ByJustin Glasser and Dawn M. Pares
Julan777@aol.com and SkaLab6066@aol.com
 

E-mail Address: Feedback happily read and answered at
Julan777@aol.com and/or SkaLab6066@aol.com
Rating: R for violence
Category: SXA
Spoilers: This one takes place after the movie and
sometime before SR819. You fit it in.
Keywords: Case File. Other keywords withheld at
author request.
Archive: Yes to Ephemeral and Gossamer. All others
please ask one of the other of us. (We almost always say
yes. Oh hell, we *always* do, we just like to be asked.)
Summary: Skinner gets involved in a case that Mulder and
Scully are investigating.
 
Disclaimer: No permission has been granted, no money has
been made, no infringement is intended.
 
Acknowledgments: There isn't world enough and time to
thank all of the people who ought to be thanked for their
contributions to this piece. We do have time, however, to
thank the ladies of the Box for their support and careful
reading, Janis for her inspiration and encouragement, and
Meredith and Jesemie's Evil Twin for their enthusiasm.
The authors couldn't have completed this work without their
help.
 
Dedication: As corny as it sounds, the authors of this story
would like to dedicate it to each other. As partners in crime, we
feel it would be unfair to inflict the burden on anyone else. :)
 
Notes: January Sun began as a vignette Dawn sent to me
several months back. It was a mood piece, something she had
written without being sure what she wanted to do with it. One day,
not too long after I read the fragment, she said "hey, would you ever
want to collaborate on something?" and I said without hesitation, "I
like January Sun." And a story was born.
 
If only life were that
simple . . .

On to Section 1!

January Sun 1/7: Skinner
by Dawn Pares and Justin Glasser

***
Crystal City Apartments
Washington DC
Early Morning

He was in the parking lot of a grocery store pushing a cart full of stuff that
he didn't usually buy: yogurt and grapefruit and bean sprouts.  Sunlight
glinted off the cars, making his head throb. He wanted to get home and
take his shoes off, put a cold cloth on his head.  Have a shot of Stoli
maybe, and a nice grilled chicken breast for dinner, which was strange
because he didn't like chicken, really.  He was more of a steak man.

He kept feeling the urge to look over his shoulder, to push the cart faster,
to bolt, but he didn't.  That was foolish.  He had nothing to fear.  Instead,
he put his hand under his left arm, groping for the gun, feeling the sweat
trickle down the center of his back, although it was only the middle of a
sunny afternoon in a crowded parking lot.  Then it wasn't.

Time changed, and it was dark and he was alone, hands clasped behind his
back, in the dark, alone, and afraid.  Afraid.  Alone.  And then he wasn't
alone.

That was worse.

Walter Skinner woke with a start, jerking up against the bedclothes,
choking against them as if he were drowning.

Still dark.

He sighed, collapsing against the pillows, turning his head to see the
blood-red numbers of the clock.

3:47

He groped for his glasses on the night table, pushed back the blankets, and
set his feet on the floor.  He never felt more like an old man than he did in
these morning hours, when he woke smelling of fresh fear.  He was tired,
dragged out, fed up.

The dreams had started about two weeks ago, and they always started the
same.  He was shopping, then it was dark, then, sometimes, there was a
voice dancing around the edges of his brain.  A woman's voice or a man's-
-it varied.  He hardly heard it before he woke up, damp with fear.  At first
he would get up, get a glass of water and go back to bed, but the dreams
had started to come back every time he closed his eyes.  He hadn't slept a
night through in six days and he was starting to feel it.

He made coffee and retired to the recliner, file folder in hand.  He'd almost
enjoy these early mornings if it weren't for the sleep deprivation.  He was
getting an amazing amount of work done, and he liked the slow shift from
night into day.  He liked hearing the dim sounds of his building waking
up, the leisurely pace of his showers, the yellow light of the sun reflected
off the building across the way.  He almost wished he had windows that
faced east.  And, despite the fact that he spent most of his time this way,
he liked to be alone.  He'd rather be asleep, but overall, alone wasn't bad.

What was bad was the exhaustion that would come later, during the staff
meetings or the boring paperwork.  His afternoons were wars with sleep,
but even if he lay down on the leather couch and had Kim hold his calls,
he couldn't rest.  He'd stopped trying to take naps.  The afternoons were
murder.

The mornings, though, when he could tell himself a new day had started
and there was nothing wrong, when he could almost believe that getting
up at a quarter to four was just getting a jump on the day . . . well, the
mornings were fine.

***
J.  Edgar Hoover Building
Washington D.C.
8:01 am

He stepped out of the elevator, eyes already grainy from weariness, and
shouldered impatiently through the usual assortment of bureaucracy and
administrative assistants.  Kim sat at her desk as always, fingers flying
over the keyboard.  She got in at 7:30 everyday, because, as she had
chirped to him at one Secretary's Day lunch, she was a morning person.

"Morning, Kim," he said, pushing open his office door.

She spun in her chair.  "Mr. Skinner--" she began, but he had already seen
them, the thorns in his side, the banes of his existence, the two people he
liked more than anyone else he knew in the FBI.

Scully sat in a chair like a normal human being, but Mulder prowled,
investigating the photos on the shelves.

"--pretty impressive--" he was saying, and Skinner knew from the frame
that Mulder was holding the picture of him with Susannah Bilkes, his
former partner's daughter.

"She's like a daughter to me, Mulder," he said.  "To what do I owe this
honor?"

"I didn't know you had a niece, sir," Mulder said, setting the picture down
and folding himself into the chair next to his partner.

Sinking into his own chair, Skinner felt like a bag of wet sand.  "God
child," he said, waiting for the explanation, for the story, for the bullshit
rationale that Mulder was going to unravel on him so that the federal
government would pay for this next phase of the Great American Alien
Hunt.

Mulder stretched forward and handed him the omnipresent manila file
folder.

"What'm I looking at?" Skinner asked, skimming the police reports.

"As of yesterday police have found four women--Janine Graham, Gloria
Arguilez, Kara Stoddard, and Teresa Honeywell--each strangled,
eviscerated, and left in empty warehouses or storage facilities in Bent,
North Carolina."  Mulder's hand intruded on Skinner's field of vision and
flipped to the photos.  His fingers were well made and reassuring and out
of place next to pictures of the dead.

Skinner felt the hair at the back of his neck rise as he looked at the series
of broken women, and he remembered the populated darkness of his
dreams.  This was the stuff of nightmares.  Shrugging, he re-focused on
the pictures in front of him.

"This seems pretty straightforward, Mulder."  He looked up into the
younger man's eyes.  "Why are we interested in this case?"

Scully answered, her voice like silk in his ears.  He thought briefly that he
might be able to sleep if Agent Scully would come and read to him.

"Agent Mulder believes that we have a lead traditional investigators may
be overlooking."

Skinner waited.

Mulder stepped in.  "Police were contacted by an Eileen Bridgeton, a
housewife from Bent, who claims to know when a woman is about to be
taken or found."

"Really?"  Skinner couldn't disguise the sarcasm in his voice.

"She's been able to tell us details about the victims known only to police.
Local talent hasn't even bothered to question her, for obvious reasons, and-
-"

"And you want to go down and run a separate investigation."

"We want to aid an ongoing investigation by using alternative
methodologies," Agent Mulder said.  The man was a walking bullshit
machine.

"It does make sense, sir," Scully interjected.  "Considering Mulder's
background with VICAP and our experience with this kind of
phenomenon both real and feigned . . . "

"Fine."  Skinner pulled a pen out of his desk drawer.  "You're going.  Have
a good time."

Mulder almost smiled on his way out, but Skinner didn't even have the
ambition to be amused.  Mulder and Scully were off on another wild goose
chase at government expense.  He hoped they helped catch a killer while
they were down there, but he couldn't even summon up the energy to care.

***
On Flight 247
from Washington DC to Raleigh, NC
9:40 am

Mulder wasn't sure what had clued him in to the fact that his boss was off
his game--whether it was the strange look on Skinner's face during
Scully's recitation of the facts, or the way he had shoved the 302 into
Mulder's hand after he'd signed it--but now, sitting in the airplane on his
way to Raleigh, Mulder was certain that in the life of Assistant Director
Skinner all was not well.

"What do you think, Scully?"

She looked up from her book, amused.

"About Skinner," he added by way of explanation.

"He's got a nice set of shoulders.  Elaborate, Mulder."

"Did he seem strange to you?"

She closed her book, marking her place with her index finger.  "He
seemed tired.  But Mulder," she said, eyes twinkling.  "He might just be
tired of you."

"Us."

"No, just you, Mulder," she said, reopening her book.  Conversation
closed.

"So," he said, hunching down in his seat to peer at her book.  "You're into
the AD's shoulders?"

She glared, but she didn't mean it.  She also refused to be drawn back into
idle speculation.  Later, when he woke up from his in-flight nap against
her shoulder, he refused to feel remorse for the drool.

***
He brought it up again in the rental car.  She was driving, which made it
that much easier to grill her: she couldn't devote all of her energy to
defending against him.

"Skinner's shoulders, hmm?" he said.

She sighed.  "Mulder, what exactly is this about?"

"I'm not sure."  That was true.  He wasn't sure what kept bringing him
back to Skinner's image, to the man sitting at his desk handing over the
302, arm extended in resignation.  He wasn't sure why the image was
washed with sadness like a watercolor painting left in the rain.  "Maybe
it's just that we got here too easily," he said.

"Too easily." Her eyebrow lifted.

"He just signed the form."

"You're complaining because Skinner let us come down here without
making us jump through flaming hoops first?"

Mulder shrugged.  When she put it that way it sounded so . . . stupid.

"All I'm saying, Scully, is that it was not standard Skinner behavior."

"Granted, Mulder."

She seemed content to leave it there, and she had conceded his point, so he
was forced to fall back on color commentary to entertain himself.

"Look, Scully." He pointed at the billboard they were whooshing past.
Scully had a lead foot.  "Grace Dairy. Grace Cream, Grace Yogurt, Grace
Butter...  'Amazing Grace, how sweet the taste.'  Made right here in Bent.
Whattya know."

"Hmmph," she said.

"Tell me Scully," he said, turning to her.  "Has your butter been saved?"
He pointed a religious and accusatory finger at her.  When he opened his
mouth his voice came out slow and loud, coated in a maple syrup accent.
"Has your butter been SAV-ED?"

She tossed him a glance, eyes barely leaving the road.  "I'm Catholic,
Mulder.  My dairy products don't have immortal souls."

Mulder was still grinning when they pulled up in front of the motel.

***

Motel 6
Bent, North Carolina
12:52 pm

They circled the hotel rooms like a couple of dogs, wandering back and
forth through the connecting door engaged in idle banter until Scully's
shoes lay beside the chair in one room and Mulder's suit bag collapsed on
the bed in the other.

"What's our itinerary?" he asked, sprawling on the polyester bedspread
and stretching for the remote control.

"We meet with the ASAC at two and Mrs. Bridgeton expects us at three.
I'm going to go take a shower."

"Let me know if you need any help," he called after her, through the half-
open door.  She shouted something back that was probably "in your
dreams."

He clicked on the tv and started flipping channels, clicking through them
while he worked through the facts of the case mentally, performing what
Bill Patterson had called the "sift"--the culturing of fact into information
that could be used.  This was what he had always been best at, psychology
degree aside.  He could hold all of the facts in one place and run his brain
through them like running fingers through flour.

 . . . Four women, similar in appearance and age, sexually assaulted,
strangled.  Bodies mutilated post-mortem with a single cut from sternum
to pelvic bone.  Lack of fluid at the scenes indicates victims are killed then
moved to a public location, found usually within twenty-four hours of
death . . . it all lead up to two things: one, the killer was murdering women
because they represented something or someone to him, an influential
woman, perhaps a mother, or a woman who had rejected sexual advances,
a wife or girlfriend.  Two, this guy was sending a message.  He wanted
these women found.

Far away, he heard Scully's shower go off, and a minute or two later she
appeared in the doorway, dressed and damp, her naked face improbably
young.

"Mulder," she said.  Mulder didn't answer, shifting his gaze to his own
folded hands. In his peripheral vision, Scully glowed in her white robe,
and he was paralyzed with tenderness. His chest was tight with it; he
stored such moments in his intricate eidetic memory, these times when she
was most at her ease with him.  He wondered what was urgent enough to
bring her to him before her hair was dry. "Please tell me," she said, "that
this story was a facade designed to get us into the case."

"What are you saying, Scully?" he asked.

"You don't really believe that this woman is psychic, do you?"

He returned his gaze to the t.v., squelching a smile.  "Won't know 'til we
get there."

"I should have known," he heard her mutter.

"Did you say something, Scully?"

The slam of the bathroom door and the roar of the hair dryer were his only
answers.  It was good to be on the road again.
 

January Sun 2/7 : Eileen
by Justin Glasser and Dawn M. Pares

***

FBI Field Office
Bent, North Carolina
2:10 pm

From vast experience, Mulder knew that each FBI field office was
different.  Some, like those in New York and Chicago, were made up of
dozens of agents, all swimming in a sea of cases, surrounded by the best in
technology and support staff.  Others, like this one in Bent, were outposts
in the federal government's war on crime, made up of two or three
younger agents who made their own coffee and typed their own reports.
No matter how different the decorating was though, or how pretty the
secretaries, Mulder knew that each office had one thing in common:  each
was full of agents looking for that elusive gift, the Case, the one that
would get them out of wherever they were and up to the next rung of the
ladder.  The Case that would give them a Name.

And Mulder also knew that acting ASAC Jonathon Christley thought he
had found his Case, and he was hanging on to it the way a terrier will hold
on to a piece of meat, all teeth and snarling.

"Look," Scully was saying, "--we're here because you don't want to
interview Mrs. Bridge--"

Agent Christley nodded, head bobbing like a cork.  "I understand, Agent
Scully, I do."  His accent was slow and drawn, reminding Mulder of
Foghorn Leghorn.  "All I'm sayin' is I don't understand why Washington
sent two more agents.  VICAP just got here--" He pointed vaguely.
Mulder tapped on Scully's shoulder and headed off in that general
direction.

"Where's he goin'?" Agent Christley asked, and Scully said something in
reply.  "I *know*," Christley said, "but I *told* you--"

Mulder didn't hear the rest.
 

***
The VICAP guy must have been fairly new because Mulder hadn't ever
seen him before.  He stuck out his hand as the man looked up.

"I hear you're VICAP," he said, smiling.  No sense in causing trouble right
away.

The man stood and took his hand.  He was tall and thin, a light-skinned
black man whose eyes reminded Mulder of Gregory Hines.

"James Robertson."

"Fox Mulder."

Agent Robertson paused.  "Really?  Fox Mulder?"

Mulder smiled again, waiting for the joke, the story, the questions about
what was true.

"What are you doing here?" Robertson asked.

"Excuse me?"

"I thought I was the only profiler assigned," he said, sounding flattered
instead of insulted.

"My partner and I are checking out some random leads.  You got
anything?"

Robertson sighed.  "Not much.  Standard.  White male, 35-45, no record,
anti-social, blah, blah, blah.  And we've got all the victims.  You want a
copy of the file?"

"Got one, thanks."

Robertson stared at him for a moment, smiled, shook his head.

"You're a fucking legend, man.  It's an honor."

"Yeah, well."  Mulder was acutely aware of the heat in his face.  "There's
a fine line between famous and infamous, you know?"

Robertson laughed a laugh surprisingly low and rumbling.

"I hear you, man.  Let me know if you need anything."

By the time Mulder got back to her, Scully had disposed of Christley, and
stood patiently by the door.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"Robertson.  VICAP.  Nice guy."

"Lemme guess," she said.  "He's heard of you?"

***

Home of Eileen Bridgeton
337 Grant Street
Bent,  North Carolina
3:01 pm

Eileen Bridgeton was an indifferent gardener, Scully thought, if her patchy
lawn and wilting flowers were any indication, but her house was in good
repair, and the front door looked freshly painted.  Nevertheless, Scully still
wasn't sure what she was doing here waiting to ask her about the future.
She had meant what she had said in the motel:  she had considered Mrs.
Bridgeton just an excuse, a way to get out of the office and into a really
juicy case.  Now she was afraid Mulder might actually believe his own
hype.

He gave her a consoling glance before knocking, and she quelled the
sudden desire to kick him by trying to decide what this "psychic" was
going to look like.

The woman was no gypsy.

Instead, Mrs. Bridgeton was a pale, freckled woman with broad hips and a
soft mouth.  Her hands fluttered nervously to her throat when she saw
them standing there. Her eyes were the soft brown of a frightened deer.
She waved the two of them in without asking their names or their
business, and when she turned to close the door behind them, Scully saw
that she had her hair pulled back with a plain elastic band.  Mrs. Bridgeton
wasn't a psychic: she was a housewife.

"I know why you're here," she said.

*Well, then you're one step ahead of me,* Scully thought, suppressing the
urge to groan.  She was always careful not to look at Mulder at times like
this.  It would be too easy to roll her eyes.

A wary looking boy with a baseball cap was shrugging an athletic bag
over his shoulder in the hallway.

"I got practice," he informed his mother, not looking at the agents.

"Don't be late," she replied.  "My son, Brian," she said by way of
introduction.  The boy, maybe fourteen, nodded diffidently in their
direction and shouldered past Scully and out the front door.

Eileen led them to a sitting room and offered to make tea.

"We're fine, Mrs. Bridgeton," Mulder said.  He took an easy chair across
from where the woman stood, pulling out his i.d. and handing it to her.
She glanced at it, nodding. "If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a few
questions about these dreams you've been having."

"Oh, of course."  She sank onto the flowered couch, hands toying with the
hem of her blue chambray shirt.  She seemed to be thinking of something
sad.  Scully saw the skin around her eyes tighten, then Mrs. Bridgeton
sighed and folded her fingers resolutely in her lap. "They started not long
after my . . . My husband died.  He was a firefighter, and . . . and he . . ."

Scully settled beside the woman, feeling sympathy well in her chest.
Psychic or not, Eileen Bridgeton had been through a lot.

"We understand that he was killed in a training accident."

Eileen nodded, wiping at her eyes.

"He fell . . . from a roof.  They still haven't been able to really explain it
to
me.  It . . . it was just so . . . so pointless."

Mulder leaned forward then, his eyes warm and dark with concern.

"I know it must have been very painful for you, Mrs. Bridgeton.  Before
he died, did you ever have any visions, like the ones you described to the
police?"

The woman shook her head.

"No.  Never.  But now that Frank's gone, I just don't feel . . . safe
anymore."  Her damp eyes focused on Scully's face.  "Do you know what I
mean?  Having Frank here . . . I mean, I knew that his job was dangerous,
but I always thought he'd be here . . ."

Eileen unknit her fingers and closed one hand on Scully's sleeve in the
desperate grip of a drowning woman.

"But then he was gone, and Brian was so upset.  He hardly said a word for
a week after his father died.  Then he seemed to perk up a little . . . and
that's when the dreams started."

Mulder nodded, encouraging.  Scully was always surprised by the
intensity of his gaze when he was questioning a suspect or a witness, as if
he expected to draw the information out of them solely with his desire to
know.

"At first . . . at first I thought I'd just been watching too much television.

After Frank, well, I started staying up real late, flipping channels, not
really watching anything, just . . . I don't know, really.  But when I had the
first dream, I just thought maybe I'd fallen asleep with the television on,
and maybe picked up on 'Cops' or something."

A small, fleeting smile made her years younger and much more like the
pretty bride Scully had noted in the photograph over the mantle.  Frank
Bridgeton had had a kind face and a mustache.  God, Scully thought,
remembering her own father's funeral.

"Then I just thought I was crazy," Eileen continued,  "especially when I
realized I'd been dreaming what came on the news the next day."

Mrs. Bridgeton let Scully go in order to rest her hands in her lap again.

"Mrs. Bridgeton, what made you decide to come forward and report these
visions?"  Mulder's voice was kind, but not appeasing.  Scully could hear
the sincerity of Mulder's words and she found herself wanting to protect
Eileen from it, from Mulder's coaxing tone, his terrible understanding.
Scully wasn't sure the woman was ready to believe herself psychic any
more than Scully was.

Eileen glanced at her before answering, as if asking permission to
continue.

"I didn't want to.  I thought everyone would think I was crazy.  But then,
then I thought I should come forward, if I could help.  I had to."  Her
desperate look made Scully glance at the picture over the mantle again,
see the strong face of a younger, braver woman.  Eileen's reverie faded,
though, and her face crumpled.  "When I saw it on the news about that
first body . . . I had to tell the police that I'd known that already.  That
I'd
dreamed it."  Her eyes, dark and pleading, sought Mulder's.

"Do you think I'm crazy, too?"

"No, Mrs. Bridgeton.  I don't.  Scully?"  He'd gotten to his feet and, Scully
nodded at him.  Scully squeezed Mrs. Bridgeton's hand before standing up
and following Mulder into the hall.

***

Mulder barely let the door close behind them before closing a hand on her
shoulder. "Scully, she could be the real thing." His breath was a warm rush
over her ear.

"Mulder." She let exasperation flavor her pause.  "I believe that *she*
believes she's psychic.  That doesn't mean she is."

"How can you explain the dreams?  She's known things about the murders,
about the victims, that haven't been released to the media."

"Yes, the visions she's described have a startling similarity to the crime
scenes, but when you come right down to it, many of her details are
vague."

"Vague or not, how could she know them at all?"

"Mulder, this woman has recently experienced a traumatic loss in her life.
Grief can do strange things to people.  Maybe she's sleepwalking, or
driving around in a trance state following police cars . . ." She stopped,
abruptly aware that she had stumbled into a minefield of stupidity.  She
hated it when her explanations sounded less plausible than Mulder's.

His eyes actually  *twinkled*.  Scully sighed, scowling.

"'Trance driving'?  Scully, you're reaching here, admit it."

"I'll admit that I'm not sure how Mrs. Bridgeton knew details about crimes
she obviously did not commit, but I won't admit that she's psychic.  You
can't prove that, Mulder."

"And you can't prove to me she's not."  He leaned forward, eyes alight,
mouth curving into the grin that always made her want to pinch him.

"Fine, Mulder.  Fine.  Why don't we just check the place out first?"

He held up his hands in mock surrender.  "Where do you want to start?"

"Your head on a platter."

"You wound me, Scully."

"She said her dreams started after Brian got better, right?  Why don't we
start with him."

"Be my guest, FBI woman."

Scully re-entered the sitting room and asked Mrs. Bridgeton's leave to
search the house.

"I'd like to start with your son's room, if that's okay?"

Eileen surprised her by blushing.

"Oh, I wish you wouldn't.  It's such a mess.  It's embarrassing.  He's pretty
good about keeping all his junk in his room, but once it's in there, most of
it ends up on the floor."

Scully found herself smiling.

"I have two brothers Mrs. Bridgeton.  Believe me, I know how boys live."

Still faintly pink, Eileen nodded.

She led them up the stairs to a door hung with a sign.  "BioHazard" it
proclaimed in black letters over yellow and black stripes.  Remembering
Charlie and Bill's rooms during their high school years, their mountains of
clothes and debris, Scully didn't doubt the sign's veracity.  She exchanged
a look with Mulder, fighting to suppress a smile, and opened the door.

Drifts of clothes and stacks of Sports Illustrated littered the floor.  One
wall was apparently a shrine to Pamela Anderson, another to the Chicago
Bulls.  Mulder paused in front of Pamela Anderson in a pink bikini.
Scully paused beside him.

"Are you picking up psychic vibrations, too?" she asked.

"Not with all the negative energy in the room . . . " He grinned at her.

She prodded at a pile of tangled sweats with the toe of her navy sling
backs, and uncovered a broken CD case.

Mulder turned away from the poster.  "I think I'll check out her bathroom.
Maybe she's been taking Psychic Vitamins."

Scully ignored him and continued to sort through piles of unwashed
laundry.  Her brother Charles had sometimes worn the same socks three
days in a row, and bragged about it.  Brian seemed to have an endless
supply of socks, however.

Probably, he'd inherited all his father's.

That thought made her pause, made her wonder what she was doing
pawing through the belongings of a fourteen year old whose father had no
need for new socks.  She wondered if they had been close, or if Brian was
only close to his dad now, when it was too late.  She was grateful suddenly
for her father.  She had been his favorite and everyone in the family had
known it: Ahab had never made any bones about telling her he loved her.
He had driven her and pushed her and demanded her best every time all
the time, but he had also boasted about her to his friends, had hung every
award or commendation she had ever received in his office right next to
his own.  She wondered if Mr. Bridgeton had kept his love for his son a
secret.

Besides an apparently endless supply of athletic socks, though, Scully
uncovered nothing unusual, or even interesting in the search of Brian's
room, until she opened the closet.

A predictable amount of ski and camping gear was crammed behind the
doors, and on the floor lay a flashlight, a writing tablet, and a pen.

She crouched down and picked up the tablet, finger tapping the open page.
The words "Dear Dad" had been engraved into the page in pencil.  The
paper was worn and rough in places where it had been erased again and
again.

Then she saw the dull gleam of a metal box, and knew she'd found what
she'd been looking for.

***

"What is it?"  Eileen's voice was confused.  "Is it a radio?"

Scully set the thing on the counter and glanced at Mulder.

"It's a police scanner, Mrs. Bridgeton," she said.  "It was in your son's
room, in his closet.  His closet is on the wall of your bedroom.  I think this
is the reason you've been dreaming about crime scenes: you must hear the
scanner in your sleep."

Mrs. Bridgeton looked equal parts shocked and relieved, and Mulder's
face was creased with disappointment.  Any desire Scully may have had to
say 'I told you so' died when she saw the way his mouth tightened.

"Oh, how could I have been so stupid?  It's Frank's!  He used to keep it in
the garage.  He used to listen to it on his days off.  Why on earth would
Brian keep it in his closet?"

"Mrs. Bridgeton, you're not stupid, you've just been preoccupied.  And
Brian probably just misses his father."  Scully resisted the urge to pat the
woman's hand.

Nodding, Eileen fingered the dials of the police scanner.  She turned her
eyes to Scully.

"Thank you, Ms. Scully. I don't know what I would have done if I'd kept
having those dreams."

Scully smiled a rote smile of understanding and was surprised by the
feeling that came behind it.  Mrs. Bridgeton seemed truly relieved.  They
had exposed her as a fraud in a way, and she was grateful for it.

"I'm glad we could help," Scully replied, feeling obliged to mention
Mulder's hand in it.  Without his interest in her possible psychic abilities,
Eileen Bridgeton may have been plagued by nightmares for years.

"Thank you for your time, Mrs. Bridgeton," Mulder intoned.  He no longer
looked disappointed, just quiet.  They had done a good thing here; Mulder
could see that.

"Oh, it was no trouble.  No trouble at all."

All in a day's work, Scully thought, looking at Mrs. Bridgeton's wan smile.

***

"Jinkies, Scooby," Mulder murmured under his breath.  He turned the key
in the ignition.

Scully indulged in some eye rolling and did not respond.

"For a minute there, Scully, I thought you were going to unmask Mrs.
Bridgeton for the fraud she was.  I was ready to swear she was actually Jeb
Parker, the foreman for the old lumber mill."

"Mulder, your love of Hannah Barbera cartoons aside, I hadn't planned to
'debunk' Mrs. Bridgeton.  I just happened to find the reason behind her
supposed psychic abilities."

"So did you identify more with Daphne or Velma?"

"Just drive, Mulder."

***

Motel 6
Bent, North Carolina
5:35 pm

"So, what do you want to do?" Scully was crashed in the uncomfortable
lounge chair near the head of the bed, her feet freed from her high heels
wiggling against the thin carpeting.  She had pretty little feet, he thought,
watching them brush across the carpet.

"Is that an invitation?" He sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, head
tilted
back and to the side so he could see her.  Her stocking-feet made swishing
sounds on the floor.

"The way I see it, Mulder, we've got two choices: stay here and muck up
Christley's chances at promotion by working his case, or catch the next
plane.  This isn't an X-file."

He nodded an upside-down nod.  "You wanna stay?"

She looked up over his head at the tv, the virulent curtains, the cheap oil
painting of a hunting dog with a duck in its mouth.

"Scully?"

"What would you say if I told you I might have something?"

"How do I love thee, let me count the ways."  He got up on his knees and
leaned over the edge of the bed.  "Show me."

She flopped the file open and pushed it toward him.  "I was reading the
M.E.'s report and I noticed this."  She indicated a line with one manicured
nail.

"' . . . victim has two diagonal cuts across the palm of the hand . . . defense

wounds . . . '" He looked up.  "So?"

"So she calls them defense wounds.  But Mulder--" Scully flipped pages
rapidly, to another report, and another.  "All of these women have the
same marks."

"That's textbook," he said, holding his hands up at her, palms out.

"Sure, for victims killed by knives or other implements.  These women
were strangled *first.*  They have no other knife wounds, no other cuts
besides the ritual mutilation which takes place post mortem.  If these are
defense wounds, Mulder, what were they defending themselves against?"

They sat for a moment, staring at each other from across the expanse of
bedspread.

"Do we have photos?"

She nodded, turned more pages.

"Shit, Scully!  He's marking them!"

She nodded again, reaching behind her for her cell phone.  Wordless, she
pressed the buttons and held it out to him.  He had a sudden and totally
inappropriate desire to kiss her.

"Christley?  Mulder.  Get Robertson and get your ass to the office.  We've
got something."
 

January Sun 3/7:  Christley
by Dawn M. Pares and Justin Glasser

***

Crystal City Apartments
Washington D.C.

Normally, the phone ringing at five til midnight would have woke him up,
but Skinner hadn't been normal for a while.  He'd taken to going to bed
later and later, hoping to sleep through until morning.  It wasn't working--
all he seemed to be doing was cutting into his sleep time even further--but
he refused to give up.  To do so would mean that this was something he
couldn't master.

The last time had been worse in so many ways.  The dreams, the old
woman, and that poor . . . the woman he'd found dead beside him.  He
hadn't known if he'd killed her or not: there were nights he knew he was
responsible for her death, regardless of whose hand had wrung her neck.
He'd woken up with the body still cooling beside him, and for the next
two or three days he'd done nothing but try to forget her, forget all of
them: the prostitute, Mulder, Scully, Sharon.  The last time had been like a
short trip to hell.  This time it was just a couple of nightmares, just a
little
sleep deprivation.  Nothing he couldn't handle.

He was standing in the fluorescent light of the bathroom considering a box
of Nytol when the phone rang.

"Skinner."

The voice on the other end was unfamiliar and irate, a Southern voice
made nearly incomprehensible by its rapid annoyance.  Not surprisingly, it
was talking about Mulder.  Skinner should have known better, the voice
said.  What was he trying to do, derail a flawless investigation?  Skinner
looked at his watch.  Ten hours.  Mulder had pissed off the field office in
ten hours.  That had to be a record.

He let the voice run on and on, finally tuning back in when the pitch and
speed told him that the agent on the line was almost done.

"--and what are you going to do about it?"

What was he going to do about it? He looked around his apartment, at the
sterile light too bright in the surrounding darkness, and the dented
cushions of his armchair.  He thought of the immaculate expanse of his
kitchen and the too-familiar heat of his bed.  He thought of the darkness in
the dream and he thought of Mulder's cool implacable gaze.

"I'm on my way," he said, and hung up before he heard an answer.

***

FBI Branch Office
Bent, North Carolina
2:33 am

"I don't understand what the problem is!" Mulder shouted, slamming his
hand down on the conference table.  "You need a viable suspect; we're
telling you how to get one."

"You're not tellin' me *shit,* Agent Mulder!  These are defense wounds,
pure and simple."

"Robertson?" Mulder demanded, but Robertson just shrugged.

"I told you--they could go either way."

"LOOK AT THESE!" The photos he threw arced up and out, a fan of
blood and pale skin.  Several of them hit Robertson in the chest.

Scully grabbed Mulder's wrist in a loose grip.  "Mulder," she murmured.
He panted with rage, glaring at them all.  He wanted to take a swing a
Christley's smug face, but the moment had passed, leaving him with just
the dregs of anger, draining away rapidly.

The phone on the table beeped.

"Christley."  Agent Christley listened for a moment, then raised his head
and gave Mulder a vulpine smile.  "Send him in."

The door opened, and Mulder leaned over the table toward Agent
Christley, palms flat, gritting his teeth.

"You unbelievable pussy," he murmured.

Christley beamed at him.

"You mind telling me what's going on here, Agent Mulder?" Skinner
asked.  He sounded calm and mildly interested, the same way he sounded
in his office in D.C., a fact that reassured Mulder.  Skinner may have been
called to rein them in, but apparently he wasn't going to do it with an iron
hand.

He took in a deep breath.  "I was just explaining to Agent Christley that
our guy is marking the victims in a way that may help us ID him."

"And I was just--" Christley began, but Skinner held up his hand, palm
out, directing the flow of words the way a cop directs traffic.

"Mulder," he said.

"He's marking them on the palms . . .  " Mulder began, turning to accept
the photos scooped off of the floor by the ever-amiable Agent Robertson.
He leaned over the table, almost inclined on it, pointing out the details to
Skinner who came to the edge of the table and stood over him, hands on
his hips.  Mulder finished with a flourish, leaning back in his chair and
folding his arms over his chest. *Take that, you fuck,* he thought,
watching Christley's face.

"Scully?"  Skinner asked.

"I agree with Agent Mulder's analysis, sir.  I was the one who questioned
the marks as defense wounds in the first place."

Mulder noticed Christley's fish face of astonishment with genuine
pleasure.  He smiled.  For once, he and Scully were on the same page, and
it had to happen in front of Agent Jonathon "this is my case though I can't
investigate my way out of a wet paper bag" Christley.  Sometimes, life
was too kind.  Skinner, in the meantime, was eliciting Robertson's opinion.

Again, Robertson shrugged.

"Besides this, we've got nothing," he said.  "I'm not entirely certain, but if
Mulder thinks it's right, I'm willing to go with it."

"I see," Skinner said.  "Agent Christley, may I have a word with you in the
hallway please?"  He held the door open with one arm, his gaze as serene
and objective as a clear pane of glass.  Christley slunk out into the hall.
The door eased shut, and Robertson let out a low whistle.

"Guess who's about to get his ass chewed," he said, almost laughing.
"Think he'll ever recover?"

"Not unless he's wearing Kevlar underwear," Scully answered, and
Mulder, surprised, choked on his cold coffee.

***

Motel 6
Bent, North Carolina
3:41 am
 

The only thing Skinner wanted was a nice quiet room of his own and a
solid night's sleep.  He knew he probably wouldn't get the latter^"he
didn't figure that this night would be any different from any of the last two
weeks^"but he hadn't thought the former was too much to ask.

The motel office wasn't open.

They stood there, three agents of the federal government, outside a locked
screen door, dumbfounded by a simple hand-lettered sign.  "Please call
again," it said.

Skinner scowled at it.

"You can share my room, sir," Mulder offered.  Skinner nodded, knowing
he should be grateful, knowing that the idea of sharing a room with
Mulder should be value-neutral, neither exciting or troubling.  He was
dismayed to find it was both.

He watched the hem of Mulder's coat swaying as the younger man
walked.  He would have to know.  Somehow, Skinner was going to have
to come up with some segue into the fact that he would not be sleeping the
night through.  He sighed, stepping past Mulder into the orange and
yellow hotel room.

He laid his coat over the threadbare lounge chair in the corner, and
shrugged out of his suit jacket, draping it neatly over the top of the
overcoat.  Mulder still stood in the doorway, keys jangling in his hand.
Skinner heard the t.v. come on in the next room and looked up at the
connecting door that hung slightly ajar.

"Convenient," he said, precisely at the same moment as Mulder blurted
"Sir^""

They stared at each other in awkward silence for a second.  The keys had
stopped moving in Mulder's hands.

"Sir . . . " he said again.  "I . . . what does that mean?"  Skinner saw anger
flare up in Mulder's eyes, and realized he had made a mistake.

"I'm sorry, Mulder.  You were saying?"

Mulder pushed the door shut with his foot and removed his coat,
apparently freed from paralysis by Skinner's apology.  "Sir," he began.
Skinner turned his back to the agent and began unbuttoning his shirt.  "Sir,
Agent Scully and I app--"

"Can it, Mulder," Skinner interrupted, glancing over his shoulder.  "I was
told you were going off the deep end again.  It's not Christley's fault he
couldn't recognize a lead if it bit him in the ass."

"Yessir."

"I'm only sorry I didn't get here in time to prevent you from acting like an
idiot, " Skinner remarked.  "The next time you feel like going off half-
cocked, I expect to hear from you first.  Is that clear?"

"Yessir." Mulder nodded.  His swearing of obedience was a ritual, a form.
They both knew it was also a lie.  Skinner went into the mildewed
bathroom and poured a glass of water, letting the faucet run for a second
to clear the tap.

The noise of Scully's television drifted through the open door: Mulder
must have re-opened it.  Skinner recognized that for what it was--a signal
that she was awake and willing to talk.  She'd want to know how badly
he'd chewed Mulder's ass after flying all the way down here and catching
him in the aftermath of an assault on a fellow agent.  He stepped out of the
bathroom and approached the side of the bed closest to the bathroom door.

"You always do this?" he asked, waving his hand at the open door.

Mulder, who had taken a seat at the pressboard table by the window,
glared at him.

"It's not like^""

"I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation I'm not interested in
hearing, Mulder.  Will she come in?"

"Sir?" The look on his face was openly hostile.

"Never mind.  I'm going to get some sleep," Skinner said, shucking his
shoes and pants in one smooth motion.  "I suggest you do the same."

"I'll be up for a while.  Will the t.v. bother you?"

"I doubt it.  Good night, Agent Mulder," he said, setting his glasses on the
Formica nightstand.  Mulder became nothing but a white and fleshy blur
on a field of orange.  He lay down and turned on his side away from the
light.

For a long time he heard nothing but the click of Mulder's fingers on the
keys of his laptop, and the faint reassuring hiss of the television turned
down low.  He knew that Mulder sometimes stopped typing and looked at
him: he could feel eyes on his back as surely as he could feel the scratch of
the sheets.  He was considering giving up for the night, just sitting up and
opening up the files and admitting to himself if not Mulder that there
would be no rest for him tonight when he heard the words.

"Good night, sir."

It was a murmur, almost a whisper, accompanied by the hush of
movement: Mulder collecting some papers, shucking his shoes, and
slipping through the adjoining door.  Skinner didn't fall asleep for a long
time after that, wondering what he was doing in a motel far from his own
bed.

For awhile he heard low conversation back and forth, unintelligible,
Mulder's low mumbles and Scully's slightly higher responses.  That had
stopped, but Skinner was certain that if he burst in on them now he would
find two mildly shocked agents gazing up at him from at least three feet
apart: Mulder's reaction to his inappropriate comments had told him that
no matter what the rumors, Mulder and Scully's behavior was totally
within FBI guidelines.  The thought almost disappointed him.

He had wondered about Mulder and Scully's relationship.  Skinner may
have been a man with secrets, but he was also a man with ears, and office
gossip had been circulating about the two agents almost since they'd been
partnered.  He would almost envy Mulder if he'd somehow convinced
Scully to share his bed.  He would almost envy Scully for the same reason.
It would be nice to have someone there, any someone, and as close as they
were he couldn't see--

Nice.

The last time he'd entertained the idea of that kind of comfort, he'd woken
up at the heart of a murder investigation.

He was surprised to find the murmur of CNN soothing, the consistent hum
of the announcer's voice, the intermittent commercial jingle, the polite
interruptions of the correspondents . . . It was comforting in its
predictability.  He wondered how many times Mulder had fallen asleep
with the television on.

He wondered how many nights Mulder had fallen asleep with someone in
his bed.

With Scully's door open, probably not many.

Empirically, Mulder was certainly attractive, and even his pariah status
didn't keep the newer agents from throwing the man admiring glances.
Skinner had even witnessed Kim flutter a time or two, on one of the few
occasions Mulder was in the office for reasons other than to be called on
the carpet yet again.  That wasn't why he was here, though, because of the
way Mulder looked.  He had stood in his apartment with the phone
receiver in hand and . . . he was here because there was a job to be done.
Nothing else.

This wasn't a productive track of thought.

Skinner punched the pillow twice and ordered himself to sleep.
Surprisingly, it came when he called it, but it brought dreams in its mouth.

January Sun 4/7:  Elvis
by Justin Glasser and Dawn M. Pares

***

It's dark.

But it's better, the dark is better than the pitiless glare of the naked bulb.

The light shows him things he doesn't think he'll be able to forget.  Things
he would rather forget.  The dark is better.

A yellow bar slides under the door, unrolling like a mat, and he closes his
eyes, tries to call the dark back.  He can already hear her.  A new one.  She
sounds so young . . .

"Look what I brought for you.  Isn't she pretty?  She's just for you."

Can't look a gift horse in the mouth, but you must look at the gift.  That's
the rule here.  Look at the gift and the gift looks back.

He cringes: the light is like a slap in the face, he tries to hide his eyes,
but
the yellow dazzle spears behind his lids and he feels a hand in his hair,
jerking his head back and he has to look at her.

Elvis has left the building.

She's shivering, her eyes are blacked, her nose is bleeding: fat drops
spatter on the warped boards of the floor.  She's the first one he's seen
bleed . . . before.  Before the others.  Before the others had bled. The gift
looks back.

There's a face on her t-shirt, her shirt has a face, a wide face, with a
helmet of hair and a splash of blood.  His own hair is released and he
hangs his head, but not before the girl is turned for him, arranged like a
mannequin.

Elvis has left the building.

"Look at her.  *Look* at her!  She's for you."  And then he sees the hood,
and he sees the way her hands whiten, how she clutches at him, and he
feels his gut lurch, feels the burn of bile, hears her guttural click when she
should be screaming.

Elvis has left the building.

***

The noise was so familiar that Dana Scully was out of bed and through the
connecting door before she was really awake.

She had heard it countless times before: the restless stirring, the
murmuring that followed no speech patterns, the accumulation of small
sounds that meant Mulder was having a nightmare.  Sometimes she went
in and woke him: sometimes she went in and simply sat by the side of the
bed, waiting for him to wake, watching his body roll through the motions,
pulling the sheet back over him when he fell back into REM sleep.  It had
become just another feature of their relationship.  Typical.

But what she saw when she pushed open the door with one sleep-heavy
hand, was anything but.

Skinner sat upright in his bed, face smothered in his hands, making a low
animal noise in the back of his throat.  Mulder sat next to him.  One of
Mulder's hands moved rapidly over Skinner's back in patterns that Scully
assumed were meant to be soothing.  "I know how that feels," she thought,
moving to crouch by the edge of the bed.

"Sir," she asked.  One of her hands rested on Skinner's blanket covered
knee.  "Sir, are you okay?"

"Nightmare," Mulder said. He seemed embarrassed. She didn't blame him.
Sitting on your boss's bed while both of you were in your underwear had
to be a pretty embarrassing situation.  She was glad for her men's cut
pajamas.

"Sir?" She moved her hand on Skinner's forearm.  "Are you all right?"

Skinner shrugged away from their hands like a horse will shrug away a
fly.  "I'm fine, Agent Scully.  It was a nightmare." He got out of the far
side of the bed, stalked to the bathroom, and Scully noticed that his t-shirt
was soaked through in a triangle pattern over his shoulder blades.  She
tried not to notice his underwear.  Briefs.

Instead, she looked at Mulder, who still perched on the edge of the bed.
He, too, was in his t-shirt and underwear (*boxers* she noted,
embarrassed), his hair poking up in crazy patterns.  She did not reach up to
smooth it.

He shrugged.  "I was asleep," he said.  "He started yelling."

She was about to ask what exactly Skinner had yelled when the man
himself returned with a clear plastic cup of water.  "Was there something
else you needed, Agent Scully?" he asked, sounding more like her boss
than any man in a pair of briefs and a snug t-shirt had a right to.  She
realized she was still huddled at the edge of the mattress and leapt up
before she allowed herself to feel too much at home.

"What was it about?" she asked.

He sighed, slumping back onto the bed.  "Why does this matter?"

Scully looked to her partner for a second.  It mattered because they had
never understood this man as anything other than controlled.  As in *in*
control.  Acted on, maybe, acted against, definitely, but always--
somehow--in control of himself if nothing else.

He had even been in control when he had woken up with a dead woman in
his bed, acting under his own impulses, refusing to conform to their
expectations, dodging their questions . . . Skinner had controlled his
response even in the face of his impending divorce and an imminent
murder charge.

She had doubted him then, wondered if her impression of Skinner as
strait-laced and wrapped tight was mistaken.  The memory made her blush
with shame. She had been wrong that time, she knew now.  Skinner *was*
straight-laced and upstanding and virtuous and honorable and all of the
other clichs inspired by his starched and formidable form.  The prostitute
had been an anomaly on his part, one born of loneliness, or isolation, or
simply one too many scotches and a sympathetic ear.  Skinner was
everything she and Mulder had believed him to be, and their realization
that he had been set-up with that prostitute had reassured them of
Skinner's innate reliability.  And now Mulder was right^"something was
wrong with A.D. Skinner^"and she needed to know what that was.

That's what she said to Mulder after they'd shut the door between the two
rooms, leaving Skinner to his bed.

"Well, Mulder, you were right."

"Why am I not as happy about this as I should be?" He lay prone on the
opposite bed, his hands under his neck.

"On the plus side, at least we know it's nothing serious."  That wasn't
necessarily true.  Skinner had been taciturn after returning to the bed.  He
would not describe the dream and had refused to answer specific questions
until she had given up, offering him no more assistance that another glass
of water.  He had refused that, too.

"Sure, " Mulder said, rolling onto his side and setting his feet on the floor.

"You don't have to sleep with him."

Scully slid her legs underneath the anemic motel blanket, watching as he
stretched, fingertips brushing the ceiling.

"You don't have to either, Mulder. Unless you're bucking for a raise . . . "
she deadpanned.

"Ha ha," he said, but she thought there was something like panic in his
eyes as he left the room.

***

Scully was yanked from sleep by the conviction that everything was all
wrong.  Her room was too light, too quiet.  She could hear the rumble of
the cleaning lady's cart as it wheeled past her door.  Damn!

Late.

She leaned into Mulder's room.  Mulder and Skinner were two softly
breathing lumps, sleeping the solid sleep of the exhausted.  She hated to
wake them: like a toddler, Mulder often became goofy or cranky without
enough sleep. After last night, she could only guess at what Skinner's
response would be.

"Mulder," she whispered.  He stirred.  "Mulder."

"'M'up," he said, and she knew he was telling the truth because he threw
back the blankets.

"We're late," she whispered at him, and pulled the connecting door closed.
Skinner could be his problem.

They managed to be at the IHOP for Christley's breakfast meeting before
he and Robertson arrived.  Mulder's hair stuck up damply: he had been
forced to shower second because of rank, he had told her while they were
waiting for Skinner near the car.  She could only guess how that
conversation had gone.

Skinner looked like he always looked, solid, stern.  His shirt hardly had a
crease in it.  Scully wondered where he had them laundered: her shirts
always seemed to get wrinkled on the road.  He hadn't said a word to
either of them except "good morning" and he hardly acknowledged the
bored aproned waitress who slopped coffee in front of them.  It was
beginning to worry her.  She wondered if he was simply embarrassed.

When Skinner left to use the rest room, Mulder, who'd been biding his
time, seized his opportunity.

"Well, well.  Late this morning, huh?  The boss must have kept you up
*all* night.  Adjoining rooms . . . People will talk, Scully."

She knew it--goofy.

"I'm not the one who shared his hotel room, Mulder.  Any thoughts on
why the AD is being about as communicative as a piece of furniture?"

Sighing, Mulder tipped creamer into his coffee.

"Hey, he shared *my* room.  Chances are good he dreamed again.  And
he's not exactly Miss Congeniality on a good day."  He shrugged and
wrapped his long hands around his ceramic mug.  "After last night, the
less he says, the less likely it is he'll lose his temper."

Scully felt her mouth soften.

"You think he's angry.  At you."

Mulder shook his head.

"I just don't think he appreciates an audience to his vulnerability."

"And I don't think your friend Christley will appreciate the silent
treatment," she said, watching Christley and Robertson climb out of their
car in the window behind Mulder's head.

Mulder smiled a wolf's smile.

"Won't that be too bad?"

As much as Scully could understand Mulder's dislike of Christley, who
was blond and good looking in a bland way she could only think of as
"federal," and was also single-minded and arrogant (*much like Mulder
himself,* she thought, feeling less than charitable), but she also wondered
if it wouldn't be wiser to try and stay on his good side.  It was his case,
after all.  Mulder wasn't doing them any favors by acting like a prima
donna.  Then again, she reflected when Christley's pinched face came into
view, no sense in making an annoying bastard like Christley the exception
to Mulder's rule.

They were saved the dubious pleasure of breakfasting with the man by
another break in the case.

"We got another corpse," he informed her, studiously ignoring Mulder.
"Found it behind the grocery store about fifteen miles from here."

"It's pretty bad, Mulder.  They've already ID'd the body.  She was only a
kid."  Robertson's expression told her just how bad.  He looked as if he'd
already seen his breakfast twice.

Mulder nodded, not looking up.  Skinner, returning from the bathroom,
caught Scully's eye.  He frowned.

His eyes were dark and unfocused, and a small vein throbbed at his
temple.  It was all she could do to keep from reaching out to take his hand
when he leaned down to pick up his coat from the vinyl seat.
Surreptitiously, Scully brushed his fingers with her own as she followed
him out of the restaurant, and his skin, while cool, was not the icy touch of
a man in shock.

Nevertheless, once in the backseat of the rental, Skinner stared dully out
the window, wordless for the entire drive.  Scully found herself stealing
glances at him in the side view mirror, and tried not to want to hold his
hand.

***

Behind Food Lion Grocery Store
Bent, North Carolina
11:13 am

Mulder felt his knees pop as he dropped into a crouch beside the first
corpse he had actually seen since he'd gotten to Ben, North Carolina.    He
hoped, without enthusiasm, that it would also be the last.

The victim's hair had been combed out to lie around her head, a dark halo.
She had been arranged, as the other victims had been, like a body laid out
for viewing at a funeral. Her arms were folded across her t-shirt.

His partner knelt on one knee beside him, and sighed.  The unseasonably
warm weather had evaporated during the night: Mulder could see Scully's
breath plume as she moved.  He wondered if it smelled the same as it
always did^"coffee, peppermint, Scully^"or if it too had taken on the tang
of the salt air.  Bent was an hour from the beach, but the chilly humid air
still smelled of fish and salt and sand.  It reminded him of home.  Well, the
Vineyard, anyway.

Mulder saw the dim grey of frost on the body near Scully's practiced
fingers^"the victim had been here overnight, maybe, or maybe just since
early morning^"but this girl's nose was swollen, bulging grotesquely, her
upper lip contused and coated with blood. She had most certainly been
alive when she had been beaten.  Mulder watched as Scully checked the
sides of the girl's throat: red ligature marks standing out like an amethyst
necklace on the pale flesh.  He shuddered.

He felt more than heard Skinner approach, stopping just behind him.  The
A.D. murmured something, his voice distracted, flat in Mulder's ear, but it
was liminal^"he couldn't really tell what the AD had said.  He turned and
looked up, waiting for repetition, but Skinner merely kept his level gaze
on the corpse.

Mulder let it go, watching his partner lean over the body.

"What's up, Doc?"

Scully sighed.  "Probably the worst joke you've made in a long time,
Mulder." She hooked a finger in the wrist of her latex glove and shucked it
like a snake peeling.  "This is our guy.  Same M.O., same markings across
the palms.  This victim seems to have put up more of a fight, but other
than her nose being broken, there's nothing new here," Scully asserted,
directing her final comments over his shoulder, toward Skinner.

"Mulder?"  Skinner asked.

Mulder looked down at the girl lying there, her arms folded over her
baggy t-shirt.  She looked like a joke. A rude imitation of the peace that
should come with death.  Even Clyde Bruckman for all his cynicism had
seemed quiet.  Still.  This girl was still stirring.  Her life had been stolen.
 

"Who found the body, Officer?" The senior officer, a heavy, balding man,
kept adjusting his gun belt, looking dazed. Mulder had heard him confer
with Christley, admitting that he'd known her, Josie Wilkes, that he
bowled with her dad in a league. His partner, maybe twenty, with a buzz
cut and a wispy attempt at a mustache, answered smartly, although he
looked ill.
 
"I did, sir. I usually pass this way two or three times on a shift. The guy--"
The young man gulped noisily. "He couldna been here until maybe seven
or so. Real close to full daylight. Pretty bold, you want my opinion."
 
Mulder ran a hand through his hair feeling it stiffen in the salty wind.
There were times, like today, when even the cops were pale at the crime
scene, that Mulder was glad he was red/green colorblind. In his fieldwork,
he had read and heard many descriptions of the color of blood: how red it
was when it first welled up, how it purpled when it dried. He was familiar
with the brownness and blackness of blood, but he was fervently glad that
he did not know its color as a shade, because other colors could not
therefore remind him of it. He understood that hospital walls were green
so that the afterimage of bright arterial sprays would not haunt the patients
or the staff as ghostly stains. Tricks his own eyes could not play on him.
 
Small mercy. There wasn't even much blood. She'd definitely been
murdered somewhere else.
 
Killed. Jesus. This girl was so fucking *young*.

"Scully . . . do me a favor.  Move her arms."

Scully gave him her usual speculative look before lifting the girl's hands
and pushing her arms off her chest.

"Elvis has left the building," she reported.

Mulder gaped.  Elvis, he thought, and felt his mind stagger over that
simple phrase.  Elvis has left the building.

"I guess we're done here," Skinner said, letting Scully step past him.

"Sir?" He began to turn, but Skinner's hand gripped his bicep and
Skinner's voice buzzed in his ear.

"Finish up with Christley and meet me outside."

"Sir?" he repeated, but Skinner brushed past him, his mouth a tight line.
Mulder watched his boss stride through the grey air, his dark coat flailing
like crow's wings behind him.  Something had rattled his cage, that was
certain.  For a moment, Mulder just stood there, watching Skinner's
retreating back.

Elvis has left the building

***

He came around the corner and Skinner grabbed his wrist in a grip so tight
Mulder swore he could hear the bones grind together.

"Did you take care of Christley?"

Mulder shook his head.  "I sent Scully.  Sir, what you said back there, near
the body^""

"Agent Mulder . . ." Skinner's voice sounded as if it were being ground in
his throat.  "I . . . I'm not sure how to explain this to you . . . "

Suddenly, Mulder no longer felt the grip on his wrist, or the cold snap of
air in his nostrils.  Suddenly all he could see was A.D. Skinner.  Suddenly,
he understood.  "You knew that she had Elvis on her shirt.  You said it,
before Scully moved her."

"Mulder, I'm not  . . . ."

"You have information about the case."

Skinner looked down at his shoes.  "I'm not sure."

Mulder leaned in.  "Tell me."

Skinner shot him an annoyed glance.

"I recognized it, Mulder.  Her shirt."

"You've seen it before?"

Skinner shook his head, frustrated.  He was on the edge, Mulder knew,
inches away from shutting down and shutting up, but he would answer this
question, maybe only this one.  "From my dream, Mulder.  I saw it in my
dream."

Mulder felt his mouth fall open.

"Sir?" he said.

"I know how it sounds, Agent Mulder.  But I also know what I saw.  I
dreamed of that shirt last night."

"Do you think--"

"Do I think that my other dreams may also be related to the case?" Skinner
tucked his fists into the pockets of his coat.  His shoulders slumped.  "I
don't know."

"Other dreams?"

Skinner looked at him, his expression that of a child that has been caught
in a lie.  Then he nodded.  "They seem to be connected."

"Have you ever seen the shirt before?"

Skinner shook his head, his face grim in the cold.  "I thought they were
just nightmares."

Unable to answer, Mulder reached out and put a steadying hand on his
boss's shoulder.  He was torn between the desire to grill Skinner about the
dream and the feeling that he should be kinder here, different, but Skinner
just squinted at him until he removed his hand.  Mulder watched as
Skinner walked away, through the stray refuse in front of the dumpster.
He looked just as he always did, head up, shoulders back, a calm and solid
presence at the scene of the crime.  He looked no different, but he was
having nightmares, screaming into the darkness, watching women die.

Mulder sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets to warm them.  Either
A.D. Skinner was flying down to North Carolina to kill young women in
his spare time, or he had just described a precognitive dream about the
victims of a serial killer.  Mulder wasn't sure which answer he preferred.
.
January Sun 5/7: Grace
by Justin Glasser and Dawn Pares

***
Suzie's Diner
Corner of Main and Raleigh
Bent, North Carolina
5:32 PM

They sat across from him, shifting on the vinyl seat like two kids.  Mulder
gulped his food; Scully toyed with hers.  Both of them tried not to stare at
him, and probably thought he was crazy.

He wondered if telling Mulder had been a mistake.

He wondered if this whole thing had been a mistake, from his impulse to
come down here to his sharing of Mulder's room to his frightened
confession of recognition at the crime scene this morning.  He should have
kept his mouth shut, if this was the reaction he was going to get.
Suddenly, he had a lot more sympathy for Scully, and all she must have
had to put up with over the last six years.

After the waitress brought coffee, Mulder excused himself to use the
restroom.  Skinner watched his rapidly retreating back and felt his own
heart speed up in his chest.  He'd been a field agent long enough to
recognize a set-up when he saw one.  Scully had been left alone to figure
him out or open him up.  He glanced at her.  She gazed into her coffee
cup.

"I know you don't believe me," he said.

Her eyes met his, wide and blue.  He wondered how Mulder had ever kept
a secret from this woman.

"It's all right, Agent Scully," he said, trying to smile.  "I'm not sure I
believe it myself."

"What are you doing here, sir?"  Her hand came down on his forearm.  Her
nails were pretty--manicured half moons painted a neutral beige color.
Once, on a whim, he had gone to the Jefferson Monument at night.  He
had stood on the dais and looked up at Jefferson, looking up, a lone figure
against the black night sky, and at that moment he felt sadness overwhelm
him.  Jefferson alone.  For some ridiculous reason he did not want to
puzzle out, Scully's pretty nails made him think of that moment.  They
reminded him of Jefferson's circle of light and the darkness that
surrounded it.  They made him feel lonely.

"Mulder," she said.  Skinner looked toward the door, but Mulder wasn't
there, wasn't striding back through the aisle, unbuttoned suit jacket
flapping.  They were still alone.

"Excuse me?"

"You came because of him."

He sat back, pulling his arm out from under her hand.  "I was called here,
Agent Scully."

She craned over the table, eyes locked on his, voice pitched low.  "I'm
aware of that, sir.  But there's more to it than that, isn't there?  I've seen
him do this before--with Lucy Householder, Marty Glenn, Max Felig.
With you.  When you were being framed for that woman's murder.  And
he's doing it again."

"What are you saying, Scully?"  He felt his arms cross over his chest.
Walter Skinner in charge.  It felt like a lie.

"I'm saying Mulder believes, and it makes you feel better to be near him."

He looked into her eyes and fought the urge to confess, to tell her
everything.  Maybe to cry.  *You, too, Scully,* he thought, although he
didn't know what he meant by that.

"I just want to know what's happening to me."

"That's how you're different, sir.   None of them did.  None of them
wanted to know what Mulder knew, but he believed them, so they
listened."

Skinner looked at her, wondering if she realized how sad she sounded,
how hopeless.  Was this supposed to be encouraging?  "What is happening
to me, Agent Scully?" he asked.

Scully sat back, picking up her fork.  "There are many possibilities.
Dreams which seem to foretell events are a common occurence.  Almost
everyone experiences what appear to be psychic dreams at one point or
another."

"So this is normal."

He saw her answer in the blank expression that took over her face.

"Jesus," he whispered.

"I'm sure we can figure this out, sir."

They could figure it out.  They usually did.  Sure.  And Skinner could only
hope that they would this time, too, Mulder and Scully to the rescue, but
Skinner had read those reports, the ones on Householder, and Felig, and
Glenn, and he knew that when Mulder came up with an answer, that
answer didn't usually help the person in question.  In fact, the people
Mulder believed tended to end up dead.

***
Night
Bent, North Carolina

He knows where he is although he can't name it.  He's been here before.
Once, in the second grade, he'd come here with his class to take a tour that
was crushingly dull, even for second graders, but when you grew up in
Bent, there just weren't that many places to take field trips to.

*But I didn't grow up here.*

He's been here again after that, in the adolescent heat of his teenage years,
during one of the recession layoffs that preceded the plant's shutting down
for good.  The workers had been gone, the machinery silent.  He and his
date and three or four other couples had come and run around in the dark
risking tetanus and a billion other stupid things so they could scare the shit
out of each other and grope in the dark.  He distinctly recalls kissing
someone who hadn't been his date, someone illicit.  That had seemed
dangerous at the time.

Now it only makes him want to laugh, or weep.

There is no heat anywhere: everything is clammy and cool to the touch.
He is surrounded by tiles and one of the faucets leaks and leaks and
sometimes it makes him think he will start screaming and never stop.
There are no lids on the toilet tanks, nothing he can wrench up and swing
as a weapon, nothing he can do but feel his throat clench when the next
present comes along.

Something in the rhythm of the leaking faucet reminds him of the facile
commercial jingle that used to play almost hourly on the local radio
station, which in turn reminds him of the summer he'd spent helping old
Mr. Clay teach the Sunday School kindergarten when he'd been fifteen.

*But I grew up in Wisconsin.  I had football on Sundays.*

He remembers the stuffy whitewashed room and the bored five-year olds,
refusing to even attempt to remember their verses for the Fourth of July
Pageant.  The entire Sunday School had smelled like paste and sweaty
toddlers; the very walls had been warm to the touch.

Here the walls are cold.  He imagines sometimes that they are paved with
bone, but he knows, he *knows* it's only porcelain tile, small and even
and shining like teeth when the lantern light hits them.  They're too small
to do any damage, and they refuse to sharpen. His fingers sting from the
time he's spent picking at the grout.

The mirrors here are brushed steel--he can't use them to slash out his life
and flush it down the drain.  He approaches them warily nonetheless,
wanting to see and not wanting to know.

He takes only a glimpse, but he's shocked by his reflection.  Surely his
hair should have gone white?   He looks so normal, pale, but so much like
he was before, two weeks ago, before he started to dream . . . dark hair,
dark eyes, smile lines . . .

Tears stripe his drawn cheeks, and there's a song he heard in church a
hundred years ago, when he and Sharon used to go to church, words he
knew when he was young and wore patent leather shoes with buckles and
taught Sunday school . . .

*Patent leather is for girls.*

 . . . words that were once a comfort but are now an empty litany, a cruel
joke.  Once he was blind, but now he sees, sees everything, sees too much.
His lips are numb, but he can see them move, knows the mouth belongs to
his reflection.

In the mirror, he meets the black eyes of a woman going mad.

***
Motel 6
Bent, North Carolina
3:03 am

She woke to Mulder's urgent whispers near her ear.

"Huh?" she groaned, realizing he was in the middle of a sentence.  Mulder
sat on her bed, one hand on her shoulder.

"--got to see this," he was saying, shaking her.

"Okay, okay." She shrugged his hand off, annoyed.  Another night of sleep
down the drain.  She wanted to crawl headfirst under the cheap itchy
bedspread and not come up until ten or eleven in the morning.

"Mulder," she said.  She yanked back the blankets.  "Is Skinner all right?"

"Shh."  He put his finger to her lips.  She resisted the urge to bite it.
"C'mon."

Skinner lay on his back, sheets tangled around his hips.  He wasn't
sweating or moaning or tossing: in fact, he appeared to be asleep, as she
should have been.

"Mulder," she whispered.  "Why--"

"Shh," he repeated.  He grabbed her wrist and pulled her alongside the
bed.  "Listen."

Scully listened.  The sound was faint at first, inching around the edges of
her hearing, a dull murmur like airport conversation heard through glass.

The sound was coming from Skinner.

She could hardly see his lips move in the shadow cast by her body.  She
bent near his head.

"What's he saying?' Mulder whispered.  She shushed him with a flap of
her hand.

" . . . wretch like me . . ."

Mulder moved as if to say something else, but Scully reached back and
yanked on his shirt.

" . . . lost, but now I'm  . . ." Skinner said.  Scully straightened, holding
her
palm firm against her mouth.  She dragged her partner to the end of the
bed.

"Mulder," she murmured, feeling the press of laughter at the back of her
throat.  "Amazing Grace."

"What?"

"It's 'Amazing Grace,' Mulder.  The song."

Mulder stared at her for a moment, eyes blank.  Then he too clapped his
hand over his mouth, shoulders heaving silently.  Tears welled up in his
eyes.

"I guess he's fine, then," he whispered, eventually.  But he was wrong
about that.

***
Motel 6
Bent, North Carolina
3:24 am

They'd woken him from something at least charading as solid rest twenty
minutes ago.  Scully sat across from him, leaning forward, the picture of
solicitude.   He could feel her wanting to touch him, to check his forehead
or scan his pupils for a clue as to what had gone wrong with him.  He
wished it were that simple--that he could just take a pill and put an end to
this whole thing.

Mulder sat beside him on the bed, leaning towards him, a reflection of his
partner's concerned expression on his face.

"Let's go over it again, sir," he said, his voice low.

"Mulder, we've gone over it three times.  I fail to see how going over it
again is going to help anything."  Skinner reached up and rubbed his face
with blunt fingertips.  His eyes felt crusted over with sand.

"Are you absolutely sure that you dreamed of the crime scene?" Scully
asked.  "That it wasn't some form of deja vu?"

He scowled at her.  She was trying to help, he understood, but trying and
actually helping were two different things.

"How am I supposed to know?" he demanded.  Scully simply looked at
him, waiting.  "I saw . . . probably some kind of warehouse.  I couldn't tell
you where it was.  It had an industrial bathroom^"there was a woman
looking into a mirror.  What I want to know is *why* this is happening to
me.  What's going on?"

"When did you say this started?"  Mulder asked.

"A couple of weeks ago.  I'm not sure exactly."

"And the dreams are always different?"

Skinner shook his head, and his head felt so heavy he wondered if it would
snap his neck.  "This one was new."

"Is this the first time you've seen her face?"  Scully asked.

"Yes.  It looked like the victims--all of them."

"What do you mean 'all of them'?" Mulder asked.

"All of them.  Dark hair, dark eyes, pretty--like all the victims."

"It could be an amalgamation--" Scully said, but Mulder was already
tripping over himself, a manila folder in his hands.

"Mulder?" Skinner asked.

"Photos of every missing woman in a hundred mile radius--Robertson got
them for me when we weren't sure of this guy's modus operandi."

"And you want me to look at them." Skinner said.  His voice sounded dead
in his ears.

"Mulder, the chance of some dream woman . . . " Scully began, but her
voice faded into the background.   Skinner had opened the file.

The photos were all different shapes, different sizes, photos of women
laughing, eating cake, posing for the camera.  A few of them were mug
shots, some of them were women who Skinner knew had never seen the
inside of a police station, let alone been booked.  Many of them had
children with them in the pictures, or men.

Skinner leafed through them slowly, aware of Mulder's neck craned over
his shoulder, of Scully's slightly annoyed pacing, but he only saw the
women, one after another, all different, none of them--

He felt his blood turn solid in his veins, saw the folder fall from fingers
suddenly numb, watched the photos arc out: a fan of lost lives on the
carpeting.  He held onto one.

"It's her.  This is her."

Dark eyes.  A woman at a picnic, teeth shining like bathroom tiles, her
arm around a friend.  Dark eyes, darkness, shiny sink face.  Pink face.

"Sir?  Are you sure?"  Scully crouched in his line of sight, looking up at
him.  He wanted to touch her face and smile, admit he *was* kidding,
because he couldn't be telling the truth.  This was not happening.

"I'm sure," he said.

Then they were talking about him again, looking at the label on the
picture, the fact sheet on the desk, while he sat and stared into the picnic
world of the picture, at a woman who right now might be staring at the
same face in a brushed steel mirror, waiting for her next present.

Once, before, Mulder and Scully whispering about him would have made
him feel nervous, or awkward, or lonely.  Once, he would have wanted to
join them, to stand in between them and feel the thrill of their electric
current pass through him.  Once, he had wanted to know them, to be part
of them, to declare himself their ally.  Once, the thought that Mulder and
Scully were concerned for his well-being would have made him feel
happy in a thin and second-hand way.

Once, five minutes ago.

Before he knew the name of Vivian MacElvey.

***

"Scully . . ." he began.

"Mulder, I can't help him.  I don't even know if there's anything wrong
with him.  He's been sleeping erratically, he's probably operating under
enormous sleep debt, he's down here on a *whim*, and he says he
recognizes this woman as our next victim.  What am I supposed to do?"

"Believe him?" he suggested, keeping his eyes on the carpet.  She was
already worked up enough.

"Do you, Mulder?"

He shrugged.  "I don't know.  He seems convinced."

"We saw him like this before, Mulder, when that prostitute was murdered,
when he thought he was having visions.  He's been to a sleep treatment
clinic for just these types of things."

"All of that says nothing about the truth or falsehood of his claims."

She looked at him for a long moment, then sighed.

"Mulder, whether it's true or not, whether we believe it or not, this isn't
getting us anywhere."

"What do you recommend?"

"That he get some sleep, Mulder.  Uninterrupted, if possible.  He's tired--
we all are."

***
Motel 6
Bent, North Carolina
4:13 am

Skinner raised his head when he heard Mulder hang up the phone.

"I told Robertson what we got," Mulder said.  "He'll get started on it."
 
Skinner nodded.  "What'd Scully say?"

"She thinks you're crazier than I am."

Skinner thinned his lips in what he hoped would be mistaken as a smile.

"She thinks you should get some rest."

"That's a surprise."

They sat in the dim and silent flicker of the television for so long that
Skinner could feel Mulder itching to move, just to ignite an answer.
Skinner remained motionless.  He felt like a sculpture in thin cotton, his
own skin cold and detached.

"It might help if you lie down," Mulder offered.

"Mmmm."  Skinner lifted his legs and slid them under the sheet.

"Mulder," he said, after he had turned away, the white sheet like a shroud
over his shoulder.  He didn't want to ask, but there was no denying the
question.  Mulder, at least, would not tell anyone but Scully.  Mulder
would not laugh.

"Yes?"

"What *is* going on?"

***

Mulder had no answer, and he knew he wasn't expected to give one.  As if
there was one to give.

"I'm going to be up for a while anyway," he said, hoping Skinner would
interpret this as an invitation.  He knew he wasn't good with people^"only
victims and Scully.  Even his conversations with his mother were ragged
around the edges.  The world he lived in was divided into two
categories^"victims and Scully^"and Skinner fit into neither.

Skinner flopped over onto his back.

"There's nothing you can do, Agent Mulder.  It was a mistake even to
bring it up."

Mulder heard the lonely note in Skinner's voice.  "You don't think it has
something to do with the case?"

"I think it was a coincidence, Mulder, nothing more, nothing less."

"Mmmm."  Mulder nodded, sitting down on the edge of his bed, facing his
boss.  He'd always known how physically big Skinner was--he'd been on
the receiving end of more than one tackle--but seeing him spread out
there, glasses off, looking ragged and worn in the t.v. light, Mulder
thought Skinner seemed not only big, but dense, thick with isolation.

"You know, when I was younger," Mulder said, "I was convinced that
dreams were real, that they were a parallel universe that we went to at
night."

Skinner snorted lightly.

"I never understood why I couldn't just go back to the place where I left
off the night before."

"You remember your dreams?"  Skinner turned his face toward the
younger man.

"Don't you?" Mulder asked, and Skinner's expression closed.

"Sure," he answered.  "The bad ones."

"Are there any other kind?" Mulder asked, and was shocked when
Skinner's low laugh rumbled in his ears.

"We need to get out of this town, Mulder.  It's fucking depressing."

"Yes, sir." Mulder said, slipping under the covers.  "Good night."

"Don't let the bedbugs bite."

Mulder glanced over at his boss.  "Sorry?"

"That's what my mother used to say to us--'don't let the bedbugs bite.'"

Raising his head slightly, Mulder looked askance at the man in the bed
next to his.

"Wish she'd been on hand when I was staring at a giant vampire cockroach
hanging from my ceiling"

Skinner was quiet for a while, and Mulder felt faintly vulgar for having
mentioned the episode.  Just another reminder of how at odds he and
Skinner often were.

Perhaps trying to make amends, Skinner's low, smooth voice met his ears
again.

"My mother used to leave a flashlight on the nightstand.  My brother
Daniel was afraid of the dark.  She'd kiss us good night and check under
our beds with this big square red flashlight, must have been my father's
once, and then leave it for us, just in case.  To keep the monsters away."

"She had a monster spray.  My mom.   A plastic spray bottle," Mulder
explained, "with water in it and some of her perfume.  She would spray it
in our rooms to protect us."

"Did it work?"

"I'm still here, sir," Mulder said, smiling in the dark.

"That you are.  Good night, Mulder."

"Night," Mulder murmured.  He didn't say it, but the phrase kept circling,
running around and around, chasing its own tail:  don't let the bedbugs
bite, don't let them bite, don't let the bedbugs bite.  The giant,
bloodthirsty,
fanged, wall-crawling bedbugs . . .

He dreamed of his mother that night, of perfume.

January Sun 6/7: Vivian II
by Justin Glasser and Dawn Pares

***
Stringer's Warehouse
Outside Bent, North Carolina
9:07 am

Another day, another crime scene.  Skinner stood back and let his agents
work, surveying from a short distance away, hands in his pockets.  He had
expected it to be warmer here, down south, but his breath came out in
plumes.  He could smell the tang of salt on the air although the ocean was
almost an hour away, and the smell reminded him of a beach vacation he
and Sharon took in their third or fourth year of marriage.  He had still been
human then, still able to talk to his wife.  He wished idly for his gloves.

Christley stood nearby, surveying the scene like a proud dictator, and
Robertson was dutifully reporting the details he hadn't imparted on the
phone that morning.
 
"^ was Carolyn Escher, bank teller, mother of two^" Skinner tried to
look like he was paying attention; he suspected, from Robertson's
frequent, nervous glances at him, that he was failing.  Big surprise.

"Sir?" Scully gestured for him to come closer.  They wanted him to look at
her, the victim, to see if he recognized her.  That was Mulder's theory^"
that he was seeing the victims in dreams.  Scully hadn't said anything of
the sort over breakfast, hadn't agreed or disagreed, but he got the feeling
she was going with Mulder's theory for now. The thought did not comfort
him.  He would look, regardless--he had to--but he knew he wouldn't
know the girl.  The dreams weren't about knowing, they were just dreams.
Just a way to torture him with his own ineptitude.  He couldn't help her.
He didn't know why he even bothered to try.

But he stepped forward and looked anyway.  Dark hair, dark eyes,
bruising around the neck, evisceration, no shirt this time, just socks and a
pool of blood almost as black as her hair; she was just like the others.
Dead.

"A wretch like me," he muttered.  Mulder and Scully both turned to look
at him.

"What?" Mulder asked.

Skinner shrugged.  "Amazing Grace.  I woke up with the tune in my head
this morning." Scully was staring at him, her brow crinkled in a way he
recognized from seeing her scrutinize autopsy reports.  He felt like a
specimen on a slide.  "Amazing Grace, how sweet the taste," he sang
rapidly, waving his hand.  "The hymn.  You've heard it."

"How sweet the sound," Mulder said.

"What?" Skinner looked at him.  "What'd I say?"

"Mulder," Scully said, standing, peeling off her gloves.  Mulder met her
gaze, and Skinner, left out of the loop again, felt a sudden overwhelming
longing for Sharon and his old house.  Somewhere people wouldn't look
around him.

"What is it?" he asked.

By way of answer, Mulder shucked his own gloves, shoving them in his
pockets.

Scully turned, her eyes on Mulder, her voice tired but somehow amused.

"Sir," she said.  "My dairy products don't have souls."

***

There was a brief, murmured conference with Christley and Robertson.  It
ended with Christley turning on his heel and stalking off, and Robertson
gazing at Mulder with an expression both dubious and strangely
impressed. Together, his agents returned to him, looking intent and full of
terrible purpose. They walked shoulder to shoulder, and Skinner felt
himself obscurely comforted. He ignored the odd impulse to salute when
Scully held the car door open for him.

"We saw it on the way into town," she said, twisting in her seat to face
him as Mulder started the car.

Skinner shook his head, not believing her.  It simply wasn't true.  This was
not happening.  "And what do you think this has to do with our case,
Agent Scully?" he asked.  His voice sounded exactly the same as it always
did.

"You were mumbling the song in your sleep last night," Mulder said, eyes
locked to the flashing lights of the patrol car in front of them.

"Amazing Grace is a popular song, Mulder."

Scully nodded.  "But the verse you sang today isn't in the song.  'How
sweet the taste.'  It's from the billboard."

Skinner fought the urge to chuckle.  If Scully was buying this bullshit, she
would be offended.  Nevertheless, the explanation was obvious.  "Maybe I
saw the billboard on my way in, like you did."

Scully nodded again.  "You're right, sir.  You could have."

"I still don't understand how this billboard is related to the case."

"Mulder has a theory . . ." Scully began.  She turned to look at her partner.

Skinner waited.  She wouldn't postulate herself, he knew.  When it came
to cockamamie theories, Scully let Mulder do the talking.  He was almost
relieved.  Hearing it from Scully would make it real.

"I've adjusted the theory," Mulder said.  He wasn't looking anywhere but
at the flashing lights of the police car in front of them.  Somehow that
made his words worse, not better.  "You're not dreaming of the victims.  I
think you've been dreaming Vivian MacElvey's experiences," Mulder said.
"I think you're linked to her telepathically, somehow."

Skinner nodded.  This was familiar, the natural last step to the previous
theory, the theory Mulder had explained over breakfast this morning.  It
wasn't right, of course, but Skinner went with it.  "What does that have to
do with the billboard?"

"She was the first of all the women to go missing, " Scully explained.
"We didn't put her together with the case because we never found the
body."

"Until yesterday.  Until your dream." Mulder added.

"You aren't answering my question.  You think I'm telepathically linked to
one of our victims, fine.  But how--"

"She's not a victim, not yet," Mulder murmured.

"Mulder, that's not^""he began, but Scully interrupted, her smooth voice
gliding over top of his.

"If Mulder's right, sir, then your dreams are not about Vivian MacElvey,
they're *from* her.  We think she's at Grace Dairy, the dairy on the
billboard."

Skinner knew his face must have reflected his skepticism when Scully
smiled apologetically.  "It's the only lead we've got," she said.  "This guy's
not giving us much to go on."

"I'm right," Mulder said, shooting her a look.

"Mulder, if you're right--" Skinner began, then stopped, horrified.  The
dark, the cold bathroom, the pale face in the mirror.  From a hundred miles
away, he felt Scully's hand on his forearm.

"She's still alive," Skinner whispered.  "She's alive." He closed his eyes.
This whole time, two weeks, almost three weeks now, he'd been having
dreams and Vivian MacElvey had been alive, living the horrors that woke
him in the night.  The whole time.  He felt like screaming.

"You believe this?" he asked, surprised by the coarse rasp of his voice.  He
flicked his eyes to Scully.  She looked away for a second, to Mulder's
focused profile, then back.

"I'll tell you when we find her," she said.

***

For a while after they became partners, real partners not just teamed up
because the FBI bureaucracy said so, Scully had wondered how long it
would be before Mulder's belief stopped outranking hers.  She had
wondered when she would build up a callous disregard for forever playing
the disproved skeptic to Mulder's confirmed believer, how long it would
be before she was taken seriously.  For a while, bitterness had been her
faithful companion, a bad but loyal dog at her heels.  Sitting in the car
watching Skinner's pale shocked face, she realized she had stopped
waiting for that moment.

"Do you believe this?" he'd asked her, and she'd told him the truth.  She
didn't know whether or not Mulder was right.  Scientifically, there was
nothing to back her partner up--no serious studies of telepathy or
precognition through dreams, no documented evidence to demonstrate that
the future or the present could be divined by the dreamer, no way to know
whether Skinner was really seeing Vivian MacElvey or if he was haunted
by personal demons.

She'd know if and when they found the killer.

Now, as the rental pulled into the broad, circular drive of the Grace Dairy,
rain began to spatter across the windshield.  The water blurred the outlines
of the squat, metallic building and gave it the wavy silhouette of being
already underwater.  And then the sleet began.  *Appropriate,* she
thought, glancing at Skinner.  His face looked gray in the rainy light.

Through the windshield, Scully could see the thick splash of water
congealing with frost, the messy clouds of slush at the heart of each heavy
drop.  She shivered, tugging at the collar of her overcoat.

"Hey," she heard Mulder say, and he sprang from the car, coatless, before
they'd even pulled to a complete stop.

"FBI!"

Skinner was on his heels, weapon drawn, and Scully had a moment of
unreasonable jealousy before she, too, caught sight of the small man in a
the transparent hooded rain poncho who was scrambling for the door of
the building he'd just exited.  *Mulder,* she thought, irrationally, before
the instinct of the chase overcame her.

***

Skinner bolted through the sudden icy downpour, reassured by the slam of
Scully's car door behind him.  Mulder would corner the suspect, he would
cover Mulder, and Scully would cover him.  Even if this guy wasn't their
man, he obviously didn't belong here--maybe they could do some good.
Mulder was wrong about the dreams, but maybe this suspect could be
stopped from some other petty crime, burglary or attempted arson or even
trespassing, something which would assuage Skinner's increasing sense of
helplessness. The idea gave him a slight sense of satisfaction as he entered
the dark hallway, and heard Mulder's running steps loud and echoing in
the dark.

She wasn't alive.

If the day had not grown so overcast, there would have been plenty of
light inside the abandoned Grace dairy, a warehouse lined with thick bottle
glass windows.  As it was, Skinner had the feeling he'd suddenly lost the
ability to see in color.  The milking room was faded and warped in his
vision, a nonsense jumble of pipes and machinery that sorted itself only
into varied grayness, a stark and leering gloom.  He felt as if he had ran
through the warehouse door and into a world of dreams.

Mulder panted ahead of him, footsteps slowing down as he remembered
caution.  That was good: they didn't know who this fleeing suspect was, no
matter what he had dreamed.  They could be walking in on a meth lab or a
gunrunner's lair for all they knew, and Skinner didn't want to have to jerk
Mulder out of the line of fire.

He heard the subdued click of Scully's heels, felt her warm hand light on
his shoulder.

He looked at her for second, then jerked his head in the direction that
Mulder had gone.  She nodded and leaned back, letting him lead.

Where is she?  Skinner thought suddenly, and knew he was not thinking of
Scully.

***

Mulder eased through the swinging metal doors into a room yellow with
lantern light, rich with the copper smell of blood.  His feet slipped in it;
the stench of old blood brought tears to his eyes.

But out at the edge of his peripheral vision he saw them.

He had her by the hair.

She was bleeding, gasping for breath, trying to keep her feet on the gore-
slicked floor as the man dragged her towards him and locked his elbow
around her throat.

Before Mulder could remember his voice, he heard Skinner's.

"Let her go!"

Yellow light flickered on the whites of the man's eyes, but his movements
were curiously languid.  A knife appeared in his hand almost magically,
twirled between his forefinger and middle finger like a baton.  It wavered
back and forth, a snake of silver edged by the lantern's flicker.

*No thumb,* Mulder thought, eyes glued to the virtuoso performance,
feeling his profile fall into place. The marks on the hands . . . no thumb . .
.
He wanted to kiss Scully, but the man had traded the knife to his good
hand and dented the skin of the girl's throat just behind the point of her
chin.

"Drop it," Skinner commanded.  Mulder glanced back.  Skinner and Scully
both stood just inside the door, legs apart, weapons raised, elbows slightly
bent.  They looked like a textbook illustration, and Mulder felt a wave of
wholly inappropriate laughter.

"Release her," Scully said.  "We will shoot."

The man looked to Mulder, as if expecting confirmation. Mulder nodded
slowly, trying to meet the terrified woman's eyes.  He wanted to tell her
she would live, that everything would be fine, but his words were for the
man who held her.

"Put down the knife."

The gunshot thundered in his ears and he knew as the man flung his victim
to the floor and fled that Skinner had shot into the floor.

"Scully," Mulder barked, and leapt after the man in the rain poncho.

***

Scully was leaning over the injured woman before Skinner even thought to
look for her.  Her eyes were laser blue through the curtain of her hair, as
she tried to hold the hysterical woman's matted hair back from her throat.

"Mulder," she reminded, and Skinner nodded curtly, the world suddenly in
color again, suddenly in motion.  Red hair, blue eyes, yellow light, black
blood curdling on the floor, every breath laden with thick copper rot.
 
Skinner followed his agent, again lead by his breath and his footsteps.

There was a crash, followed by a sudden wash of gray rain light, pale
enough to see by.

*Elvis has left the building,* Skinner thought randomly, as he followed
the suspect, followed Mulder through the swinging doors.  But Elvis
hadn't left the building, not at all, and Skinner found himself in a
nightmare, tile and shiny bone, a room slippery not with blood but with
condensation and the smell of mildew.

"Halt, or I'll shoot!" he heard Mulder say.

Abruptly the room flooded with light: the sun must have slipped through
the clouds.  Skinner thought that once, long ago, he would have liked to
work here, to come in the doors of Grace Dairy and see the sunlight.
Diamonds dappled the floor, shone on Mulder's face, on the suspect's
hunched shoulders.

Mulder's eyes were dark, but the side of his face Skinner could see was
blinding with improbable sunlight.  It struck him dumb, that horrible
beauty, made everything silent and motionless.  The man spun to face
them, and scrabbled underneath the flap of his polo shirt, searching for
something.

Then Skinner saw Mulder's face tighten, and he knew it was over.  The
man's eyes widened, and beneath the poncho was a smear of red so dark
Skinner had to close his eyes against it.

When he opened them again, he found he'd turned his head toward the
door, and saw Scully, pale as doves in the doorway, her eyes fastened on
Mulder, one bloody hand holding the collar of her coat closed.

"His shots," Skinner told her, and his voice was low and relieved.
Together, they watched Mulder stalk towards what Skinner presumed was
the suspect's corpse, and prod it with his foot, gun still trained on the
fallen man's chest.

And then something occurred to him.
 
"Did you find her?"
 
Scully blinked at him for a moment. Then her eyes widened, and she
shook her head.
 
"I was with the victim. She's going to need an ambulance. I haven't--"

Skinner wheeled back toward the swinging door, the stench.  *No,* he
thought, but he took two steps forward, re-holstering his gun, steeling
himself.  There was nothing to do but go back, go back and look for her.
Then he heard it.  A murmur.  A song he heard in his dreams.

" . . . that saved a wretch . . ."

"Vivian?" he shouted.  "Vivian MacElvey!"  He spun on his heel but saw
nothing, only shadows and diamonds of sunlight.  "Vivian."

"Sir?"  Scully reached out for his arm, but he shrugged her away.

"That wasn't her, Scully.  It wasn't her."

She shook her head.  "She might not be here."

He glared at her.  "She's here.  Vivian!"

" . . . was lost, but now I'm found . . ."

"Vivian?  This is the FBI!  We're here to help."

The echoes were maddening, multiplied by other agents yelling in other
parts of the building.  Skinner paused, took a deep breath.  He couldn't
have killed her, could he?  The man hadn't had time to try to kill them
both.

"Vivian MacElvey?" he shouted.  "Can you hear me?  We're here to help
you!"

"Help me?" his echo asked, and then it laughed in a woman's voice.

He spun around, peering into a black corner.  "Vivian?" he asked.  "Vivian
MacElvey?"

"I once was lost, but now I'm found," the voice said.

There, theretherethere, in the corner, under the sink, there, there, under
there.  He was on his knees, suddenly, near the row of sinks, bashing his
head on the porcelain ledge.  He ignored the pain, closed his eyes against
the moment of darkness.  "Vivian?" he whispered.  Scully was at his
shoulder trying to look at his head, and Mulder had come up behind her,
but that didn't matter.  She was found.  Skinner crept forward until he
could see her, a huddled figure handcuffed to a pipe in the corner.  She
wore an Elvis t-shirt as well, he noticed, and dingy socks, and whenever
he put out his hand to touch her, to release the handcuffs, to smooth her
tangled hair out of her face, she screamed.

In the end, he had to settle for draping his coat over her and stepping out
of Scully's way.

***

Grace Dairy
Outside Bent, North Carolina
2:48 PM

She was brought out on a stretcher as a matter of form, flanked by Scully
and Mulder with his gun still drawn.  The last abductee, Elizabeth Prade,
was already on her way to the hospital, paramedics having pronounced her
scared but unharmed.  Skinner had watched her shiver under the orange
wool blanket, telling her story to the medics and the cops who clustered
around her.  He hadn't gotten close enough to hear what she was saying,
but he knew the story: the tears, the relief, the obsequious thanking of God
and rescue workers over and over again.  He didn't want to hear it.
Elizabeth Prade hadn't been saved by God, Skinner knew.  She had been
saved by dumb luck and good timing: she had been taken last.

Vivian MacElvey, on the other hand . . .

She lay thin and trembling under Skinner's coat on the stretcher, her filthy
stocking feet pressed together like a little girl's.  Skinner stood by the
doors of the ambulance, holding on to the cool metal frame, not craning
his neck to see her.

He saw her anyway--his position predicated it, and maybe that's what he
had wanted when he stopped there, leaning against the ambulance like a
boy at a junior high dance.  The woman in the picture had been pleasantly
round, her smile buoyed by cheeks and the soft smooth flesh an extra ten
pounds will give a woman.  That woman was gone.  This woman, Vivian,
was gaunt and pale, her collarbones jutting out of the stretched neck of her
too-large t-shirt.  Sharon had worn big t-shirts like that to bed, he
remembered suddenly.  Vivian's hair lay matted like dog fur against the
stretcher.

She'd been shuddering and blank eyed when he'd found her.  She had
screamed when he tried to touch her.  She had hummed "Amazing Grace"
over and over again while Scully unchained and examined her, until
Skinner thought he would go mad himself and left the room to stand here,
beside the ambulance because he couldn't just walk away.

"Vivian," he whispered when her stretcher paused next to him.

Her dark eyes opened, sought him, studied him for a moment, large with
something akin to fear.

"You," she said, and one skeleton-thin hand reached out for him.  Skinner
held still as her fingers skittered across his face as if seeking purchase.
"You," she breathed.  He did not move.

"I didn't think," she said.  Her voice was brittle and rough.  "I didn't think
I'd live to see . . ." She stopped again, hand trembling against his cheek.
Skinner could see her struggling with the words.  "What took you so
long?"

Then she yanked her hand back as if it had been burned, curling on her
side toward Scully, toward someone neither male nor brunette with pretty
brown eyes.  Toward safety.  Skinner understood.

***

Grace Dairy
Outside Bent, North Carolina
7: 47 pm

On TV shows, the important cops always got to go home right after the
bad guys were caught, Skinner thought, sipping at a cup of old coffee.
Once the victim was rescued and carted off, and the standard witticisms
were exchanged, the principals got in their cars and drove off into the
sunset of a good meal and a good night's sleep.  Skinner thought it was a
pity real life didn't work that way.

Instead, he stood here in the gloom of a January dusk, watching a swarm
of local law enforcement gather evidence.  The man, Harold Bloomfeld
according to his driver's license, was dead, so there would be no trial, but
there would be an enquiry for Agent Mulder, and, more important than
that administrative formality, there would be the studies of Bloomfeld,
psycho- and sociological investigations, profiles and conclusions, and
probably a true-crime novel that, if Mulder had any sense at all, he would
write himself.

In other words, the evidence had to be gathered and Skinner got to oversee
the gatherers.  It was either this or talk to the press who had begun to
arrive in droves not five minutes after Vivian was taken away.  As senior
officer on the scene, Skinner was technically the one who should have
handled the wolves at the door, but what was a sycophant like Christley
good for if not dealing with the press?  Skinner had bowed out, citing
Christley's familiarity with the local press, and ducked back into the
warehouse with a sigh of relief.  Later, when he found out that Christley
had been the one to name Harold Bloomfeld the CopyCat Killer, that relief
would turn to annoyance.

Copying was what Harold had done, Skinner would think, setting the
report down on his immaculate green blotter, but instead of copying other
killers, he had tried to copy his principal victim, seeking out women as
much like Vivian MacElvey as possible, then raping, strangling, and
eviscerating them as she was forced to look on.  The marks that Scully had
found on the victims' hands, cuts drawn straight across the base of the
thumb, would turn out to be another form of copying^"Harold's way of
copying his mother's accident with her young son and an electric carving
knife.  Despite the appropriateness of the name, however, Skinner would
find 'CopyCat' too childish and deceptively simple a moniker for such a
monster.

Blissfully unaware of Christley's blunder at this point, Skinner watched as
Mulder came up next to him, hands in his pockets, head down.  It was nice
to know that he was still the alpha dog, though he didn't want to be at the
moment.  He wanted someone else to take the responsibility, to be in
charge, but there was no one else.  Only him.

"Congratulations, Mulder," he said.

He felt the other man's heavy gaze, but did not meet it.

"Thank you, sir."

"I would prefer it if you made . . . if my involvement in the case was
downplayed in the report."

Mulder nodded.  Skinner did not look toward him, but he felt Mulder
move, come so close that their shoulders were almost touching.

"Sir, I just wanted you to know that^""

"Thank you, Mulder," he said.  He met Mulder's gaze without wavering or
blinking.  *Thank you,* he thought, but did not say it again.  He looked
into Mulder's concerned face and understood what Scully had been saying
in the diner.  Mulder believed.  He believed that what you were
experiencing was real and honest, even if it was so crazy you didn't
believe it yourself.  With Mulder, it wasn't you but the world that was
insane, and that thought was so tempting, so reassuring, that Skinner's
hands itched with the desire to grab Mulder and pull him close.

"'scuse me," said Robertson.  He stood in front of them, shifting from one
foot to the next like a second grader who had to pee.

"What can we do for you?"  Skinner asked, almost relieved to be
interrupted.

"I was wondering you would be willing to work the room with me, you
know, sort of spot me on the follow-up," he said, talking to Mulder.
Mulder glanced at Skinner, who shrugged.  No harm, no foul.  Robertson
would benefit from hearing Mulder's mind in action.  With a dead perp,
there was no need to do a profile immediately, but it didn't hurt to let
Robertson work it now, and it didn't hurt Mulder to have his opinion
respected.

Mulder moved to the corner of the room near the sink Vivian MacElvey
had been chained to, watching with a slight smile on his lips as Robertson
paced in a circle, hands flying.  So Robertson paced and Mulder watched
him and Skinner watched Mulder, and when Mulder looked up and caught
Skinner's eye, he smiled.  Skinner tried to smile back.

January Sun 7/7: Walter
by Dawn Pares and Justin Glasser

***

The chill creeping into his skull woke him up.  Mulder blinked, and
opened his eyes.  He felt like he'd had his head in the crisper of a fridge
and his forehead hurt where it began to warm.  He fingered the skin on his
face, wondering whether he could get frostbite from glass.  He'd have to
ask Scully.

It was almost dark: smudgy gray light just crept over the horizon, hardly
visible over the green glow of the radio. The faint reassuring voices of the
NPR announcers murmured about the fall of the Yen.  There was no sign
of Skinner besides his coat, crumpled on the driver's seat. That bothered
him.  The fading halo of his profile was melting from the window.  It was
undoubtedly *cold* out there.  Wherever they were.
 
Then Mulder heard the cry of a gull, and recognized the crust of salt in the
cold, humid air.

A thin curve of white at the edge of the grayness; the sun would rise soon.

Mulder rubbed at his rough jaw, flipped the visor down to make sure he'd
wiped the trail of drool off his chin, and then opened the passenger door.

"Sir?" His voice got lost in the rhythmic rush of the waves.  Nothing.  He
peered into the darkness, but no shape was recognizably human. Mulder
shrugged his coat up over his shoulders and buttoned it, turning up the
collar. He pushed up and out of the car, his legs stiff and unwieldy like a
colt's from too much car travel.
 
They'd left the crime scene around two a.m.  Scully, who had gone to the
hospital with Vivian MacElvey, had called from airport at ten.

"You coming?" she'd asked, not even saying hello.

"I don't think so," he'd answered, his eyes on Skinner.  The AD hadn't
bothered to get involved in handling the press coverage, but he stood over
the FBI techs every step of the way, watching carefully.  "We'll take the
car back."

"Suit yourself," she'd sighed.  "See you tomorrow."

That was how he'd found himself in a car with his boss at two in the
morning, instead of on his own couch, a beer sweating on the coffee table
and the remote in hand.  Still, he had no idea why they'd ended up here on
the beach.  It shouldn't have taken more than four hours tops to get back to
D.C., and the debriefing, and the start of the paperwork.

Mulder had meant to stay awake and find out exactly what it was Skinner
had been looking for so closely at the scene, but Skinner had been even
more quiet than usual on the ride back, and the car had been stuffy and
overheated, and Mulder hadn't really slept in maybe thirty-six hours, and
he'd lost consciousness maybe fifteen minutes into the ride.

And now he was on an empty beach with a frigid wind that licked his
bones even through the coat, and there was Skinner, just ahead of him,
dim, a different shade of gray in the dull predawn.

"Sir?" he repeated, but the older man didn't seem to hear.  Even if he'd
been shoulder to shoulder with Skinner, Mulder doubted the man would
have been able to hear over the crash of the waves.  He reached out to
touch Skinner's shoulder, but stopped at the last moment, tucking his hand
back into his coat pocket.  "Skinner," he muttered.  He could feel the salt
wind already making his hair stiff.

Skinner stood with his arms crossed against his chest.  Apparently he'd left
his suit jacket in the car as well, or else dropped it somewhere, because he
was standing on a January beach in his shirt sleeves.   Mulder couldn't tell
if he was shivering, but he should have been.  The light was too poor to
see if his bare forearms were marbled with gooseflesh.
 
The lost jacket worried Mulder; Skinner was nothing if not practical, and
Mulder saw nothing practical in waiting for hypothermia to turn your
bones brittle on a frigid strip of sand.

He found himself unbuttoning his own coat and hanging it around
Skinner's shoulders.

Skinner turned his head and looked at him for the first time.  For a
disconcerting moment, Mulder was sure the older man hadn't recognized
him.

"Mulder?" he said, finally.  His voice sounded rough and unused.

"You're going to freeze to death.  Come back to the car."

"Wait," the other man replied, and turned his face back to the horizon, and
the widening band of light, now tinged with pink.

Mulder nodded, and watched his breath plume white and stream away as
he exhaled, inhaled, exhaled again, the air bitter in his lungs, hard as glass.

He tucked his hands in his armpits and tensed against the cold, but he, too,
now, wanted very much to watch the sun rise and paint this secluded
beach with warmth.  Give the sand some gold, the sky some blue,
Skinner's ears some red.  Color.

"She told me she didn't think she'd live to see another day," and it was flat,
and it was apropos of nothing, but Mulder nodded.  He understood.

"But she did," he answered, and for no good reason he smiled.  He was
glad to think of Vivian MacElvey waking up in a warm bed.  Even
shivering awake from a nightmare, but waking.  That was the important
part.

"What he did to those women, Mulder..." and for the first time, maybe the
first time ever, Mulder heard a tremor in the other man's voice.  Maybe it
was just the cold.

Mulder stepped in front of the Assistant Director, and although his fingers
were already clumsy from the relentless windshear, he buttoned his coat.
The arms hung empty at Skinner's sides, and Mulder was mildly surprised
that he'd been able to button it at all across a chest so much broader than
his own.

"He won't do it again," Mulder told him.  The sway of the empty sleeves
disturbed him somehow so he tucked them into the pockets of the coat.  It
was good to be the voice of reason once in a while.  Good to be the one
who could offer some sort of reassurance.

"Vivian has you to thank for that," Skinner said.  Startled into looking up,
Mulder realized there was enough light to see the other man's eyes.
 
"Well.  You can tell her he got in the way of the bullet.  His bad luck."

An expression that was almost a smile lightened Skinner's face.

"You did a good job, Mulder."
 
"Thank you, sir."  Mulder felt his face warm and was glad that his cheeks
had already been rouged by the salt wind.
 
"The sun's up," Skinner said, and Mulder had realized it was more than a
strange flood of gratitude that had warmed the back of his neck.  He
turned, and was dazzled by the sun, the diamonds of light on the sea and
streak of gold in the sky.

For a moment he was blinded, and he held a hand up to shield his eyes.
Skinner's glasses glimmered with sunlight, making his face bright and his
expression closed at once, because Mulder couldn't see the other man's
eyes through the reflected light.  He put his gaze out to sea again, feeling
glad of Skinner's relative closeness.  He felt anchored by the fact he was
close enough to reach out and touch the other man.  The crash of the surf
lulled him, and the faint spray and his face reminded him of the summer
house he had stayed in as a boy.  He remembered the sound of his father's
voice at dusk, rising over the rush of the waves, calling him home to
dinner.
 
Eventually, he realized Skinner had been calling his name.

"Mulder.

"Mulder, it's cold.  let's get back to the car."

Nodding, Mulder made a few stumbling steps, the sand suddenly
treacherous under foot.

"You'll have to unbutton this," Skinner said, and although he wasn't
smiling, something in his voice communicated his amusement.  Mulder
was sure the older man would have reached out to steady him had he had
his hands available, but as it was Skinner simply leaned against Mulder's
shoulder, bracing him.

He undid the coat with more finesse than he'd buttoned it with.  For a
second they stood, Mulder holding the flaps of the coat open like a man
opening a curtain.  He found it impossible to look into Skinner's face, but
he spoke anyway.

"You . . . "  He sighed.  Forced himself to meet Skinner's bemused
expression.  "She should thank you, sir," he said.  He wasn't sure if his
voice could be heard over the splash of the waves, but Skinner moved,
lifting one arm over Mulder's shoulder's and turning him back toward the
car.

Mulder tucked one arm between the man's warm back and the thick fabric
of his trench coat, and together, they made their way back to the car, the
clear January sun on their backs.

***The End January Sun***

You are so beautiful to me
Julan777@aol.com and SkaLab6066@aol.com