Synopsis: A architect visiting Washington DC is mistaken for
Special Agent Fox Mulder and kidnapped by a couple of very nasty
characters with revenge on their minds.

Warning: This story is rated NC-17 for adult material, violence,
weird sex and really bad sex, rather gross anatomical
descriptions and general all around not niceness. There is also
nobility, determination, a rat, stupidity, luck, both good and
bad, and an unexpected and not entirely welcome visitor.

Disclaimer: These characters of Mulder, Scully and Skinner
belong to the X-Files, Chris Carter and Ten-Thirteen Productions
and are used here with respect and with no expectation of making
any money. The character of Jake (the last name I made up as
none is given), is the property of Red Shoes Diaries and Zalman
King productions and is similarly borrowed.

Author's Notes: This is not a pleasant story. It started with
the premise of what would happen if Jake visited Washington and
was mistaken for Mulder. The rest evolved from there. If you
know what Red Shoes Diaries (RSD) is and you aren't allowed to
watch it because you're too young, then you shouldn't be reading
this story either. If you don't know who Jake is or RSD and you
are older than seventeen then read below.

      There is, by the way, only the briefest mention of the
actual Red Shoes Diaries in this story. It is a story about Jake
and Mulder - how they are different and how they are the same.
There also some X-Files stuff going on and lots of Washington
travelogue stuff. I did actually walk the distance between the
National Building Museum, which is an actual place as described,
and the FBI building. The 'seedy' parts of town I've driven
through on spring evenings. The 'freeway' as described did
actually exist in the place mentioned for many years though it
may have been finished. Don't ask me, I don't drive in DC. If
God had wanted you to drive in DC, he never would have invented
subways. Oh, and excuse me for D.C. bashing but I live in the
Washington suburbs and it's rather a regional pasttime for us.

      Who is Jake? A friend of mine I mentioned this story to
actually asked me who Jake was. So I guess I'd better explain.
If you already know, you don't need to read this. Red Shoes
Diaries was a pilot for a series made probably about a year
before X-Files came out. David Duchovny was hired to play the
male lead - Jake - who builds sky scrapers. Jake is a driving
and successful architect and a sexy, sensitive lover. He has
decorated a warehouse as his studio/eclectic apartment. It is
equipped with a Victorian bathroom complete with claw-footed tub
and stained glass windows and a complete 1/10 scale city scape
which he lights up to show how his buildings will affect the
skyline at sunrise. There's a basketball hoop in the studio.

      On the series premier of RSD Jake is comfortably in love
with a beautiful but not completely altogether woman named Alex
who realizes that, though she loves Jake and that he is as good
to her as any man could be, he just knows too much about her.
She longs to have some secrets, to maintain some mystery. To
make a long story short she has an affair with a hunk of a
construction worker who induces her to buy expensive high-heeled
red pumps which she wears to their little rendezvous'. What Alex
finds is that she cannot break off from this purely animalistic
relationship even after she accepts Jake's proposal. Unable to
justify the two halves of her life, Alex slits her wrists. Jake
finds her floating in the Victorian bathtub. He is devastated.
While cleaning out her clothes he finds her red bound diary
which describes her affair in excruciating detail. Jake sinks
into a deep depression. This betrayal is even worse than her
suicide.

      Unable to understand how she could have done this to him,
he places an ad in several newspapers asking for lovers with
similar experiences of love and betrayal to write to 'Red Shoes'
with their stories. This is the background for the series Red
Shoes Diaries. Every episode begins with Jake opening his mail
and ending with his making some comment. I have not seen very
many of the actual 'Diaries' other than the ones which were put
out on video (there were at least four with three episodes each)
but Jake's character is never developed in any detail except in
the pilot and one story called - appropriately enough, 'Jake's
Story' - in which we find out that Jake has finally gone back to
work but a year has passed since Alex's death and he still has
no desire to 'go out'. This is an excellent story which I would
recommend to any adult. I will summarize, however, that Jake is
left at the end of this brief affair in worse shape than when he
started.

      And so here this unsuspecting architect is in DC and now he
has to deal with Fox Mulder's problems too. Poor Jake.
 

JAKE'S LUCK
By Susan Esty (AKA Windsinger)
9/96
Warning: PG-17

Chapter 1

      Footsteps echoed, rising to hang in the air of the huge
hall. A small, round fountain splashed soothingly in the center
of the hall which, though nearly the size of a football field,
had a beauty in balance and form and symmetry which made an
impression beyond it's sheer size. Beneath the cathedral-like
ceiling, two stories of office windows behind Roman arches look
down from high up on the clear story level. Marble squares in
the colors of earth and rock were set in intricate patterns in
the floor. Columns of golden-veined stone, eight feet in
diameter, some of the largest interior columns in the world,
marched elegantly row by elegant row along two sides of the
fabulous room.

      Hazel Harwood stared to the right, to the left, up at the
ceiling more than six stories above her and then down at the
marble squares at her feet. And to think this had nearly been
lost. Neglected for many decades, left to rot, the building had
been saved only at the last minute from the wrecker's ball. What
a shame it would have been if that had been lost.

      "Miss Harwood?" A man with sparse, grey hair and a thick
beard asked.

      "Yes?"

      "Senator Cranshaw asked for me to show you around. You're
his...?"

      "Cousin. I'm an art history professor at Ohio State. Sorry
if I'm a little breathless. I can scarcely believe this. I've
been to Washington half a dozen times and I never even knew it
existed. This is fantastic."

      "Yes, the National Building Museum is an unappreciated
treasure. You don't find it on most of the tours. The
neighborhood has fallen on some hard times but it's coming
back." They walked across the large open room to stand between
two of the columns just to get a feel for the mass. Everyone did
that. Their footsteps echoed staccato-like, softly mingling with
the gentle splash from the central fountain.

      "It's a little awe-inspiring."

      The museum director smiled proudly. "You should hear the
acoustics when it's empty."

      The trim, middle-aged woman for the first time concentrated
on the exhibit booths. Two or three dozen of them were scattered
about the floor at the other end of the room in an artistic sort
of disordered harmony.

      "What - ?"

      "That? A temporary exhibit on the architecture and
engineering of the modern city. It's affiliated with an
architectural conference just closing at the DC Convention
Center. Over the last week we had some of the country's leading
young architects showing off their works in progress here."

      Hazel Harwood smiled. "In the field of art history, most of
the artists we study are dead."

      "Oh, far from that here. They're beginning to pack up
today, but one or two might be available to talk to you."

      "I think I'd like that. Maybe a budding Frank Lloyd
Wright?"

      The older man gestured for her to precede him and began
wending his way through the displays. "I think there is an
incredibly talented young man who is still here. He's from
Portland. Ah, yes, here he is." A slender, dark-haired man
wearing a crisp, boldly striped shirt and suspenders with his
comfortably cut European trousers was just rolling a blue print.
All of the tools of his trade were scattered about on his
drafting table in various stages of being packed. "Mr. Simmons,
Ms. Harwood."

      Ms. Harwood extended her hand and smiled broadly. Oh, if
only she were twenty years younger.
 

      Hours later with the sun set long before, a tall figure
moved with an unhurried, rather forlorn grace down the wet,
glistening steps of the Building Museum. His hands were deep in
the pockets of his flowing black coat, his collar was pulled up
around his ears against the chill, March drizzle. The street he
crossed was deserted. The downtown section of Washington was
often that way once the office workers had all departed for
their safe bedrooms in the suburbs.

      Two shadows watched his passage from the darkness. The
smaller one made a gesture and the two moved forward much like
jackals closing in silently for the kill.

                             ********

      FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder rolled over on his couch. The
ancient leather creaked. Squinting, his eyes flickered over the
digital read out on his VCR. Three-sixteen. Something had
disturbed his sleep and not dreams, not this time. He had
actually been sleeping well lately. If not another nightmare
then what? His living room was lit by the soft blue glow from
the television which at the moment was showing only the-station-
is-off-the-air snow. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. He
listened. At the moment the only sound was the television's soft
hiss. No, that wasn't true there was another sound. A

scratching, metallic sound. Someone was at his door trying to
open it with a key but not hurrying. They were even fumbling a
little.

      There had been no knock. One click on the controller and
the television went black. As his hand reached under the cushion
near his head for the gun he kept there, Mulder's brain raced
back over he and Scully's most current cases. Had he irritated
any of his regular stable of enemies enough recently to explain
this very early social call? Nothing particular came to mind.
Nothing more than usual anyway. There was no whir from an
electronic lock 'picker', the intruder was clearly using a key.
>From where? That was easy. There were copies in the rental
office and, of course, the resident manager had his. In the
microsecond that it took for all this to go through his mind,
Mulder hoped the little old man had not come to any harm just
because his tenant in apartment 42 happened to have pissed off
more people in Washington than the combined efforts of the
Democrats and the Republicans.

      The door opened, light from the hallway spilling in as
Mulder trained his gun on the silhouette in the doorway, its
identity barely registering on his mind before his visitor did
something totally unexpected. The figure flipped on the switch
next to the door turning on the main apartment lights.

      Mulder flinched, momentarily blinded, yet at the same time
he leapt from the couch into a protective crouch, gun raised.

      There was frantic rustle, a shine of metal and a small
woman raised a gun which was a partner to his.

      "Mulder!"

      "Scully? What the... " Both guns came down, safeties
clicking automatically into place. "You just about scared me to
death! I could have shot you."

      Stunned, Dana asked, "Mulder, what are you doing here?"

      "Last time I looked I live here. Why?" Mulder looked down
at his wrinkled T-shirt and skimpy, faded jogging shorts. "If
you had knocked first I could have worn something a little more
appropriate."

      Dana Scully totally ignored the comment, not even a rolling
of her lovely eyes, an omission which by itself got her
partner's attention. She was more than pale, she was a rather
noteworthy shade of ghostly grey. "I didn't knock, Mulder,
because I didn't expect you to be here."

      "That's interesting. Where was I supposed to be?"

      Dana opened a manila folder she carried, pulled out a
photograph and handed it to him. It was the picture of a man
lying on his side either unconscious or dead. He was pretty
thoroughly beaten. Mulder estimated the age to be about thirty
if not younger, dark hair, lean, broad-shouldered and probably
tall from the length of his torso. His hands were bound behind
his back. His button down shirt hung open from his broad
shoulders and through the rents in the T-shirt beneath abrasions
and a great purpling bruise could be seen. Under normal
circumstances the man would have been clean-shaven but at the
time the picture was taken the face was heavily shadowed with at
least two days growth of beard. The one eye which was visible
was swollen and dark. From the cut on the forehead a trickle of
blood stood out of the fair skin. And then there were more
bruises.

      "All right. Some poor bastard's gotten himself beat up.
That's no reason I can think of for sneaking into my apartment
at three in the morning. Is this a case for us?" For about the
tenth time since their meeting, Mulder noticed that his calm,
collected partner was far from calm and collected. The hand that
had extended the picture had trembled. Her hair was
unaccustomedly mussed and her eyes, red-rimmed. Her voice when
she finally spoke was not that of the cool, professional Agent
Scully he had come to expect.

      "Skinner called me down to the office tonight at eleven. A
street person delivered an envelope to one of the night guards."
Dana gave a little shrug but she was so tight the gesture was
more of a jerk. "The woman's been cleared. She was given a
'five' for her trouble but can't remember much about who gave it
to her. Inside was a ransom note to the FBI and the picture."
Mulder's expression continued rather blank.  "Mulder," Dana said
her voice showing the strain of a hellish few hours, "the ransom
note was for you!"

      Mulder looked down again at the picture after a moment
absently placing a hand to his chest.

      "But, Scully, it's not me. I mean, it's obviously not me.
Why didn't you call?"

      Blue eyes burned. "I tried your cellular and got no answer
-"

      "It's in the shop."

      "- and then I dialed here." Dana walked over and with two
fingers pulled a damp sweat shirt from the top of his answering
machine. The red light blinked. Dana was not smiling.

      Mulder felt his face reddening. "Sorry. I took a late run,
longer than usual, and just as I came in I realized that there
was this Vincent Price movie on I wanted to catch..." His voice
faded out. "Well, you could have tried to call more than once."

      "I had every reason to believe you'd been kidnapped. I was
imagining all sorts of horrible things. I didn't really expect
you to have dumped your sweaty clothes on top of the damn
answering machine!" Her relief had switched into anger. Anger
for his having frightened her. Mulder understood. He would have
reacted in the same way if their places had been reversed. Hell,
he HAD reacted in the same way.

      Mulder went back to studying the picture more closely this
time. "I don't understand how you and Skinner... I mean, this
doesn't even look like me."

      "Believe me, Mulder, when you're beat up that looks like
you."

      Mulder pointed to the slacks, then the shirt. "But look at
his clothes. That's a haute couture cut. Much as I like them, if
I have to spend a wad on clothes, I'll spend my hard earned pay
on whatever the well-dressed but nondescript FBI agent is
wearing this year. I've got enough problems without trying to
make a fashion statement."

      Dana looked at the picture again finding it difficult to
take her eyes from the swollen jaw, the beaten but familiar
face. Familiar? Dana forced herself to concentrate on the
subject's clothes. True enough. The incongruity had struck her
as well. Especially the dramatically striped shirt. "I noticed
that, but I thought you had just gone GQ on me off hours."

      Mulder sighed. "Since when do I have off hours?"

      Dana nodded. It's true, she should have been more
suspicious. Mulder told her everything. Everything. If he had
bought such an outfit she would have been the first one he'd
have shown it off to. Between home phones, office phones,
cellular phones, e-mail and voice mail, sometimes she thought
they were joined by a permanent communications link.

      Except at important times, like tonight.

      Dana sighed. "All right, it's not you. But then who is it?"

End of chapter 1a
 

From trevizo@utep.edu Wed Oct 30 02:43:49 1996
I did not write this. Please send all comments to the author at
(Windsinger@aol.com).

           __________
          / __    __ \
         ( (__)  (__) )
--------[[[---------]]]-------------------------------------------------

JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over 1b/9
by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but
there are some very nice parts in here, too.
For Disclaimer see chapter 1

Chapter 1b
                             ********

      For his own protection Scully and Director Skinner decided
that Fox Mulder had to really disappear, even from the other FBI
agents on the case, and for her part Dana decided that he had to
disappear to somewhere where she could keep an eye on him. That
night Dana smuggled Mulder into the Bureau in the back seat of
her car which the focus of all this attention found vastly
amusing. Mulder flashed her a smile before pulling the blanket
over his head four blocks from their destination but the smile
never reached his eyes. Solemnly, Dana turned back to
concentrate on her driving reassured that her partner was not
taking the situation lightly.

       Mulder spent his hours pacing the tiny walkway between his
cot and the wall which was all the space he had in the utility
closet in the basement which he now called home. Claustrophobic
as it was, worse was the helplessness of being forced to do
nothing and worse still the plain, old-fashioned loneliness for
Scully. Most of the time she was off leading the investigation.
She was after all the obvious choice. Ostensibly, she was
looking for her partner. Skinner was playing this very
carefully. Only her few select lieutenants knew that the man
they where looking for was not Fox Mulder. The more people who
knew the truth, the greater the chance that someone might slip
and make a joke that might be overheard by the wrong people. The
kidnappers could find out.

      "Well, excuse me, SIR!" Mulder thundered on night two when
Skinner came down to visit -- to check on the prisoner was
probably closer to the truth, "but I'll quit being a pain-in-
the-ass when you give me something to do on this case!"

      Skinner was standing by the door, his expression
disgustingly sincere. It was the kind of expression Mulder hated
because it was the one Skinner wore when he was dead certain he
was right. "You know what we know, Agent Mulder. Which isn't, I
admit, a hell of a lot. If you can pull anything out of your hat
to add to this, I'll be more than happy to take a look at it. Do
you think we don't want to solve this thing? I'd pay the damn
ransom out of my own pocket if I could but these people don't
even really want to bargain. I've had teams posted to a dozen
locations for meetings but the kidnappers have never shown up.
I don't think it's primarily the money they're after at least
not yet. What they are doing is having a good time trying to
make us sweat."

      "I'd say they were doing a pretty good job of it," Mulder
replied in a surly tone.

      "If you have any better ideas, Agent Mulder, just let me
know. Until then like the rest of us, you'll just have to be
patient."

      Mulder threw himself down in the cot. "You thought I was
crazy before. Leave me down here a few more days and I'll be
certifiable."

      Skinner ran his hand over the end rail of the narrow bed.
The tone of his voice was as sympathetic as his expression had
been and just as intractable. "I thought you liked the
basement."

      "Not for forty-eight hours straight while some guy wearing
my face is getting himself transformed into hamburger on my
chit."

      "You know you can't show yourself. If the kidnappers come
to realize that they've made an error, they'll be around to make
a try for their original target and they won't be so subtle or
so gentle next time. Even worse, they'll most likely kill their
'mistake' without a second thought."

      Mulder's face darkened. He knew this all too well. Dana had
certainly drilled it into him often enough in the last two days.
It was the only thing that held him here.

      Later that evening Dana arrived, hot, tired and with
another envelope. Mulder felt his hands begin to sweat as he
stared down at a new photograph. His double was not faring well.
The bruises were multi-colored now. The cuts untended. The good
cut of the clothes now indistinguishable. And they had sent
Agent Scully a special present.

      "Oh, my God!" she had whispered, opening the tiny box.
Inside was a small slice of pale skin and flesh which it took
even Dana a few minutes to identify.

      "What is it?" Mulder snapped. He was becoming more and more
irritable as the hours passed.

      The hand that held the little box trembled a little and
those red lips began to look even redder as she paled. "I don't
think I should tell you. Besides, I'd only be guessing..."

      "Scully..." Mulder hissed between clenched teeth.

      She shuddered and headed for the door, box in hand. "I'm
going to have it analyzed."

      "Scully..."

      Dana looked back. That was her partner standing there, her
friend, stress etched in his face, grief in his posture.

      "This loss won't be debilitating. It's not anything the
poor man can't live without, but he might have gone into
shock... And to think as civilized people we do this to our
children." Mulder's hazel eyes were pleading. "Foreskin," she
admitted with reluctance. Before she vanished out the door, she
added, "At least now I know that there's at least one way in
which I can tell you apart."

      "Not any more," Mulder said into the empty room.

                             ********

      The lab results took another day to come in. The ransom
demands from the kidnappers were becoming nasty. Mulder wasn't
sleeping any more.

      Dana scanned the test results. "I was right about the
tissue, Mulder." She let the sympathy show through her eyes.
"Sorry. You can take some comfort in that he's not your clone
and not some long lost brother. Not even a cousin. Tissue typing
shows that though he comes from the same Northern European-
Jewish stock as you, there's no clear relation. Just a
coincidence."

      "JUST a coincidence," Mulder muttered, desolately dropping
onto the little cot for what seemed like the hundredth time that
day. "You're wrong, Scully. This poor bastard and I do share
something. More than our fair share of bad luck. So he looks
like me on a bad day. Other than that what do we know? That his
family wasn't Orthodox."

      Dana looked up from the report. "That occurred to me, too.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have had anything to - ah - remove."

      Mulder lurched to his feet and began to pace. "Scully, I
can't just sit here. We have an innocent bystander who's been
kidnapped because he's unfortunate enough to look like me -"

      "'Unfortunate' is a matter of opinion," passed unbidden
through Dana's mind. "More men should be so unfortunate."
Grimly, she acknowledged a touch of Mulder's gallows's humor in
the thought. She missed his jokes. There had been none for days.
 
 

      To keep from staring inanely at the same four walls hour
after hour, Mulder began analyzing other case reports. He knew
he wasn't making much progress but he had to have something to
occupy his mind. As the hours and days passed, there were no new
leads. Not one. If he really had been kidnapped he would be dead
meat. The FBI had a no ransom policy.

      Early in the morning on the fifth day Dana burst through
the storage room door, to catch her partner doing push ups in
the tiny spot of floor beside his cot. He was still unshaved and
had the tousled appearance of one who has not slept well, if at
all.  Mulder had only to look at her face. Finally, something.

      "What?" he asked rising rapidly to his feet, his face
slightly damp with sweat.

      Dana sat on the end of his cot and spread out the contents
of the file she was carrying. "We know who they've taken. Jacob
Simmons. 'Jake' to his friends and colleagues. From Portland,
Oregon. He came to Washington ten days ago to attend an
architectural conference at the Convention Center. As part of
that convention he had an exhibit on display at the National
Building Museum. He had a Thursday night flight but never came
into work yesterday which was Monday. His business partner
didn't give it a thought when he took Friday off but began
worrying when he didn't show up for work this morning. We know
Mr. Simmons checked out of the Washington Hilton Thursday
morning as planned. He had his luggage sent directly to the
airport."

      Mulder worried his lower lip. "Don't tell me. His luggage
is still there."

      "How did you guess? After checking out of his hotel, he
returned to the Building Museum to finish packing up his
exhibit. Late Thursday afternoon was the last time he was seen.
His partner also checked his residence, the teenager who is
looking after his dog and the diner around the corner where he
takes most of his meals and picks up his mail. Jake Simmons
never made his flight. He never came home."

      Mulder's expression blanked out for a moment as he accessed
a map of Washington in his head. "How far is the Building Museum
from the Convention Center, Scully? Four blocks?"

      "Five," Dana responded. She should know. It was part of her
power walking circuit when their case load allowed time for that
kind of exercise. Not all that far from FBI headquarters."

      "He probably walked that route at least twice daily during
the convention. I know I'd never pay Washington cab prices for
that kind of distance. That's probably where he was seen."

      "It is a transitional area," Dana agreed. "Safe enough in
the daytime but after dark when the vast majority of the
Washington business and government types scamper home to their
safe suburbs, it's not a particularly good area to be found in
alone. He may not have left the Building Museum until after
seven. His flight was not until nine. The sun would have set and
it was raining that night. Dark enough."

      Mulder looked down at the other materials on his bed. There
was a slick company prospectus. The man was an architect Dana
said? From the look of it a good one. Built sky scrapers. Very
well heeled. The brochure showed a man who looked younger than
his years, confident, cool, professional, almost smug, with eyes
full of intelligence and life. A man with the world at his feet.
 

      How could Scully possibly think that I look like that?

      Mulder shook his head. "The kidnappers have made a really
BAD mistake. They should be trying to get money from this guy's
family or his company. Either has got to pay better than the
FBI."

      Becoming interested in a different photograph Dana was
staring at, Mulder reached for it. She released it reluctantly.

      "Why did it take four days for someone to realize this guy
was missing?" Mulder asked. Only after he had spoken did he
actually look at the picture. It was same man, the same face,
and, yet, not the same. A dark shirt. A dark coat. Eyes
downcast, and pain, oceans of pain. The smugness, the
confidence, the life was gone. This face Mulder saw in the
mirror all too often.

      Even though the second picture was in Mulder's hands Dana
could still see it just by looking at Mulder's face at that
moment. He saw it too, now. The similarity was agonizing. "That
one was taken at his fiancee's funeral two years ago. She
committed suicide. His partner says he took a deep slide. Very
despondent. Clinically depressed. If Jake had disappeared like
this last year, Paul, his business partner, tells me that he
would have expected suicide before anything else. He didn't come
back to work full time until a year after the suicide, but when
he did he worked hard. Very high quality work, too, or so the
organizer's of the Conference tell me, though his partner says
he's still not socializing to his knowledge. Oh, there was a
brief affair but that ended rather disastrously and he refuses
to talk about it. When he isn't at home and his partner needs to
locate him, Jake can usually be found walking by the docks near
his home with his dog."

      Mulder swallowed. No girl for this man then, either. No
girlfriend, no mention of parents, certainly no wife, no
children. If he was found too late, maybe that was just as well.
 

      Mulder began to move. The chase had begun. Energy flooded
his body. He talked, talked faster, as he gathered his gun, his
second gun, his coat.  "Let's go. I need to see the hotel, the
museum, the Convention Center, walk the route. Did he have any
acquaintances in the area he may have contacted?"

      Dana stood in the middle of the room, a fortress. "Stop,
Mulder."

      He struggled into his coat. "What 'stop'?"

      "Just what I said. You're still out of this. Skinner says
so and, more importantly, 'I' say so."

      Mulder halted, cold flowing in, strangling. "Scully, you
know..."

      Dana closed her eyes then slowly reopened them. "I know
what this means to you, Mulder. But, please..." Her eyes were
pleading. "Don't do this to me, not again," then she turned on
her heel and left closing the door with finality behind her.
Mulder just stood and listened to the rapid sound of her rapid
footsteps on the stairs.

End of Chapter 1
 

From trevizo@utep.edu Wed Oct 30 02:45:02 1996
I did not write this. Please send all comments to the author at
(Windsinger@aol.com).

           __________
          / __    __ \
         ( (__)  (__) )
--------[[[---------]]]-------------------------------------------------

JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over 2/9
by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but
there are some very nice parts in here, too.
For Disclaimer see chapter 1

Chapter 2

      Elbows on knees, Mulder stared at the black and while
linoleum squares on the floor at his feet.

      How could Scully say not go? She knew he couldn't just sit
here. She knew what it would do to him if he was forced to stand
aside and the man died. Died in his place. Especially now, now
that the victim was more than a face, had a name, talent, a
history, a life.  If she really wanted him to stay put, they
would have to handcuff him to this bed, better yet, put him down
in one of those holding cells in the annex.. Nothing short of
physical restraint would stop him.

      Swearing he left his monk's cell and headed for the other
end of the basement and the X-Files office. There he collected
the extra ammunition clips from his stash in the little box
behind the skull on the bottom shelf of the bookcase - never
knew when you were going to need some fast. He was moving out,
moving fast before someone came down to stop him. Certainly
Scully knew by now that telling him not to do something was like
waving a red flag.

      Mulder stopped dead still, his hand on the knob of the
door. But she did know. She knew more than anyone. Just as she
knew he would jump on that train, run alone after that killer,
tear off to Alaska without a word, slip through the fence at
Ellens, meet Deep Throat and Mr. X anywhere and everywhere. She
knew he would not stay put during this. She had laid down the
letter of the law as Skinner had instructed. She knew her
irascible partner would understand just as he knew that she knew
that he would go.

      And both were well aware that he could be walking into
Death's waiting arms.

      And yet she had walked out, leaving him free, because she
knew he had no choice.

      Mulder rested his forehead against the door, feeling the
blood surging in his head. There it was again, filling him up
like sparkling wine in crystal. Her love. Their love. Not
romantic. Unconventional to say the least. Never spoken of,
hardly a touch out of place, but there nevertheless. Absolute
and complete. Waiting for the right time to be brought into the
light. Now the right time may never come.

      Mulder turned and looked at this room. It held her
presence. Held the memories of all they had shared. More than
any other place their bed of exploration. He may never come
back. What could he leave her? Something. Some message, as
understated as the relationship that they shared.

      Twenty seconds later he was gone, the room unchanged except
that the framed picture of a dark-haired girl had been moved
from his desk to hers.

                             ********

      The sun was actually warm. The slight breeze wound around
under the steam vent and came up under his long wide coat making
his first trip into the open air in days a pleasure. A pleasure,
that is, if it weren't for the smell. Mulder propped his beard-
scratchy chin up on his hand and nibbled a little more from the
thick stubby end of the carrot. Leisurely he scratched his ass.
Right in public. And liked it. When a passing businessman on his
lunch break threatened to look towards the grimy street person
hunkered down beside the Civil War Statue, Mulder added a
visible tremor, a few jerks as if he were being tortured by
unseen demons. Just for effect, of course. At least this time.

      How far the great had fallen.

      Mulder had never gone in for under cover work. This time
was no exception. He always felt ridiculous dressing up. Half
the time he even felt ridiculous just putting on a tie for work.
But the situation this time cried out for a disguise. After all
he had not only the kidnappers to hide from but Scully and, if
the activity here near the Building Museum was any indication,
at least half the local FBI force. Even Sherlock Holmes wore
disguises from time to time. Mulder cringed, blinking through
his one eye, trying to send that particular memory elsewhere.
Considering the unpleasant memories of Phoebe such thoughts
stirred up, he had best table further comparisons to Sherlock
Holmes for a later time. Like sometime a week after forever.

      Mulder stared down the street. From his perch on the only
steam grate within visual range of the main door to the Building
Museum he had watched a steady stream of FBI and D.C. police
wander in and out since noon. A pair he vaguely recognized as
being assigned to the Philadelphia office were looking up and
down the street.

      They went all the way to Philadelphia for manpower and just
about everyone but Scully and Skinner thought they were actually
searching for the FBI's bad boy? Mulder should have felt wanted
but didn't. He wished the circumstances didn't warrant this. The
sun lost its pleasant warmth. His throat tightened until he felt
he was going to choke and he wasn't even wearing the hated tie.
 

      Where was Jake? What was the poor man feeling? He had
practically no one. A stranger in a strange, impersonal city. A
completely incomprehensible kidnapping, beatings, torture, and
for no discernible reason. He must feel like he had fallen into
the fifth ring of hell, abandoned and hopeless. Mulder knew all
about hell, abandonment and hopelessness, too. This was why he
was here.

      Mutt and Jeff from Philadelphia were wandering closer
looking for exactly what Mulder was looking for - someone who
had no business on this street, one of the kidnappers come to
gloat as the mighty FBI chased their tails with no leads.

      What would this pair of unimaginative, by-the-book agents
see when they saw him? Just another street person? The homeless
were a nearly invisible population in Washington. Like ghosts
they were everywhere you looked but no one ever admitted to ever
seeing one.

      Ghosts? What ghosts? Homeless? What homeless? Naw...

      With forced calm Mulder brought the carrot up to this
mouth. Not nearly as good as sunflower seeds but less obvious,
at least to Scully, and she was bound to be along sooner or
later. Besides, he needed something to do with his hands or he'd
go mad. The pair of agents were coming closer, trying to appear
casual and unofficial as they questioned a bag lady, a street
vendor. Did they have any idea of how miserably they were
failing? Mulder could almost hear the mouths snapping shut all
around him.

      Mulder raised his nose a little into the air at the same
time pulling down the brim of his shapeless hat. Method acting.
A middle-aged man, Vietnam vet era, with a non-too-tight grip on
reality, badly in need of either his meds, a fix or a drink.
Just another former inmate of St. Elizabeth's who should never
have been released. He wore an ancient rain coat sizes too big
for him over even older fatigues and large, heavy-rimmed glasses
with a grey patch over one eye.

      Remember, you're homeless and you like it, he told himself.
Just try not to wrinkle your nose against the acrid scent of
ammonia and decaying garbage. No self-respecting street person
would never let on even if he did find his surroundings and his
own body odor rather revolting.

      Mulder sighed which reminded him not to breathe through his
nose on this case. He certainly found his surrounding and his
own body odor disgusting. Foul would be a more accurate
description. An acquaintance doing undercover work for the DEA,
who in Mulder's opinion was FAR crazier than Fox Mulder would
ever be, had fixed him up with all the trimmings. Odors
included. Ammonia, cheap wine, the dripping from the inside of
the undercover officer's long neglected garbage can and a little
doggie doo-doo just to top things off.

      Mulder shifted feeling the stiff old cloth rasp against his
skin. He was absolutely coming to hate this idea. Scully
wouldn't sit beside him for a week. 'Eau du Skunk' would begin
to seem like French perfume if he spent much more time in the
sun.

      One of the Bureau's innumerable blue cars pulled up in
front of the Building Museum. The two from Philadelphia turned
in that direction like a synchronized swimming team leaving the
remainder of the street unscrutinized, including Mulder's steam
grate. They had clearly been expecting somebody.

      Movement about the car. As the passenger emerged, a small
woman's red glossy head just barely showed from above the blue
car's roof. A casual turn. Ice blue eyes raked the street even
as, with back straight, she climbed the marble steps into the
museum.

      She knew he was there somewhere. Probably did not even need
to go back to the office to know that he would do something like
this. Probably was putting off checking just so she didn't have
to report to Skinner that he was gone. She wouldn't look too
closely, but she couldn't help looking at least a little.

      Be careful.

      He could hear the words even from fifty yards, even over
the traffic and noise from the passenger jet cruising in towards
National Airport. He could hear the words even though her lips
had never moved and their eyes had never met.

      Mulder felt for a moment the chill from a passing cloud
even though the sky was a rare, for Washington, robin's egg
blue. Even at the FBI he felt at times like the odd man out, but
he could not be much further from being on the outside looking
in as he was now. He did not like the feeling. As the agents all
moved inside the stately building, the heavy bronze doors shut
leaving him alone, separate.

      Scully, this was really a lousy idea.

      Mulder forced himself to lean back and casually cracked his
back. No more moping, he told himself. He had a job to do.
Carrot in his mouth like a cigar, he used the heavy cane he had
brought to rise stiffly to his feet as if just to stretch his
legs. But in truth his eyes were roving.

      His uncovered eye touched on each of the characters
lingering along the street, taking two-dimensional snap shots.
He had no doubt that just as he was here, so were the
kidnappers. They would have their gloat. They would have had the
Bureau staked out so would know exactly when the investigation
moved to the museum.

      Scully? Yes, they would watch her, too, but only watch.
They would not move on her, of this Mulder felt confident. They
had stuck their head out far enough taking one federal agent and
were getting nothing but delays and rhetoric for their efforts.
They wouldn't dare try for two. Besides her hollow eyes and the
tired way she moved were probably making their day.

      Mulder shuddered. This is the way it would be if he really
was the one who was missing. This is the way she would look and
act and move. That was a creepy sensation, even more so because
he knew Dana was not acting. In her mind these people were
perfectly capable of doing to Mulder exactly what they had
already done to Jake Simmons, and, given the opportunity, they
would. She refused to give them that opportunity.

      A delivery boy caught Mulder's eye, but more for the pizza
and subs he carried than any suspicious activity on the boy's
part. Mulder's stomach growled emptily.

      Down, boy! Remember, the pinched look will be more in
keeping with your role than if a homeless vet were to be seen
ordering a pizza to be delivered to his heating grate.

      A courier in day-glow orange and green sped by on his
bicycle, completely ignoring the traffic lights. Mulder had seen
him before but he moved too fast to be a serious suspect. A
'banker' for the street vendors made his rounds, picking up
receipts from the steam carts selling hot dogs and the Iranian
selling Washington DC and Redskins T-shirts. This was too close
to the wrong part of town to let too much cash just sit around.
The bag lady settled back in the shadow of her chosen spot
beside the subway entrance and seemed to be interested in
resuming her snooze now that the duo from Philadelphia had gone
off to hear Agent Scully's pep talk.

      Leaning heavily upon his cane, Mulder was just stepping off
the curb which rimmed the steam grate when he saw the traffic
control engineer again, or at least what he had taken at first
to be a traffic control engineer - white, nondescript coveralls,
a painter's cap pulled down over his eyes, and a tool belt, but
no truck that Mulder could see. The man was middle-aged, stood
about five and a half feet tall, and sported light brown hair
with a splash of grey at the temples and a wiry build. For the
fifth time that day the man had pulled the panel off the switch
box of one of the two traffic lights but though he seemed to
fiddle with this and that, the rhythm of the lights never
changed. Running the previous views of the man over in his mind
Mulder realized that the engineer had always positioned himself
so that he would be facing the entrance to the Building Museum
as he worked. Supposedly worked.

      As if bored with the lack of law enforcement going in their
useless little circles, the engineer quickly finished his 'work'
and began leaving the area at a rapid pace. Too fast for any
salaried District worker. Mulder stared around in exasperation.

      Damn, just when you needed a cop there was never one
around. He should tell Scully, but there was no time or he would
lose his suspect.

      He'd let her know later. Later? Yeah, right.

      I'll be careful, Scully, Mulder swore as the half-blind vet
hobbled on his one 'stiff' leg after a man in white coveralls,
a spot now a block in the distance.

                             ********

      Four blocks from the museum the neighborhood took a turn
for the seedy. Not the sort of neighborhood the tourists took
pictures of when they came to Washington. As the blocks passed
under Mulder's feet he realized it was not even the sort of
neighborhood tourists would dare to be caught dead in during the
day, much less at night. Teenagers cutting class if not the
whole school day, street vendors selling Korean counterfeits of
name brands, the out of work or unmotivated clogged the
sidewalks. Mulder shuffled along, frustrated that in this crowd
he was not able to make any kind of time. It was nearly
impossible to keep the speck of white coveralls in view until he
conjured up a scene from one of his more recent nightmares.
After that a few explosive expletives and a fierce waving of his
free arm as if warding off the voracious attack of nearly
microscopic, phosphorescent, moisture-sucking bugs and he made
more rapid progress through the crowds.

      The closeness of the buildings and the crowds suddenly
vanished. Mulder lifted his head squinting into the sun. He knew
this area. A two block square had been leveled years ago to make
way for a new office complex which would have gone a long way
into revitalizing the area. But then came the office glut and
this part of town didn't look like such a good candidate for
urban renewal any longer and so it sat. An open smear of broken
concrete and weeds. Around it were other buildings barely saved
from a similar fate.

      Up the steps of one of these buildings, a huge yellow-brick
apartment building, the man in the white coveralls trotted to
vanish through the front door. From the missing and cracked
windows and the number of broken door and window frames where
boards blocking use of the building had been repeatedly torn
down, it was obvious that the structure had been condemned
multiple times.

      Phone.

      To give himself a moment to try to locate a phone, Mulder
paused at the corner of the block as if trying to shake a cramp
from his stiff leg. There were people going in and out of the
building, people of all shapes, sizes, ages and colors, the same
types he had seen on the street before, but there was no phone
to be seen nor any business open which might have one. This had
been a rotten time for his cellular to be in the shop, but
Mulder doubted that he would have brought it anyway. Wouldn't
have gone with his image and it would have been just his luck to
leave the thing on and have it beep at a critical moment.

      Into the lion's den then if the inhabitants seemed remotely
friendly. Friendly would not explain these people. None looked
his way. Not surprising. The desperately poor were private
people. Paranoid but private, most not looking for a fight. Look
like you knew where you were going and it could get you far.
Appear to be too interested in business not your own, however,
and you're asking for serious trouble.

      Mulder limped towards the stairs which led up to the front
door. His hand was on the knob when a voice, rough, good-natured
and male, called out from behind him, "Ask for Mabel."

      Mulder forced himself to turn slowly. The man who had
spoken was a stocky black man with greying hair. He also wore
the remnants of fatigues. Another vet by the way his body moved
in little shell-shocked jerks. "Ask for Mabel. She don't make
too much noise. Know what I mean?"

      Mulder had no trouble responding with a grim smile of
understanding confident that the mouth appliance his undercover
friend had given him would hide the almost perfect teeth his
parents had worked so hard to pay for. The difficult part was
keeping it from being a broader grin of relief.

      A long time before, perhaps as late as the turn of the
century, the building had been upper scale. There was a wide
lobby, yellow with age and brown with dirt like the brick
outside. There was old linoleum in green and white squares, at
least in the places where you could see it through the
incredibly rancid trash. Mulder's nose twitched. He'd be
surprised if the place had even a single working toilet. In
addition to the building manager's counter and office straight
ahead, both of which had long ago been smashed into almost
unrecognizable pieces, four corridors branched off, each closed
off by its own door though the doors were not in good shape and
barely hung on their hinges. There was a corridor to the far
right, the far left, and one on each side of what had been the
manager's desk.

      Mulder heard footsteps behind and knew he couldn't be found
just standing here indecisive and, therefore, suspicious. He had
to at least look like he was hunting for something. Stairs to
the third floor? Good enough. What he found more quickly to his
right were two ancient caged elevators, no long functional, but
they were in a recess just before the door to the right corridor
and provided a much needed alcove of deep shadows.

      Luck was with him. The door to the corridor near the
elevators was ajar, just enough to give Mulder a view. Two men
came out of an apartment and one was the man in the white
coveralls.. The other was of lumberjack dimensions who towered
over his slighter companion. By his leg the new man casually
held a sawed off shotgun. At the moment two small children were
playing tag in the hallway. Clearly, they did not find the
presence of the gun exceptional. Their game took them back into
the apartment they had left but its door remained open.

      "Pete, we should be talking about this inside," the big man
was saying.

      "No way. The stench is making me sick," came out a Texas
drawl. "I can't stay in there. It reminds me too much of Marion.
What did Jackson keep down there anyway? Hog smell better."

      "Well, excuuuse me, Miss Prissy. And does this mean that
you won't be goin' downstairs again at all? Not even to put ol'
Jim Bowie to use?"

      There came the sound of a knife being drawn out smooth from
a sheath. Nausea rose in Mulder's throat as he pressed closer to
the comfort of the wall and its shadow. If these two were
talking about what Mulder thought they were talking about then
he and Scully knew all too well what the Bowie knife had last
been used on.

      "I haven't forgotten," the Texan replied slowly over the
sound of metal drawn against cloth. "Patience. Macon will have
his revenge. You city people are always in such a hurry. I'd
have thought The Blockhouse would have taught you that. Besides,
keepin' 'em danglin', keepin' 'em fearin' that each mornin'
could be the one, makes it all the sweeter for us and all the
more hell for Pretty Boy downstairs. And hell is exactly where
I want to keep him. Which comes back to my point. I don't like
to be distracted when I work. I'd hate to gag on the stink. Who
knows what I'd cut off. Guess I couldn't talk you into cleanin'
the place up for me?"

      "Jeeze, Pete! What have you been shooting up? You don't pay
me enough for that. Nobody pays me enough for that. Just
thinking about it puts me on the edge of losin' my breakfast,
lunch, and everything I've eaten in the past week."

      The Texan's voice rose in volume jeeringly. "Well, if you
won't, Lawrence my dear, maybe one of the girls then. They'd
love -"

      "No!" At least Mulder thought that was the word Lawrence
used. It came out more like a snarl. "No, not them."
Reluctantly, the big man's tone mellowed. "Besides, they're too
expensive."

      At that moment an apartment door just on the other side of
the partially open door to the corridor where Pete and Lawrence
stood opened and an old man with runny eyes stumbled out. Mulder
pressed tighter against the shadowed recess but the old man
tottered on down the hall in the opposite direction passing the
white-clothed Pete and the hulking Lawrence as he went.

      "Hey, Pops!" the big man called in an over-sweet, sing-song
voice. "Want to make a pint? Just a few minutes of toil for
hours of oblivion?"

      The old man muttered incoherently and produced a wet cough
as he shook off the big hand on his arm and moved on.

      Pete blew his nose. Mulder knew it had to be Pete, the
noise was a much lighter one than the ape Lawrence would have
made. "You've got to be kiddin', right?" Pete asked incredulous.
"What if he took the job? What if he said anything?"

      "Would anyone we found around here really care?"  Lawrence
asked. "They look out for their own skin. Besides the Fed hasn't
talked for days. I must admit I expected a little more spirit."

      "Yeah, well, so did I. Maybe I don't remember him as well
as I thought I did. Arrogant. That I remember. He'll beg yet.
He'll drop that stupid story he's been trying to hand us and
he'll beg."

      Mulder felt a sweat of anticipation break out on his brow
and under his arms. He didn't know whose luck he was being given
today but it certainly wasn't coming from his normal supplier.
These guys were making things almost too easy. There was only
one person they could be talking about and with if the gods
continued to be so accommodating the big man was not only
willing to take him right to their prisoner but would then let
him out again. Out meant free to bring back help.

      The delay would be irksome but even Fox Mulder knew it
would be irresponsible to attempt a frontal attack alone at this
point. One man against two? With the element of surprise, not
such terrible odds even if one of the two men he faced had shot
gun and the other a knife, but the man Pete mentioned a third
man - Macon - who could be anywhere. And then there were the
children. Mulder could hear their thin voices through the open
apartment door. They could come out into the corridor at any
time as could any of the other resident of the building. Mulder
frowned and reluctantly decided to listen to his gut for once
and his gut told him there was too much at stake here. If it
came to a shoot out, there were the innocent bystanders who
might be hurt not no mention that there were probably more guns
in this building than in the FBI itself.  And if by some chance
Mulder was forced to kill both of these two and Jake Simmons was
not simply 'downstairs', the architect might never be found.
There was also the possibility that Mulder could be killed
himself or injured badly enough so that the truth about the two
'Fox Mulder's' would come out. Either way Jake would suffer. So
play it safe for once, this was no time for heroics.

      By the book, Scully.

      Realizing how he was dressed and that he was totally alone,
Mulder found it hard to suppress a self-depreciating smile.

      Well, as by the book as I'm likely to get on this case.

      Blowing a stream of air over the disgusting mouth piece
Mulder reached deep into the inner pockets of his fatigues
pulling out his Sig and his ID. From his left boot he extracted
his little back up weapon. If he were accepted for the job, they
would certainly search him first, so he had to look as harmless
as a lamb or two lives could be forfeit.

      Searching, Mulder spied between the elevators an old glass-
walled mail shoot from when the building had known far better
days. It was filled almost to the top now with trash.
Reluctantly, Mulder dropped the weapons and ID down behind the
trash watching them slip out of sight. They would be as safe
there as anywhere, for it was certain no mail carrier would be
coming. There was no doubt in Mulder's mind that if he did not
come back they would sit there until the wrecking balls came.
 

      Hunched over, gripping the cane, a crippled, one-eyed vet
pushed more fully open the hallway door and shouldered his way
through.

      Simultaneously, Pete and Lawrence glanced up. For the first
time Mulder got a good look at the man Pete as he was standing
under one of the few yellow bulbs. This then was the ring
leader, the man who supposedly knew him well enough to recognize
him on the street.  Mulder got a shock. Even with the card
catalog in his head he could not bring up a memory of this man.
He had thought this enemy would be from one of his big cases
back from his violent crimes days. A rapist, a drug dealer, a
murderer - but nothing came to mind. There was, however, the
other name mentioned by Pete. Macon. 'Macon would have his
revenge'. Mulder's eidetic memory started work on the name only
he doubted that there would be time to come up with anything
soon enough to be of any use.

      "Hey, bud, you got business here?" Pete drawled
suspiciously.

      In his broadest Maine accent Mulder muttered through the
appliance in his mouth, "Looking for Mabel."

      Pete's mouth opened in a leer. "Ah. Third floor." Mulder
turned vaguely from side to side as if trying to see if any of
the doors nearby lead to a stairway.

      "Candie's better though," Pete offered. "That's of course
just my opinion. Then ya have to be able to afford 'er."

      Mulder just let his head nod and made to move on but not
quickly. Bum leg after all.

      "You know, buddy," Lawrence began his voice showing
interest, "they're all pretty accommodating if you bring a
bottle with you."

      Mulder turned his uncovered eye on Lawrence while
maintaining his stoop and keeping his face in the shadow.

      Lawrence took a pint bottle from his pocket and waved it.
"You got a bottle, Yank?"

      Mulder shrugged stiffly.

      "Want one? They'll give you an EXTRA good time if you bring
a bottle."

      "Don't have one," Mulder replied, adding the slightest
touch of longing to his voice.

      "I've got a little job that needs doing. Just a few minutes
of your time and it's all yours." Lawrence swung the bottle till
the clear liquid sloshed. Pete was frowning but didn't complain.
He was, after all, going to get what he wanted out of this.

End of Chapter 2

JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over  3a/9
by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but
there are some very nice parts in here, too.
For Disclaimer see chapter 1

Chapter 3a

      Dana Scully sat at her desk, the framed photograph of
Samantha upright and lonely in front of her.

      Mulder had left her - again - and he had not only left her
but his most precious possession, the search for his sister. His
legacy, his insurance, just in case he didn't come back.

      I should be used to this, Dana grumbled to herself. No, you
never get used to watching those you love walk into danger. She
had seen him on that street with that ridiculous carrot. He
could fool the others but did he really think he could fool her?
Just the way he moved his hand, stretched out a leg, turned his
head. That was Mulder. She had known he would be there. She had
known from the moment she had laid down the ground rules of no
involvement earlier that morning - rules she had known he would
never adhere to. The question was how long had he waited? By the
complexity of his disguise not long. Ten minutes? Five?

      One of the hardest things she had ever done was straighten
her back and walk up the steps into the museum leaving him alone
on the street. Not for long though. She had kept the others
waiting for their briefing long enough to whisper hastily to
Edwards, her junior lieutenant.

      "I need two of your best surveillance men," she had told
him to the young agent's surprise. After a second of hesitation
Edwards had nodded. The word around the Bureau was that when it
came to Agents Mulder and Scully, if you don't want to hear the
answers, don't ask too many questions.

      "There's a vagrant outside across the street and to the
left half a block," Scully informed him. "He's wearing a hat,
has on an over-large tan raincoat and he's eating a carrot."
Dana had to give the young man credit, he didn't crack even the
hint of a smile. "I want him followed, followed like it was your
brother's life you were protecting. But he can't know. Do we
understand each other?"

      Edwards had. When the briefing ended, however, the young
agent approached Agent Scully crestfallen. "I had someone out
there within three minutes, but he must have gone. No one even
remembers seeing a man like that. I sent out six of my people to
comb the surrounding blocks and we couldn't find a thing." He
must have read something in her face, Dana had not meant to show
because he added solemnly, "I'm really sorry, Agent Scully."

      So where are you, Mulder? Dana asked the picture of the
young Fox behind his sister, captured for all time within the
frame. What have you found?

      There came a slight tap on the X-Files office door. It was
Skinner, no surprise there. Dana didn't even sit up straight
much less stand. She was too tired.

      "I take it he's gone."

      "What did you expect?" Dana asked with some bitterness. "We
both knew he would. It was either that or lock him up."

      "You know I couldn't have just given him my blessing.
Internal affairs would have had all three of  us for lunch.
That's not what he would have wanted."

      "So he's out there alone."

      There seemed no answer to that. Skinner cleared his throat,
a little nervous gesture Dana would not have expected. "I saw
your e-mail. Another message came from the kidnappers?"

      Dana picked up a poorly-penned note, now wrapped in
plastic, and tossed it in Skinner's direction. She didn't even
glance at it. The words had already imprinted themselves where
she would never forget them.

      Skinner read silently: "There'll be one less stud at the
old ranch come sun up. Sure you aren't ready to deal? If you
change your mind you know how to contact me."

      Skinner felt certain body parts begin to squirm. Uneasily
he shifted his shoulders. "I don't suppose the man is talking
about a vasectomy."

      Dana's expression was like stone. "Nothing requiring quite
so much finesse."

      Skinner winced.

      "Tomorrow!" Dana exclaimed with irritation. "This monster
is going to mutilate a man at dawn tomorrow and the entire
resources of the FBI can't do a thing to stop it!"

      "There's no indication in the note that they realize their
mistake," Skinner said with some hope in his voice. "That may
mean that Mulder is still free."

      "True, but you know how dangerous that is. When Mulder does
blunder in they'll find out quickly that there are two and that
they don't have the right one." Dana suddenly sat up, her face
paling in alarm. "Unless -"

      "Unless what, Agent Scully?" Skinner asked not catching on.

      "Those glasses!" Furiously, Dana spread out Jake's file on
her desk, frantically shuffling through the photos. "Mulder was
wearing glasses when I saw him outside the Museum. I just
remembered. Glasses with the left lens blanked out. Oh, shit!"
Dana stared up at her superior, her hands empty. "They're not
here."

      Walter Skinner knew the direction of her mind now mostly
because he knew Mulder nearly as well as she did. "Some of the
photos are missing, specifically the pictures of Jake the
kidnappers sent showing his injuries."

      You fool, Mulder! Dana swore to herself. You noble fool!
"He's doing exactly what either of us would do in his place if
we could and he might even be able to pull it off."

      Bring him home, Mulder. Bring both of you home.

                             ********

      Lawrence led the way into the cellar. Pete had wanted no
part of it.

      Mulder limped ahead of the big man who lumbered along in
his plaid wool coat, his sawed-off shotgun aimed at the floor
behind Mulder's back, loosely, but ready enough. Mulder added a
wheeze, a slight cough. Lawrence's breathing was deep, raspy
behind him. They descended old cement stairs that had long ago
lost most of their grey-green paint. The passage before them
stretched out long and narrow with a ceiling so low that both
had to stoop. The walls dripped from the remnants of the cold
spring rain. There was no light except that from a flash light
Lawrence carried.

      Mulder felt naked, but not from the cellar's dampness. He
did not like being down here without a weapon while a social
deviant like Lawrence marched behind armed to his bad teeth. His
decision to rid himself of his own guns and his ID had been a
correct one, however. Lawrence had searched him well and even
Pete who clearly didn't like to get his hands dirty had taken a
half-hearted turn. Without a doubt the weapons would have been
found and then Mulder would not be on his way now to ascertain
how Jake Simmons was faring which at the moment was the task
uppermost on his mind.

      As he continued limping stiffly down the passage, Mulder
reached under his coat and absently rubbed the spot on his ass
where Lawrence had the nerve to pinch him. Maybe it hadn't been
an intentional pinch, Mulder certainly hoped not, not for Jake's
sake or his own either, but the threat from this unforeseen
direction bore watching.

      After more than a couple of long minutes the passage opened
up onto a large room filled with huge ancient furnaces and
boilers all dated no later than the turn of the century. The
human stench that had been in the hall upstairs was stronger
here. Lawrence went directly to the farthest furnace, the
largest one, and used his foot to push down the rusty valve
which opened the door through which coal had been shoveled
nearly a century before. The ancient hinges groaned. The stench
increased a hundred-fold.

      "In there," Lawrence commanded with a mirthless smile,
gesturing with the muzzle of the gun.

      Not wanting to appear too eager Mulder bent down to peer
into the black cavity. "What's in there?"

       Lawrence thrust a small, dented dust pan, a brush, a heavy
plastic bag, a role of paper towels and a greasy spray bottle of
'409' in the vet's direction. "You've been in the service.
Latrine duty. Only you don't have to dig any holes. Just clean
up in there the best you can and you'll get the bottle I showed
you and an extra nice ride from the girls upstairs. Just don't
disturb the tenant or you won't live to enjoy your reward. Is
that clear enough for you?"

      Mulder took the supplies in the arm which didn't hold the
cane. "Tenant? It's not a dog, I hope. Don't like dogs."

      "No, it ain't no dog. Just my, ah, cousin. He's a little
crazy. You know crazy?"

      Mulder made it clear from his stance he knew what crazy
was.

      "Really took off last week so we put him down here for his
own protection. My aunt's coming in a few days to take him back
to North Dakota where he can run around and be as crazy as he
wants and no one will notice. There's so much empty space up
there, they're all crazy." Lawrence's voice lowered. "So you
don't listen to anything he says, you hear?"

      Mulder bobbed shoulders and head stiffly up and down and
with exaggerated effort knelt down, pushed the cleaning supplies
ahead of him through the opening, and then crawled after. It was
as black as a tomb inside, it felt like a tomb, every breath
echoing back hollowly from the blackened iron walls. Small, dark
places, were not Mulder's favorite choice in accommodations. At
the last minute Lawrence thrust in a flash light.

      "You've got ten minutes. Make it good."

      And the shrieking door slammed shut with a thunderous echo.

End of chapter 3a
 

From trevizo@utep.edu Wed Oct 30 02:51:37 1996
I did not write this. Please send all comments to the author at
(Windsinger@aol.com).
           __________
          / __    __ \
         ( (__)  (__) )
--------[[[---------]]]-------------------------------------------------

JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over  3b/9
by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but
there are some very nice parts in here, too.
For Disclaimer see chapter 1

Chapter 3b

      Immediately after the door closed, Mulder leaned back on
his boot heels and began to scan the interior with the flash. It
was a cube maybe six feet by eight but no more than five feet
high. Larger than one would expect from just the fire box. This
furnace must have been gutted at some time but still every
surface was covered with an ancient black soot that was more of
a crust now than dust. Across the floor ran rivulets of rusty
water leaking from who-knows-where in the building above.

      A crematorium. Great. That would save those guys a lot of
trouble if he was found out.

      At first Mulder felt a slight touch of consternation. The
furnace shell was empty. Or so he thought upon first inspection.
Then he made out the tiniest flash of paleness in the farthest
corner where some pipes snaked down. It was the figure of a man
crouched against the pipes, his back to the door, nearly
invisible because of the tarry soot that was everything. This
then was the black grim they had seen in the photographs, though
this was far worse.

      As he crawled forward Mulder noted that the man was huddled
into as small a target as possible, head down, one arm raised
straight above his head. The reason for that was soon clear.  On
the wrist of that arm flashed bright, new metal. A handcuff. The
other end was fastened to a pipes that ran horizonal across the
wall on that side.

      Gently Mulder placed his hand on the man's shoulder. The
shoulder, the entire body flinched violently. Something like a
whimper escaped unseen lips. An thin echo moved up and up and
up. Briefly Mulder projected the flash's beam onto the ceiling
and made out a one foot square duct rising. Every sound they
made would go up. If Lawrence was waiting, listening, in one of
the rooms above all would be lost. All Mulder could hope for was
that Lawrence was driven out by the smell as much as Pete had
been. A tracing of the light on the floor of the furnace showed
a small spot, obscenely close to where the man huddled, where
the prisoner had put his waste and other similar heaps, older
and drier, in other corners from earlier occupants. As the men
had hinted, this place had been used as a prison for more than
one poor soul.

      Mulder came as close as he dared to the prisoner and began
to clean up the mess liberally using lots of towels, all of
which went into the bag.

      "Jake, listen to me. I'm not one of them," Mulder whispered
inches from the prisoner's ear in as clear of tones as the mouth
appliance would allow. "I'm with the FBI. You've got to believe
me, we don't have much time."

      There was a long moment of hesitation, then the broad back
before him turned, slowly, in jerks, with pain and stiffness.
One eye blinked in the unaccustomed light, the other, as the
photos had shown, was nearly swollen shut.

      Mulder sensed fear in this man. That was the only word he
could use to explain the emotion that hit him in the chest. He
was reminded too vividly of pictures in his own medical records
after some close encounters of the nasty kind. Unexpectedly,
Mulder found himself experiencing a flash of embarrassment, then
anger, at the remembered whimpering.

      Damn it to hell, Spook, this is NOT you! This is just
another one of the millions you have pledged to protect, only
this one just happens to have had the hideous misfortune to have
been born with a physical similarity to yours truly.

      Mulder let out a long sigh.

      Physical similarity? And bears shit in the woods and not in
old coal furnaces.

      The eye that stared back on him was narrowed in the light
of the flash and distrustful. He had every right to be wary of
the use of his own name. Lawrence and Pete couldn't have known
it unless Jake, during the early hours of his torture, had
shouted it out to them. Certainly, the two kidnappers had failed
to believe him.

      Mulder shifted the flash to shine partially on his own face
and began to remove the mouth appliance, then the glasses with
its grey patch over the left lens, and then the hat.

      As each item was carefully removed and put to the side
Jake's one staring eye opened wider and wider, particularly when
the glasses came off. There was make up over the FBI agent's
left eye, latex and purple and red and black make up to made
Mulder's left eye appear to be nearly swollen shut.

      "Fox Mulder. As I said, FBI, and I believe you're in my
place, Mr. Simmons."

      The ruined lips, cracked for want of moisture even more
than in the photos, moved. Mulder pulled a flask out of his
pocket. Not liquor, just water. Jake took the fluid into his
mouth as if it were the first he had seen in days but he was
smart and drank little, mostly rolling it around, savoring it.

      When he finally swallowed "Why?" came out in a forced
whisper.

      "Why am I here or why are you here? It's pretty obvious now
that we're face to face, isn't it?  Pete and I have a history
and he wants to change the ending, but he made a little mistake.
Pretty understandable mistake under the circumstances."  Mulder
raised his head listening. No returning footsteps yet though he
doubted he would be able to hear them. Reaching deep into a
space in his coat where the lining was thickest he slipped out
of some casing three small keys, his handcuff master set. He
kept the one that fit and replaced the other two. In seconds he
had Jake's cuff opened and was helping the man lower the blood-
starved limb. The touch of that cold skin was creepy, in fact
Mulder did not find the pallor of any of Jake's skin from what
he could see under the soot and bruises very encouraging.

      "Hold on. I can't afford for you to pass out of me. Are
they pretty prompt about coming back?"

      A slow nod, a weak voice. "When they say they will."

      "I'm only supposed to be the waste management engineer. Do
they plan another visit besides coming back to get the janitor?"
 

      Jake's one good eye dropped down into his lap. "One of
them, Pete, said he'd spent a summer castrating sheep and was
eager to take up the trade again." Mulder felt his own insides
flip over and, even in the eerie light from the flash, knew Jake
could see it. "Not an experience I've been looking forward to,"
Jake commented dryly.

      Mulder stayed in his crouch, for several thumping
heartbeats as if deciding something. "Can you walk, at least
with a cane?"

      Jake stretched a leg, grimaced, then attempted a careful
flex of his entire lean body. His breathe caught sharply. "If it
means getting out of here, I can."

      Rapidly Mulder began peeling off his coat and the fatigues.
Underneath was torn and dirty dress slacks and a stripped shirt
in a similar state. As Jake watched wide-eyed Mulder picked up
handfuls of soot chunks from the floor and, one eye on the
architect, began to liberally smear more of the soot onto his
clothes and skin just where Jake was the dirtiest.

      "Take off your shoes," Mulder ordered. When Jake did not
move but only watched the agent take off his own boots, Mulder
hissed impatiently. "Move. Quickly."

      Slowly, Jake began to comply, the fingers of his throbbing
arm not manipulating the laces well. "We're not going anywhere,
are we? At least not together." He gestured to the fake wound
over Mulder's left eye, the clothes. "You planned this all
along, to take my place."

      "There you're wrong," Mulder muttered slipping on the other
man's shoes and not surprised to find they fit only a little
snugly. "You've got my place. I just want it back." Mulder
frowned. The architect was moving too slowly. "Look, finding you
was just a possibility I had to be prepared for. Something Fate
plays me some pretty odd hands. I've learned to go along for the
ride."

      "You should have said 'No, thank you' this time."

      Shoes changed, Mulder had been studying Jake's face. Now he
added a last bit of soot to his face, a large glob where Jake's
mouth was bruised. "I needed a disguise anyway."

      Jake's attempt at dressing, which had been progressing
slowly, stopped entirely. "That's because you're not only hiding
from Pete, you're hiding from your own, aren't you? You're not
even supposed to be here. At least someone at the FBI has two
brain cells to rub together."

      "That's my partner," Mulder muttered grudgingly.

      "Well, I hope he knows where we are."

      "SHE doesn't. That's your job. Get out of here and bring
the cavalry on the off chance that I'm not able to get out of
here on my own. And I would appreciate it if you hurried."

      Grumbling, Jake struggled with the boots. Mulder had gotten
them large to help but it was still taking the man too long. The
architect had managed the fatigue pants but that seemed to have
taken most of his strength. His breathing was not good. Mulder
knelt and began helping with the boot laces.

      There was quiet for long moment and still no sound of
Lawrence's return. "Are you married?" Jake asked softly. "No,
you couldn't be or you wouldn't have dared try this dumb stunt.
Girlfriend?"

      Mulder opened his mouth and then changed his mind because
he found in his heart that he couldn't accurately answer the
question. Scully... How does one explain both less and more at
once. "Something like that. She'll murder me if I let myself get
killed down here."

      Mulder had to push the boot on the architect's foot. As he
did so he heard a groan and sharp movement as an arm moved to
protect some injury in the area of his abdomen. "Sorry."

      Jake's voice was thin. "This is a stupid idea. I have no
one. Leave me here and go back for the marines yourself. It will
save your girlfriend from having to murder you."

      "No, way. Even if you weren't mistaken for me, I'd still
have my oath to protect the public. There goes what's left of my
reputation if I come back and find out they've maimed you or
worse."

      A long, dirty hand came down on Mulder's wrist, stronger
than Mulder would have expected and the voice was low but every
word distinct. "You can't force me to go through with this
insanity. You go. The only thing I ask is that you must promise
that if you don't make it back in time and something has
happened to me that you won't do anything rash. You have no idea
what that does to those who are left."

      Mulder had hesitated for a moment the boot laces in his
hands, remembering the suicide of this man's fiancee and tried
to convey through the intensity of his gaze that he knew exactly
what the architect was talking about. "YOU understand that I'd
feel worse if something happened to you and I stood by and did
nothing - not that it's going to come to that because you're not
going to be in the line of fire much longer. But just to let you
know, I have no intention of shuffling off this mortal coil any
time soon. To paraphrase Robert Frost: I have promises I need to
keep and miles to go before retirement."

      Boots on Jake now, Mulder stood as best as he could under
the low ceiling and held out the long-sleeved fatigue shirt for
the other man but Jake made no move to stand.

      "This is wrong. You have obligations? Well, I don't. The
world can do without another building. Go back to your almost
girlfriend, Agent Mulder, and find out what she wants and give
it to her. Of course finding out what they want, that's the hard
part." The one green eye Mulder saw staring at him was pinpoint,
feverish and maybe just slightly delirious. Mulder began to have
more than a few doubts about his own plan. "Why do women leave?
Why do they wear your ring at night and then run off during the
day to be with another man? I loved her, I was gentle. What did
she want? I don't know. Passion? Danger?"

      Calmly, Mulder moved to stand near where the cuff link
hung, the closed end still locked around the pipe, the open end
that had been around Jake's wrist dangling free. Mulder nudged
the other man firmly with his foot. When he had the architect's
glazed attention Mulder snapped the open cuff around his own
wrist. The sharp snap and the feel of the cold, confining metal
on his skin forced a fist of nerves to close in the pit of his
stomach.

      The desperate act did have its desired effect on Jake. The
webs cleared from the architect's brain, solidifying his
wandering mind into a single bolt of energy and outrage.

      "What in the hell did you do that for?" Jake demanded
hoarsely.

      "To stop this argument!" Mulder responded in a harsh
whisper. "There's no time for it. I'm staying and unless you
want them to kill us both when they come back and find the
Hardie twins going at each other, you'll put on that shirt and
the coat and hat I came in with, take up your sack of offal,
crawl out of here and head straight for the FBI."

      Jake hissed. Mulder wondered if he looked as totally
disagreeable when he was royally pissed. Grimacing against the
pain in his insides, Jake began reluctantly to button the shirt.
 

      "You at least have the key, I hope."

      "Where you'll never find it," Mulder glared.

      "Did anyone ever tell you that you were certifiably nuts?"

      Sitting on his haunches, back against the wall, the
shackled hand dangling above his head - he could not quite get
up the nerve to sit on the slimy floor - Mulder smiled a grim
smile of triumph. "More often than you could possibly imagine."

      As Jake worked on getting the coat on, Mulder watched with
some satisfaction. The man's hands were trembling in pain and
exhaustion and probably a good dose of fear. In any case a good
approximation of the DT's. He would fit in close enough with the
immediate world outside. "Answer me one question before you go,"
Mulder asked.

      "That's a switch," Jake replied sourly. "I thought you were
the one with the answers to everything."

      Mulder ignored the hurt and sarcastic bite in the other
man's voice. "Did those two tell you why they're doing this? I
don't recognize Pete who was the one who supposedly picked you

out - I mean, ME out - as working for the FBI."

      Jake keep struggling with the coat. "He didn't expect me -
YOU - to. He was in the courtroom the day you testified at his
cousin's sentencing. You recommended that the man be sent to a
federal penitentury. And that's where they sent him."

      Pieces of a puzzle began to fall into place. "Billy Macon.
Now I remember. I was thinking of Macon as a first name. That
was years ago, I was a fairly green analyst with Violent Crimes.
>From my profile I was convinced that Billy Macon needed to be
locked away somewhere very, very safe for a long time."

      "That's what Pete told me."

      "What he didn't tell you was that on my word alone Billy
Macon never would have been sentenced to Marion Federal.
Everyone else on the case seemed to want to give him another
chance and send him to a state institution. They would have,
too, if Billy hadn't leaped for my throat as I stepped down
after giving my deposition and then tried to take out a piece of
my face with a quarter-sized chunk of broken glass."

      Jake stopped fumbling with his buttons to stare to Mulder.
The matter-of-fact way the agent spoke told the architect that,
as much as they may look alike, they, in fact, lived and worked
in two entirely different universes.

      Mulder pointed to a small scar under his jaw which Jake
clearly didn't have. "It was very dramatic. He cut me once, just
a little, but I bled like a stuck pig. The press made a big deal
about it. It was Billy's attack that convinced everyone to lock
him up and throw away the key. Still, there has to be something
more. I can't believe all this is in retribution for that."

      "I'm sorry I can't remember more. I was busy having the
shit beat out of me about that time." Jake's eyes went a little
glazed, Mulder could see the memory of all he had been through
the past few days trying to rise. This was not what the
architect needed to be thinking about now.

      "Are you going to be able to make it?" Mulder asked more
gently.

      "A little late to be asking that, isn't it?" Jake snapped
returning to the shirt buttons. "I'll make it. If I have to
crawl, I'll make it. Where am I going anyway?"

      Carefully, Mulder gave instructions. All the architect
really needed to do was get out of the building and a safe
distance away as quickly as possible just in case Pete and
Lawrence had a sudden change of heart about witnesses. After
that, Mulder showed Jake where his emergency twenty dollar bill
was hidden in his coat, more than adequate for a cab ride to the
FBI even at District cab prices. "Just ask for 'Skinner'."

      Coward, Mulder chided himself. Leaving it to Skinner to
break the news to Scully about what a dumb stunt he'd pulled
this time.
       Reluctantly committed, Jake listened, asked intelligent
questions and generally showed he was still mostly all there in
his head. His strength, however, was in question. He frowned
when Mulder explained that the area of town he would find
himself in was not so very good.

      "You're at 426 M. Street, N.W. Whatever you do, don't
forget that. Even the cavalry needs a map."

      Jake had finally finished with the shirt and coat. Now he
was fumbling with the glasses. Their one opaque lens would hide
his swollen eye as it had Mulder's fake one. "Where is the FBI
anyway?"

      "The Building Museum is at Fifth and F, NW. The monstrosity
that Hoover built is at Tenth and Pennsylvania. Not so far."

      Bluntly, Jake pushed the hat down on his filthy hair and
even managed to stuff the offending mouth piece over his teeth
and not a second too soon. Both men jumped at the sound of
scratching at the door. Lawrence had returned. Jake jerked
desperately in the agent's direction, the rapid movement making
the tiny room spin. Mulder had crumpled his long limbs into a
close approximation of Jake's position when he had first seen
him. At the last moment before turning his head away Mulder
mouthed 'Good Luck'.

      Lawrence shouted for the cleaning crew to crawl on out.
Grasping the cane and dragging the bag of filth behind him, Jake
pain-stakingly complied.
 
 

      Because he had turned to the wall as Jake had been Mulder
never knew that Lawrence looked in at the figure in the dark
corner after Jake crawled out. Nor did Mulder see the light in
the tiny dark eyes. He only knew that when Lawrence swung the
screeching metal door shut that he was left in the dark in a
tomb of utter silence.

      How long would it take the architect to contact someone? In
distance even by foot the FBI was not so very far. Ten blocks,
twelve. A fast twenty minute walk for a healthy man. However,
Jake was far from healthy and a stranger in the city, directions
or no. Mulder stopped a shuddering breath, refusing to think
about what Pete could do with his sheep gelding knife while Jake
stumbled his way along some of the shadier parts of Washington
trying to find either a cab willing to pick him up, a working
phone, a friendly face or the FBI itself.

      One thing Mulder was determined to do - rid himself of this
damn handcuff. If Lawrence or Pete came back then at least he
would have some freedom to defend himself. His hand felt the
back wall. His mind pulled up the picture of the wall as it had
appeared in the light of the flash the one-eyed vet had been
allowed. Jake hadn't noticed where Mulder has stashed the key -
a small break in the iron casing just at the ceiling joint, a
space just large enough for a man's fingers. Mulder's probing
hand found the cavity quickly. His fingers closed onto the
welcome hardness of the key.

      With a cry Mulder's hand jerked away from the hole, cursing
as the key went sailing off into the blackness to land -
someplace - with a soft wet sound, certainly beyond reach, that
was for damn sure. The sounds of little paws and a squeaking
came to Mulder's ears as the rat that had bit him scurried away
to another black corner where it would not be so rudely
disturbed.

      In pure anger, Mulder dropped back into his crouch. His
left arm which was suspended above his head throbbed already and
promised to hurt a whole lot more in the next few hours.

      Mulder spent the next five minutes, cursing, forcing the
bite from the razor-sharp little rodent fangs to bleed clean,
and berating himself thoroughly for being such a stupid dumb-
ass. The only consolation he could find in this totally fucked
up situation was that he had just made Scully's week. She could
now look forward to administering not only tetanus shots but the
whole series of anti-rabies injections. Oh, joy.

End of Chapter 3
 
 

Chapter 4a

      Jake swayed even though he gripped the yellow building's
rusted railing with all his strength. Twilight had crept over
the city while Mulder had been inside, but it had been a warm
day for March, one of those harbingers of spring, and the
sidewalks were still crowded with the prowling intercity
dwellers. Set free by the warmth of the sun during the day, they
had no desire now that night had fallen to return to their
winter haunts.

      Jake had been liberated as well, but felt no joy at his
release. Instead he found himself trembling uncontrollably,
barely able to stand. Four days of utter silence, four days of
pain and all-encompassing fear, four days of being beaten again
and again and again with Pete screaming in his ears that he was
not who he knew he was, four days of not even knowing why he was
being tortured. None of that had prepared him for this, not for
this seething mass of poor, mostly unwashed, definitely jostling
humanity. The noise beat relentlessly into his skull. The blast
from a dozen Boom boxes, the hard laughing, the jeering voices
confused him, twisting his thoughts into unrecognizable shapes.

      He found the street jive which was raised to a painful
volume all around him terrifying, intimidating. Though from a
different culture, it was still too much like Pete and
Lawrence's. He was an alien amidst this ocean of colors, wading
through foreign seas where everyone knew their place but him.
Despite the extra double layer of clothes the FBI agent had
given him, he felt exposed and vulnerable.

      "Get away," Agent Mulder had told him looking dirty and a
little desperate at the end. "When you get outside leave the
area as fast as you can." But Mulder had forgotten the time.
That at this just-after-dusk time it was not so easy just to get
away. Jake grasped the handle of the cane, leaned on it
frantically for balance and forced his trembling legs to descend
the last steps. He raised his head, frantically searching for
something, anything to guide him. Having one eye blocked was
disrupting his perspective as well as his balance, yet between
two building far to his right he saw the gleaming pinnacle of
the Washington Monument more than a mile distant.

      That way. Civilization.

      How he had managed to stagger through the corridors of the
basement and then up the narrow, steep stairs with Lawrence
breathing like a bellows behind him, Jake would never totally
remember. It was all part of a dark haze. He had forced his legs
faster than they wanted to take him but then he had had the
walls on either side of the passage to dig his fingertips into
for balance. He had pulled himself up the stairway hand over
hand using the bannister as much as he had used his feet.

      After extracting his 'janitor' from the innards of the
furnace prison, Lawrence had been mercifully reticent asking
only if his 'cousin' had spoken. Threat was veiled but clear
enough if the answer had not been to his liking. Jake just shook
his head.

      "Not surprised, he's really been out of it these last
couple of days," Lawrence commented with false nonchalance as
they began to climb the steep stairs, a task that had looked
like Everest to Jake. "Maybe he needs a little company. Yeah,
now that things smell a bit better down there maybe I'll just
pay my 'cousin' a little visit later. Just to be neighborly."

      The sick sound of that statement had cut through Jake's
exhaustion sparking a small surge of panicked energy. It
reminded Jake too much of how Lawrence had looked at him,
especially at the beginning before the pain of the beatings had
blotted out all thought.

      Having conquered the last cellar step, Jake had only been
able to stand, weaving and indecisive. Behind him Lawrence had
laughed at the vet's disorientation, putting it down to the
utterly disagreeable job he had just performed that would have
scrambled anyone's brains. As the big man extended the bottle of
vodka, Jake had at first just stood there, staring stupidly
until he remembered what Mulder had told him about the expected
payment for the job. Lawrence had laughed even louder as Jake
dragged himself unsteadily towards the front door.

      "Hey, Sergeant! D'you forget your little planned visit to
the ladies? Maybe you don't have the stomach for it any more,
maybe you think they wouldn't be so friendly considering how
much you stink!." And Lawrence had howled.
 

      That was before, this was now, out on the street and Jake
was convinced that Lawrence was following. Jake could almost
feel the con's hot breath on the back of his neck. Gracelessly,
he turned stumbling backwards for a few steps anxiously
searching the crowd, but Lawrence wasn't there. Only the echo of
his laugh. Jake had forced his legs to carry him off the steps.
He had crossed the street with the crowd too dazed to make sense
of the cross walk icons and now the yellow building was a block
behind him. Too close still. Off balance, still moving backwards
he bumped into a group of teenage girls in tight skirts who were
trying to act sophisticated beyond their years. Their laughter
was shrill, the gold of their necklaces and huge dangling ear
rings glowed in the night against their dark skins. They
shrieked recoiling as the filthy street loon blundered into
their midst. Their voices changed, disgust switching to anger,
became harsh and snappish.

      He spun forward again away from their group trying to move
more quickly, but they were going the same way as he and seeing
his confusion continued to jeer, their mocking cat calls
following him, driving him onward faster. Their ridicule, their
insults fueled his disorientation. A darkness opened to his
right. An alley. All Jake knew was that there were no people
there. No lights. A place to hide. He slid into it along the
wall of a building at its corner. The crowd of girls moved on,
their last few taunts already beginning to fade as they bemoaned
the loss of their game.

      Jake crawled along the wall, past dumpsters and pools of
substances that smelled even worse than he, but moved on,
escaping the people. Finally he sank to his knees in a pool of
grey shadow, where the noises of the city and its people was but
a distant throb. There he could listen to his heart pounding,
there he could feel the heat from within burning his eyes, there
he sought, mostly in vain, to pull together again the edges of
his sanity. Like an old scratched LP only tiny chunks of his
thoughts were clear and these repeated endlessly, visions of
interminable blackness, a lonesome dripping, abandonment. No
wonder none of this made sense. He had been delivered from hell
but to what? To this eternal night, these wet echoes, this
aloneness.

      From far down the alley came the sounds of laughing voices,
young male voices. Horseplay, slaps, hoots, the tinkle of glass,
their running, dancing footsteps all echoing as if inside a huge
bell. Jake froze. They were coming nearer moving along the alley
towards the party atmosphere on the farther street. A chilling
sweat trickling down his back, Jake forced his legs to bear his
weight and reeled in the direction of a blacker shadow but the
cane slipped on the greasy, foul ground. He fell into a stack of
rotting cardboard boxes left out too long in the rain. They had
that smell. His fall made a sound was like thunder in the quiet
street.

      "What we got here, man?" a young voice shouted with gleeful
menace.

      The footsteps scampered, came even closer and Jake found
himself suddenly blinking like a stunned animal in the glare of
a pen light fixed at his eyes. The small beam flickered away to
scan his clothes. The rain coat had fallen open revealing the
camouflage fabric of shirt and slacks.

      "Look lads, we got ourselves a 'nam cat!" one of the group
snickered. Slowly Jake's eyes were beginning to adjust. There
were six of them, slender and strong as young trees with
shining, feral eyes and skin that would have done a rainbow
proud.

      "Hey, GI Joe, you got a joint?"

      "Yeah, you guys always got joints. Spent four years just
sucking the air."

      One of them grabbed him held him up, not minding that
standing straight Jake was taller than any of them. "Hey, bud,
we're talkin' to you. We want to know if you got a stash of
grass, ya know?"

      Jake's mind went blank. His lack of response irritated the
punk who held him who hurled him backwards into the brick wall
of the building. Pain exploded at the back of Jake's head. He
didn't remember his legs giving out but they must have for the
largest of the punks had to come forward and haul him upright
again by his coat.

      "We asked you a question," the fuzz-faced street thug
grunted. Jake only sank bonelessly to the ground, the world
spinning, his stomach heaving on empty air as the teen abruptly
released him just to watch him fall.

      In the darkness above where Jake knew the boy's faces must
be, they were jeering, their laughter without mirth, but he
could only focus unsteadily on the legs of their torn and well-
worn jeans and that only from the knees down. "Well, we'll just
have to take a look for ourselves, hey, guys?"

      Two must have stood look out. Four pairs of hands began
swiftly and expertly to snatch at Jake's clothes turning out his
pockets, searching even in the top of his socks. Immediately
they found the Smirnoff's leading to whoops and cat calls of
joy. Then they found the twenty dollar bill.

      Mulder's twenty.

      A blaze of comprehension streaked through Jake's besieged
mind. All that he was honor bound to do suddenly returned with
agonizing clarity just as the means to accomplish it slipped
into another's pocket. Too slowly Jake made a grab for it but
his reactions were far too slow, his strength like water. The
boys laughed as they batted his hands away.

      "Not a bad haul from this little piggy," one of the boys
said as they backed away from their downed victim, backed away
but not far enough, still within kicking distance, and at least
the feet of some moved restlessly. Too much energy, too little
to do.

      "Oh, leave the drunk be," one of the elder boys said seeing
no sport and off he swaggered but not before three of the
younger ones lingered, seeing an opportunity for some practice,
relishing the solid, thudding sound, the flinch and grunt from
the man at their feet as a kick connected well. At least the
teens wore athletic shoes and not Lawrence's boots and they
didn't have his malice or experience at finding the most tender
spots but did well enough.

      A sharp, booming snap burst into the near silence, the
sound of a heavy stick bounding off the edge of a nearly empty
dumpster. The group jumped and spun at once, crouching on their
haunches like wolves. A harsh and ancient voice called out
sharply, "Children, what DO you think yer doin' there?"

      There was a hasty scramble as young bodies stepped away
from where their victim lay twitching and moaning softly as he
curled around his injured stomach. The postures of his
assailants relaxed, softened, never returning to the tenseness
of their attack mode.

      The eldest stepped forward with a swagger. "Hey, Mama!"

      "Don't ya Mama, me. Yer own Mamas would be ashamed. What
brave boys you are, six against one," the old woman's voice
grated with sarcasm. "You've got what you want and had your fun
now be off with you."

      With uneasy good humor they howled to each other across the
alley, added a few more dents to a few more trash cans, and
tossed their long locks disdainfully at the small, bent figure
of the old woman who stood staring after them. But they left.

      At their leaving quiet descended upon the narrow, dark
alley like a cloak. A warm cloak of blessed silence.

      Jake was aware of little of it, only that he hurt, that
more was torn and bruised inside. As soon as the feet had
stopped coming at him out of the dark, he had crawled off into
the blackest shadow he could find. There he huddled, his aching
back against the crumbling brick of one of the buildings. His
arms clasped about his knees, he waited for the new pains to
ebb. With dread he heard and tried to block out the sounds on
the busy sidewalk a block away, all those people with their hard
hands and cruel voices. A siren cried streets and streets away.
He knew he was on the edge of delirium when he almost laughed at
the sound. Even if he could find a cop, he couldn't picture
himself going up to one, not looking like this. The very idea
was ludicrous. Would they believe him? Would he if a bum on the
street told him this story.

      Despair washed over him, drowning out the hysteria. What
was he going to do? All the money he had was gone, Mulder's
money, the money that would have paid for the taxi to take him
out of here. He had lost even the bottle of liquor which was the
only thing of value he had to barter with. His head fell forward
unto his knees.

      And he hurt, he hurt so bad... It hurt to breathe, it hurt
to think, at the moment it hurt to live.

      A voice spoke near him. Jake jerked, startled, which sent
too many pains stabbing into that burning space just under his
ribs and through his limbs. Eyes stared into his, ancient, dark
eyes. There was an odor of mothballs and mildew strong enough to
overpower even his own stink. A wrinkled hand wiped his tear-
streaked face with a dirty scrap of what must have once been a
woman's slip. Jake had not realized until that moment that he
had been crying.

      "Hey, pretty boy," came the old voice. It was the voice he
vaguely remembered from before, the voice that sent his
tormentors away. She sat a little outside the densest shadow,
just far enough so he could see that the voice came with a face
as wrinkled as an old walnut. It shone benignly from beneath a
ring of cloud-white hair. "Don't cry, don't cry. Can't be as bad
as that."

      Jake opened his mouth but nothing came out. The old bag
lady patted his shoulder and settled down next to him, hugging
his side. "It'll be okay. It'll be fine. Mama Rosa is here, and
she'll stay right here with you will you feel better."

      "I've got to..."

      "Shhhh... quiet... sleep...."

      A voice. Too weak certainly to be his. "No, I've got to
go... help...."

      "Shhhh... Now you stay right here and keep Mama Rosa's old
bones warm for a while, you hear?"

      Her arm was strong for such an old woman. Her strength
insisted that he lie down with his head on her lap. "Can't..."
he whispered. She stroked his matted hair. "Tired... so
tired...." he muttered. He wanted to say other things, but what
exactly was lost in his body's cries for rest. Besides he felt
safe, for the first time in longer than he could remember. Safe.

End of chapter 4a
 

From trevizo@utep.edu Wed Oct 30 02:49:23 1996
I did not write this. Please send all comments to the author at
(Windsinger@aol.com).
           __________
          / __    __ \
         ( (__)  (__) )
--------[[[---------]]]-------------------------------------------------

JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over 4b/9
by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but
there are some very nice parts in here, too.
For Disclaimer see chapter 1

Chapter 4b
                             ********

      Mulder jerked awake from his half doze, something had
touched his hair. Probably it had been just a stray breeze from
down the narrow shaft above his head, but the ache in his finger
brought up other possibilities all centered around images of red
and hungry eyes. Taut he raised his head, alert and listening
but heard no sound at all, much less the brush and scurry of
small rodent feet. The hour must be very late for even the
distant vibration from the street was gone as was the
intermittent sound of dripping water which only seemed to begin
after one of the toilets above was flushed.

      Time passed, stretched out like a physical thing, black and
silent and interminable. Mulder waited, his left arm aching from
its awkward position, his body shivering from the damp cold that
radiated from the metal of the dead furnace's iron walls.
Contemplation of the universe, his soul, the NBA stats, his
chances of getting out of this alive, passed and were gone.
Bored, Mulder allowed his head to drop slowly back against the
wall at his back. His distaste for the rats was real but so was
his exhaustion. There had been little sleep since Scully had
appeared with that first photo of Jake and the strength sleep
would give him he may need later. Under the circumstances he
wasn't going to be able to take either Lawrence or Pete by
surprise anyway.

      Mulder didn't know when consciousness slipped into dream.
Sleep wove itself into his thoughts slowly like a gentle dancing
breeze. A warm one. Blessed warmth. The discomfort in his arm
and shoulder also seemed to drift away with the gentle breeze.
It stirred his hair again but this time he did not wake, did not
want to. This was better than his cold prison.

      A touch on his cheek, gentle, soft, hesitant...

      Mulder stiffened, waited. He could have sworn... Another
touch, bolder, a finger, a woman's on his cheekbone trailing
whisper light down his cheek and along his jaw.

      Mulder smiled ever so slightly in expectation. This had the
makings of a good one. Certainly the previews were auspicious.
He dared not move.

      It's all this talk about the threat to your maleness, his
educated brain tried to tell him.

      Beat it! was Mulder's response. The last thing he wanted to
do was psychoanalyze why this was happening now. After all, like
a furtive wild animal which he wanted to lure closer to take the
treat from his hand, he didn't want to scare it away. The breeze
blew upon his face, stronger this time, with more presence,
sending a pleasant tingle over his body.

      This was nice.

      Lips touched his gently smiling ones, warm and soft, dream-
like. His heart picked up its rhythm. He felt warmer already.

      This was very nice.

      More than one finger brushed against his closed eyelids,
smoothing his lashes as they lay upon his cheeks. The finger
moved on tracing the curves in his lips and jawbone, eyebrows
and cheeks. Two hands now, fingers combing through his hair, a
breath upon his upturned face smelling of musk and flowers and
woman. Kisses, soft as butterfly wings over his face, down over
his chin, along his throat. Teeth pressed down daintily upon his
ear lobe, tasting, first one than the other, unhurried. A stream
of warm air brushed against his ear, the sensation shimmering
all the way to his toes though it concentrated about half way
down, igniting a small fire of exquisite pleasure.

      Small, eager hands, astonishingly shy moved under his
shirt, soft, loving hands. A tongue licked the skin of his
chest, teeth closed in, just teasing, not nearly hard enough to
break the skin. He did not move. He welcomed her with pleasant
thoughts, with grateful little sighs. As if taking that as
encouragement she became bolder still, moving over his body,
licking, biting, scratching in little cat bits. Easily enough to
bring a shiver, not enough to drive him mad. Not yet.

      Lips and tongue lapped at a nipple then with an unexpected
pounce came down hard, sucking, drawing him in, forcing out a
moan of surprise and pleasure. More than his heart was throbbing
now, his blood was up and hot, rushing like white water down to
his nether regions.

      This was working up to becoming the most intense wet dream
of his life.

      Please, just don't let me wake up, not now.

      The pressure on his left nipple released, a woman's silvery
laugh, almost too soft to hear, came from below his chin.

      A small, cold shock ran up Mulder's spine. What if this
wasn't just a very, very nice dream. Maybe Pete or Lawrence had
decided as a final bit of irony to hire the girls from the third
floor, maybe even the legendary Mabel, to attend their prisoner
before the final cut, like a last meal. If so, whatever she
charged, it wasn't nearly enough.

      The eager mouth clamped down again this time on his other
breast. At the same time somewhere low, a hand, warm and soft,
squeezed. All thoughts of dreams or not, of kidnappers and
prisons fled. There were no thoughts at all. Just pleasure,
guiltless, beyond depth, past perfection. There was no hurry as
if time had no measure. There was not fumbling, not a single
false move, not a one, as if the artist who played his body knew
exactly what he wanted even before he did. Before he could wish
for a little pressure here, some release there, a cupping of his
balls now, a sliding along the shaft this long and no longer, it
was done. His body shuddered as he struggled to hold it all in,
to make it last. The affect all this was having on his blood
pressure he didn't dare think about.

      Hands massaged his chest and his buttocks at once. The
throbbing in his veins inched up another level. Nails raked
along the inside of this thigh. Now this was approaching
madness. At the same time the claws on the other hand carved
blissful ridges down the skin of his back. Glorious.

      In the tiny corner of his mind that could still reason,
there smoldered a shred of remorse for taking so much and giving
none in return, but he found, not entirely to his surprise, that
his arms would not lift, instead felt leaden as if he were
restrained by silken cords. The hands smoothed his brow, as if
comforting him, telling him not to worry.

      We are sexual creatures, she seemed to say. Words are
extraneous. A few thousand years of civilization cannot erase
hundreds of thousands of years of nature's drives. Lie still, be
at peace.

      His head fell back as he she lowered herself onto him, warm
and wet. Peace was suddenly the farthest thing from his mind.

      She rocked against him, slow but with presence and it was
all he could do to keep from flying away, but that would be
giving in too soon. With a shuddering breath he stayed with her.
 

      Very good, came the whisper and she kissed him, easing up,
letting him fall back gently only to bring him back to the
heights less than a minute later with just the tiniest movement
of her body.

      It was harder not to come this time, every muscle in his
body, a special few in particular, were beginning to quaver in
little convulsions with his need. Jaw clenched, fists like claws
he stayed on the earth.

      She stroked his head as if he were a good beast to obey her
so well, to which he growled softly. This was becoming too much.
He had been patient. How long did she expect him to wait? Forget
the gentlemanly control, a little ravishing was beginning to
look better and better.

      Only he could not move! His nostrils flared in his
frustration as his body began to oscillate furiously between
pleasure and pain.

      Hold on, she told him in a voice still soft but with an
edge beginning to creep in. The greatest prize goes to those who
wait. She moved again, lowered her mouth and sucked.

      His body tight as a drawn bow, stretched as if to breaking
between her outstretched hands. The center of his fire was the
arrow poised but not allowed to loose. His moans became