talk to him again.

       At that moment what Mulder wanted to do more than anything
was to take a few minutes and really wallow in how he had fucked
up his life once again, but knew he didn't have the time. He
would have to work out his problems with Ms. Scully later, if
there was a later. In that he found some hope. From their brief
but intense time together, he had found that, while Scully may
be stubborn and opinionated, she was also fearless and
definitely not a quitter. She would be back, just, he hoped, not
too soon.

       You will be back, won't you Scully?

       Please.

       Enough wallowing. He had work to do, unpleasant work. Too
many people were dying, and the animals in the viper's hole on
the second floor had come to him, offered him anything. That
scum he could have turned down, them and all the glorious
publicity he'd receive for helping them to catch one of the
really big ones - but not the victims. He couldn't turn his back
on the dead and those who would join their select company if
this killing machine wasn't stopped soon. The man was escalating
fast.

       He felt the itch in his palms. It was still there. The
seduction of unwrapping the puzzle, laying out the pieces,
putting them all together. It *was* like an addiction... at the
beginning. Later, it was like being caught up in a drug that had
you by the heart and the head and the balls. At the end... like
going cold turkey. Tearing apart... Coming down.

       Stop.

       Perhaps, Mulder speculated, perhaps the process wouldn't be
as devastating this time. He was older, more experienced and he
had healed, more or less. He had only to dig through all the
case data, follow leads, find a pattern, ask the questions: Why
this time? Why these people? Why this place? Why this manner of
death? He could do this kind of work standing on his head.
Always could. Piece of cake.

       <In case you haven't noticed,> his reasoning side reminded
him, <you're alone here now. Who do you think you're trying to
convince?>

       No one. No one here but us sword fodder - the foot soldiers
sent out onto the front lines to be ripped down first.
Sacrifices for the greater good.

       The pile of file folders on his desk called to him. He
found them not so seductive after all. More like traps, like
sucking tar pits, like innocuous but deadly pools of quicksand.
Already he could feel the ghosts beginning to hover. The visions
and recollections of all those other horrible cases he thought
he had buried, the twisted emotions of all those other sick
minds. Why else did he force himself to keep so busy? If he
didn't stand still maybe the ghosts couldn't catch him. What was
he doing walking into that house of horrors all over again?
There should be someone guarding his back, and he knew just the
one. A flash of red hair and a little body, slender but as
strong as tempered steel. But she wasn't there. Wouldn't be
there. He'd sent her away - thrust her away - protection for the
future.

       So there was no one, no one at all with him, only the men
from the team who would be coming in a few hours to pack up all
this and take him away to someplace quiet and secure - very
secure - where he couldn't be disturbed - or disturbing. They
all knew the drill. It was in his file. These men, however,
couldn't be counted on - not for backup, not for protection, and
certainly not for companionship. In the end they could end up
just as much his enemy as the monster he was trying to catch.
His isolation made him feel physically ill and frighteningly
naked.

       Mulder took his hands out of his pockets to see if they'd
stopped shaking. They hadn't. Again he became aware of how
silent the office was and how empty.

       For an intelligent man, Spook, you can be incredibly stupid
sometimes.

                                    * * * * * * * *

       In her apartment that evening after spending the day at
Quantico in a haze of frustration, Dana threw herself down on
her couch, kicked off her shoes and settled herself in for a
good sulk.

       She'd show Skinner, Blevins, *and* Fox Mulder. She'd been
making her case in her head all day even as she'd listened to
the FBI Academy's Instructor General brief her on the class they
needed her to teach. Point one: Skinner had made it plain that
the current arrangement was temporary. Fine she'd play along. Be
the good soldier. It would earn her points and help her later
when she was ready to spring her next career move on them. Why
shouldn't she leap-frog it? The males at the Bureau and in most
businesses certainly did it often enough. Loyalty didn't seem to
matter for much.

       Point two: Dana had worked with enough bureaucracies to
know that good intentions, even promises from soon-to-be
Assistant Directors, meant very little. She needed to look out
for herself. No one else would. For the 'good of the
organization' she and Mulder could be separated in a heart beat.
She'd be one step ahead of them.

       Point three: She had already shown herself to be competent
and flexible. A good team player. Hadn't she been able to work
with Fox Mulder for six weeks? Mulder had a history of eating
potential partners for breakfast. Some of his previous victims
hadn't lasted six days. If she could tough it out for six
months, that would be some kind of record. If you could work
with Spooky Mulder, you could work with anyone. Hmmm, maybe this
was all just some kind of a test, like a right a passage.
Everyone had to put up with Fox Mulder for a long as they could
stand him.... or until Mister Popularity took it into his head
to rid himself of them. Like now.

       Point four: For the good of her future credibility, it was
best that she move along before she got herself into a case
which she couldn't explain away as a psychosomatic illness, a
genetic mutation, stress, or a dysfunctional childhood.

       There, short term goals all nice and neat. She'd get what
milage she could out of the position and then move on. She would
not allow herself to be treated this way!

       Energized by at least the temporary pacification of her
injured pride, Dana began one of her hurricane sweeps through
her apartment - straightening, sorting laundry, stacking paper
for the recycling bin - when the door bell rang. Bent over the
washer, her arms full of wet sheets which probably hadn't needed
washing anyway, she froze. Mulder? Was that possible? Had he
come to apologize? Eat a little humble pie and ask her to come
back? Would she?

       Stuffing the sheets in the dryer, Dana headed for the door.
She would. She'd make him sweat first and pay later big time,
but she'd go back. The case had very high visibility and what
she had told him about wanting to watch him work had been the
truth. It was a coldly logical response. She tried not to
acknowledge that there were other deeper, warmer, feminine
reasons. She had seen him hurt - physically, mentally,
spiritually and professionally. He was also not nearly as
unaware as most people thought he was of how his pursuit of the
X-Files was viewed by the rest of the Bureau. Damnit, but she
wanted to defend him and she wanted to shield him because she
knew no one else would.

       Setting her face to reveal neither pleasure nor anger -
both of which were mixed within her in confusing proportions -
Dana opened the door. A form was lounging against the opposite
wall. There was a smile.  Right leg was crossed over left. A
wine bottle was swinging. Not Mulder, not even close.

       Her sister Melissa.

       The slender woman of medium height - which meant a few
inches above Dana's - pushed herself languidly away from the
wall. "Well, do I get to come in or not?" Her voice was as
sleepy-mellow as her eyes.

       "Sorry." Dana held open the door. "I'm just so...
surprised."

       "I don't know why you should be. I always come unannounced.
It's my trademark. Got a cork screw and some glasses?"

       Dana went to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, "I
thought you were off studying in Switzerland with some holy man
or other and that alcohol muddied the rhythms."

       "I was," Melissa said as she dropped down onto Dana's
couch, "but they're muddied anyway with the jet lag so why waste
a perfectly good muddle. What's worth doing is worth overdoing.
Besides, this is a good burgundy. Its tannins are good for the
heart."

       Dana came back with the glasses and the corkscrew. "You've
been to see Mom, I assume?"

       "Of course. Took two hours, but she filled me in on all the
family doings."

       "We haven't heard from you for three months." Dana's tone
wasn't accusing, just curious. Ever since college Melissa tended
to drop out for long periods to go off to study crystal reading,
aural projection, organic gardening and other related New Age
curricula. "Learn to levitate yet?"

       Melissa sadly shook her mound of dark red hair. "Lama Duvie
doesn't go in for the theatrics." They talked of family matters
and Mel's future plans as each finished their first glass of
wine. With her second glass cradled in her hands, Melissa leaned
back and scrutinized her sister with more pointed interest.
"Enough about me. What's Mom tell me about a new job for you at
the Bureau?"

       For a moment Dana was confused.  How had her mother learned
about her reassignment back to Quantico so quickly? She hadn't
told anyone except a few people at headquarters who needed to
know. Then she realized that Melissa's information was months
old. She was talking about Dana's leaving Pathology.

       "I got restless at the lab. I asked for a new position,
that's all. I have a partner and he doesn't even need a cane to
get from one side of the room to the other." No use in getting
into the current day's complications.

       "Right. Mom told me his name. What was it again?" Melissa
asked, swirling her wine.

       "Fox Mulder," Dana repeated. How odd his first name still
felt on her lips.

       "He isn't from California by any chance, is he? What kind
of name is that for an FBI agent?"

       No one was more surprised than Dana herself as she felt a
flush of indignation. "The one his parents gave him which he
can't help and which he hates. At least I assume he does because
nobody, but nobody calls him Fox."

       "Hmmm. So what sort of cases does this Fox Mulder
specialize in?"

       Dana felt herself squirm just a little. "Serial killers,
rapists, terrorists. When he worked for Violent Crimes he was
their golden boy."

       "Past tense, I notice." Melissa's eyes glowed with
mischief. All the Scully children were quick. "So what's he been
doing lately?"

       Dana hesitated. She hated herself for doing it, but she
hesitated. "Like I told Mom - he concentrates on cases other
departments can't solve."

       Dark eyebrows raised inquiringly. "And...? Come on, Dana,
I know you. What kinds of cases other departments can't solve?"

       Dana sighed. Melissa, the New Age ditz, was going to love
this. "Unexplainable by normal means."

       Melissa stared, the thought sinking in. "You're talking
para-normal, aren't you?" When no denial followed, Melissa
laughed so abruptly that she had to cover her mouth with her
hand to keep from spraying burgundy all over Dana's couch.
"Dana, you have to be kidding. Dad must be catatonic. His pride
and joy chasing ghosts."

       Dana felt her back stiffen. "I was brought in," she said
distinctly, "to make certain that the more traditional
scientific explanations for these phenomena are not ignored.
We've only had a few cases together but we've seen some
incredible things."

       "But ones with rational explanations."

       "They all could be explained that way, yes."

       Melissa looked skeptical. "Really?"

       Mel had done it again. She always could jerk Dana's chain.
Of course, that was the way her reports had been written.

       "Solid scientific explanations," Dana admitted, "or no
explanation at all owing to insufficient evidence."

       "Are you being honest to this man and to yourself or are
you just giving your superiors what they want to hear?"

       Dana blushed with pique. How could she answer that? Who was
she to say that such and such a phenomena had been caused by
ghosts? Was laying the blame on alien intervention any better?
Or government conspiracies? There she felt a twist of guilt.
She had seen Mulder's vacant stare as they drove away from
Ellens. That had been real. Something *had* happened. He had
been hurt deeply and her government was to blame and yet other
than getting him what little medical attention he would accept,
she had written it off, dismissing the incident as too hot to
handle.

       In all seriousness, Melissa leaned forward. "Dana," she
said softly, "to accept such a position where you know you
cannot be totally objective, isn't like you. You usually throw
yourself whole-heartedly into your work."

       <I was ready to,> Dana remembered with a pang. <Just this
morning. Ready to jump in with both feet, only Mulder ruined
it.> Her silence, she knew, was more damning than any
denunciation.

       "Dana, don't do this to yourself. Do a good and true job or
get out. Your Fox Mulder won't appreciate it and certainly those
of us who believe in such 'other' possibilities don't need you
covering up what little true evidence there is."

       Ouch! That had hurt. "Mel, do can you really think I would
falsify evidence?"

       "You don't have to. You just need to continue giving these
cases other explanations."

       "Mel, you have to believe me, I'm not part of anyone's
agenda. I want the truth as much as Mulder does, as much as you
and your friends do."

       "Really?" Mel wasn't being cruel, she was just probing,
Dana realized. Helping her straight-laced sister to understand
those nasty, confusing emotions the younger sibling was always
running away from.

       "If I didn't feel that I could at least try to be
objective, Mel, I'd walk away. I would. I can't help what's
inside, however. I can't help but look for explanations within
the realm of science first. That's why I was given the job. As
for Mulder, sure we argue, but he hasn't asked me to leave yet."
Dana found her hands shaking. "Mel, I'm going to tell you
something that I don't want you to tell anyone. Not anyone.
There's something in the work. Maybe it's seeing it through
Mulder's eyes. It's intriguing. Exciting. I've never felt this
way before. It's not only challenging intellectually, but
fascinating personally." Dana paused. She had knelt by Mulder's
side in that dark warehouse and, though bleeding and in pain
from having just been clawed by the 'beast woman', his voice had
been filled with a glorious awe - "She was beautiful, Scully!" -
 as if he had just beheld a rare flower or seen a shower of
shooting stars.

       Melissa had settled back in awe herself. "This guy I have
to meet. If he can have such an effect on my dwebby little
sister... Joan even says that you told her he was kind of cute."

       Dana's head came up with a start. "You certainly have been
busy."

       "Well, you're not the only one in this family who can
investigate. Mom says that you and our dear domestic cousin talk
so I just thought I'd get all the facts before I came over." In
their depths Melissa's eyes were glittering like a great cat who
is deceptively lethargic on the outside but all hunter on the
inside. "So, when do I meet him?"

       "You don't," Dana found herself saying, rather more sharply
than she expected. Her sister and her partner? Those two
together? It would be safer to stand on the San Andreas fault.
"What I mean is, he's on a case."

       "I don't see you working. When's he get off this case? I'll
be in town a few more days." She sipped from the glass again,
the wine reddening her lips. Dana felt a wild, foreign emotion
rising up through her chest. Why was she sweating? <Just the
wine,> she told herself. Melissa watched her sister's blush with
devilish interest.

       "He really is on a very critical case. I don't even get to
see him."

       "Undercover?" Mel asked becoming more serious again. This
was, after all, the work her sister did now.

       "Not like that, exactly," Dana explained. "You know,
thinking about it, you two won't have as much in common as you
might think. You see the New Age stuff as something very
spiritual, almost as a religion. Mulder sees it as all so very
natural. Things just are. More like - "

       "Science?" Melissa offered her barb quite decidedly
pointed. "Maybe you two are the ones who are closer than you
thought?"

       The realization that hit Dana was almost electric in
nature. Was is possible? Similar? Just a few weeks ago she'd
been thinking quite the opposite, of how she could make a name
for herself by taming Mulder's wild talent and bringing his
eccentric genius back to the fold. To make her point and move
on. To stay with the X-Files for long would be professional
suicide. Now, however, the morning's commitment she had made to
herself to jump into the work with gusto fell much more heavily
on her conscience.

       Mulder. It was all Mulder's fault. Dana stared into the
ruby red liquid swirling in her glass. She realized that she had
come to see the individual behind the man. Mulder was not her
private project to save any more than he was VC's legendary
profiler or the office loony. Mulder was a person, a very unique
person. She would never have thought so after her first case but
he was actually not so very hard to work with as long as you
didn't stand in his way. He was like some big, intelligent,
half-grown blood hound puppy whose head was so full of scent and
spirit, so full of will and energy, that he tripped over his own
feet in his enthusiasm. He *did* want to learn, he *did* want to
discover. He *was* more of a inventor than anything.

       Dreaming dreams no one else dared to dream.

       Inventing truths.

       Melissa went on to other topics but Dana barely heard. What
was she going to do now? She was still angry over the current
case but now she could at least frame it within the larger
picture. Only the picture, which had been a nice clean map whose
roads clearly marked out her past and her future, was suddenly
full of grays whose frontiers were defined in simple blotches of
color. Some were jarringly disturbing but others were quite
fascinatingly beautiful.

~~~~~
 

Monday, October 18, 1993

       For three days, five since she'd seen Mulder if she counted
the weekend, Dana stuck to her temporary assignment. She taught
the classes, graded the tests, and counseled the young men and
women who were stumbling in the hallways and losing their
lunches in the morgue sinks after lab. Anger carried her through
the first two days. After that she realized that the work wasn't
really so bad. Teaching she had done before and the familiar
words and phrases were all there on the tip of her tongue. The
appreciation for her efforts and experience was there, too,
which went a long way towards soothing the sting. The lingering
confusion left over from her conversation with Melissa she put
away in a deep place. She had decided that she couldn't resolve
her feelings for why she was continuing to work with the X-Files
until she was actually doing it.

       One morning after she had given a lecture her students had
actually listened to, and after a lab during which none of her
students lost their breakfast, Dana slipped away for a well-
earned break in the small but tastefully furnished little office
that had been released for her use. Soon she was leaning back
with a cup of her favorite herb tea. She had just finished her
second piece of early Halloween candy when she realized that
someone had gone to a lot of trouble to see that she was happy
here. The work was good and there was neither too much of it nor
too little. The accommodations, considering that she was a
simple substitute instructor, could not be better. Much as she
would like to thank Mulder for her current situation, she very
much doubted he had been involved. Not only were the personal
touches just not Mulder's style, but there hadn't been time. He
had been as surprised by the case as she had been.

       Blevins? He would have been just as happy to send her down
to the secretarial pool for a week or, more likely, back to her
old position, following on the dottering heels of Dr. Alexander.

       Who was left? A.D. Skinner? The man did have depth. Dana
found herself wondering how the report structure might be
reorganized once Skinner moved up. He certainly seemed to be
taking an interest in Mulder - and, Dana realized - in her. It
was not unheard of for Assistant Directors to take small
departments directly under their wing, skipping the need for a
Section Chief for all but administrative matters.

       By afternoon the tea and candy and the comfortable chair
were forgotten. Rumors were flying that the Hunter had dumped
another body. Number seven. The news filled Dana with dismay. As
angry as she still was at Mulder, whom she had not tried to talk
to since that horrible morning and - even worse - who had not
tried to talk to her, Dana had wished for his success.
Unrealistically, she had expected him to pull up a profile with
the wave of his hand that would be so exact that within forty-
eight hours the perpetrator would be in custody. If Dana felt
badly about the continued deaths, how must Mulder feel? As she
wrote the outline for her lecture on the blackboard, Dana felt
an unreasoning urge to call him. She wanted to ask how the work
was doing, to ask if he was serious when he said he saw them
working together again in the future. They had functioned well
together, Dana thought. Mulder had freely said so himself.

       Dana pushed the chalk so hard against the board that it
broke.

       Damn, she shouldn't be the one to make the first move. He
was the one who started this.

       So why didn't the ingrate call!

                                      * * * * * *

Thursday, October 19, 1993
8 p.m.

       Day nine since the dreadful morning. Dana returned to her
apartment after a late night grading papers. She dragged. The
new routine had been like a vacation in the beginning. It had
quickly lost its appeal, however. Tonight she felt no spark in
the teaching or in her. Her apartment was neat, clean, orderly
and sterile. Dull. Her life was dull. She had worked late but
not nearly late enough. Not as late as she often worked with
Mulder when they found themselves inhaling Chinese food at ten
in the evening after both realized that they had forgotten to
eat since breakfast. Tonight Dana didn't even feel hungry though
she knew she had to eat.

       She was staring at the limited selection in her
refrigerator when she remembered the three pieces of leftover
pizza from Dr. Everett's impromptu party, which she'd frozen.
The smell as they thawed and warmed in her microwave brought
back pleasant memories. With a can of soda she managed to find
in the back of her refrigerator and the pizza, Dana settled back
to watch a video of a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation which
she'd taped months before but never had time to view.

       Soda, pizza and decent mind candy... but Dana found it
impossible to concentrate. The soda was flat, the pizza soft and
slightly freezer-burned, and the people in the story had
problems that made hers seem depressingly trivial by comparison.
The soda went down the sink, the pizza in the trash and the tape
back on the pile with the others she'd never watched. Unable to
think of anything better to do, she stripped off her clothes and
crawled into bed.
 

       Somewhere too close to her ear and too early, a phone rang.
Dana moaned and groped for the receiver on the night stand, not
bothering to turn on the light or even to open her eyes for that
matter. She didn't need to see to know that it was still dark
and that she had had less than three hours of sleep. Her REM
cycle had a habit of letting her know when it had been rudely
interrupted. Waking was harder than she remembered. She really
must be out of practice. During med school she'd been able to
wake in the middle of the night and actually be able to function
within seconds. If this was an automated phone solicitation,
someone was going to die.

       Fumbling with the receiver, Dana muttered something totally
unrecognizable.

       "Agent Scully?" a voice on the other end of the line asked.
 

       Dana was instantly awake. She didn't recognize the voice
immediately, but this was obviously work related. "Yes? This is
Agent Scully."

       "Walter Skinner."

       Most of the muscles in Dana's body went rigid. Skinner was
calling her at - Dana stared at the clock showing it was not yet
one a.m. Suddenly she felt deathly cold. Mulder? Why else would
they be calling her? Had something happened to Mulder? No,
couldn't be.  He was sitting in a nice, safe office writing a
profile, not out on a raid or a stakeout.

       Involuntarily huddling deeper under the covers as if that
could alleviate her chill, Dana managed to ask, "What can I do
for you, sir?"

       "There's been another incident. The body was found just a
couple of hours ago."

       Dana tried to swallow. 'A couple of hours'? No wonder she
hadn't heard. "The Hunter's M.O.?"

       "How did you guess."

       That makes eight, Dana thought. Just what they all needed
to improve the mood around the office. For they all felt it,
even at the Academy. The hottest cases always made good jumping
off points for almost any classroom work. The pressure Mulder
must be feeling Dana didn't even want to think about.

       "I'm sorry to hear that, sir."

       "Not half as sorry as the unit is. We need an autopsy now.
I have Blevins's okay to ask for your assistance."

       'To ask for your assistance.' That was how he had put it.
So this was a request, not an order, and there was only one
reason why they should be so solicitous.

       "What about Mulder?"

       "We have no choice. Every other M.E. associated with this
case has been pulling double duty as it is." A pause. Skinner
did not sound happy. He clearly did not like having to bring her
in and countermand one of his own decisions. "Word has it that
you're very good."

       Word from whom? Dana wondered, and why the flattery? Did he
think she would refuse? Did they think that she would let the
fact that Mulder's considerable nose might get bent out of joint
deter her? Associate Director Skinner didn't know Dana Scully
very well, not yet anyway.

       "He'll find out," she warned.

       "Then he'll have to deal with that, won't he?"

       A few minutes later after they had discussed details, Dana
slipped out of bed into the cool room and rapidly began to
dress. There was no rush, the dead would wait, they always
waited, but this new victim bothered her - that and Mulder's
reaction to it. She couldn't get out of her mind the expression
in Mulder's eyes as he had risen from his brief examination of
the body of the beast woman as she lay in the blood-splattered
leaves. Something very much like betrayal. Mulder hated to lose.
This would be a similar blow. No, this one would be worse. He
had been given time to stop it and he had failed. This was the
second death that had occurred since Mulder had been pulled onto
the case so he had failed not just once but twice. If one
counted the poor 'devil', which Mulder would, that made three
deaths in just ten days laid out at his door.

                                    * * * * * * * *

Quantico
Friday, October 20, 1993
3 a.m.

       Driving to Quantico at an hour of the morning before even
the earliest commuters had ventured out, gave Dana the oddest
feeling. It was like flying through a wilderness of shining
black asphalt and glaringly bright white arc lamps. No traffic
at all. The trip would almost have been enjoyable, except for
its purpose. The Army's morgue was not the place Dana would have
chosen to perform the autopsy, but the District officials had
begged. Anything to divert the hordes of reporters for at least
a little while.

       Everything was ready in the great, echoing room by the time
she arrived. As she reverently drew back the sheet from the
Hunter's latest victim, Dana was struck by how quiet it was.
Morgues were usually quiet places but not like this silence
which stretched for the entire building and most of the grounds.
The body was that of a well-built male with the salt and pepper
hair of late middle age. In life he must have been an handsome
man.

       Dana stood for a second in silent prayer as she always did
before she beginning her examination. Today, however, her
meditation had more form than substance. She found herself
listening for footsteps. No matter how hard she tried, however,
she couldn't coax any from the silence. Where was Mulder? She
expected him. He did a poor job of hiding how squeamish he could
get during her autopsies, but he could usually be found hovering
somewhere nearby.

       She had just started recording her external observations
when she heard the sound of the electronic tumblers in the outer
door lock, then the sound of two people approaching.

       "Dr. Scully? I have a visitor for you."

       Even though her stomach clenched with some apprehension
over how awkward it would be meeting again after this last tense
week, Dana's eyes lighted over the edge of her mask. "About
time, Mulder," she grumbled under her breath.

       But the man shown into the room by the security guard was
not Mulder. Dana's empty stomach unclenched so rapidly that she
felt slightly nauseous. She found herself staring at a broad-
shouldered, thick-set man of about her father's age with
thinning hair and a strong odor of cigars about his rumpled
suit.

       "Sorry to be late. Car wouldn't start," the man apologized.
He held out a hand, realized she was gloved and pulled it back
with some embarrassment. "Bill Hennessy, but everyone calls me
Bull."

       Looking at the thickness of his neck, Dana could imagine
why. His nose was also quite distinctive. The man probably boxed
in his youth and lost often.

       "Dana Scully."

       "So The Skin informs me."

       "I take it you're on this case?" She inclined her head
towards the body.

       "If he's one of that bastard's new prizes, yeah, I am. From
the on-site examination we're almost sure he is."

       Dana found herself asking a little lamely. "Are you the
only one coming from the team?"

       "The only one who hasn't been up for the last three nights
running."

       Then Mulder wasn't coming. The sickness rolled around a
little more in Dana's stomach. Blanking her mind of everything
but the job, always relieved the sensation. So did adding a
little anger to the mix. How had she ever allowed what Fox
Mulder said or didn't say, or what Mulder did or didn't do, get
so under her skin?

       "Any background you want to give me before I get started?"
she asked her only companion for the night - her only companion
other than the poor corpse.

       "Not at this time," Bull rumbled matter-of-factly. An old
hand at this sort of thing, he had come supplied with an extra
large coffee and a bag of donuts from the '7-11', the all
pervasive local convenience store chain. He'd already slid a
spare chair over by the door. He'd be close enough to hear her
comments intended for the official recorder, but not too close.
He'd also be within easy reach of the wall phone.

       "You're not going to tell me anything?" Dana asked.
"Nothing about what I should be looking for? Nothing about the
other victims? All I know about this case is what I've read in
the papers."

       "Sorry, but that's the way they want it. A clean slate.
Just do the most thorough job you've ever done in your career.
We need a break. Bad."

       Dana turned back to the table and stared down at this
meaningless death. It was going to be a long night. A clean
slate? That had an empty sound. As empty as Mulder's not
bothering to take the time to come down to see her.

       No more thinking about Mulder, Dana decided. He was
probably off somewhere sulking because his divine wishes had
been overruled and she'd been brought in after all. Ungrateful,
stubborn man! With respect, Dana removed the sheet from the
victim which had covered him from midchest down. Dana had
already steeled herself for what she might find under the sheet.
The newspaper reports did not make for pleasant bedtime reading.
Even without them, she would have been warned by the sheer
powder-white of the victim's skin. There was a harsh violent
slice through the skin from just below the xiphoid process at
the end of the sternum to the crotch. At least her work would be
abbreviated. The abdominal cavity was completely empty. Not only
empty but nearly pristine.

       Almost as an after thought, Dana noticed a pale bruise on
the side of the victim's chest wall, below and to the left of
the heart. She would look at that more closely later. Unbidden,
the memory of other injury on another man's ribcage came to
mind. It had been a ten days. She wondered who Mulder had gotten
to change his bandages?

                                      * * * * * *

       Dana finished recording her external examination. Out of
the corner of her eye she had been aware of Bull listening
intently. She caught the nods and the frowns and found herself
following up and double checking if a particular observation
seemed to bother or excite him. It was all she had to go by.

       When she paused to retrieve her instruments, Bull reached
up for the phone. Dana took her time so she could overhear. The
call was not to Mulder but concerned him.

       "No, I haven't told Mulder yet.... " Bull's voice grumbled
defensively. "Well, he says he's going to finish the next go
round of the profile tonight and I didn't want to break his -
concentration.... Yeah, I know he'll be pissed if he doesn't get
all the information but this looks so cut and dried... Okay,
okay, already, I'll call him."

       So, Mulder didn't even know about this new victim yet, and
didn't know about her. Whether that was good or bad, Dana didn't
know, but under the circumstances she certainly couldn't blame
him anymore for his absence. Why did that sooth a multitude of
hurts? Of course, it also meant that the storm was yet to come.

       Bull punched in a new number, supposedly a call to Mulder.
Dana stood poised over the body, a scalpel in her hand. She
pretended to be distracted by something about the victim's head.

       The phone must have rung for a LONG time before Bull
muttered. "Come on, Spook,  you bastard, pick up the phone. I'm
not doing this for my.... Mulder? .... Yeah, Bull... look sorry
to disturb you but the Hunter's done another one... When? Found
11:45 this evening. Rock Creek Park near the zoo..." A long
pause, Bull sputtering towards the end trying to get a word in.
"Hey... Hey...  cool down, you shit, don't yell at me... I'm
only the messenger boy here... Yeah, well, I'm here with the
M.E. now. It's almost done. Yeah, it's our boy. I'm sure... Who?
I don't know, but she's young, she's short, she's cute and she
came highly regarded... Yeah, from the Skin himself... Is she
who? How should I remember? I'm awful with names." The big man
went flipping vainly though the little notebook he carried. "All
right, all right, already I'll ask." Putting his hand over the
mouth piece, Bull raised his voice, "He wants to know if you're
'Scully'."

       Dana nodded, smiling to herself as she shaved a part of the
skull. With a description like that no wonder Mulder had
guessed. Not that many young, short, female M.E.s on the East
Coast. The cute part she could have done without, though. She
certainly doubted that Mulder would have noticed anyway. He
barely noticed she was female, but he couldn't help but notice
she was short.

       "So you're going to take her word for the report...  you
don't want her at the briefing... I don't know if that's your
decision to make, Mulder. I think Benchley will want to drag her
in just like all the others..." A long pause. "Well, EXCUUUUSE
me for breathing, Mr. Oxford graduate Ph.D, but you set up the
procedures so we stick with them. She comes, *comprende*?"

       Bull swore as he hung up the phone. "Sorry for swearing but
our profilist is a little tense right now. He says he knows you.
Funny, he doesn't think it necessary that you come to the
briefing tomorrow, but our M.E.'s always do. In the past
Mulder's always insisted on it so he can grill you people with
a lot of creepy questions."

       Scully felt the anger beginning to rise again. Damn him
anyway for still trying to keep her out of this. "Mulder will
get over it," she said, with more ice than she intended.

       A baffled look came over Bull's face. "I'm glad you think
so. I don't like to be on the losing end of that temper unless
I need to be. Do you know what else is odd? Under most
circumstances old Spook would be down here in about fifteen
minutes to breathe down your neck. He didn't seem eager to do
that this time, did he? Not that Benchley would let him." Bull
pulled a sugar donut out his paper sack. "I think Benchley's got
our pet psycho on a chain until the profile's done."

       Dana felt a chill run down her back which had nothing to do
with the cold body laid out before her.

                                    * * * * * * * *

       It was a special case and Dana took extra care. She needed
to be right on this, absolutely right. She'd show Mulder just
how much of a mistake it had been to ship her off to Quantico.
By the time the body was shelved and the report of the gross
anatomical findings had been drafted and filed, the first lab
results began to filter in. Tired as she was, Dana stayed. So
did Bull, though he'd found the doctor's lounge and was sawing
some significantly noisy Z's. Dana finally nudged the VCS
representative awake at ten-fifteen. Time to head back into the
city for their meeting with the rest of team at eleven.

       When Bull's car failed to start again, Dana drove them
both. This suited Bull well because that meant he could read her
report as she drove which he should have done hours before.
There had been almost a guilty look in his eye when she'd nudged
him awake. Dana got the impression that no one on the team was
expected to have the time for sleep.

       Under normal circumstances Dana couldn't say that she would
be looking forward to this briefing. A roomful of cranky,
testosterone-laden males all stressed-out from having played
King of the Hill all week without anyone coming out on top? "I
can hardly wait," Dana sighed inaudibly as she drove up
Interstate 395 towards downtown D.C.. Part of her, however, was
eager to strut her stuff. The examination of the body had
provided a lot of data but without the files on the other
victims they were just random facts about one particular death.
Once she had access to the background materials, however... Dana
began to see the intrigue surrounding the investigation of those
rare creatures, the serial killer.

       Sitting beside her, muttering, smiling, moaning, and
occasionally slapping his knee as he read her draft and the lab
findings, Bull was doing a good job of raising Dana's own
particular level of stress. The hardest part was wondering
whether what she had found was going to be of any use to a
certain someone.

Friday, 10:55 a.m.

       Dana had not been in the downtown VCS annex often. Most of
the teams Dana had worked with in the past either accepted the
lab and M.E. reports without comment or, if they had questions,
met her at the morgue or called her on the phone with additional
questions. The rather well-worn and slovenly appearance to the
desks and the drab army-green of the general decor definitely
stamped this as a male-dominated sanctum. Dana knew women had
entered its ranks but it was assumed that those who did had
better be prepared to be treated just as crudely as any of the
'boys'. At least it was a first step. Dana knew all about hidden
hoops and glass ceilings. She had faced similar problems in
forensics. Enlightenment would come in time.

       As they neared the conference room, Bull's beeper chirped.
He glanced at the tiny digital readout and swore. "Damn, it's
Betty. She probably wants to make sure I haven't died." The big
man frowned at the closed double doors that marked what had been
the