By JRFPatton
JRFPatton@hotmail.com
 

Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001
Feedback: Yes. This is my first attempt.
Archive: Anywhere, just tell me
Rating: PG-13
Classification: SRA
Spoilers: through All Things
Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance
Disclaimer: The main characters, the familiar ones, are the
property of Chris Carter, Fox, and Ten Thirteen
Productions used without permission. This story is in no way
affiliated with or endorsed by anyone associated with The X-files nor
intended to infringe on copyrights.
Summary: A horrific investigation leads to unprofessional conduct
charges against Scully and Mulder. Their defense forces them to
them apart. When they decide to listen to each other, a rather
explosive situation develops at a church with a unique history.

Legend of the Perfect Union

She used to be young. Striding into her apartment full of purpose,
Special Agent Dana Scully saw the evidence of that youth still lying
in open photo albums on her sofa. Once she was carefree and terribly
young.  It didn't seem long ago. She was hopeful and open and wise
and full of curiosity. She went to concerts and danced and read out
of interest instead of need. She had a circle of friends and they
talked of love, marriage, fashion, rock stars, and movies. She used
to be warm.

"Just a minute."

Standing alone in her living room Special Agent Fox Mulder thought
the day turned colder with each passing hour - just like his partner.
He realized with a start that this was not something new, even though
it just occurred to him. Dana Scully had pulled back, retreated and
finally set up camp behind an impenetrable wall. He couldn't recall
anything he'd said or done to piss her off, so it must be this latest
case dealing with child pornographers and murderers. When he thought
about it, Mulder couldn't picture the last time he'd seen Scully
smile or heard her laugh out loud. Something that might, technically,
be called a half-smile pulled at her lips a few hours earlier. He
watched it emerge in slow, satisfied, Scully-style when they got a
lead on their prime suspect.

Mulder usually avoided all Violent Crimes Section assignments because
nothing good ever came of his association with them, and assignments
involving children, because he hated watching Scully endure them.
However, they couldn't duck this one, a double-header. A Violent
Crimes case involving murdered children.  A few days into the
investigation Mulder hadn't even bothered to illicit another "I'm
fine" from Scully. He didn't have the energy to ask and she wouldn't
have had the strength to lie anyway.

Mulder was hard pressed to recall a more horrific series of crimes.
Over the last two months, three young girls in the D.C. area had been
raped and murdered, their little bodies mutilated nearly beyond
recognition. Mulder had been stunned by the violence of the crime
scene photos.

And then there were the videos. As each child died screaming in
terror, someone videotaped it. Scully, shaking and pale, excused
herself after viewing the first tape-an unspeakably humiliating
display for her. No matter that a D.C. cop and another FBI agent
barely made it to the men's room. The video sold in the back of porno
shops as illegal snuff fiction until one storeowner reported a
resemblance between the little actress in the tape and the newspaper
photo of a murder victim.

Some things even offended perverts.

The videos represented the first break in the case. Until then,
nothing had tied the murders together. The crime scenes had been
carefully scoured to eliminate trace evidence. The victims were
apparently chosen at random by opportunity, not design. Now they had
backgrounds on the tape to search for and white noise to listen to in
hopes of uncovering identifiable noises. All that work, all the
manpower attracted attention. It was a major effort for the FBI and
DC police to downplay the whole thing to avoid a panic. Unofficially,
the word spread until even street gangs were on the lookout for child
killers. It shaped up worse than the Atlanta murders.

With the second murder, the D.C. police called in the FBI. He and
Scully were still combing through the D.C. police data - an
impressive amount of it - when the third body turned up. Scully
performed the autopsy, discovering a hair that didn't match the
victim or anyone else they could find. When Mulder pronounced it a
clue that put them a hair's breath closer to the killer, Scully
hadn't even lifted an eyebrow. His initial concern bloomed into
worry.

For his part Mulder developed a profile of men who could organize,
plan, and execute the murder of little girls, then videotape it for
sale. In fact, the current progress in the case owed much to Mulder's
skills as profiler. He felt sick for days after he began to his work
in earnest. He wished for a way to escape, even temporarily, from the
insanity he envisioned. A game, a drunk, a distraction.

In the end he made a conscious decision to distance himself from this
one. Now he was relieved. He saw the shell of Scully, recalled the
ravaged faces of the other officers on the case, and congratulated
himself on stepping back.  Law enforcement officers like the D.C.
squad charged with the investigation had been hard at work for eight
weeks. The men he'd met looked haunted. Mulder was glad he didn't
have to go home with any of them. Life with Scully - the part of
her he could still reach-was difficult enough. Now that he thought
about it, tempers were short all around. Everyone involved with this
case needed to spend some serious time in a decompression chamber. Or
in Tahiti. Or naked in Scully's arms.

Right this minute he would settle for a little light and heat. Scully
hadn't bothered to snap on lights or turn up the heat when they came
into her apartment. Mulder waited for her to change from a skirt to
something warmer so they could watch their suspect's apartment
building. He felt off center, restless, edgy, maybe something else he
didn't want to think about. He wished for something good to happen.
Like Tahiti. Or, the other thing.

Okay, he would settle for one day free of blood. Wandering idly
Mulder flipped through some photo albums lying on the sofa. Most of
them were family photos and pictures of a rather sophisticated girl
with a young Scully--huge eyes and long hair, as long as it was the
day she descended to the FBI basement. In every photo she smiled or
laughed. From her sofa he'd moved on to peruse her coffee table -
mostly folders of crime scene photos - and some scientific journals
that looked almost as cheery. He didn't intend to invade her privacy;
he just needed a distraction. Her mail sat piled on the table near
the front door and a fancy, oversized envelope peeked out from the
top, right between the electric bill, a flyer advertising a self-help
seminar, and two pizza ads.

He reasoned later it was fate that he saw the wedding invitation at
all. He had to shake it loose from the folded flyer that urged him to
"Seize This Opportunity - Your Dreams Can Come True". Ivory parchment
paper among the slick ads attracted him. The invitation had already
been opened, read and now lay exposed. The first words that
registered made his heart leap: "Church of the Holy Trinity" followed
by "St.Mary's City, Maryland".

"You've been invited to a wedding at Holy Trinity!" He held up the
invitation for her to see as she came out of the bedroom. She had
changed into jeans and a long-sleeved sweater. She barely paused. In
one efficient move Dana Scully grabbed her coat and plucked the
invitation from his hand. She dropped it back on the table on her way
into the kitchen.

"Yes...and no," she said. She picked up a brown paper bag on the
kitchen counter and motioned him out of the apartment.

"Yes...and no?"

'Yes, I've been invited to the wedding of a family friend and no, you
cannot come with me. Do you have a blanket in the car? Probably not.
I should get one."

He followed her. "Why can't I go?"

"No."

"I wouldn't want you to be mugged. Could be a rough crowd."

"My brother Bill and his wife are coming," Scully said, her face
somewhere in the middle of the chest at the foot of her bed.

Mulder remembered his unpleasant encounters with Bill the sailor. All
well deserved, which made it worse. "See--a rough crowd."

"No."

"Why not?"

Dana Scully stopped rummaging around the chest. "Because Amanda Chase
is a dear friend and being there when she marries is important to me.
Being there for you is only mildly interesting because it's Holy
Trinity."

"What if this is the one, Scully? What if your friend's marriage is
the one so blessed by God that the rays of heaven burn the couple's
image into the rock of the altar floor."

"That is exactly why I said no. This is not an X-File. This is my
friend's wedding. My whole family will be there. My aunt, my mother's
cousins...." She pictured Mulder trying to blend with walls. Worse,
she envisioned his debating virgin birth with her Aunt Minnie. She
shuddered. "No." Scully discovered a green blanket folded in with
a quilt and pulled it out of the bottom of the chest. It smelled like
mothballs. The chest lid slammed and she started out the door again.

He did not follow this time. At the apartment door she stopped and
put her hand on her hip. "Are you coming?"

"I'm thinking about it," Mulder said.

"It's just a legend, a myth."

"Like transubstantiation?"

Scully glared. "Are you going on this stake-out with me?"

"I'm thinking about it," Mulder said.

"Think and walk," she said, setting an example. "Our informant said
Braxton might be there tonight after twelve. It's almost eight. I
want this guy."

"I love it when you talk like that..."

"Seriously, Mulder, we've been searching for this man. And out of the
blue..."

"Blue. Imagine how blue Chesapeake Bay will be this time of year," he
said, catching up to her.

"It's almost winter," she said.

"We could drive down the night before..."

"It's not a long drive and I don't want to spend any more nights in a
motel than I have to."

"So, we could get up early and make a day of it," Mulder said.

"No."

"And when we get back. We'll go to Rocco's for dinner. My treat."

Scully stopped with her hand on the front door of the apartment
building. "Rocco's?"

"Lasagna with cheese so goo..."

"All right! But I'm warning you, any funny stuff-including but not
limited to-speculation on holy ghosts or cracks about marital
flash points in the church and I will drain your fish tank."

"You'd kill innocent fish!"

"In a heartbeat," she said, her words, like her breath, coming in
short puffs.
"The latch on this seat back is still broken," Scully complained. She
sat bolt upright. She continued to pull and tug at the lever on the
passenger side seat of the requisitioned Taurus to no avail.

Exasperated, she gave up and tucked her hands in her coat pocket.
She'd forgotten her gloves. Perhaps she lost them; she hadn't seen
them since last winter.

Mulder's face was turned toward the street and building where their
suspect Braxton was supposed to show. It was a renovated apartment
complex in a Washington neighborhood struggling to attract yuppies.
His busy fingers tapped on the steering wheel. Scully wanted to grab
them and make him stop drumming.

"I know this is our guy," he said. "He fits the profile. These
murders bear hallmarks of a crime he was questioned about several
years ago. He visited other cities where similar crimes..."

"You don't have to sell me," Scully said. "Unfortunately, we have no
DNA to match. In all likelihood the hair doesn't match him, but one
of his underlings. We're a little short on evidence."

"We'll get sample when we find him. We'll get evidence." His fingers
drummed on. "We will bury this man."

"Nice of him to drop in our laps." Scully shivered, rubbed her hands
together and studied Mulder with touch of resentment. He was never
cold. "Why are you so anxious to go to this wedding? It can't be only
the legend of the perfect union and it can't be my family."

"I like your mother." Mulder looked away from the building and
stretched. "I like your mother a lot." He had an answer, but it would
be no answer at all for her. It was ridiculous, in fact. He wanted
to, felt compelled to. He watched her go into the bedroom tonight,
unbuttoning her suit jacket and taking with her that wonderful smell
of woman he always associated with Scully, and realized in panic that
the room she left him in was flat, dull--without texture or life.

Mulder had distracted himself to keep from following her into the
bedroom and embarrassing himself. What would he have said: "I'm empty
here in the next room."

He closed his eyes. He longed to open them to find the world had
changed magically into Disneyland - where fantasy was fun, no
children hurt, and grown-ups connected with the openness and beauty
of the children in them. He was sick of ugliness, deception and
blood.

If he needed some magic, Scully needed it more, though she would
never admit it. He would do almost anything to wipe away the deep
sadness that seemed to grip her very bones. Being with family and old
friends at a happy occasion like a wedding might do it for her. That
was it, Mulder realized. He wanted to go to the wedding to see her
happy and safe.  He was always there when things were at their worst
for her, now he wanted to be there for the better part. Maybe some of
it would rub off on him. Maybe he could even see how it's done.

"Mulder? Why do you want to go?"

"No one has ever disproved the story of Aaron and Abigail Arnold.
Nice names," he said.

"Hmm. Alliteration adds to the romantic flavor, don't you agree?"
Scully said. "Who would want to know about Horace and Bertha Plotz?"

"Plotz - isn't that Polish? This is an Anglo-Saxon story. Devoted
Catholic girl with strict upbringing...."

"...All girls back then had strict upbringing."

"And knew it was rude to interrupt," said Mulder. Scully did not look
the least bit ashamed. "She falls in love with the Protestant
schoolmaster, a man of intemperate beliefs and few prospects."

"Hardly a match made in heaven."

"Her parents refuse their permission to marry. When her father joins
the Continental Army, they flee to the church and ask the priest to
marry them. The priest refuses. God does the job Personally." Mulder
made a sound like lightening and illustrated the zap with his fingers
on the steering wheel. "The lovers seal their undying devotion at the
altar with a kiss. Heaven blesses their union by burning through a
hole in the roof and searing their images into the solid marble floor
of the altar."

There it was: a hint of a smile in Scully's eyes and on her lips.

Encouraged, Mulder pressed on. "Theories?"

"An alien craft testing the dreaded Cupid ray?"

"The legend of the perfect union or something like it is a staple in
the folklore of every culture. I can see you've not given this
American phenomenon serious thought," Mulder said.

"The hole in the roof-now covered by a magnificent stained glass
window, by the way - occurred in 1779 as the result of a lightning
bolt," Scully said.

"So it was lightning..."

"Any lightening, laser beam or force strong enough to burn the
couple's silhouette in rock would incinerate them in the process."
"X-ray?"

"...Wheeled in from the Revolutionary War hospital across the
street?" Scully clucked. "Sorry to disappoint you. I'm afraid it's
just a coloration of stone that gives rise to the legend - like a-a
tomato that grows in the likeness of Elvis or a shadow on the wall
that looks like the Blessed Virgin."

"Squash," Mulder said.

"Squash?"

"It was a squash that was Elvis. The tomato was..."

"President Clinton-how could I forget," Scully said.

Mulder glanced at the building across the street and back to his
partner. "How do you know so much about Holy Trinity?"

"Amanda's been planning her wedding since we heard the legend of the
perfect union in third grade. I've been trying to talk her out of
this-"

"You don't like the groom?"

"I don't know him, except by reputation. He's a chemist at the lab
where Amanda works," Scully said. "I've always tried to talk her out
of Holy Trinity. It's like marrying in June - everybody does it."

"So you object on the grounds of triteness," Mulder said. "Do you
suppose that will affect God's decision to put in a personal
appearance at the wedding?"

Small creases of concentration appeared on Scully's forehead, giving
rise to a sudden and nearly overpowering desire in Mulder to
soothe them away with his fingers, then his lips.

"I think God blesses every union where a man and woman commit to love
and honor each other  -- the absence of smoke and lightening at the
altar doesn't make that less true," she said.

"The divorce and domestic violence rate say you're wrong."

"The legend never says that Aaron and Abigail lived happily ever
after," she said. "It only talks about the blessing part. Marriage is
perfect; the people in it aren't always."

A small vein near Scully's throat pulsed hypnotically against the
collar of her sweater and captured Mulder's attention. "Does Amanda
expect a miracle?"

"I'm sure she doesn't really believe the legend, but I suspect that
played a part in holding the wedding in the morning instead of the
evening."

"Trying to make it easier work for God?" Mulder said. "The sun being
a greater source of power than the moon."

The throbbing vein on Scully's neck disappeared beneath her sweater
to Mulder's relief. She glanced out the windshield at the full moon
shining over the buildings ahead. She gave him a mischievous look.

"In my experience the moon possesses a greater power."

"I had no idea you were such a lunar scholar!" Mulder's pulse picked
up.Scully picked up a thermos from the floor between them. "Is this
coffee?"

"It is, but...." Mulder reached behind him on the floor of the
passenger seat. Before Scully could move, his face grazed her
shoulder.  "I have here another full of hot chocolate." Curious now,
she turned to see what he was doing. They nearly bumped noses when he
brought the thermos out.

"I know what these late nights do to your blood sugar," Mulder said.
"It's not pretty." Their fingers touched when he put the thermos in
her hand. Her small hand under his larger one felt cold and he held
it there longer than necessary. "Your fingers are cold, Scully."
Without thinking Mulder tucked an errant strand of hair off her face
and behind her ear. He did it slowly. "Want the blanket?"

She shook her head. It all seemed so natural Scully decided to enjoy
the rush and let it go without comment. She knew he worried about
her. Mulder tended to hover as an expression of concern. She could
see the dark circles under his eyes that meant the long hours and
this awful case were catching up with him too. Now that she really
looked at him, he seemed haggard, his eyes full of an
uncharacteristic emptiness. Perhaps the wedding would be good for
him. Knowing Amanda the festivities would be-riotous came to mind
but somehow Scully couldn't associate that word with Holy Trinity
Church. At the very least it would be one of those occasions where
people are happy and optimistic. God knows they could both use some
of that in their lives. She sighed.

She hadn't slept well since Skinner assigned this case. The bruised
bodies of the little victims and the unspeakable images on the tapes
had become mixed up in some thinking she'd been doing about her own
life since Amanda Chase popped into her life again. Now every time
she closed her eyes collages of the murdered girls dressed in white
dresses, FBI identifications, Mulder's eyes, and blood spatters on
bridal bouquets slapped her awake.

Always, lurking somewhere in the background, were all the children
lost to her.

A chill shook her. "Maybe you can turn up the heat?"

"Absolutely," he said. Without taking his eyes off her, he reached
for the dash and the car heater.

"You have to flip the ignition key first."

"Oh yeah." He was nonplussed.

"While we're on the subject of chocolate..."

"I thought we were talking about heat," he said.

Scully arched a brow and stared into his eyes. Her breath hitched.
She wondered what was going on with him tonight. The concerned
partner thing was nice and comfortable. Tonight felt different
somehow. Edgy and dangerous and...sexy.

"I brought cookies. Wrapped in the blanket behind your seat," she
said.

"Cookies?"

"Chocolate chip." She leaned back to reach behind the driver's seat.
He didn't move and she bumped into his shoulder with her nose. "Is
there a reason we keep drawing this car?"

"Less conspicuous?" he said.

"I still can't ...."  She arched back, rummaged around the blanket,
and groped for the brown paper bag. She could hear the paper rattle
in the seat, but couldn't grasp it with her fingers. She stretched
over further, burrowing the top of her head into his shoulder and
catching a whiff of his soap or aftershave, a musky smell. Now she
felt very warm indeed. He leaned over closer. She could almost feel
his breath on her neck and chin. She turned her face up slightly to
extend her reach. "I couldn't sleep so I made them last night."

"Ah-h," Mulder said. "I thought I detected a smudge of chocolate in
the corner of your mouth this morning." He stared at her lips and the
play vanished from his eyes. She felt the warmth glide deeper into
her middle and spread. "Scully...." Her name never sounded so soft,
seductive, and sweet. Her mouth watered, but not for chocolate. She
forgot the cookies in favor of something infinitely more delicious
and tried to sit up.

The latch gave way and the passenger seat collapsed into the rear,
throwing most of Scully into the back. She yelped in surprise. Mulder
tried to stifle a laugh, but failed.

"Not funny! I reported this seat. Twice."

Like a punch-drunk boxer, Mulder couldn't stop laughing; he heard her
snicker then start laughing with him.

He twisted around and put his arm under her shoulders to get her
upright. "Here, let me..." She grabbed his shoulder for balance and
he pulled her up, both of them still chuckling. The car windows
fogged.

Over his shoulder something red flashed across Scully's line of
vision. She stared. "There he is. Braxton. Our informant was right."
Scully nodded toward the apartment. She watched as a tall, well-
groomed man in a red jacket paused near the mouth of an alley to
light a cigarette. He stopped for a moment to inhale and straighten
the crease on his trousers.

"Get back-up," Mulder said and grabbed for the car door handle. He
heard Scully calling in their location as he closed the car door as
quietly as possible. He put his gun in his coat pocket and out of the
corner of his eye saw Scully do the same before she got out of the
car. "Take him at the front door."

"He has company on our left," Scully said as she came around to the
driver's side of the car.

It took a moment, but Mulder saw the stocky man in jeans, a blue
baseball cap and blue jacket slipping behind Braxton in the shadows.
He kept a measured distance in the shadows behind their target while
casting furtive looks up and down the street. He had his hands in the
jacket pockets, which meant he was cold or he had a gun.

Mulder put his hand in the small of Scully's back as if they were
coming into the apartment building from a date. He kept enough
distance between them so she could take out her gun in a hurry. They
both had one hand in their coat pockets. Their quarry didn't seem to
be in a big hurry, nor did the man trailing him.

"Bodyguard?" said Mulder. They were standing in the middle of the
street looking up and down an empty street.

"Could be," Scully said. "Braxton certainly needs a bodyguard."

"That's your man," Mulder said with a nod.

"Right."

It was easy, almost as though it had been rehearsed. The two agents
finished crossing the street. As soon as Braxton came into the light
of the apartment building Mulder drew his weapon, identified himself
and took hold of Braxton's arm. The man's reaction was sluggish,
stunned. At the same time Scully drew her gun, pointed it at the
bodyguard and identified herself. The two targets stopped, wide-eyed,
and raised their hands.

"Hey, agent!" said the bodyguard.

"You're making a mistake."

"Over here," Scully shouted. She motioned her prisoner forward.
Mulder took out restraints and secured his man.

"Listen quick, agent...."

"Here!" Scully said pointing to a spot by Braxton. She patted his
pockets and felt the unmistakable outline of a gun in one. When she
took it out, she noted it was standard police issue and tucked it in
the waistband of her jeans.

"You don't..."

"Quiet!" As soon as she said it, Scully felt the hair on the back of
her neck go up. It was too quiet. She drew her cuffs and hurriedly
restrained the bodyguard. Something was wrong. Her mouth dropped open
in surprise, her eyes widened and she stepped back from her prisoner.
Scully ventured a quick look at her partner and saw his question too.
The street was clean - not a broken bottle or garbage can around the
apartment building. And quiet-even for the late hour. No one else
was on the street. No lights were on in the apartment building. No
lights across the street - even the streetlight had been broken. No
cars parked in front of the building, no garbage cans
strewn around. No dogs barking, no children screaming, no one around
at all. The world seemed to be holding its breath.

The silence broke all at once. Mulder heard someone - perhaps it was
Scully - say: "Set-up!" He shouted for everyone to get down. At the
same time Mulder saw the man in the blue jacket look in the street
and yell something like "No! You..." Braxton jerked out of Mulder's
grasp. The bodyguard moved after him. Scully reached for her
prisoner, but she was a second too slow.

In the stillness, heralded only by the squeals of automobile tires
and brakes, gunfire erupted.

Later Scully recalled the impression of a dark sedan bearing down on
them from the left.  She vaguely remembered headlights in her eyes
and the sound of car engines as she turned with her weapon ready to
fire. She heard an angry wasp buzz her ear. Mulder tackled her from
her left and she skidded head first across the pavement.

The two agents lay sprawled on the sidewalk. Mulder saw the night lit
up from a thousand starbursts. He covered Scully's body with his own
just as the bodyguard collapsed on them both. He heard screams,
another man in pain. Mulder raised his arm up to return fire and
discovered there was no one to shoot at. The gunmen and their cars
vanished down opposite ends of the street as quickly as they
appeared.

Scully pulled herself from under the stack of men, weapon raised, and
scrambled over to check the two prisoners. Braxton lay sprawled
behind the feet of his bodyguard. She knew from the wounds they were
already dead. In the distance she heard sirens.

"Where did they go?"

"Where did they come from?" Mulder said. He holstered his weapon and
leaned over to rest his hands on his knees. His arms shook and the
back of his shoulder was on fire.

Flashing lights-red from ambulances, blue from police cars, white
from search lamps - blazed across the neighborhood. The lights
bounced off the streets and doubled their glow. The dark was suddenly
and sadly luminous.

"You never saw them?" AD Walter Skinner said. "Either of you?"

"No sir. One minute they were here, the next they weren't." Scully
said.

"They came from up and down the street. Black sedan, gray two-door in
bad shape, one-two shooters each," Mulder said. "It was Chicago in
the roaring twenties."

"You aren't going to tell me this is the work of Al Capone's ghost,"
Skinner said.

"No sir, it is as it appears. An ambush," Scully said. "One of them
must have been parked on the street waiting. The D.C. police had the
street blocked off coming west earlier in the evening and removed it
an hour before the shootings." She pointed off to her right.

"Plates?"

"Mudded over," Mulder said.

"There are skid marks all over the street," Skinner said. He pointed
to the bodyguard who was being taken away on a stretcher. "The D.C.
police are.... this man, Victor Thrash, was one of theirs, an
undercover cop."

"Why didn't they notify us?" Mulder said.

"They claimed Braxton wasn't his assignment," Skinner said. "This
seemed like a routine stake-out when you proposed it."

"We've been looking for Braxton as the suspect in those child
murders. We got a tip, filed the paperwork..." Scully
said. "What was Thrash doing here?"

"Are you hurt, Agent Scully?" Skinner said. He nodded at her. "You're
bleeding."

Scully touched her cheek, surprised to find wetness there. She
automatically reached for the handkerchief she knew Mulder would
offer. He already had it out of his pocket and laid it in her hand.
She pressed it to her face with a wince. "I-I guess I
scraped it when Agent Mulder knocked me to the sidewalk."

Skinner aimed a questioning look at Mulder. "You okay?"

Mulder nodded. "I heard Scully say, 'Set-up' and I..."

"I didn't say anything," Scully said. "It must have been one of the
men."

Mulder considered that, then shrugged. "I must have seen one of the
cars coming from the right. A second car came from the opposite
direction at the same time. The shooting started; I shoved Scully and
dived after her. This was a well-planned assault." The ambulance
pulled away, forcing the FBI agents out of the middle of the street.
A pair of D.C. police officials crossed the street toward the federal
agents.

"And your prisoners?" Skinner said.

"Yeah, what about your prisoners? You left them standing there to
die." The words came from middle-aged, well-dressed black detective
with a badge pinned to his coat collar. His lips pressed together as
he struggled to control himself. His expensive silk tie was askew;
his shirtfront had a few drops of blood on it. The young white
detective with him said nothing, but he too appeared angry. "You cuff
our man and let him stand there without a way to get clear or defend
himself."

"We're very sorry for your loss, Lt. Lewis," Skinner said. He had met
the lieutenant only once, but he respected Thomas Lewis' reputation.

"Thrash was a fine officer, a good friend, and he was gonna be a
daddy in two more months," Lewis said.

Skinner inserted himself between his agents and the D.C. cops. "They
had no way of knowing your man was not with Braxton."

"You said he told you-"

"He only said I was making a mistake," Scully said. "He didn't
identify himself as a police officer."

"Where's his gun," Lewis said.

Skinner held up an evidence bag with a gun in it.

"You don't recognize standard issue weapons?" Lewis said. "Thrash
died in your cuffs, didn't he?"

"Do you have any idea how many police weapons are on the street,
lieutenant?" Scully said.

"Better than you," Lewis said. He spit the words.

"Then you must know having a police weapon is not the same as having
a badge."

"Did you give him time to show you?" said the detective.

"No, but..."

"Did you even think of those men once?" Lewis said. His face, which
might have been handsome in any other circumstance, pressed as close
to hers as Skinner's intervening shoulder would allow. His eyes, once
angry, now filled with hurt and pain.

"I-I grabbed for my prisoner, but he twisted out of reach," Scully
said. She continued to meet his eyes, while her fingers worried a
button on her coat. "I'm sorry for your man, lieutenant."

"Did he say anything?" Lewis said. "When he stood there helpless in
your control, did he say anything?" He sounded near tears.

A squad car inched by, nearly brushing Scully's coat. She took a step
to the curb. "What?" For reasons she didn't understand the word, her
tone, or her momentary distraction seemed to infuriate Lewis. He drew
anger back out of his sorrow.

"Yeah, say anything! Did either of them say something to you before
they were hit? You were standing right there - what did you hear?"

"Thrash said something like, ' No! You'. ...Or maybe it was 'who',"
Mulder said.

"Did you fire at the assailants?" Lt. Lewis asked Mulder. He snorted
at Scully. "You didn't, I know. You were under him."

Skinner shifted to put more of himself between his agents and the
lieutenant.

"What were you thinking?" Lewis turned on Mulder. "Two men standing
in the line of fire and you crawl over her?"

"I won't apologize for protecting my partner," Mulder said. "She was
blind-sided." His right hand made a fist; unconsciously Scully angled
her body to block it from view.

"Protecting her?" Lewis waved his arm at the FBI car across the
street. Spittle fell off the corner of his mouth. "Is that what feds
call it? That's one I haven't heard. What were you doing in..."

"That's enough!" Skinner said.

"Check it out. The passenger seat in that unit is down flat," said
the young man with Lewis. He pointed to the FBI Taurus.

"What does that mean!"

"Mulder..." Scully was suffocating in testosterone.

"You're supposed to guard the safety of your prisoners whether
they're my man or not!" Lewis turned on Scully and Mulder. "You
supposed to pay attention on stake-outs! That's the job!"

"Lt. Lewis, I tell my agents what they're supposed to do." Skinner
was taller than Lewis, though not by much. Both bull-necked and
broad-shouldered, they stood nose-to-nose. "Mulder, you and Scully
have your reports on my desk in the morning."

It was a clear dismissal, but Mulder hesitated. Scully laid a hand on
his arm and pulled him gently toward the middle of the street.

"Come on," Scully said in a low voice. "He lost a friend tonight."

Mulder took one more look at the yellow tape marking the crime scene
and the chalk outlines of the dead, then walked off across the street
with a furious stride. Scully trailed behind him to their car.
Following Mulder gave her the first opportunity to see the small
black line burned across the shoulder of his coat.

"Is that a....." She touched his shoulder. "Are you hurt?"

"I think a bullet ruined my jacket. Drew blood. Nothing more."

"Give me the keys. I'll see to it when we get to my apartment," she
said.

"You just don't want to ride home looking at the car roof."

Scully poured Mulder a brandy while he peeled off his jacket, shirt
and tee shirt. The blood from the wound had dried through his shirts
and even though he pulled them off carefully, the wound reopened.
When she handed the liquor to him, Mulder wrapped his fingers around
hers on the brandy snifter.

"You want to ply me with alcohol and take off my shirt? Can we skip
the brandy and go right to whatever else you have in mind?" he said.

"We can," she said. "I don't advise it."

He grimaced, took two big gulps, then a third. Mulder sucked in his
breath, fire following the air down his chest." I can't believe
people pay money for that."

"Keep you warm on a cold night...."

"I can think of better ways to keep warm."

Scully smiled at him and put the back of her hand on his cheek.
Mulder wasn't much of a drinker-his cheeks flushed quickly.

"Lie on your stomach and let me see this," she ordered. "You've had a
tetanus shot recently, haven't you?"

"You ask me that every time I scrape my knee."

"I'll get my kit," she said and disappeared.

Mulder hated brandy. He hated getting shot at; he hated Scully being
shot at. He wasn't sorry he'd pushed her out of harm's way. Given the
choice he'd do it again no matter who else got hurt. She came back
with her first aid kit and knelt on the floor beside the couch.

"This will be cold...."

"...And sting...owwwh... ooh...." Mulder could feel her fingers
probing his back, cleaning the area around the line made by the
bullet. "Could you possibly be a little more gentle? Where is your
bedside manner?"

"There. I think we can skip the stitches. A few butterfly
bandages will do," Scully said.

"No trip to the hospital for stitches?"

"I could do them here next time, if you'd prefer," Scully said.

"No next time."

"There's always a next time with you," she said. The inevitable truth
of her words struck Scully dead center. Some night she wouldn't be
able to fix him up with bandages or stitches. Panic, a searing
hollowness, radiated from her heart. Better someone, anyone else but
him, including those two men tonight. Including her. She pealed back
the bandages and concentrated on applying several. When she smoothed
the last one down she said, "Mulder...."

"No, Scully. We did not let them die." He turned his head on the
couch to face her. "When you gave me the warning...."

"I didn't."

"Whoever then...I reacted as you would have, as any other agent
would."

She lowered her head and carefully rolled up the gauze in her hand.

"You didn't see anything," he said.

"Did you?"

"Just that it was too quiet, too clean, too open. By the time I
noticed anything else...."

"You didn't see the cars?" Scully shook her head. "You didn't hear
one of those two men say "Set up'?"

"I was too busy thinking it." She smiled at him.

"You probably said something and just don't realize it."

There was a heartbeat and she said, "Did you try to get them down?"

"Braxton pulled out of my grasp. I couldn't see them. My first
thought was to..."

"Protect me?"

"You're a trained officer. But you didn't see the car. You were
facing away from the one I saw." The heat coming on in the apartment
made a thunderous noise.

When she finally spoke she wasn't looking at him, she was gazing into
her vision of the hit. "I thought you fell on me because you were
hit. I heard a man scream... Braxton or his bodyguard, the undercover
man...I thought it was you. And when I found out it wasn't, I was
glad...weak, really, from relief." She got off the floor and began
rearranging items in the first aid kit. "I didn't care who it was as
long as it wasn't you."

"It's supposed to be that way."

"Is it?" She shook her head. "I-I'm not so sure. Could it be we've
reached a point where we're a danger to the public? I mean, shouldn't
our first duty have been to the men in our custody?"

"I didn't have time to think -"

"That's the point, isn't it? You instinctively reacted to save me..."
"You act like that's a bad thing."

"No, I-I..." She sat down on the coffee table. "I'm saying we may be
too ....close."

Mulder said nothing.

"Perhaps if we'd paid better attention on the stakeout..."

"-Instead of what?" Her face flushed. Mulder wondered what
embarrassed her. He couldn't recall anything going on that should
turn her face the color of her hair. The normal sexual tension
between them was one of the spices of his life. "Are you suggesting
that not only are agents supposed to work together without giving a
damn about each other, but they aren't supposed to laugh and talk
casually on the job either."

"We weren't following procedure," she said.

"Ah." Procedure was Scully's last refuge, the stronghold where she
retreated when she needed time to think. Mulder released an
exasperated groan into the couch pillow. The only good news here was
that it was a temporary condition. The real question was: what didn't
she want to face? What did she want to think about? Scully took her
kit back to the bathroom. He told himself to sit up but found he was
too exhausted from the late nights, the brandy and the shootings to
move. He replayed the stakeout once more, the heat in the car. Surely
Scully recognized too - he wasn't that far off his game. Maybe he had
pressed a little more than usual, but she hadn't objected. It had
become so natural for them to banter that way, testing each other,
jumping back, risking nothing. He didn't want that to change.

When she returned, he was asleep. Scully covered him with a blanket
and indulged herself by stroking his hair. For a moment she watched
his unguarded face. She turned off the lights and went to bed.

Skinner finished their report and tapped rhythmically with his finger
on the desk. He looked out the window for a moment into an afternoon
sun. He had known the agents in front of him a long time, felt closer
to them than most, and now he had an unsettling suspicion they were
all standing on some sort of precipice. He didn't much like the
feeling, especially since he had no idea where the danger was
coming from. That the two agents were close, he knew. They had to be
to do the job - not to mention enduring the ridicule that attended
most of their work. Skinner had never observed behavior that would
lead him to believe they had crossed the professional line drawn by
the bureau. He felt certain Scully wouldn't do it; he had no such
illusions about Mulder. The man did what pleased him - that was both
his value and his curse.

"So you know," he said finally. "Lt. Lewis is still hot. He maintains
you ignored the danger to the prisoners."

"We didn't," Mulder said.

Skinner sighed. He was uncomfortable about this. "He's claiming
personal involvement tainted your professional conduct and lead to
the circumstances surrounding Detective Thrash's death." Scully
studied her hands.

"You wouldn't have tried to protect your partner?" Mulder said.

"Agent, you're not hearing me. Lt. Lewis suggests you and Agent
Scully were negligent last night from the stakeout to the shooting.
He suggests you were too interested in...." Skinner searched for
words.

"...Each other?" Mulder said.

Both Skinner and Scully looked at him in surprise. Scully's cheeks
grew an adorable pink. Mulder felt himself respond to her coloring in
a more primitive way and crossed his legs.

Skinner took his time replying. "He claims you weren't attentive to
what was going on in the street or in front of the building prior to
and after the shooting."

"Lt. Lewis' accusations are not justified as you must know," Scully
said. "He has nothing to substantiate wrong-doing on my part or Agent
Mulder's. Could I see his complaint?"

Skinner pushed his glasses back on his nose and shoved the brown
folder across his desk. "Take a copy. His captain is asking the FBI
to launch a professional conduct investigation."

Mulder made a rude noise and started to say something.

"Save it." Skinner held up his hand. "I don't have to tell you how
unpleasant this is for me. They've requested your personnel jackets,
disciplinary actions, records..."

"Those are confidential," Mulder said.

"Yes, they are." Skinner leaned forward on his desk. "May I remind
you Lt. Lewis is a D.C. officer of 25 years with an excellent
conviction record? He's one of those charismatic squad leaders you
hear about once in a lifetime. He didn't get all that by taking no
for an answer. He knows how to get what he wants."

"Which is?" Scully said.

"Someone to blame for his dead officer," Skinner said.

"Sounds like a man with a guilty conscience," Mulder said.

"Maybe he and Thrash had an argument that day or maybe he just feels
responsible for all his men. In any case, I wanted to give you a
head's up. I could be wrong," Skinner said. "This could blow over
without further incident."

"And if he pursues it?"

"There will be a formal hearing," Skinner said. Scully sank into her
chair. Skinner was too uneasy to notice her discomfort.

"That went well," Mulder said.

That earned him a snort of disbelief.

"So, the wedding's Saturday." He waited in the hallway for Scully to
take a drink from the water fountain. She'd been unusually quiet and
that boded ill. Out in the hall there was a busy murmur of people,
shoes scraping on tile, papers dropping, elevator doors ringing.

She looked up and down the hall to see who might overhear. "He didn't
believe us," she said.

"He doesn't think we did anything wrong."

"He's afraid we did," Scully said.

"What's he afraid of?" They weren't talking about Skinner anymore.

"I'm going to get some things from the office before I go home,"
Scully said.

She left him standing in the hall alone, feeling like something
terrible was going to happen, like there was something important he
had missed. He got into the first elevator going
down. He decided to find out if his feeling was right.

Traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, had wrecked havoc with any
evidence left at the scene of last night's shootings. Mulder had to
go on faith that the D.C. cops or the FBI crime scene experts had
done their work. He pulled up just short of the yellow tape strung
around the area. Much of the yellow chalk marking the bodies had
vanished; it never stayed in place long exposed to the
weather. And since the photographs had all been taken there was no
real need for them to.  A young, bored D.C. uniformed cop approached
and Mulder flipped out his identification.

"Were you here last night," the cop asked.

Mulder nodded.

"Heard two of your guys stood by and let Thrash take a couple in the
chest - thought he was the bodyguard or something," the cop said.

"I heard they reached and didn't get a piece of him," Mulder said.

"You and I heard something different. How could anybody think Thrash
was ..." The cop had lost his audience. Mulder was studying the
position of the bodies, the pattern of the blood. He stepped into the
street and walked around, thinking about last night, what he heard,
what he saw, and the yellow and red evidence on the cement.

He went back to the drawings on the sidewalk and squatted down.
Embedded in the cement near an orange marker were tiny dark specks -
blood, he thought-about where Scully scraped her cheek. Scully's
blood. His heart wrenched. He'd seen too much of it, caused
too much of it.

"You may have solved a mystery here," he said to the policeman. "You
said bodyguard - maybe that's what he was."

Mulder was certain the trajectory of the bullets and the
wounds on the bodies would prove him right. He called Scully.

"You need to do an autopsy on Thrash and Braxton."

"Assuming I'll be allowed anywhere near those bodies, what am I
looking for?" she asked.

"The direction and angle of the bullets," he said. "I want to know
where that puts the victims when the shooting started. I'd also be
curious to know if Braxton was drugged or drunk."

"That's standard. We should have it in two or three days anyway," she
said.

"We need it now."

"Okay."

When he snapped his cell phone closed, Mulder turned to the puzzled
cop. "Did you know Thrash?"

The young man shrugged. "Just his rep. Straight up, ya know. A real
cop's cop. Like all the men in his squad. Shame what happened. All
the guys in Thrash's squad - they're tight. They're tore up."

Mulder wanted to find out a lot more about the straight up Officer
Thrash and what he was doing on the street with Braxton in the first
place.
 

Where the hell was Mulder?

How often in the last few years had she asked herself that
question? How many times had she laid on this bed or one like it,
tossing, turning, and wondering what he was doing or where the hell
he was?

Scully thought about pounding her pillow as a substitute for what
she'd really like to do. The only bright spot in her day was the
autopsy--that was a sad commentary. As she anticipated, she hadn't
been allowed to cut. However, the coroner had been gracious to a
colleague he knew well and allowed her to observe and contribute her
thoughts to the preliminary reports. Tox screens were pending - that
took more time. From the autopsy she was able to get a bullet
trajectory. She had a good guess what Mulder wanted to prove, but
she needed his pieces of the puzzle to complete the story. He was
nowhere to be found.

Scully had something else for him. She had always thought the old
adage "Know Your Enemy" was good advice, not to mention good police
work, so she'd made some inquiries into Lt. Lewis. Her discoveries
put her senses on alert. She was not the profiler Mulder was, but she
knew he would find Lewis' background interesting.

Scully stared at her bedroom ceiling, then turned on her side to
stare at the window. She flipped over to check the time: 2:33 a.m.
Never a heavy sleeper, she was too conflicted tonight to turn her
mind off. She thought about going for a run to blow it off, but she
knew running wasn't a permanent solution. Running - the Freudian slip
made her chuckle in the dark.

For some time now Scully had a vague sense of the real problem. Last
night's stakeout crystallized it for her. She had almost crossed the
line- she needed a vacation far away from Mulder. As soon as this
case ended, she would book a week on a sailing ship out of Key Largo.
She'd gotten a brochure in the mail and tucked it in the bottom of
her bedroom desk drawer. A sail with the wind in her hair, warmth all
around her, blue skies and nothing but God's ocean all around her-
that was precisely what she needed.

She always accepted her sexual attraction to her friend and partner
as part of her human condition. What she defended against was an
emotional attachment that might lead her to act on that attraction.
Along with medical procedures and diagnostic techniques, Daniel
Watterson taught her that a consuming interest in a man's mind and
work could lead to a kind of sacrificial passion for his body that
was as draining as it was disillusioning. She had so few
illusions left. She clung desperately to the ones she still had.

She was too experienced to fall victim to the pleasure of physical
release. When she felt the needs of her body rise hot in her as it
had during the stakeout, she took care of it herself. She was
realistic enough to know a person couldn't have everything in life.
Still, having everything was a nice fantasy. She wanted to continue
believing in it. That didn't seem a lot to ask.

Her work had become all-consuming, as it had for Mulder. It loomed so
large in her mind that when she bothered to review he life at all,
Scully wondered whether she was foolish to think there could ever be
anything else in her life besides blood, vampires and mindbenders. It
was that 'anything else' she craved but would not name. Given what
she knew of the isolation and duplicity in his life-not to mention
his obsession with their work-Scully doubted Mulder gave a thought
to anything else. On the strength of that belief alone she was his
champion.

Most of the time she chose to dwell on what she had, not what she
didn't have. Except on nights like this when she waited for him. The
wind blew branches against her window, the cracks in the caulking let
in a whisper sound and she waited.

On this night she sensed something different in the darkness of her
impatience. The neat borders and definite checkpoints of her world
were blurring - she never felt that more keenly than yesterday -
- and she sensed it in Mulder too. She had become aware of anomalies
in his recent behavior. From time to time she caught him studying her
intently. Or, apropos of nothing, he would remark, "You always click
ballpoint pens twice before you write" or "Why do you crook your
fingers up when you eat sandwiches? It looks like you're signaling
for service" as though he'd made her small personal habits his
doctoral research project. He had always shown up at her door,
apologetic, almost embarrassed. Now when he dropped over he walked in
as though he belonged, as though what was hers was his too. He had
even gone through her photo album and mail. Avoiding her family was
Mulder's forte; yet he pressed to go to Amanda's wedding. A sailing
trip would put things into perspective. She found it all unsettling.

Unsettling had always been Amanda's bailiwick. After the first
phone call with a request to visit her down in Norfolk, the wedding
invitation came, followed by a second call to announce she was coming
to Washington for a visit. Unfortunately Scully had to go out of
town. Another call to chat-it was more contact than they had in
years.

Now that Scully thought about it, Amanda had been the nicest thing
about the last few months. She was one of those friends who picked up
the sentence she left off a day, a month, a year earlier and
continued from the same spot. It was a habit they'd developed as the
Navy moved their two families around. Often the families were
stationed at the same base - the girls thrilled to be reunited -
- always to be parted. Now, as before, Scully fell in step with
Amanda. That, too, was habit born of trust and time. It had always
been difficult not to be swept along. She never made any secret of
her affection for Dana Scully.

"Listen, pal, I've got too much regard for you to dress you up and
parade you down the aisle. But you know how I love you - don't miss
this. Be there for me," Amanda had said during the last call.

"I will," Scully said.

"I'm counting on that. You don't sound good. Justin, hand me
that...no, that pillow. Thank you. Now, go away..." Amanda sighed and
settled in. "What is it."

"Nothing. I'm fine."

"You forgot to dot an i on your last report? You gotta stop being so
anal."

Scully almost chuckled. "I find it hard to take that seriously when I
recall your hysteria over a typo  ---"

"Oh please! It changed the entire formula! Not the same thing."

"Hm-mmm."

"And right back at you. Seriously...talk to me."

"Some murders. Bad."

"How bad?"

"Children."

A rare moment of silence from Amanda was followed by, "Almost over?"

"I don't think so."

"What about your partner?"

"Mulder is... obsessed."

"And oblivious. A dual phenomenon observed in 99 percent of the male
population over the age of three." She giggled and Scully could see
Amanda as she was the day they met in the third grade: tall even
then, frizzy black hair, all elbows and knees, huge grin, defiant
eyes, loud voice, open heart. "What else? There's more, isn't there?
With you there's always more."

"Gotta go," Scully said.

"The flee/fight response," Amanda said. Scully loved her friend's
brilliant blue eyes and could just picture them now trying to see
things Scully didn't want to show. "Can't you talk about it?"

"Nothing to say."

"Can you tell Mulder, then?"

"I can't even tell myself." Scully tried to laugh, but the truth cut
too close to the bone. As long as she never spoke it aloud, kept
everything in the back of her mind, she was safe.

Safe, from the Latin salvis, meaning healthy.

Scully heard a car door slam. She pushed the covers away, put on a
robe and went into the kitchen.

"Coffee's brewing," she said when she opened the door.

"Couldn't sleep, huh?" Mulder said.

"Oh no, I frequently drink coffee in the middle of the night."

"I've never mentioned it before, but sarcasm doesn't become you,
Scully." She gave him a drop-dead look. "You look all tousled, like a
child." He turned her head. "How's the scrape? Oo-h. It looks angry."

"I'm angry all over."

"Why?"

"Where have ...." He looked incredibly sad, beaten down and her
irritation gave way to concern. "Are you all right?"
Mulder sat down heavily on the sofa. "I spent several hours with
Detective Thrash's widow. We went through family albums. She held off
the D.C. police force - no small task. I turned off my cell phone."

"Oh." She would ask later how he talked his way inside the house.

Mulder rubbed his face. "My day went into finding out about Detective
Thrash. His record, his life, his dreams, his unborn child. He was a
Boy Scout, Scully. A 100 percent All-American idealist. A certifiable
saint."

"Do you believe this?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I do."

"Great."

"He was a fine officer. Lt. Lewis handpicked him a year ago. That's a
compliment. Every police officer in D.C. wants that squad. You get
assigned to the 33rd and you got family. They're all messed up about
this."

"At some point are you going to say something that will make me feel
better?" Scully said.

Mulder stared into space for a moment, and then he stirred. "What did
you find?"

"While you were learning about Detective Thrash, I checked on his
boss. Exemplary officer. Dedicated leader. Married 15 years to a
fellow police officer. Two daughters. Divorced - bitter break up five
years ago. She met somebody else. From what I heard, he still cared
about her. His squad pulled him through by sheer force of will."

"So his family's gone."

"Pretty much. He is devoted to the job and his squad-he always has
been. That was one of the causes of the break-up. His wife didn't
like the competition."

"I thought they worked together."

"I guess he made a better colleague than husband," Scully said.

"He's won all sorts of commendations for valor, leadership...Skinner
was right. He knows how to get what he wants."

"What about the autopsy?"

She told him. They shuffled through the files on the coffee table.
Then they went over the size of the blood droplets, the spatter
pattern, though it was pro forma. They had already come to the same
conclusion.

"He was protecting Braxton. No doubt. He stepped in front of the man
and took several bullets for him," Mulder said.

"Why? You don't think he was involved with Braxton in any way."
Mulder shook his head.

"Then he was protecting the shooter."

Mulder shrugged.

"Perhaps he was the one who shouted set-up," Scully said. "He was
trying to protect the shooters, alert them to us, or visa versa."

"Makes sense," Mulder said. "I've been thinking about last
night...what did you hear Thrash say?"

Her brow furrowed. "He said I made a mistake. Then he said - then he
said to listen quick."

"Listen quick - a warning?"

Scully nodded. "I think so now. It didn't seem like it at the time.
Then he called me agent - twice, actually-and shouted something
into the street. "No! You!""

"Or, No! Who!"

"Or...." Her mouth opened in understanding.

Mulder finished: "No! Lou."

"Lt. Lewis?"

"The hit was Braxton-and Thrash tried to stop it," Mulder said.

"I'm almost afraid to say this - that makes the shooters-"

"-Vigilante cops."

Scully expelled the breath she'd been holding. "We don't have any
proof of that. Nothing."

"Yeah, but we're right." He was excited now. This felt good. "Lewis
and his cops investigated this case. They are a good homicide unit.
They came up with this suspect, but nothing to pin on him. They were
certain they had the guy. So they ask the FBI to step in. We come up
with the same suspect, the same lack of evidence. Suddenly we get a
mysterious lead on this Braxton's whereabouts. We know from his
behavior so far that Lt. Lewis is not a patient man."

"He's a veteran police officer, a skilled interrogator, a fine
investigator. Patience is a prerequisite," Scully said.

"Yeah, but what if he lost his. This is a horrible case. Look what
it's done to both of us. These guys have lived it for months. I
sympathize with Lewis - another day and I might have joined his
hunting party."

"Who knew where Braxton was going to be tonight?" Scully said. She
was intrigued, but not convinced.

"Not many. For sure the D.C. police - that means Lt. Lewis," Mulder
said.

"I'd like to know about our informant?"

"That would be interesting. Voice prints, call tracing-maybe
Skinner could help us there. Suppose it was Thrash?"

Scully licked her lips and clashed her hands together tightly.

"Mulder, police officers who would do this to one of their own -"

"I don't think they knew he'd be there and they certainly didn't
count on his taking a bullet for Braxton. You think they deliberately
shot him?"

"That's not what I was going to say. Officers who would shoot a
suspect and kill a fellow officer - even accidentally - wouldn't
hesitate to come after us."

"I think they already have," Mulder said. He pointed to the
envelope containing Lewis' complaint. "I think this is designed to
keep us occupied. They have too much integrity to kill us - but they
wouldn't mind ruining us."

Scully wandered into the kitchen to get coffee for Mulder and tea for
herself. She came back to the sofa wearing the same thoughtful
expression.

"All the spent shells on the street come from guns commonly used by
gangs. It could be a drive-by shooting. Could have been someone else
who hated Braxton."

"How many guns like that are lying around the D.C. streets or the
police property room? Think it would be a big problem for Lewis and
his squad to come up with those kind of weapons?"

"An entire squad?"

Mulder thought a minute. "Seven men. Not his whole squad. Thrash
didn't participate."

"Have we interviewed the neighbors?"

"The district cops did."

"We still need proof. We need a witness."

"No one in the squad will talk," Mulder said.

"We get someone to talk, or we may never prove anything," Scully
said.

"Any word on the cars they used?"

"You think we're apt to find something we can use?"
"What about the street closing? How did that happen and who was there
to make certain no cars went up or down that street at the time of
the shootings?"

"Good questions. We know the answers."

"We can not prove the answers. We need someone to corroborate-"

"Yeah," he said. Both hands rubbed his cheeks.

They sat in silence for a moment, thinking.

"Where's Lt. Lewis' complaint?" Mulder said. Scully pointed to the
coffee table. She had obviously been going over it too and she'd
spread the pictures of the slain children out on her floor. She
looked as though she'd been studying them. To make certain she never
forgot them, Mulder knew. No wonder she couldn't sleep.

Mulder began to read. His shoulders hunched in concentration. Scully
could read the fatigue in his eyes in his body too. She wanted to
rub his shoulders, give him some ease. She had actually moved in his
direction when he looked up. "Lewis was there...he was watching us
that night."

Instead of outrage, she felt guilty somehow. "How do you know?"

Mulder pointed to Lt. Lewis' letter. "Here. He repeats something he
said at the scene. He charges us with inappropriate conduct during
the stakeout. Now if he wasn't there, how does he know it was
inappropriate? You can't infer unprofessional conduct from what
happened later. "

"He's trying."

"But it's very thin. Very thin, unless he was there to see
something..." Mulder searched for a word "...suggestive."

The very idea seemed to make her self-conscious. She retreated to the
corner of the sofa. She was so uncomfortable it made him smile. She
looked terribly vulnerable and girlish.

"He doesn't go into detail - only that we knew or should have been
aware.... 'Inappropriate'...." she said. "You can't conclude from
this that he personally saw anything - or knows someone that saw
something."

"The way he came after us that night...."

"Grief, Mulder."

"Guilt, Scully."

"Why do I keep saying the same thing? We don't have any proof...."
"You feel it too, don't you?"

After a long pause meant to confirm his intuition she sighed. "Big
difference between knowing and proving."

"The question is, how do we get him to dig this hole a little deeper?
'Inappropriate'. He can't be stupid enough to make that kind of
mistake..."

Scully massaged her temple. "We weren't paying attention."

"What?"

She got up and took her mug into the kitchen, leaving him
dumbfounded.  "You act as though the entire building exploded and we
didn't notice!"

She cleared her throat and came back in the room slowly. "If the
building exploded we might have picked up on that." She studied the
knot in her bathrobe. "We weren't, strictly speaking, following
bureau guidelines on surveillance."

Guidelines? First procedure and now guidelines.  She did sense
something different last night and, while she examined this
development in meticulous Scully-fashion, she beat him up for having
normal but decidedly carnal thoughts. He grew annoyed. The
role she played in his erotic fantasies was none of her business.
He'd never let his lascivious musings interfere with their job, and
he'd be damned if he'd censor not only his actions but his daydreams
too. Nothing meriting guidelines and procedures happened last night.
He refused to be harassed by the Scully Thought Police.

Unless the Thought Police weren't after him.

His exasperation became vague excitement. Maybe last night surprised
Scully herself. It never occurred to him Scully would give more than
a casual thought to him in any role other than friend or colleague.
The idea that she did - at least did last night - would certainly
explain her passion for rules all of a sudden. And if it was that
serious for her last night maybe it was more than a casual thought. A
surge of hope forced him to squirm on the sofa. This notion merited
some further - and cautious-investigation. Scully wasn't a slap and
tickle. She was serious business and Mulder knew if he got too close
to the truth about this he'd better be prepared to put up or shut up
permanently.

Effused with purpose, he wondered how to proceed. Mulder hadn't
learned much about women, but he knew this about Dana Scully: she
wouldn't be pushed and she wouldn't be pulled, but she could be lead
-- carefully. "Uh, Scully, you don't think it's possible that what
happened in the car could be a natural kindda thing?"

"We were working!"

"Still not a felony. Do you concede the possibility that a man and
woman who like and respect each other might experience some
attraction?"

"We had a job to do."

"You saw Braxton."

"We didn't see the street, the broken streetlights, the absence of
cars going up and down the street..."

"Chances are we wouldn't have noticed it. We weren't meant to,"
Mulder said. "Unless something happened I missed, all we groped for
was drinks and cookies-which I never got, by the way."

Scully tried to see if he were serious and decided he was. He had no
clue about that night - how close she'd come to blowing it. She felt
relief tingled with a strange, but profound, sadness. She feared
there was something in her that she couldn't control, something that
signaled she wanted more from him-even Lt. Lewis seemed to think
so. But there couldn't be. Perhaps Mulder saw innocence in her
because he was innocent too, the idea of anything else never really
occurred to him. A man as obsessed as Mulder had no room for
something besides his work. That, of course, was their common
defense.

She cleared her throat but could not bring herself to look at him.
"We can't let the lieutenant drive this. Maybe interviewing the
neighbors...."

Deflated, Mulder said, "All we'll do is wear out our shoes."

"We could turn up something. It's the correct procedure."

"We'll miss a special edition of Thursday night football."

"The sacrifices we make." She shook her head in mock dismay. "So we
canvas. Mulder...?"

For the last minute he had been too fascinated by her body language
to think about the case. He hadn't realized he was pressing her. She
acted as though he might strike her. She curled into a tight ball to
present a small target, her knuckles became nearly white from griping
the cup, her eyes studied the floor, and she moistened her lips
often. She was asking something to do with the current case. He
thought. Or not.

"Mulder?"

He locked his hands behind his head and leaned back in what he hoped
would present a non-threatening posture. Scully ventured from the
corner onto the cushions next to him and put her hands on her knees.
His eyes closed and for a second Scully thought he'd fallen asleep on
her couch again. "Mulder, we-"

"A screen."

She waited for a moment but he didn't continue. "Perhaps we should
call it-"

"You know what a screen pass is," he said.

"The offensive team deliberately allows the opponent through the
first line of defense to enable a pass receiver to get in front of
the defense," she said.

He nodded. "Close enough. The quarterback hates screens. He pedals
backwards, sprints to the right or left  - he stands to get pounded."
"Have we strayed from the topic?"

"We might catch Lewis with a screen," Mulder said.

"Obviously, I should watch those NFL highlights more closely," she
said.

"Do you watch them at all?"

She favored him with look of disdain and took his coffee cup into the
kitchen. "Who plays quarterback in this scenario?"

"You, I think. I haven't completed a pass in years," he said.

"Perhaps you should stop playing," she said from the kitchen.
Mulder wondered whether they were still talking football. Over the
years Scully had acquired considerable skill at doublespeak. He
wasn't sure that was a plus. "You're in a better position to receive
his attack. He implied you're a fallen woman based on my tackle...."
Scully stuck her head around the corner of the kitchen into the
living room, apparently to see if he was trying to be clever. He
feinted innocence so she popped back in the kitchen to rinse out the
cups.

"We can make that work for us."

She wiped her hands on a towel, folded it across the kitchen counter.
"How difficult could it be?"

"You control the play only to a certain extent then you have to take
whatever comes. The interview could get -"

"Are you suggesting I shouldn't do this?"

"I'm just warning you it could get out of hand...ugly."

"It's already ugly."

"Okay then. We have to have witnesses to this without scaring him or
violating his Constitutional rights." Mulder pulled on his lips. "Do
you know you never let me finish my coffee before you take it away or
get up from the table? At a restaurant, in the car, in the office-"
She stared at him which, Mulder thought it best not to mention, she
seemed to be doing more frequently.  "We can't tell Skinner much
about this. He'd never believe it."

"Why should he? We have absolutely no..."

Mulder held up a warning finger as though another word would
interrupt his train of thought. "We play scared. Make Lewis think
he's right - that we're running for our professional lives." His
breathing came a little quicker.

Scully decided football must do a lot more for Mulder than it did for
her. "So we try this and when it doesn't work...."

"This gotta work," Mulder said.

He meant more than the plan, but as usual, she didn't catch it.
*****

"No shoulder pads?" Mulder asked.

They walked down the hall toward the FBI conference room to meet
Skinner, Lt. Lewis and Lewis' captain. Scully carried a brown
envelope and a black FBI folder.She touched the top of her suit
jacket.

"Pretty flimsy," Mulder said.

"Hmm-m. Strong enough."

"I hope so," he muttered in her ear as he opened the conference room
door.

The three men in the room stopped talking and stared at their
entrance. Mulder hoped they got a good eyeful of him leaning into
Scully's neck. Judging from Lewis' smirk, he had. Skinner motioned
them to one side of the heavy cherry table opposite the D.C. police.
Hoping to make a point without making a show, Mulder pulled out one
of the upholstered chairs for Scully and scooted her up to the table
before he sat down. He pulled out the chair next to her and folded
his hands across his stomach.

The conference room was small, but formal and well appointed. As with
most of the larger meeting rooms in the Hoover Building a color
portrait of the Attorney General and the President of the United
States hung on the paneled walls. Someone turned down the harsh
overhead lights in favor of the using the wall scones around the
room; the conference room had a welcoming glow. Scully felt as though
she'd been called into the parlor to make polite conversation with
relatives she barely knew.  She had no illusions, however, that the
conversation in this room would remain polite.

Skinner introduced them to Capt. Marvin Elliott of the D.C. Police.
He was short man, graying at the temples and obviously uncomfortable.
So was Skinner. Elliott sat next to Lewis, dwarfed by the man's
height as well as his presence. In the few private exchanges Scully
witnessed, Elliott clearly deferred to his subordinate. Lewis turned
his attention to the two agents. His brown eyes sparkled. His smile
was inclusive, not too broad and not too friendly. Scully recognized
a hunter with quarry in his sights.

"Agents, you asked for this meeting," Skinner said.

Mulder looked at Scully. Ready or not...but he knew she wasn't
prepared.

"When you assigned Agent Mulder and me to this case we had no idea
the depravity involved. In all our years of service Agent Mulder and
I have never investigated a more brutal case. We've not encountered a
suspect for whom we felt so much revulsion," Scully said. She took
out a folder and displayed the photos of the little victims on the
table. Lewis studied each one carefully. "I conducted the autopsy on
the last victim..." Scully tapped the crime scene photo. "The people
who killed Braxton were public servants." She heard Lewis stir.

"I'm sure we all agree with the sentiment, Agent Scully," Skinner
said.

"Agent Mulder and I hope to resolve whatever misunderstandings
exist about our roles the night of the shootings," Scully said.

"First, I'd like to apprise Lt. Lewis and Capt. Elliott of the work
Agent Mulder and I have done over the last few years. In addition to
the commendations in our jackets, our solve rate is above agency
standards - 75 percent -"

"Your conduct in the past is not at issue," said Capt. Elliott.

"Past conduct is often used as a barometer for judging present
actions, sir."

Scully felt a subtle shift in the air. Lewis opened a manila folder
and took out two pieces of paper. He appeared sympathetic and almost
sorry to be passing the sheets to her. "What about these past
actions?"

Scully discovered Lewis had copies of motel checkout bills from
Anine, Iowa and Nathan Junction, Nebraska where she and Mulder had to
share a room. "Yes?"

"How do you explain that!"

Scully spoke in the crisp, clear tones of one struggling to remain
rational amid idiots. "There are few motel rooms available in small
towns and on those occasions ..."

"Are there few rooms in New York?" Lewis slipped another piece of
paper out of his file and slid it over. Scully remembered well how
Mulder discovered that she was feverish with the flu. He spent the
night trying to bring down the fever." I became ill and-"

Skinner crossed his legs, the movement speaking of irritation and
impatience. "I don't see how this is germane, lieutenant." he said.

"I'm only pointing out violations of your own bureau policy, Mr.
Skinner," Lewis said.

"Agents Mulder and Scully are adults and seasoned agents. It is not
bureau policy to second guess their personal conduct on every
assignment," Skinner said.

"Unless there's a pattern," Lewis said.

Skinner acquiesced with the barest nod.

Lewis turned his eyes to Scully. He smiled. "I understand you and
Agent Mulder spend some of your free time together - Rocco's is a
favorite. The head waiter thought you were married or at least
longtime lovers."

Lewis turned to Mulder, "You spent two nights at her apartment after
the shooting, didn't you?"

To Scully's embarrassment, Mulder gave Lewis a sly smile then resumed
his careful study of the hands laced across his middle.

Skinner wondered why Mulder didn't jump in. The man reclined
comfortably in a chair pushed back from the table. He played with a
paper clip in his hand as though they were discussing dental benefits
or tax forms.

"You're very good," Scully told Lewis. "If you'd been as thorough in
your investigation of the case perhaps one of those little girls
would still be alive." The fire in her face was in her tone.

Lewis' eyes narrowed to slits. "Look, I don't care if you screw like
rabbits--."

"That's enough!" Skinner said. "Captain?"

"Let's move on to the night in question," Capt. Elliott said.

She scored first blood; Lewis was angry. Scully pressed her
advantage. "Where were you, Lt. Lewis, when your officer went down?
Why wasn't Detective Thrash at his assignment?"

"I have no idea why Thrash was on that street. I'm still trying to
figure that out," he said. "I feel responsible for my people, but I
can't monitor them 24/7."

"Nor can I," said Skinner. "Nor do I wish to." He promised Scully
latitude in this meeting, but he wondered how far he should extend
the privilege.

"On the night of the shootings, Agent Mulder and I drove to the
suspect's address. We were acting on a tip from an unknown informant.
We plan to stake-out the apartment building and bring the suspect in
for questioning should he appear."

"Questioning?" Skinner said.

Mulder roused himself. "We did not have enough evidence for an
arrest. As we shared with the district police, Agent Scully and I
felt questioning him about the murders was all we could do at that
time."

"You had no evidence?" said the captain.

Mulder retreated to his reclining position and studied his
fingernails. He had a hangnail, which he proceeded to chew on.

"Yes sir, we had something - do you want to go into the merits of the
case?" said Scully. "Based on Agent Mulder's profile and certain
other evidence, we felt confident Braxton was our man. Frustrating as
it was, we couldn't prove it-yet."

The captain sat back in his chair. Scully consulted some notes before
continuing. "At 10:54 p.m. the suspect appeared across the street
from where Agent Mulder and I parked.  I called for back-up and we
initiated-"

"Whoa, whoa!" said Lewis. "You skipped something."

Scully's expression, while still professional, bordered on mocking.
"I don't believe I omitted anything that bears on the shootings."

"That's what we're trying to ascertain in this unofficial meeting,"
Skinner said.

"If you had been watching you would have seen the street was
deserted, might have noticed a strange car parked nearby, could have
seen Thrash coming up the street...." Lewis said. "You could have
saved his life."

"Speculation. The unfortunate fact is, we were alert and we saw
nothing unusual until the suspects were in custody." Scully said. She
was firm. Her pulse raced.

"This isn't getting us anywhere," said the captain. "Agent Scully,
what did you and Agent Mulder do in the car while you were observing
the premises?"

Scully re-arranged the papers in front of her with a small show of
exasperation. She took some comfort in knowing she had almost
completed her part and she could pass off to Mulder.

"What happened from the time you arrived until you called for back-
up?" Skinner said.

"We sat in the car and, according to bureau policies, took turns
watching the front of the apartment building where we were informed
the suspect lived," Scully said.

Lewis leaned forward. "You sat there according to bureau policies for
two hours."

"Did I say two hours?"

"You said since you arrived. Was that two hours, three?"

Scully thought a moment. "Perhaps it was closer to three hours."

"You didn't see anything or anyone on the street for three hours-
and you didn't think it was unusual?"

"It was late. It didn't seem unusual at the time."

"Why?"

She blinked. "Why didn't it seem unusual?"

"Why didn't you notice it all those hours on surveillance? It seemed
to cause you some surprise later."

How could Lewis know that unless he was there? Scully glanced at
Mulder. His expression was unreadable. "Did it?"

"Three hours in a dark sedan on an empty street with a man you admire
and respect - you do admire and respect him," Lewis said.

"Of course."

"He's good-looking, right?"

Her throat began to close. A tight smile served as her answer.

"Three hours in the dark with a good-looking man you admire and
respect, a man you've worked with for what-five or six years?" Lewis
said.

"That's correct."

"Seeing anyone, Agent Scully?"

"You are out of line!"

"Agent Mulder is never seen with anyone but you," Lewis said.

"My personal life has no relevance to what happened that night-"
Scully said.

"You don't have a personal life. Not today," Lewis said. His tone
resonated with regret.

"It's likely you are projecting your behavior with your wife onto
Agent Mulder and me!"

He pursed his lips and nodded. "Possible. I worked a lot of cases
with the woman I loved," Lewis drew the words out. "I was on lots of
stake-outs with her too."

Scully's heart jumped into her throat. She'd made a mistake. She
helped him cast her partnership with Mulder in a soft romantic light.
Somehow this interrogation got away from Scully. That she recognized
good interrogation techniques when she heard them didn't give her
solace. Until now she controlled the tempo, the style of the
interview. She began to sense her feet slipping out from under her.
She fought her natural inclination to lash out and run. "We have
adopted -"

"We - you say that a lot. You're a great team, aren't you? You and
Mulder."

"Yes."

"Depend on each other?"

She nodded. All these innocent questions and answers added up to -
what? She turned to Mulder and received a penetrating look in return.

"Agent Scully?"

"Sorry..."

"Do you trust Agent Mulder?" Lewis said.

"Of course," Scully said.

"And he trusts you?"

"Yes."

"Like each other?"

She nodded, no longer able to trust her voice.

"Defend each other?"

"Yes."

"He saved your life once."

"More than once," Scully said.

"You shot him - and still you stay together?"

"Yes sir."

"He must really...enjoy. working with you."

Scully opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. He had been
there. He had seen. Lewis sounded so positive of what he was saying
as though he knew Mulder, knew her and was privy to her thinking. He
had sucked all the oxygen from the room.

"You care for him," Lewis said in the kindest of tones.

"We've been together a long time."

Beside her Mulder stirred. She glanced quickly and realized he was
staring at her as though he hadn't really known before today, as
though she were a stranger. A cold sweat began at her hairline and
trickled down her back. She felt alone, cut off from him for the
first time in many years.

"Ever lie for him?" said Lewis.

Scully turned to Skinner. "Shouldn't we be discussing the night
of the shooting?"

"You asked for this." Irritated with Mulder, Skinner took it out on
her.

"Have you ever lied for Agent Mulder," Lewis said.

"No."

Lewis grinned. "Are you lying now?"

"No."

"Ever fudged any paperwork, any rules for him?"

"That would be foolish and possibly criminal."

"Ever take a bullet for him?"

"No."

"But you would."

"Yes."

"You'd let anyone else take a bullet for him too."

"No sir."

"You're there for him whether he's sick, broke, sad, happy?"

"Yes."

"Is he always there for you?"

"Always." Except now.

"Would you want anything to change?"

"Not that I can think of," she said.

"Would you want to be assigned to another agent?"

"No."

Lewis chuckled. "You sound married."

"We're partners. As you are no doubt aware-"

"That's what married is, Agent Scully. Partners with spice. Spice
changes boring three hour stakeouts into.something interesting."
Lewis leaned across the table and folded his hands. "Change isn't
always bad." His large eyes sliced through her to stare into her
core. His breath escaped in a soft sound. "Three hours to think of
changes, other things you could do."

Other things.... swaying to his lead with no way to break the power
without breaking the spell, Scully opened her mouth, but no sound
came out.

"Agent Scully?" Skinner's voice came from a great distance.

"We followed procedure."

"Stakeouts invite change," Lewis' voice lulled her.

"Sometimes-"

"Bet you were tired in that car." The words suggested Lewis knew how
very tired she was; his tone said he understood what she was tired
of.

"Yes, but-"

"Hungry?"

"Yes!" Scully leapt at the truth in that one word.

"You've been on surveillance with a woman. You know what it's like."
Mulder's lazy voice in the charged atmosphere drew everyone's
attention. "Now Scully's always cold, she wants the heater turned up.
She's even carries a blanket. Half the time it's so.... hot... I feel
like stripping." He left no doubt that a degree Fahrenheit was only
part of what he was talking about. He had a rapt audience. Scully sat
motionless in her chair, trying to get her breathing back on an even
keel. "Scully made some hot chocolate that night. I reached behind
her seat to get the thermos and leaned into her shoulder." He sniffed
deeply. "She wears this perfume... I was not thinking of procedure
right then." Scully's eyebrow shot up and her lips parted slightly.
Her hands began to sweat. "She brought homemade chocolate chip
cookies. She had them in a paper sack behind my seat and when she
leaned over to get them out of the back, she bumped into my shoulder.
She turned her face up to mine just a little to extend her grasp
and..." He stopped, looked into her eyes, and said, "I don't believe
Agent Scully was thinking about our suspect right then." The room was
silent and heavy. All Mulder heard beside him was Scully's rapid,
shallow breathing; all he saw was confusion in her eyes. "Then the
back of the passenger seat collapsed." He threw up his hands. "The
rest you know."

"Like hell!" Lewis nearly leapt out of his seat.

Mulder rose slowly. All eyes followed him around the room to the
far end of the table. He moved with an elegance Scully had not
noticed before. Deliberate, sensual - she blinked twice to clear her
head. "You know, you can't be arrested for what you think," Mulder
said.

Scully's lips parted.

"Hell, man, you fogged the windows."

"It was a cold night. Breathing fogs the windows," Mulder said.

"You couldn't have seen anything on the street. You weren't on the
ball," Lewis said. His eyes narrowed. His focus was all Mulder. "Or
maybe you were. What about it? The lady let the seat down---"

"I reported that broken seat twice," Scully said.

"I bet the seat fell like and Mother Nature just took her
course. Yes sir, I have been there," Lewis said.

"Twice."

"Whatever it looked like, I didn't lay a hand on her." Mulder was
maddeningly innocent.

Lewis' fingers popped up and down on the table. "Hell, man, you were
so busy with your hands on her, you couldn't have seen anyone on the
street."

"If I ever put my hands on her, you will be absolutely correct,"
Mulder said. A streak of fire pierced Scully; she stiffened and Lewis
caught it.

He whirled on her. "You know your mind wasn't on your job."

Scully turned to Mulder in guilty horror. She set her face in a rigid
line, certain it was too late.

Mulder's eyes on her were kind, gentle. "What's on her mind or mine
is nobody's business."

Spite flew out of Lewis' mouth with every word. "My man is dead. Your
career is over. She worth that, Mulder?"

"Can't punish people for what they think," Mulder said.

"Thought, hell! You two were laughing...hands all over each
other....and-and kissing....and fogging the windows! You should have
seen Thrash in time to get him away," Lewis said. His eyes bounced
from Scully to Mulder and back.

"That's not what happened." Scully's voice was an octave higher
than usual, but firm. She felt exposed, laid bare for the men in the
room to examine and condemn.

"But that's the way it looked three cars behind us," said Mulder. He
walked behind Scully's seat now and put his hands on the back of her
chair. She could feel the heat from his fingers through her jacket.
She dropped her chin, folded her arms, crossed her legs and drew them
tight against the chair. When she sat back, her shoulders bumped into
Mulder's hands and she nearly gasped.

"Come on, Mulder, we got a pretty good idea of how it was." Lewis
opening his arms to show Mulder he was among friends. "We all
understand how things can get away from a man in a hurry."

Mulder nodded. "You must have been panicky. You finally see Thrash.
You couldn't risk radio contact. No way to call things off -
everything was timed with the men in the other car. Your only hope
was three cars away in what looked to be a compromised position."

"You were Thrash's hope and you were compromised," Lewis hissed.
There, Scully cried in silent plea to Mulder. End it!

"That's the way it looked. You were watching a dream of quick justice
turn into a nightmare." Mulder leaned his face next to Scully. She
could feel the warmth of his cheek near hers and smell the shaving
cream he used. His eyes - and hers - zeroed in on Lewis. "We
understand how things can get away from a man in a hurry."

"What crap..." Lewis scoffed.

"We all think about doing something...out of character...to get
things we really want but can't seem to have. We get tired of waiting
for the right time, the right place." Mulder put his hand on the
chair near Scully's shoulder and pointed to the pictures on the
table. "How could you not think of a hundred ways to kill the man
responsible for this? You know he's the guy but the evidence takes
time to build. Time to have another child's death on your conscious.
Your thoughts turn to plans."

Scully felt the heavy imprint of Mulder's fingers on her back. She
didn't even dare breathe or shift her eyes from Lewis. He was
following Mulder carefully.

"What you and your squad did was make a lot of serious thinking
become reality."

"It's a lie," Lewis said. It fell out of his mouth without the ring
of conviction. His shoulders sagged.

"Thrash died trying to stop you from turning your fantasy of justice
a mockery," Mulder said.

"No..." Lewis said. His hands dropped off the table into his lap.

"He wouldn't go along with the vigilantes, so you assigned him
undercover far across town. He didn't stay; he called in the FBI and
he was on the scene to warn us. Or maybe he just wanted to scare you
off, clue you in that Scully and I were around so you wouldn't fire."

"No."

"The truth is, Lewis, you were so busy worrying about Scully and me
that you didn't look into the street or you would have seen Thrash
yourself!"

"No way!"

"You failed him twice!"

"Shut up!"

"If you'd seen him sooner, you might have stopped the hit, but it was
too late when you spotted him!"

Scully managed to find words for what she hoped was a coherent
sentence. "A neighbor identified you sitting three cars behind ours
that night." It was a slight exaggeration - the woman only said there
were two men in a car on the street that night.

"There are some fantasies that you should leave in your head," Mulder
said to Lewis. "And some, maybe, you shouldn't." He glanced at
Scully; her eyes shone wet and bright.

"Not true," Lewis whispered.

"Thrash's last words were for you. They were to you," Mulder said.
"Even there he tried to protect you. Just as a cop's bullet took him
down he shouted at you in the street. He yelled, ' No, Lou!'"

The tears that fell came from Lewis. He groaned. There was a beat of
silence.

"Autopsy showed the angle of the bullets that killed Thrash and
points of impact on his body.  He took two hits: one as he moved
toward Braxton, and another as he stood in front," said Mulder.

Scully's head jerked slightly. That was supposed to be her line and
she'd been too paralyzed to speak.

"We didn't know ....he wasn't supposed to be anywhere around
there...Nobody saw him until it was too late-"

"Honor his sacrifice by making it right," Mulder said.

Lewis nodded slowly.

"Christ, Lou," Captain Elliott said.

The silence in the room was complete. Skinner finally said,
"You'll want to make a full statement."

"My men..." Lewis said.  "I'm responsible. Only me."

Capt. Elliott looked like a much older man than the one who entered
the room. He started to put a hand on Lewis' shoulder, then thought
better of it. "Okay."

"Agent Scully, would you escort Lt. Lewis and Capt. Elliott down the
hall?" said Skinner.

Scully rose, but she couldn't look at any of the men. She knew how
she looked: flushed, hot, close to tears, guilty - as guilty as
Lewis. She touched his elbow. "Sir?"

The conference room was stifling. The longer she stayed in the same
room with Skinner and Mulder the more intolerable it became. She was
stripped. Her arms and legs felt leaden. For a moment she thought
Elliott might have to help them both down the hall. Then Lewis moved,
glanced at Elliott and said, "Oh."

He came meekly. Scully and Elliott each took an arm, and they
disappeared out the door.

The heaviness in the air lingered.

Skinner turned to Mulder with his mouth open. Mulder never struck him
as a mean or stupid man. Judging from Scully's reaction, today's
display was barbaric in its psychic cruelty. Just what the hell
happened in that car? Mulder glowed with what looked to be triumph on
the battlefield; he nearly tap-danced on the conference table.

"Congratulations, Agent Mulder, that was." Skinner was at a loss.
"Congratulations."

"Scully and I knew we had to get it right the first time. There
wouldn't have been a second chance."

"You and Scully rehearsed this?"

"Not rehearsed - discussed."

Skinner tried a new tact. "Agent Mulder, is there something you want
to tell me?"

Mulder considered the question. "Not at this time."

Skinner opened his mouth again then realized there was nothing he
could say. He was in a no-win situation. Something-he groped for an
appropriate word and came up with 'delicate'-happened along with the
trap sprung on Lewis. How much of that Mulder appreciated Skinner
couldn't decide. The man was either the biggest con or the biggest
fool Skinner had ever known.

"If that's all, I need to catch up with Scully," Mulder said.

"You do that."

Skinner was fond of his two subordinates. He wanted to keep them
around and together. He had a suspicion that they'd just tumbled over
that precipice they'd been standing around. The only thing he knew
for fact was that he had an agent down and no way to rescue her.
********
 
 

From: "RF Patton" <jrfpatton@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 19:38:34 -0000
Subject: The Legend of the Perfect Union
Source: direct

********

Scully couldn't hold back forever. It pleased her, however, that she
completed through the booking procedure and signed the necessary
papers, collected her car from the bureau parking lot and drove all
the way home without incident. At points where she thought she might
break, she recalled and recited to herself scraps of poetry, verses
of songs, mathematical formulas, and chemical equations-anything
to keep her mind from straying back to the 48 minutes spent in the
conference room. Those were the most humiliating, degrading 2,880
seconds of her life, time that would be book marked forever in her
memory, a rude awakening second only to her discovery that the man
she loved and idolized was married.  She was younger, more resilient
in medical school.

Scully maintained a serene exterior until she locked the door
behind her and stood alone in her apartment. She deposited her keys
on the table and slung her briefcase on the couch in a sudden burst
of blind rage. She nearly screamed in fury; it was so powerful her
throat hurt from holding it down. Fists clenched she strode up and
down the narrow hallway from the door to her bedroom, pausing only
long enough to kick off her shoes. They made a pair of satisfactory
thuds against the closet wall.

Anger dissipating, she collapsed on sofa and buried her face in her
hands. She was such a fool, such a weakling. She had allowed this to
happen. She was no longer safe. She felt sick. She loved him. She had
admitted as much in that interrogation room. My God, how could this
have slipped up on her! When did she become so out of tune with
herself that she couldn't recognize simple signs and warnings? What
use was recognizing paranormal behavior and cosmic phenomenon if she
didn't notice what was happening in her own inner space? How could
she not realize it and take steps to protect herself? Her best
friend, her partner - how could she permit herself to fall in love
with him?

Worse, much worse, everyone knew. Mulder knew. Her mask had been
ripped away, torn from her hands. She had declared her most intimate
secrets out in the open for everyone to see, pity, ridicule. She
would never be taken seriously again. And Mulder had aided in her
demise. He robbed her of one of the few childish daydreams she
permitted herself to keep. She hated him with all her heart.

Why had he done this? Why had the Mulder who worried about whether
she was sleeping through the night or getting enough to eat done
this? Had he enjoyed that spectacle? Perhaps it was the only way he
had of guarding his own comfort zone. She had been right, then, the
night of the shooting. They were too close. She was too close and
Mulder chose this most cruel of methods to keep her at arm's length.
She stumbled into the bathroom to wash her face, wondering what she
would do, how she could live without those things she valued most:
her work, her self-respect, her last illusion-and Mulder.

The phone rang and she only stared. The caller left no message.
Scully changed her clothes, separated her laundry into three large
piles and took them to the machines downstairs. The phone rang again
and again the caller left no message. She set up the ironing board,
found a cloth and a can of furniture polish, and began dusting. No
message the third, fourth and fifth time the phone rang. The
next time, Mulder's voice came on the machine: "Pick up, Scully. I
know you're there." He sounded exuberant, excited, happy.

She obeyed out of exasperation. "I am doing laundry.
"
"You left without collecting the kudos. Skinner said to tell you
congratulations."

"Lewis wanted to confess - you knew that."

"I thought he might want to get it off his chest," Mulder said. "I
know how he fe-"

"I know you want to discuss this, but I'm busy," she said.

"I'm sorry -"

"I've got things to do before the wedding tomorrow."

"What did you think?"

"The plan worked. We did well."
"Sorry, Scully!" She hesitated a moment too long. "You and I know
there was only one thing said that wasn't true. I brought the
chocolate."

"You warned me things could get ugly."

"Was it ugly?" The bastard sounded surprised. "Were you listening?"

"I was indeed. Hanging on every word, Mulder. Nothing else for me to
do, trapped as I was in that conference room with our suspect, his
superior, and our own."

"What did you hear?"

"Goodnight." She refused to be humiliated and patronized by the same
person on the same day.

"What? I-I neve -"

"Goodnight, Mulder." She hung up.

She knew he wouldn't call back, but she half-expected him to knock on
her door.  Just in case, she put her gun in her dresser drawer so she
wouldn't shoot him.

As the piles of laundry, dust bunnies, and stacks of ironing
diminished, Scully could at last review parts of the meeting without
cringing. She might be able to salvage her career. She would behave
as though the entire thing was part of the plan. She had been shot in
the stomach; she could endure that. Skinner couldn't know what was
truth and what was scripted for the plan she sketched for him.
Everyone would fall into line with her. Perhaps she hadn't lost her
profession or her credibility. Later, when this had faded in
everyone's mind, she would leave. Back to Quantico. Maybe private
practice.  She got out a scrub brush and bucket and stripped the
kitchen floor. She remained on her knees when the phone rang again
and let the machine pick it up.

It was Amanda with a party in progress in the background. "Hi. Just
wanted to .... I guess I'll see you tomorrow. I wanted-I needed
to....well, see you soon."

Mulder's motive in the debacle, the penetrating way he looked at her
when she turned to him for help - she considered that as she brushed
her teeth with vicious strokes that punished her foolishness as well
as her gums. She gradually slowed to thoughtful brushes. Why had he
sat back like a stone, ignoring her dilemma, listening to her
confess? She wasn't much of a player at the relationship game, but
she had some experience. She wasn't wrong about Mulder's regard for
her. She put on her pajamas slowly. That begged the question: why had
he allowed the interrogation to continue in the face of Lewis'
admissions? They had enough to hang him several times over. She
pulled down the covers and eased under them. Before she dropped onto
the pillow she had inkling. "What did you hear?"  Not what he heard
or Skinner heard, but what had she heard. Today's performance might
have more to do with what she learned than what Mulder discovered.

The more she replayed the interview, the more tiny droplets of
hope filled the hole in her chest. Staring at the ceiling from her
pillow she admitted she was as afraid of leaving the comfort zone as
Mulder-perhaps he lost patience with her cautious ways and sought
some method to get things out in the open, to speed them toward the
inevitable. The inevitable. It didn't sound very romantic to put it
that way-not that romance had been the hallmark of what she shared
with Mulder to date.

She could admit she loved him without feeling like a schoolgirl, now
that it seemed to be an open secret. When had their mutual love and
respect not been an open secret, an assumption on both their parts?
It was always simmering beneath the surface; they just never talked
about it - except in the language of innuendo and doublespeak that
was the refuge of the insecure and the cowardly.

Somewhere between the 3 and 3:45 a.m. replay of the interrogation,
Scully got it. She turned over and faced the moon shining through the
windows. The devious shit, she thought. She wondered whether he'd
ever considered just sending flowers or candy. She'd ask him someday
- after she responded to his overture in kind.
*****************

Mulder lifted his hand for the third time the next morning, trying to
summon the courage to knock. He was nervous. Scully sounded hurt and
angry. He heard it over the telephone last night. Angry he was
prepared for, counted on. Hurt - that was something else. He never
meant, never intended to cause her pain. That would be unforgivable.
He stood outside Scully's door the fidgeting with his tie and
wondering for the millionth time whether he should go. Her brother
couldn't stand him, her friends didn't know him, Scully was angry,
and he'd never joined her family gatherings before. He turned away
from the door, and then sighed in resignation. He'd already shined
his shoes. He knocked on the door hoping she'd left without him.

"You're early," she said. "I'm still wrapping Amanda's present."

She looked refreshed, excited...lovely. He knew his feet carried him
into the apartment because after a few seconds he realized he was
inside and she'd shut the door. Mulder hadn't seen Scully in a dress
on many occasions. Suits with skirts, pantsuits, jeans - even her
underwear. No dresses. At least not like the light-colored one she
was wearing. Simple, flowing, fitted to her waist, secured in the
front by a row of tiny pearl buttons, and long sleeves of a gossamer
material fixed at the wrist by two more pearl buttons. The skirt
tapered from above the knee to an inch below the knee in back and
hung around the bottom in irregular shapes. Mulder wasn't much of a
fashion commentator but the overall effect was uniquely soft and
feminine.

"Isn't it a breach of etiquette to be more beautiful than the bride,"
he said.

Her eyes sparkled. "No one is supposed to wear white. This dress is
champagne. And...thank you." He looked like a whipped dog, albeit a
handsome one, she thought with some satisfaction.

Mulder tried a small smile. Too soon to tell, but it appeared things
were okay. The question was whether they were better than okay.

"We're supposed to meet my family outside the church and go in
together." She searched for a coat in the little closet off the
kitchen.

"Fine," said Mulder. He didn't sound like he meant it. Scully enjoyed
his growing discomfort immensely He stood in the apartment with
uncertainty hanging from him like crepe.

"Mulder?"

"Do you still want me to go?"

She sighed.

"I understand -" He was crestfallen.

"Only as a participant. You can't just sit in a corner and observe."

"What?"

"Participate. Meet and greet, smile, laugh, drink punch and eat
cookies. Listen to my cousin's elephant jokes, dance with my mother,
play with the children, exchange small talk with Bill. A
participant."

"Fair enough."

"More than fair."

"Scully? Don't let me screw this up."

She knew what he meant, but she couldn't extend herself anymore. She
feared if she stretched any thinner she would disappear as she nearly
had with Daniel.

"Well-work on it," she said.

She didn't hate him; she was thinking.

Work on it. That means be charming at the wedding, be entertaining,
laugh, smile, or walk home. He could do that. His heart repeated the
hope like a litany: she didn't hate him.

And she was thinking.

"We still have Braxton's organization out there," he said.

"A now headless organization." She wouldn't look at him. "Perhaps
legal can untangle some of those corporate webs Braxton wove around
it."

"Any idea how to proceed?"

She seemed to move further away from him, hugging the door. "Not
really."

"Tell me about the bride," Mulder said. "Was she in the photo album
on your couch?" He kept his eyes on the highway, but he was very
aware of Scully. The bride sounded like a nice, neutral - safe-
subject.

"Tall, long hair? She's vibrant, mischievous, smart, kind to a
fault..."

"The good ones are all gay or about to be married," Mulder said
wistfully.

"She was one of the few constants in my life from third grade until
high school."

"What happened?"

"Her father was killed in a training exercise and her mother moved.
We kept in touch. She came to see me after my father died."
Scully said. She burrowed into her coat. "I was very glad to see
her."

Scully didn't have many friends in her life - although Mulder guessed
she had more than he did and more if he weren't around. They just
weren't the type to form friendships quickly and the one friendship
that mattered to him most--he stole a glance at her. She was smiling
out the front window. "What?"

"Ever notice you want what you don't have?"

"Frequently."

"Amanda always looked so much older and worldly than she was so she
tried very hard to be - anything but." Scully put her elbow on the
window and although she looked outside, she saw nothing. "I was
short, freckles, tomboy and I tried to be...wanted to
be....Amanda." She smiled at her sad face. This wouldn't do for
Amanda's wedding day. Not for Amanda.

"You never mention her."

"Really? Are you sure you just weren't listening?"

A moment of awkward silence passed. Because it was so
uncomfortable Scully looked out the window again and said, "The day
I met we were the new girls in school. At lunchtime I sat on the
school steps watching all the other kids. Amanda walked over to the
boy's baseball game and announced she wanted to play. When they
wouldn't let her, she stole the ball." Scully grinned. "She threw it
to me, and I threw it to her, they caught up to her first-"

"...and you clobbered the ringleader with a bat."

She scowled at him. "A tuna fish sandwich. My lunch. I ground it into
his hair. That boy, Larry McCann, smelled like tuna for days! After
that Amanda and I were always together. She came up with new and
terrible things for us to do. She was the scourge of Sister Marie's
catechism class."

"Now she's a chemist?"

"An inventor for the military. Some type of liquid bomb. It's all
classified."

"Both of you scientists."

"She liked manipulating science. I enjoyed it-"

"-for the certainty it represented. The rules it obeyed."

Scully considered it for a minute. "From what she says, it sounds
like Justin is also a purist."

"Justin the groom?"

Scully regarded Mulder with skepticism. "It's not like you to be
curious about such things."

"Practice. I'm making polite conversation."

"My mother likes him. She says he's very stable," Scully said.

Because he was working on it, Mulder refrained from saying the groom
sounded like a horse. They drove on in silence, a silence made
disquieting by things not said. After a time he realized she was
asleep. He touched her arm. His hand there was warm, comfortable. She
drew her sleeping breaths shallow and quick as though she was ill or
wounded. He didn't turn on the radio. He wanted to hear her to
breathe. He wanted to hear her breathing next to him.
***

Julius McMannis, the regular organist at The Church of the Holy
Trinity and a rotund, middle-age man of classical tastes, often
commiserated with Father John Martin over the weddings at Holy
Trinity. Privately they called the historic old church The Wedding
Mill. The organist deplored the contemporary music today's couples
selected; Father Martin deplored the mates they selected. The
organist played with distaste; the priest performed the
ceremonies with disinterest. Six times on Saturdays, once a day
during the week and twice on Fridays they went through the liturgy,
pressed the organ into service and dreamed of what more they could do
if they had a normal job, a normal parish. Father Martin's greatest
joy lay in preaching and worship, yet he only proclaimed the Word
twice a week. Julius became a church musician to support his habit of
eating regularly while he composed great works that would move the
masses to tears. The priest could only celebrate his oratory and
Julius could only celebrate his creativity on Sundays. Together they
cursed the legend that brought so many couples to Holy Trinity for
weddings. The organist and the priest forged a bond of frustration
and disillusionment.

On this Saturday Father Martin took another bite of breakfast toast
and wished it were a waffle smothered in butter. The diet he put
himself on was a killer. It might loosen his pants, but his spirit
was still constricted. He looked at his schedule of weddings, trying
to picture the bride and groom involved in each one and found he
couldn't.  He sighed. In his first parish 30 years ago, Father Martin
knew every couple. It was a church of 1500 persons and he knew them
well. He baptized many of them personally, knew their families,
counseled them at Cana Retreats before the ceremony. They were his
children. He was loyal to them and their generosity supported the
parish.

Weddings kept a roof - albeit a leaky one-over Holy Trinity. The
small parish of 400 could not support the needs of the historic
church alone. Even with the wedding income the Diocese had to pay for
the recent re-wiring made necessary by various city code violations
and the repaving of the back parking lot. The bishop had already made
it clear the parish needed to do more to support itself  -- as though
Father Martin could squeeze another wedding into the schedule merely
by getting up an hour earlier on Saturday.

He had to concede more weddings meant more revenue - he'd long since
given up thinking of them as happy, festive occasions where two
people who loved each other began a life together or even as
ceremonies celebrating God's plan for the human race. And the
counseling he required was little better than one of those self-help
quizzes on the Internet. Instead, Father Martin wondered if running
the wedding mill put his soul in danger of hell - the more marriages
he celebrated the more he contributed to divorce, which was a sin.
Did that make him an accessory to the sin? He posed this to Julius
one Saturday as they prepared for another onslaught of brides and
grooms.

"You mean you hold yourself responsible for all the idiots who
marry in haste, and repent in an equal rush?" Julius said. "Doesn't
sound practical, John. People want to hurt themselves they'll do it
at Holy Trinity or somewhere else." The state of his soul wasn't the
only problem. Holy Trinity was falling around his ears and no one
seemed to care. Least of all the bishop. Father Martin sometimes
thought he could hear the plaster cracking and the wood splintering
around him. Oh, everyone from the Holy Father in Rome to the
last deacon to the tourists who drop in a dime at the door thought it
possessed a glorious history but no one wanted to shoulder the
responsibility for it. They were content to let the huge number of
marriages - ill advised or not - support the House of God. Father
Martin thought the church's one foundation should be more
substantial.

He wondered more than once whether it might be better to just to get
rid of Holy Trinity. Be done with it - legend and all. Just put a
match to it and warm himself by the glow. At least there would be
some fire from Holy Trinity in that end. His only regret there would
be losing Abigail and Aaron. Father Martin leaned back in his office
chair and stared out the window. Forecasts to the contrary, it was a
cloudy day. The bride and groom who wanted the blessing of perfect
union would be disappointed today.

The priest thought of the black silhouettes of Abigail and Aaron on
the white marble of the altar, and discovered he liked them very much
in spite of the predicament they had put him in. He was a sucker for
a real love story. He suspected that contributed to his growing
disillusionment about his job - he no longer thought of it as a
calling. From all he could glean from researching the legend,
Abigail and Aaron had been real people, ordinary people of the time,
who just turned out to be extraordinary lovers. They had tried to
behave honorably, live in accordance with God's laws and even back
then such conduct was amazing enough for the Lord to note in stone.
Today the media would probably poke and prod and tear Abigail and
Aaron to shreds. He could just visualize the tabloid headlines at the
supermarkets checkouts. He was glad they died decades ago.

A white van with a large green and yellow flower painted on it drove
through the parking lot at breakneck speed. Father Martin frowned and
got up from his chair to peer out of window. The Daisy Dozen florist
was one of his least favorite firms. He continued to watch as a tall
burly man in a jumpsuit much too small for him got out of the
driver's seat and walked to the back of the van.

The Daisy Dozen must have forgotten something for the first
wedding. Father Martin checked his watch. It was almost time for the
-- he fingered through some papers on his desk - Chase/Butler
wedding. Was Chase the bride or the groom? For a minute Father Martin
couldn't remember.

Scully had never visited Holy Trinity. Amanda described it to her
dozens of times and she'd read the brochures. Still, she wasn't
prepared for the size. It was small. Even though she knew it only
seated 300 or 350 people, counting a choir and organ loft in the back
balcony, Scully was surprised. Such a small place for such a big
story.

The original building of stone - which might have been impressive in
another setting-sat in the middle of appendages built beside and
behind it. The old gray stone of the original contrasted with the
brighter gray and even red brick of later construction. In fact, all
the additions dwarfed the original building until the total facility
was neither pretty, historic-looking, nor uplifting. The neighborhood
around it was seedy too. Parking lots, used car dealerships and,
across the street from the church, a large restaurant with a flat
roof that would serve as the reception hall for Amanda Chase's
wedding. Scully tried not to be disappointed.

Mulder parked the car across the street from the church and noted
Scully's dismay. "Graceland is a lot like this. The King bought a
farm in the country and the city of Memphis grew out to surround it.
So you've got podiatrist offices, grocery stores, appliance
warehouses right there with Graceland, Heartbreak Hotel, and The
Hunka, Hunka-Burning Love Chapel."

"The perfect wedding venue," she said.

"It looks a lot like this," he said, still working on it. He got out
of the car, consulted the sky to see if an umbrella would be needed
before they came back and went around to the passenger side to open
the door.

Scully handed him the present and as she got out of the car she
recognized an elderly woman on the sidewalk in front of her.

"Sister Marie? How wonderful to see you." She grasped the old woman's
hand in both of hers.

"Who is it!" said the old woman. Her small, narrow head, shielded and
nearly swallowed by her wimple, tried to make its way forward. Her
face, when it emerged, looked like a wrinkled pink turtle's. "Who is
it?"

"Dana Scully, sister. Amanda Chase and I were in your first catechism
class at Our Lady of Sorrows..."

The old woman leaned on the arm of the young man with her. "Dana
Scully? Oh, my! Charles - you aren't Charles. Who are you? This is
Dana Scully."

"Charles Andrews--Sister Marie is my aunt," the young man said.

When Scully introduced Mulder as her partner the nun asked, "Partner?
Are you in business?"

"FBI agents," Mulder said.

"Really?" said the nun to Scully in some confusion. "An FBI agent? Is
Amanda in trouble? I'm not surprised! I suppose Dana Scully is here
too?"

Charles looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. Mulder struggled
to suppress a grin.

"I told you Amanda was the scourge of the class," Scully said.

"Amanda wasn't alone," Sister Marie said, shaking a bony finger at
Scully. Her head seemed to shake clear for a moment. "You kept her
out of jail - until now. You know, I never believed that sheet and
holes trick was all Amanda's doing. Such quick minds. Such warm
hearts. You and Amanda-I couldn't keep up with either of you two. God
has blessed you?"

"Yes, sister."

"And you, young man, has God blessed you too?"

Without realizing he did it, Mulder moved closer to Scully. "I've
been lucky."

Sister Marie seemed confused. "I thought you said you were Dana
Scully," she said, squinting at Scully, then Mulder. "Is she your
wife?"

"Partner," Mulder said.

"How long have you been married?" said Sister Marie.

"Almost seven years," he said, succumbing to the old woman's fantasy.

"Marriage is a great blessing," she said.

"Great feeling," said Mulder, still trying to be agreeable.

"It isn't a feeling, young man. It's action."

"Cantankerous as ever," said her nephew with an apologetic smile.
"Let's go inside."

"Where are we going?" said the nun.

"Amanda Chase's wedding," said Charles patiently.

The nun scoffed. "She's too young to get married." Her nephew tucked
her hand under his arm and guided the nun across the street.

Mulder shuffled his feet and grinned. Sheets and holes trick?

"Before you ask, Mulder, the sheets and holes had to do with the
the Holy Ghost and merits no more discussion."

"I don't think Sister Marie gets out much - physically that is."

"We thought she was old when we were in catechism," Scully said.

Scully's family congregated at the bottom of the front church stairs.
Mulder felt Bill's eyes on him from the moment they crossed the
street and saw the man lean over to whisper to his wife. She made a
hasty response that displeased him.

Margaret Scully smiled at Mulder. She rather liked Fox Mulder, he had
a bit of the tortured poet in him. She kissed her daughter.

"Where have you been?" Bill said.

Scully hugged her brother. "Nice to see you too, Bill."

Bill glared at Mulder. "Are you here on a case?"

"I came with Dana," he said, trying to project an air of hail-fellow-
well-met.

"Why?"

Mulder looked to Scully for help and she regarded him with a blank
expression. "I wanted to," said Mulder, still trying to be friendly.

"You wanted to," said Bill. He did not look friendly.

"You look nice, Dana," said her mother. She felt uneasy without
knowing why. It could be because the only times she'd been around Fox
Dana was in danger or trouble.

"What happened to your face?" Bill said.

Scully's hand flew to her cheek. "A little trouble with an arrest."

"Mulder isn't hurt," said Bill.

"He pushed me out of harm's way," Scully said.

"I didn't mean to hurt her," Mulder said.

"Seems to be a recurring theme," Bill said.

Without appearing to intervene, Margaret Scully stepped between Bill
and his sister, taking Scully aside. "Elizabeth Chase is looking for
you. Amanda wants to see you right away - she doesn't seem to care
about Justin, Father Martin or anyone else, just you."

"What's going on now?" Bill said.

"Dana?" Her mother gave Scully a searching look.

"I'm sure it's just pre-wedding jitters," Scully said.

"This is a church, not a crime scene," Bill said, making his point to
Mulder.

Scully bit her tongue and started up the steps, followed by Mulder.
"You can't go."

"I thought it was only the groom who wasn't supposed to see the bride
before the ceremony," he said. He opened the front door for her.

Elizabeth Chase waved frantically over a crowd of people to attract
Scully's attention. She was one of those a ghastly thin woman who
always seemed to be in motion. For this occasion she wore a fitted
deep rose-colored suit that flattered her white hair. "Well, Dana,
thank goodness! Maybe Amanda will calm down now. She's a nervous
wreck."

For a moment Scully tried to reconcile the self-assured Amanda she
knew with the description "nervous wreck."

"I'm so pleased to meet you, Mr. Mulder. Your life must be very
interesting with Dana around," said Mrs. Chase.

"It certainly is," Mulder said.

"How do you keep up with her?"

Mulder laughed, "I'm not sure I do."

Mrs. Chase led them through a narrow corridor behind the wooden
staircase to the balcony. In the corridor she knocked on a door and a
edgy woman in a white dress opened it.

"Dana." Relief flooded her face and poured down her body. "Thank
God," said Amanda Chase and dropped her head in her hand.

"Amanda! You're going to muss your hair," said her mother.

"I'm glad to see you, pal."

"I'm glad to see you too, Amanda." But Scully wasn't sure she meant
it. Amanda had an air about her that did not look festive.

Amanda glanced at her mother, Mulder and a bridesmaid hovering
nearby and mustered a smile. "You look great. Is this Fox Mulder?"

She gave him a long appreciative look.

Mulder hoped his fly was closed. "Best wishes," he said.

"Where is the bride's bouquet?" said Mrs. Chase. "Honestly, that
florist..."

"I saw it over there, Mother," said Amanda.

"It's lovely," said Scully.

"I understand you are a very smart guy, Mr. Mulder. How is it you've
let my pal stay in play?" Amanda said.

For a second Mulder thought Scully would save him the need for a
reply. Then he realized he was on his own. "Maybe I'm not as smart as
I look," said Mulder.

Amanda approved. "More on that later, I'm sure," she said. "Right now
I need Dana..."

"The ceremony starts in 10 minutes," her mother said. Her voice was
an octave higher than usual.

"Mother, nothing's going to happen without me."

Mrs. Chase started to protest, then harrumphed off. Amanda backed
into a small room off the parlor, taking Scully with her.

The lemony aroma and dust in the air of the small room blended into
the musty, old smell that always seemed to permeate old buildings.
Scully had serious questions about the last time the wooden floor had
been swept. For a few moments the two women regarded each other
warmly.

"Is that your mother's dress?"

"I had to let it out about six inches," Amanda said. "Is it okay?"

"More than okay," Scully said. "What are we doing in here? Your dress
is going to get dirt ..."

"Listen, pal, I'm in a serious jam here."

"What?" Scully was afraid to ask.

"I must be insane!" Amanda drew a ragged breath. "I never believed
that blessing crap, but it would have been so amazing - poof!" Her
hands illustrated. "And what a perfect way out-"

"Way out!" Scully felt a deep, dark chasm opening at her feet.

"I'm so glad you're here! There must be a God or my pal would be a
doctor instead of an FBI agent."

"You're scaring me," Scully said. "You haven't killed