By Susan Esty (AKA Windsinger)
Windsinger@aol.com

11/96

Synopsis: A 'Field Where I Died' vignette. (Yes, ANOTHER one and
though there will be similarities with some of the others - of
which there are about two dozen I'm told - I think there is
something different here.) Angst, metaphysics and - eventually -
 shameless romance.

Disclaimer: No, the characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully do
not belong to me but to themselves and Ten Thirteen Productions.
(But I can dream, can't I?)

Author's notes: I clearly acknowledge that the idea of the time
discrepancies for Cancerman and Sidney are not mine but I got
the idea from some posts on the AOL message boards. Sorry, I did
not record the authors of those posts but it was very observant
of you both. The rest is from my warped imagination. If there
are similarities with other writers, well, we are all starting
with the same material and we all want a happy ending to this
very upsetting episode. Of course, this is a Windsinger story so
happiness is not so easily bought.<g>

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A HOUSE DIVIDED
by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@AOL.com)

Chapter 1

     "Agent Scully?"

     Dana Scully turned from the vision of the sun's last rays
washing golden over the tufted grass of the field. She did not
need to keep the distant tall figure in view. He would still be
there swaying with bent head near the old gnarled tree when she
had finished with whoever sought her attention.

     Agent Peter Henry, her contact with the ATF Philadelphia
office, was striding towards her from the house. He was a big
man, an Ex-Navy SEAL but that didn't protect him from looking
worn, bruised, and slightly in shock. It would take weeks for
the lines of strain and defeat to leave the faces and bodies of
the officers and agents who had served here. They had stood fast
and followed the rules and had still lost more horribly than any
of them could have possibly imagined. Just as well that Mulder
had disappeared after he had silently watched the county
coroner's men bear Melissa's body away. Afterwards, Dana had
made no move to prevent her friend from stumbling towards the
lighted window and escaping into the field. The other agents
there had not needed to have their professional detachment
further challenged by Mulder's haunted and haunting presence.

     Henry gestured towards the figure standing in the field
beyond.  "Agent Mulder needs to come in for debriefing."
 
     "It can wait till tomorrow," Dana stated flatly.
 
     Henry frowned. "He shouldn't. We were right behind him and
saw about as much as he did, but he was first on the scene so
naturally they want -"

     "He'll come!" Dana snapped. "But tomorrow. He needs
tonight. He's been hit hard by this."

     Yes, like another damn truck, Dana thought angrily as the
ATF representative retreated to round up the remaining members
of his clean up team. Even the crew still combing for the bunker
were getting ready to close up and secure for the rapidly
approaching night.
 
     Dana wondered why was she so angry at Mulder. Was it his
fault that he was so damn empathic that weird things seemed to
fall out of the sky at his feet begging for him to pay attention
to them? From the very beginning of this case she had sensed
that this was the absolutely wrong place for him to be. Why
hadn't she had faith in her own intuition and kept him out of
this?

     "Because it wouldn't have done any good," her logic told
her. She never could have held him. After more than three years
she certainly should know that.

     But why for once couldn't he have been able to maintain
some distance?

     Because he was Mulder. Because that was what made him what
he was.

     Now it was too late. What she had feared for more than two
years now had come to pass: He had been caught by the very
truths he had pursued with such child-like enthusiasm. What his
future, hers, would be like after this... Dana suppressed a
shudder by starting off across the field towards him.

     Enough!

     It wasn't until she had begun walking that Dana realized
how tired she was. As the first physician on site, the grim task
of documenting the deaths had fallen upon her. Luckily, she had
sufficient help. One body would have been too many. There had
been... Dana realized in horror that she had lost count. The
main worship room where Melissa had died had been bad enough.
The view of the children's quarters would torment her nights on
and off till the end of her days.

     The Employee Assistance Office's staff psychologists would
be kept busy for months after this debacle.

     Dana had made no attempt to keep her passage silent but
still Mulder gave no sign that he had heard her approach. He was
sitting for the first time in hours. He probably hadn't even
noticed when his legs had given way. The photos were no longer
in his hands. There was no need really. Dana could practically
see their images burning perfectly duplicated behind his eyes.

     She sat beside him feeling the warmth of his body across
the evening's chill air even though only her coat touched his
arm. His head was lifted towards the sunset, his face was drawn
down, the lids drooped, half closing his eyes. She waited for
him to speak first but sensed he was still far too far way for
that.

     "It's getting cold, Mulder," she told him. "We should
leave." No movement, no reaction. She couldn't tell for certain
if he even breathed. "We'll go back to the motel. Henry says we
can finish the formalities in the morning."

     The lids closed wearily the rest of the way down.

     "Mulder, I want to apologize. It was unfair what I said -
that you were only responsible for yourself. I know that's not
the way you're put together. It may seem that way sometimes to
those of us outside but I know it isn't true."

     The broad shoulders slumped a little further.

     Dana took a long breathe and stared with him up at the
sunset.

     "As I've told you before, I went to a parochial grade
school," she began softly. "When I was in third grade, or maybe
it was the fifth I can't remember, the priest gave us a little
mini-sermon in our classroom one day. He said that if God gave
us a vocation for the priesthood, or in my case to become a nun,
that that was what we were meant to be. He told us we would
never be happy in this life if we didn't follow God's plan."
Dana swallowed and shifted uncomfortably. "They talked a lot
about vocations in those days. Being married was clearly second
best. For a woman to have a career and perhaps to choose not to
have children at all was unthinkable even in those enlightened
days. They drilled and drilled this vocation idea into us -
maybe they have a quota they have to fill or something. Children
are so impressionable. I felt that for certain that I had one of
those vocations, that God meant for me to enter the religious
life. But I didn't want to. It terrified me. To this day I don't
know how I could be so certain that this was what 'He' wanted
and just as certainly knew that that was not what 'I' wanted."

     The cold was creeping up into their limbs from the damp
ground but neither moved to relieve chilled muscles.

     "There was a church on the school grounds. Our Lady of
Sorrows. A beautiful stone church, dark and creepy with vaulted
ceilings and low stone arches and high pointed windows full of
dark stained glass. Mary's side alter was like a little grotto.
During the day, the church was dark and full the red and blue
light from the stained glass. The statue was lit only by the
light coming from a rack of those little red votive candles. I
went there during recess for weeks. I knelt and I cried. I cried
real tears and I prayed over and over again for God to release
me. I wanted to have a happy life but I didn't want to be a nun.
There was too much that I wanted to do. I didn't know what yet,
nothing specific, but I knew that being a nun would be like
being in prison. I was, in a word, miserable but I didn't
breathe a word to anyone, not to my parents, not to my teachers,
not to my friends and certainly not to the nuns."

     "Six months later, when the anxiety had reduced to just
this dull ache that ever seemed to go away, one of the other
students, a boy, questioned the priest further about this. 'You
mean I can NEVER be happy if I don't become a priest?' The
priest hemmed and hawed a little. 'Well, happy, yes, I suppose.
But not AS happy.' I was never so relieved. In literary terms
one would say that I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted
from my shoulders. But my relief really did feel that way. I
didn't care if I never reached the rapture that nuns were said
to find in their Christ. My life was not over. I could go on. I
had choices again."

     Dana sat back surprised at how tense she had become as she
talked. In her entire life, she had never told anyone about this
incident before. Why after all this time did the memories still
have such an affect? As can happen with childhood traumas, she
thought about the incident often over the years. Finding herself
lonely and a bit estranged from the silliness of other girls her
age, she had wondered whether the priest's first sermon had not
been the correct one and she was somehow being punished. Just
superstition she knew now, but every lonely year or so she still
remembered and within her she could feel this dull ache of
doubt.

     As she spoke, Dana had fixed her eyes upon the sunset
horizon just as Mulder did. Now she became aware that he had
turned his head towards her and had actually managed to focus
his sad hazel eyes.

     "That's a really cheerful story, Scully," came his voice
rough with disuse. "Does it have a point?"

     Dana stared unwaveringly into his eyes. "That no one, not
even God, has the right to lay that kind of a burden upon a
young child. And not on any adult either."

     He attempted to wet his dry lips but without much success.
"Are you afraid that that's what I'm thinking: That I'll never
find happiness now?"

     "You tell me, Mulder."

     A pause. A long one. "Honestly, Scully? I don't know.
There's just so much... It just goes round and round in my
head." He put a hand to his chest. "And what I feel... what I've
felt since I came to this place it's like nothing..."

     Dana could feel him trembling and yet in his words she
found hope. He had doubts though those doubts had stripped him
bare. She could almost see him bleeding inside.

     "The regression session..." she began. "You know how
inaccurate those can be. Dreams and hidden emotions can come out
as visions, as truths. The suppressed memory studies on children
have proved that. You spoke of Cancerman being a Nazi in the
late thirties or early forties. He's sixty-five or so now. He
would have had to have been a boy of five or ten. Not possible.
And Sidney... Melissa's other persona... sounded and acted
exactly like a elderly New York Jewish man who, by 'his' own
admission lived at the time of Truman."

     Amazing, Mulder had not turned her off. By his posture it
was clear that he had thought of these things also. Now his
glowering brows lifted and the smallest smile, a smile and yet
full of pain, came to his lips. "You can't see Sidney as husband
material for me, eh?"

     Dana laid one hand softly on his knee. "From what I
gathered from listening to 'him', not a chance. What it comes
down to, Mulder, is that you accept it all or it's all suspect."

     His head dropped till he was looking into his empty hands
as they lay limp and open in his lap. "Then why not go the extra
mile, Scully?" he asked his voice starting mild enough but an
edge creeping into it more and more as he talked. "Why don't we
go really far a field. Ephesian supposedly had attractive
paranormal powers, charismatic to put it mildly, as well as an
absolute belief in reincarnation. We just scratched the surface
in that part of the investigation."

     Dana stared at him. "Are you suggesting that he might have
'planted' those histories in your mind?" Her eyes grew wide,
considering. "He did tell us at our first meeting that we were
expected. Could all of that have been just to distract us from
uncovering his real purpose?"

     Mulder's head jerked up angrily. "Scully, I wasn't being
serious. How can you refuse to believe ME, what I feel, and yet
consider that Ephesian is capable of that kind of power? That
would mean he used me to delay our realizing his true plans.
Which would make me partially responsible for -" His expression
changed as though he were suddenly looking into the deepest pit
of hell.

     With regret Dana realized what she had stumbled into.
Mulder's experience with the Pusher was one he buried as deep as
he possibly could considering the damned efficiency of his
memory. "No, Mulder, I didn't mean that at all. If you weren't
for you... Mulder, you put your own life in danger when you ran
into that house. I thought for certain that you were going to
get yourself shot. By doing so you saved the lives of ten
children. Ten! Infants they had not had time to administer their
cyanide cocktail to. Everyone else would have waited until they
were sure it was safe. But you..."

     He was up, moving away from her. He fought her hands when
she sought to hold him but finally accepted her shoulder to lean
on for otherwise he would have fallen somewhere in the wet
grass.

     Words barely recognizable struggled out of him."I knew! I
could have stopped it! I should have went to Skinner sooner."

     "We are never soon enough, Mulder, never wise enough, never
strong enough. We can only do the best we can." She sought for
one of his hand to squeeze it and was appalled when she touched
it. He was limp with exhaustion. His hand was like ice. Like
before in the room when the thrall of the hypnosis was
disintegrating about him.

     "Mulder, at the end of the session when I asked where the
other bunkers were, do you remember what you said?"

     His head moved and she took that as a 'no' though that was
far from certain. "You said you were too tired. It was all very
sudden, as if here was something which your unconscious didn't
dare try to answer -"

     "- Scully!"

     She pushed aside his anguished protest because she had to
make him hear. "Mulder, Sullivan Biddle would have known the
answer, so you couldn't say you didn't know, nor could you guess
wrong, because then we would have had proof that it was all a
lie - "

     "- Scully!" He had her in a painful grip by the arms, his
cold fingers threatening to bruise her skin even through the
fabric of her coat. When she looked into his eyes she saw a soul
in ruins, a mind shredded and lying exposed like a wound.
"Scully, why can't you believe? I FOUND the first bunker! I knew
my own name, I knew Sarah's!"
 
     He wrenched himself from her and started in jerky uncertain
steps towards the house again fleeing that field, the ghostly
pain in his chest.

     For the hundredth time that afternoon he asked himself the
same questions Scully had asked. Why hadn't he been able to
speak? Why? With the proof of the illegal weapons they could
have arrested Ephesian. ALL this death could have been
prevented. Could he and Scully both be right in this instance?
What if Ephesian had blocked his remembering this one item
because as Mulder has said at the time, Ephesian knew they could
never win a battle with guns and yet he was determined to win...
 

     Mulder felt her small, strong body at this side supporting
him. He had fallen to his knees and hadn't even noticed. How he
wished he could tell her. Wished he could close his eyes and see
those bunkers. They'd be lead-lined he knew because that was the
metal the rebels would have been able to work easily and
otherwise the FBI metal detectors would have found them within
hours. Even with Ephesian gone he couldn't see the place,
however, because Melissa was also gone and what had been was
dying within him. With her passing that incredible connection,
the miracle of her soul that had reached out and called to his,
was falling to small, sharp pieces.

     He, who had for such a brief, incredible time had felt
complete, knew now more than ever what is was to be alone.

                          **********

     Mulder made no protest when she took him back to his room
at the motel. He allowed her to take off his shoes, belt and
shirt. He pulled down his own slacks with numb fingers and let
her lower him onto the mattress before she left to find some
food. He couldn't lie there long, however, not with all the
silent screaming going on in his head.

     When she returned a half hour later he was standing
silently by the window. He wasn't angry just so tired in mind
and body that he didn't have the strength to fight any more. Her
eyes told him that she wasn't happy to find him up, but the
anger that had surfaced as they argued had faded for her as
well. They had both stated their positions with claws
unsheathed, taking no prisoners. That was their way. This time
had just been more painful than most. As always, the tension had
slipped away as soon as both realized that there was no way one
could ever convince the other. Besides, it didn't matter. Their
friendship was what mattered. Dana placed a hand on his bare
arm.

     "Mulder, eat. If you won't eat, at least get back under the
covers before you make yourself sick." Dana pulled up the
blankets and tucked them around him because she knew he was a
restless sleeper. He did not speak except through his eyes which
thanked her for yet again one more of the hundreds of similar
kindnesses she had shown him throughout the endless years.
 
     She made a motion to leave, then seeing that his eyes
weren't closing, nor about to, she knelt down beside his bed. "I
feel like I'm bringing coals to Newcastle here, Mulder, but I
have to say this because this time I think YOU'RE the one who
needs to hear it: Don't you even think about closing any doors.
What you felt and heard and remembered - or thought you felt,
heard or remembered - whatever it was I believe there is a grain
of truth somewhere. Even if I'm not about to embrace your
explanation entirely, I've worked with the X-Files long enough
to know than anything is possible. The only part of this I am
certain of is that the way you are thinking is only going to
make you unhappy."

     His response was weak and brittle. "I've gone way past
unhappy this time, Scully."

     She stroked his hair pausing only for a moment when she
realized that it was a gesture a parent might use to comfort a
child. Her hand drew away from him as though his skin burned
her. Why should she be surprised? Dana often felt centuries
older than this impossible, incredible man. At the same time
that she took pride in his accomplishments, she wanted more than
anything just to keep him safe. Wasn't that the dilemma of every
parent or mentor? The look in his eyes showed that the same
thought had occurred to him.

     "No, oh no, Mulder!" Dana began raising her hands in mock
defense. "Now you've got me doing it. Are we going to live the
rest of our lives second guessing every word and every gesture?
Mulder, I can't live like that. Neither can you and stay sane.
No one is going to tell me what to do or who to love, not even
God and certainly not some memories of a past life of yours."

     "Not even God?" he asked incredulously, a little more life
sparking in him though his voice was still weak. "That's my
Scully. Go right to the top. Do you think I don't feel the same
way? Up until two days ago things happened to me but I always
felt my actions were my own. I ruled my life. Scully," he said
his voice dropping even further to a whisper, "I admit I thought
I would do anything to obtain proof of reincarnation, but I
never would have wished for this. Never." Dana felt his hand
close desperately around hers as if he were afraid she would
slip away. The distance between them was suddenly uncomfortably
close. "Scully, there's no ground under my feet any more."
 
     "That's because you're lying down," Dana quipped lamely.
"Mulder, we're both tired. You especially. Just don't label all
this as fact in your brain and then close down because it's too
painful to go on. Keep that twisted mind of yours open to all
those extreme possibilities of yours."

     All having been said, Dana turned off the light, opened the
connecting door and disappeared into her own room.

End of Chapter 1 of 2
 

From trevizo@utep.edu Tue Nov 26 23:27:30 1996
I did not write this. Please send all comments to the author at
(Windsinger@AOL.com).
           __________
          / __    __ \
         ( (__)  (__) )
--------[[[---------]]]-------------------------------------------------

A HOUSE DIVIDED - A 'Field Where I Died' Vignette (2/2)
by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)
11/96

Chapter 2

     For over an hour Dana tried to sleep but couldn't. She kept
thinking of him lying in there all alone in the dark, on this
night more than any other probably afraid of that dark. Dana
knew she was.

     How much of this could have been prevented if he hadn't
been so desperately alone and seeking some way to fill that
emptiness. She had held herself away from him over the years
because of the job and, yes, because he scared her sometimes as
he pursued his causes, his mind ready and open to absorb
anything no matter how fantastic. That was the part that scared
her, infuriated her and yet she had never met anyone so capable
of loving, so much in need of it, and yet had received so
little. He had walked into this so vulnerable. Now he was
paying.

     Served him right.

     No, she didn't mean that. She could never bear to see him
in pain. Even now, he shouldn't be left alone. Not completely
alone, anyway. Not tonight. And why shouldn't she be with him?
The possibility of their relationship deepening was gone forever
now. Now and forever he would always think of her fondly but
only as a friend or perhaps as an authority figure, a parent, a
mentor. One of the responsible ones.

     Yeah, that's me. Responsible, Dana sighed.
 
     Rising, she belted a robe over her pajamas and tred softly
into his room. He didn't seem to have moved. Maybe he was asleep
and then she noticed that his eyes were still open though far,
far away, glistening like wet stars in the dim light which
leaked in around the heavy drapes. The limp way he lay
frightened her. Kneeling by his bed again, she placed the pack
of her hand on his forehead, again as a mother - or a father or
a lover - might do. It seemed warmer than it should but maybe
that was only because her own hand was so cold. "I'm here,
Mulder. If you need me in the night, I'll be right here in the
next bed."

     He seemed so distant, even more than before, but then that
was to be expected. In sleep the barrier between life and death
was at its most fragile. Dana decided her decision to stay with
him had been the correct one.
 
     "Mulder, this is hard, now, I know, but I think you've just
uncovered more questions than answers. The time discrepancies,
Ephesian's possible influence, why you couldn't answer my last
question and talk about the bunker. You went searching for the
truth and you've gotten perhaps a little too close this time and
it's bitten you and the bite is hard and painful. But this is no
time to get gun shy. I want you, I need you, to get back up on
that windmill."

     She didn't think he had heard her but after she had
adjusted his blankets once again - not because they needed it
but because it gave her an excuse to touch him - and had crawled
into the empty double bed beside his, she heard a slight
movement, a sigh, a struggle to swallow before he could talk.
 
     "You're mixing your metaphors, Scully."

     "Go to sleep, Don Quixote."

     The last came softly but the words were still unmistakable.
"Night, Sancho."

     Dana started as that final name slammed painfully into her.
Sancho? Great, just great! Could just as easily have been Tonto.
"Night, Mulder," she managed to murmur more or less coherently
as her world lost its sun, its warmth and all its meaning.

                           ********

     The night was eternal. Mulder lay like a corpse and tried
to make his mind as blank as one. He tried not to hear the
muffled sounds from the bed beside his that went on and on
softly like the wind in winter trees before they finally died
away.

     He had been lying here trying to convince himself that the
smell of black powder in his nostrils was just the mustiness of
the motel blankets, that the sound outside in the night was the
booming of an empty tractor trailer on the steep grade of the
interstate and not the echoing blast of a cannon, that the
dampness on his face was tears and not the final trickling of
his blood.

     'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' Abraham
Lincoln said that about the nation more than a century before.
Within Mulder's mortal shell a civil war of his own raged. The
weight, the impossible weight, of the pain and the lives and the
deaths going on and on made it hard to breathe. In the silent
dark, his body floated warm under the blankets, his limbs lay
lifeless with exhaustion, his chest constricted with grief, the
future stretched out before him like a black loveless void. He
did not know if he even wanted to try to breathe any more.

     "I... miss... you!" Sarah's voice echoed over and over in
his mind. Within him a voice cried out, answering as it had for
more than two days now though Mulder had not always understood
the words. "No more, my love, than I miss you!"

     It was Sullivan Biddle who answered Sarah's impassioned
cries. Biddle who had possessed him, possessed him still, who in
his essence was like an identical twin to Fox Mulder but one
separated from birth. The same fundamental core but different
experiences, a different life. Like oil rising to the surface of
a pool Biddle had risen from the deepest part of him awakened by
the sight of the singular field in sunlight where he had
suffered, bled and died. Biddle had led him to the bunker,
Biddle had seductively stroked Melissa's hand in the examination
room and called her 'Sarah' not 'Melissa' as Mulder would have
done. Biddle cried for his lost life and would not let Mulder
rest.

     Who waited for Fox Mulder on the other side? No one. If he
died, Fox Mulder would cease to be. Biddle had been loved with
a love that spanned time. Biddle wanted to die again, and die
now! Biddle did not want to wait for the end of Fox Mulder's
life to have a chance to live again and find again the house
within which his lover dwelt.

     "I... miss...you!"

     An answering leap heavenward, that anguished, lonely cry.

     For Mulder only pain. Oh God! Jehovah! Great Spirit!
Mulder's hands clutched convulsively at his chest as if that
alone could halt Biddle's desperate flight. But Biddle was
winning. Mulder felt himself falling, breaking, dying. No one
could live who was so broken inside. So this was what happened
when one died of a broken heart. There would be no blood that a
surgeon could ever find.

     "Let him go," whispered a voice.

     Confused, startled, Mulder forced his eyes open. Trying to
see the form bending over him was like looking through milk, but
the voice he remembered, a beloved voice from a long, long, long
time before when he had been ill and nearly died very young.

     "Mama."

     "You remember." A gentle hand came around behind his neck
as if lifting his head to give him water. "You always were the
strangest child. Your curiosity, your will, were always too big
for the tiny world in which you were born. Always looking at the
sky. This suits you better."

     The pain was like a fire burning inside. "I'm dying."

     "No, no you're not."

     "He wants to go."

     "So let him. Yes, he is, was, a part of you, but already
you feel that you are separate and so it is time. Plato, he
understood."

     Mulder tried to move his hand, but it was too heavy. His
body was too heavy. "He wrote about it in The Republic," he
recalled wearily and in wonder. "This is how new souls are born,
isn't it?"

     "Yes, and like birth, a painful process, but necessary,"
said the old woman kindly. "Every soul has split a hundred
times, a thousand throughout history but, as a tree is pruned to
bear fruit, it does not weaken the stock. What we chose to do in
life does that."

     Hope battled with fear within him. Maybe he wouldn't die
after all. "But what will I be without him?"

     The old woman sighed. "Empty, at first. Though you have
probably felt empty for a long time. It is not a sudden
process."

     Empty. Life did not seem much better than death at that
moment. So alone. Something almost alive moved painfully within
his chest like a caged animal desperate to be free.

     "What's wrong, my darling?" the woman whispered near him as
a concerned hand brushed the hair from his eyes.
 
     "I'm afraid."

     "Of course you are, but listen to your heart," coached the
old woman. "Search beyond Biddle. What you feel speaks truly. No
one is ever truly alone. Even without him you will still be
bonded to many. Not the same, I know, for all bonds, but the
One, are meant to shift and change. Only the great bond, the
love bond, is as steady and timeless as a mountain and as
beautiful and indescribable as a sunset. When he leaves that one
will be broken completely. It's that emptiness which you feel
already. In the fullness of time you will bind with another,
until then you must live without."

     One name came to mind, one face to his mind. Slowly, with
effort, he turned his head on the pillow. She was there just a
few feet away sleeping, the tears drying on her face. His soul
ached to look at her. His last words to her had been so cruel.

     "Do you want her?" the soft voice asked.

     He realized with awe that the question she asked had an
answer.

     "I do. But she's yours, isn't she," he whispered. "If you
were my mother and she my father, then you were her wife. Is
that what you've come to tell me - that I can't have her?"

     "No," said the woman with a smile, "just the opposite. When
Scully lay dying two years ago we split her you and I. I was the
still water, the pond, the quiet she sought to heal the hurts
done to her during her abduction. You called her from the other
side. She is, therefore, like you, unbound, lacking, what you
might call, half her soul."

     A eagerness, a hope surged through him. Biddle responded,
growling unhappily, furious to break free and be gone. The pain
clamped shut Mulder's mind. Only one thought remained: On the
other side of this pain, he would be free. Free to hunt and
seek, to win and bind again in as joyful, as triumphant a coming
together as he knew Sarah and Sullivan would have.

     "Hold!" his guide cautioned. "That it will be Scully for
you and you for her is not in any way assured. There are always
many at a time unbonded. Millions. Some souls live many lives
before they can find their One. You and Scully are connected
already in one of the strongest bonds there is but it is not the
same as the one your soul seeks now to be fulfilled. Our
connections to others souls do shift and change. Sometimes for
one of these to transform and become the great bond is as simple
a thing as a key fitting into a lock. At other times the old
bond must be shattered completely before it can be rebuilt in a
new way."

     Gazing upon Scully, remembering all they had already
shared, and all they had fought about, Mulder thought that
perhaps the hunting would not be so time consuming a task but
the winning might take a lifetime, maybe two. "Which will it be
for us?"

     The old woman replied sadly. "Alas, even if it is destined
that you two make that next and greatest step, I do not have the
knowledge of how it will happen. I do not even know my own
future. My Scully was 'born' again last week. I will be 'born'
again very shortly. How we will find each other in our new
lives, who knows? I hope we will but we may not for many lives.
It's possible, in fact very common, to marry in the world to one
to whom we have no bonds at all. It's important in fact. That's
how new bonds are formed. It's not the end of the world. In fact
it's the beginning."

     He was too tired and he hurt too much. It all whirled about
him. "It's all chaos."

     She laughed gently at the dismay on his face. "No more than
life in your 'real' world. Think of it as natural selection of
a sort which you were never meant to know even existed. You may
bind with someone utterly new and through her be bound to
countless thousands you never would have known otherwise. Then
again you may bind with she who has been within your reach since
eternity. You've been given a gift - though you may call it a
curse - to understand how these things happen. It does not mean
your life or your choices will be simple. Nothing is
predetermined. That's what you wanted, isn't it? It is your free
will which you thought you had lost and mourned for above all
else." The old woman rose as softly as ghost and as softly
touched the breath of a kiss on his forehead.

     "I must leave now. You must go though the separation alone.
Do not dismay. The pain will pass and fade into dream with time.
Over all, you must strive to forget all of this. All this
bonding of souls goes on behind the scenes. Your real work is in
the world and it is from the choices you make there that real
happiness springs. Concentrate on that and take heart that where
there is love and respect and trust all things are possible."

     And then she was gone and all was again as it had been. The
room was dark and silent except for the distant discordant
traffic. Temporarily, he had lain out of time as if encased in
amber.

     The pain roared back.

     Damn you! Damn you! he screamed in his mind. If you want to
go, Go!

     But still the fear. Who would be there to catch Fox Mulder
when he fell? And in answer he felt the hands of the mothers and
fathers, sisters and brothers Fox Mulder would never know. Yes,
and sons and daughters, too, but above all Scully, who was here
not only in this life but had been there for him in all of his
others. Scully! He forced his head again to move, to look upon
her who had cried herself to sleep for his sake. He reached for
her as surely as if he had been able to move.

     Scully, I'm not ready to go. I want to stay.

     "No!" Sobbed a woman's voice in a soft Southern accent.
"No, Love, to me! To me!"

     Something ripped final and forever deep inside. A searing
agony.

     Desperately, Mulder forced his eyes open to keep the small
woman in the bed beyond in his sight, afraid that if he blinked
he would never see her again in this lifetime. For an eternity
the vision of her small huddled form as it lay wrapped in her
own pain became indistinct, unclear, as if the darkened room was
not just another nondescript room in a third-rate motel like a
thousand others but a field in mottled sunlight.
 
     He split in two with an agony that was like the bullet of
love that had pierced his shoulder. The vision of the field
melted like an old photograph in fire and only she remained.
With the greatest effort of will of his life he released his
grasping hands. A fragile fabric he had been holding in like the
essence of life itself seemed to come apart in his hands and
wisps of it fled between his fingers, into the darkness of the
room, out into the night and beyond crying in joyful reunion.

     And somewhere far away the cry was answered.
 

     After the longest moment during which it seemed he never
breathe again, Mulder did, but brokenly. The effort was not
without its cost in pain but he breathed. As a shudder undulated
throughout the length of his long body, his arms fell back
limply at this sides  The vision of her shining hair, the curve
of her cheek dimmed, dimmed before his exhausted eyes as he sank
into a deep, healing sleep.
                           ********

     As morning drifted into the room, Mulder woke to find Dana
dressed and sitting opposite him on the other bed. She must have
watched him wake. The dreams which he suspected had not all been
dreams had left him a little light-headed, but as long as she
was near there would be no wandering. He would always be home.
She handed him a glass of water which he took and drank
gratefully.

     "You had a slight fever last night," she told him in her
simple matter-of-fact Scully way, "but it seems gone now. You
look a lot better. Feel better?"

     "I'm fine," he said automatically and then reaching inside
he found, amazingly, that he was. He felt the way one does when
one wakes from a long illness - tender, a little sore like the
ache from little used muscles, but marvelously light and
unburdened. The stone of despair was gone. The memory of Sarah
and Biddle and their love was still with him but the pain was
distant, dreamlike.  His eyes opened wider. "I AM fine."

     Dana smiled. The horrible lines on his face had faded.
True, they would never completely leave him, but had faded. He
was still tired, yes, but not like death. Maybe he had just been
ill. "Ready to attack those windmills again, Mulder?" she asked,
before heading for her own room to finish dressing.

     "Whenever you are, Dulcenea," he said to her retreating
form.

     Dana paused in mid stride. Had she heard him say what she
thought she had heard him say? Turning, she inquired in wonder,
"Last night you called me Sancho - a short, dumpy -"

     "- but loyal -" he added with a mischievous half-smile.

     "- but loyal companion. This morning I'm Dulcenea, the
unattainable object of perfection? You're improving, Mulder."

     Before he could comment further she retreated. Better to
keep that lovely thought before he made a joke and ruined it.

     Mulder rose from the bed, unfolded, stretched, feeling
stiff enough to have gone through birth.

     "Who's the one who reminded me last night to keep the door
to possibilities open?" he asked softly into the room where
there was no one to hear. He smiled as he headed for the shower,
pausing in the doorway to look towards her room. "And maybe not
so unattainable after all."

The End