By Bonetree
bonetree@aol.com
 
 

Disclaimer in Chapter 0.  This is Part 3 and Chapter 10.
 

*******
 

TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO
MARCH 18
11:30 a.m.
 

On Ghost's gray back, Albert Hosteen rode in the relative silence of
the high desert, the sun warm and climbing high overhead and hanging
in the crags of the Chaco Mountains far off in the distance.  The
horse's hooves kicked up a slight cloud of dust that settled around
him like tan smoke, a faint wind on his face that still held some of
the cool of the early morning on its breath.

He wore a dark green shirt, the sleeves rolled up in the warm
sunlight, his jeans so faded they were almost white. He held a rope
in one hand, his other one on the worn reins.  The aging saddle
creaked with each of the horse's steps, the saddle as old as the
horse, the leather beginning to crack at the joinings.  The leather
was the deep brown of Hosteen's weathered skin.

The reins slack, the horse lowered his head and sneezed, a ruffling
sound.  Hosteen reached down and stroked the animal's soft neck, his
fingers trailing in the white mane.  He spoke softly to the creature
in Navajo, and the horse's ears cocked back, as if to listen, which
made Hosteen smile.

It was a faint smile, though.  Much was on his mind.

Agent Scully, looking pale and tired at the breakfast table that
morning, was the current focus of his thoughts.  She'd said the baby
had kept her up -- the child's movements and a touch of nausea -- and
she'd smiled wanly as she said it.

Of course, she had lied.

He'd worried over her, standing beside the window with his pipe in
the corner of his mouth. She'd picked at the breakfast Sara had made,
eggs and bacon and fry bread.  She hadn't even protested when
Whistler had put the terrible smelling tea in front of her.
Hosteen's brows had risen with that.

He found his mind drifting to Eda, his wife, dead for more than 20
years now from cancer, her body growing thin and her skin turning to
paper between the worn sheets of the hospital in Farmington, then
later, how she'd seemed to vanish in their bed at home, like watching
her turn to sand and dust.

He thought of how he'd felt after she'd gone, how he'd sat for hours
on the porch out front, his sons there, but how he'd felt alone in a
way he had not yet experienced, like an essential part of him had
gone missing along with Eda, the children almost like reminders of a
life he had once had and would never have again.

Of course, he had learned to deal with the space inside him, open as
the desert beyond the house, a barren patch in him.  He'd learned to
live a different life, filled with children and grandchildren, and
with his faith and his place in the community.

Thinking of Agent Scully, the lost look on her face, the look of
someone with something missing, he remembered all of this.  He
thought of how she was when she'd come to him with Mulder before, so
much broken between them, how she'd looked the same then, though it
had been well hidden then with shame and rage and pain.   He
remembered Mulder on the concrete porch at his brother's house, the
time he'd found him shirtless in the chilly morning, Bo creeping at
the edge of the property like a ghost, how Mulder had seemed almost
like Hosteen himself in the weeks after Eda had died, his arms
crossed over his bare chest.

Hosteen sighed, the horse angling around a small scrubby brush, the
mountains closer now, great crags of sand and stone.

Mulder and Scully had found their way back to one another in this
place, coming together as something stronger than what they'd been
before.  And Scully would find a way to be apart from him here, as
well.  She had it in her to do that now, even if on this first
morning alone she did not know it yet.

It was good, he decided, that she learn this lesson now.  When the
road between her and Mulder was clear, though filled with distance.
Better to learn this way than how he had learned it.  When there was
no way back at all.

A soft stumbling behind him, a tug on the rope in his hand, and his
mind came back to the present.  He turned slightly on the horse's
back and looked behind.

The pony was shuffling along behind him, its neck outstretched
slightly, a peeved look on its face.  On its back, the boy sat, a
baseball cap on his head, his eyes down until he saw Hosteen looking
at him.   They rose to meet his gaze, and then darted back down
again, as though afraid.  His hands were gripping not the reins but
the horn of the small western saddle, his knuckles white.

Sean's first time on a horse, his aunt had said when Hosteen had
gone to gather him at his brother's house, the boy silent in the back
room when Hosteen had entered.  Sean had been drawing on the floor,
stretched out with markers and crayons, and Hosteen had stood over
him, looking down into his thin, still frightened face.

"A good picture," he'd pronounced, looking down at the drawing, a
very close likeness of the pony -- its charcoal back, the round white
spot on its rump dotted with black.  Beneath the pony was a single
word:

Cloud.

"And a good name," Hosteen had continued, smiling kindly.  "Looks
like a storm cloud, the colors on his back."

Not surprisingly, Sean had not replied.

"Time to go out," Hosteen said, and, reaching his hand down toward
Sean, the boy had risen and followed him out of the house, past his
aunt's worried face, past the baby in her arms, whose hands had
brushed Hosteen's shirt as he'd passed.

Hosteen lifted Sean onto the pony's back once Victor had saddled it,
Ghost standing patiently beside them, and then they'd headed out into
the desert, leaving everything else behind.

Miles from the house now, the sun coming almost exactly overhead,
Hosteen turned his attention to the foot of the mountains, the land
around it, barren but beautiful in that way that desert was, things
greener than usual with the coming spring.

They reached a large clearing at the foot of the mountains hemmed in
with boulders, and Hosteen urged Ghost to halt with a touch of the
reins.  The pony likewise stopped, tossing its head against the rope
Hosteen held in his hand, still looking irritated at being led for so
long from the stable.  As he dismounted, Hosteen smiled at the pony,
and touched its small nose with his free hand.

"Are you ready to learn how to ride?" Hosteen said, standing close,
and Sean looked at him, uncertain.  He wouldn't take his hands off
the horn, the reins against the pony's mane.

"I will hold the rope while you are learning," he added, showing
Sean the rope in his hand.  "But you will do the steering and the
stopping.  You will do all the work.  Before we leave here today, you
will be able to ride him back walking beside me with him, not behind
me with me leading you along.  What do you think of that?"

Sean stared back, and then shook his head.  Hosteen merely smiled.

"You can do it.  Your pony is very tame.  The man I got him from
said he would not hurt anything, that he would mind very well."  He
paused, meeting Sean's gaze.

"Trust," he said softly.  "In me and in yourself.  You can learn and
will do very well.  I can feel it.  And I have feelings about such
things."

Sean merely looked at him, and shook his head again.

"Hm," Hosteen hummed softly, and stood back.  "Come down off of him
and we will start at the beginning.  Something easy.  All right?"

He helped Sean slide off the pony's back, holding him around the
waist.  Then he handed the rope to him, and stepped back, walking a
few paces away from Ghost, who watched him go.

"The first thing you must do is call a horse by its name," Hosteen
said.  "Let it hear you, so it can learn to mind.  Watch."

And as Sean shook his head, Hosteen reached his hand up toward Ghost
and spoke in Navajo to him.  First his name, then the word "come."
He did not move otherwise.

Ghost pricked up his ears toward him at the sound of his voice, then
obediently came forward until his nose touched Hosteen's outstretched
hand.

"Good," he said softly.  "Good."  Then he looked at Sean.  "Now you.
Go over there and say the pony's name, and the word 'come.'  See if
he will hear your voice."

But Sean was shaking his head again, looking down, and dropped the
rope.

"An easy thing to do," Hosteen said, ignoring him.  "Two words.  It
is how you start with an animal like this.  He will not mind you
unless he hears your voice."

He watched Sean look at the pony, the ground, and back again.

"You are only speaking to the pony, Sean," Hosteen said quietly.
"Not to me or to anyone else.  Only to him.  Go on.  Try."

He nearly held his breath in the waiting that followed, doing his
best to appear nonchalant, talking softly to Ghost as though he were
paying Sean no mind at all.

Then he watched, from the corner of his eye, Sean walk a few paces
away from the pony, close to a boulder on one side.  The boy raised
his hand and looked at the animal, who watched him, gnawing absently
on its bit.

Sean's mouth opened, but nothing came out, closed it again, then
opened.  Then...

"C..Cloud."  A high voice, almost as faint as a whisper.  A long
pause, the boy's eyes going down as he heard his own voice.

The pony's ears came up, but it did nothing.

"Call him louder," Hosteen said gently.  "He will mind.  Tell him to
come to you."

Sean swallowed, his hand still outstretched.  He opened his mouth
again, hesitated.

"Cloud," he said, a bit louder, though his voice was hoarse, papery.
Hosteen smiled at the clipped accent in the word.

Sean drew in a breath, swallowed again.  When he spoke, it was
almost a normal tone.

"Come."

The pony hesitated, but Hosteen knew Victor had spent the better
part of yesterday and the day before teaching the pony the word.

Then it pricked its ears forward, and, dragging the rope after it,
it went to Sean until its nose touched his palm.

And Sean did something Hosteen had yet to see him do.

He smiled.
 

******
 

THE HANGED MAN
BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND, U.K.
1:22 p.m.
 
 

TO:  RosesRedHotMama
FROM:  SpookyPapa
DATE:  18 March 2003
SUBJECT: Trying this out

S,

Well, one thing's for certain -- no one is ever going to find a way
to trace these names.  You sound like a porn site advertiser and I
sound like a truck driver's CB handle or a racehorse.  Never let the
Gunmen configure your email accounts, I guess.   And I don't think we
have to guess which one of them made the names, given yours.  The
worst part is I don't think they can be changed at this point, so
we're going to have to live with them.

I'm here -- remind me not to come the day after St. Patrick's Day
again, will you?  I don't think it brings out the best in these
people.  But that could be because of places we're staying right now
-- mostly pubs, looking for the elusive Mr. R.  He hasn't shown up
where he was supposed to be and there's been no word on him from
anyone here.  I've got a room, though, and the food is just like I
remember it -- heavy and good.  Sk's so jetlagged he can't see
straight.  I can't believe after all this time he hasn't learned to
sleep on planes.  He's been pissed off all day about R. not being
here when we showed up.  I figure he'll turn up, though.  The
bartender says he's basically been living here for several days,
belly up to the bar the whole time.  I can't wait to meet him.

Just a note about G. -- he's really not looking good lately, though
he's trying to hide it as best he can.  That gunshot wound really has
him tied up.  I wonder if there's anything you can do for him, if
he'll let you.  He's too young to be hurt that bad.  I'm wondering if
there's something else wrong that he's not letting on about.  Maybe
he'll talk to you about it.

I'm thinking about you.  Too much, probably.  Wondering how you are,
what you're doing with yourself.  Thinking about the baby, and what
you're feeling.  I didn't think it would hit me this hard, this soon,
but knowing you're so far away...it's just hard.  I'm glad we have
this, though.  We've never really written letters before, and who
knows?  It might be sort of enjoyable if we get into the habit of it.
I'd give anything to be sitting in front of you, though, reading your
eyes.  I forget sometimes how much I can tell just by watching them,
how much you give away with them, if only to me.

Hey S, should we start using emoticons?  Abbreviations?  I'd love to
have you ROTFLYAO.  ;)  :)  ;)

Write me when you get a chance.  I'll check here for you as often as
I can.

I love you.

M.
 

Mulder moved the cursor over to the "send" button on the tiny
machine, tapped it softly, and sat back in the chair at the worn desk
in his room, looking at the message that the email had been sent for
a long moment, feeling somehow hollow inside as he did it.  He could
hear someone moving down the hallway toward the common bath, the
creak of  the door.  Below him, a murmuring of the people in the pub,
the faint sound of a television playing, a sporting event from the
sound of an announcer and a crowd.

They hadn't been in Belfast long, and the place felt enormously
strange to him, despite his college years in the U.K Going from the
desert and the desolation of the reservation to this, a city teeming
with people and noise and traffic, was quite a shock to his system.

As was being away from Scully so suddenly.  He couldn't believe he'd
just left her the morning before, there beneath the covers in his
sweatshirt in Albert Hosteen's house.  Already it felt like years,
made worse by the strangeness of the place and the distance.

He sat up straighter, ran a hand through his hair, pushing it off
his forehead and scrubbing it back.

He couldn't think that way.  He had to concentrate.  There was a lot
to be done here, and he had to be ready for what was to come.  Not
distracted.  Not aching the way he was now.

More footsteps outside the door, and a knock this time.

"Come in," he called, and Skinner entered the room, glancing at the
computer, still on, on the desk.

"I'm not interrupting you, am I?" Skinner grumbled, his ill-
temperedness from the morning clearly still gripping him.  He looked
tired, pissed off.

"No," Mulder said quickly, and reached out to shut the internet
connection off, then he turned the computer off.  "I'm all done.  Any
word?"

"Yeah," Skinner said.  He wore jeans, a long-sleeved white T-shirt
with a black jacket over it to hide his gun at his hip.  "Renahan
just got back from wherever the hell he's been.  The bartender just
pointed him out to me.  He's downstairs in the pub."

Mulder stood, reached for his own leather jacket, also long enough
to hide his Sig, pulled it on over the black turtleneck he wore.

"Let's go," he said, and Skinner nodded, led the way into the hall,
Mulder closing the door behind him.

They wove their way down the narrow staircase that led from the
rooms upstairs to the pub below, a dark, cave-like place with a long
bar and some tables, a few booths lining the walls.  There were dim
lamps in the booths, and ceiling fans kept the persistent smell of
cigarette and pipe smoke milling around the room.

Skinner stopped just at the bottom of the stairs, nodded toward one
of the booths where a man sat, alone, his back to them.  Mulder could
make out a long stretch of uncombed hair, a curl of smoke.

"That's him," Skinner said, and led the way toward the table.

The man that gazed up them as they stopped beside the table seemed
more weary than Mulder had ever seen anyone look in his life.  Dark
circles beneath his eyes, set into a pasty white face.  A wild beard
and piercing eyes, which met Mulder's, then looked him up and down,
doing the same to Skinner, though he appeared to recognize Skinner at
least.

"Mr. Skinner," he said, and it was not friendly.

"Yeah, that's me," Skinner said.  "This is Agent Fox Mulder."

Renahan's lip curled.  "Not hurt as bad as you looked, eh?" he said,
staring at Mulder.  "Not hurt at all, in fact."

"No," Mulder said carefully.  "I'm fine."

Renahan nodded.  "I'd venture a guess that your wife is fine, as
well.  Am I right?"

Mulder looked at Skinner, unsure of what to say, and Skinner looked
down at Renahan.

"We can't discuss that," Skinner said, keeping his voice low.  "Not
here."

Renahan smiled a bit more.  "No need to discuss," he said.  "You've
answered my question already."  He gestured to the other side of the
booth.  "Please.  Sit.  I don't bite, you know.  Just look like I do
these days."

Mulder glanced at Skinner again, and then slid into the booth,
Skinner following him.

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Renahan," Skinner began without prelude.
"But where the hell have you been?  You were supposed to be here to
meet us this morning."

"Out," Renahan replied, unruffled.  Mulder noticed he had a
cigarette in one hand, a pint in the other.  The hand holding the
cigarette shook slightly.  "Been talking to some old acquaintances of
mine from years back, those that are still around, that is.  Finding
lots of people dead."

Mulder nodded.  "Are you finding what you need?" he asked, pitching
his voice carefully neutral.  He was trying to get a read on the man,
and it was hard.  The eyes gave nothing away at all.  Blank as slate,
though intelligent.

Renahan looked back at him, appraising him again.  "A bit of what I
need, yes," he said.  "It's not IRA doing this.  I know that for
certain now.  The IRA's up to nothing much these days, and killing
two women -- including one of their own -- isn't something they're
doing.  I've been trying to get a finger on Fagan with a few people,
but haven't found anything out I didn't already know."

Renahan took a drink from his pint in the silence that followed,
Mulder chewing his lip.  Skinner was looking around the pub as though
trying to figure out if they were being watched.

"What about a man named Eamon?"  Mulder asked.  "A custom's officer
who was arrested once a long time ago."

Renahan's eyes narrowed.  "Eamon Neill?" he replied, sounding
incredulous.

"I don't know his last name," Mulder said.  "Mae didn't know his
last name.  She just said he might be someone who could help us find
out something about Fagan."

"Well, that's the only custom's officer named Eamon I know," the
grizzled man replied, puffing on his smoke.  "The only one we
arrested.  He went to jail for a few years for conspiracy.  Couldn't
pin any actual murders on him, though I know he's as dirty as they
come.  Hiding people, stealing cars and weapons, scoping out targets.
He got a lot of people killed, that one, even if he didn't do it
himself."

"Mae said he was good friends with Owen Curran, and that he knew
John Fagan," Mulder pressed.  "Do you think we could find him?"

Renahan looked at Mulder and gave that same quirky smile, as though
he found Mulder terribly amusing.  "You just want to walk right up to
his house and knock on the door, Agent Mulder?"  He laughed.
"Doesn't work that way around here."

"Why not?"  Mulder said, leaning forward slightly.  "These people
aren't the ones under investigation.  And if this Neill has already
been arrested, he knows that we'd know he had IRA connections.  It's
not like we'd be exposing someone with no known ties.  He might be
willing to talk to us."

Renahan's eyes narrowed again on Mulder.  "What makes you so certain
of that, Agent Mulder?  Eamon Neill is about as close to Path as
you're going to find.  He might not want to risk further exposing
himself."

"We won't know unless we try," Mulder replied, looking to Skinner
for backup.  Skinner nodded.

"It might be worth our time to talk to him," Skinner said.  "IF you
know where to find him."

Renahan leaned back, stubbed out his cigarette.  "I don't know where
Neill is anymore," he said.  "But I know some people who might know."
He moved to stand, Mulder and Skinner looking up at him.

"Well, come on," Renahan said, chiding and gesturing toward the
door.  "If you're going to do this, then do it.  Time to meet a few
people.  Get your faces out there.  They'll bloody well like your
faces better than they'll like mine."

"Where are we going?"  Skinner asked, standing, and allowing Mulder
to do the same.

"Derry," Renahan said softly.  "Right into the middle of things.
That seems to be where Agent Mulder wants to be."

He looked at Mulder, who stared back.

"You're right," he said.  "I do."

Renahan smiled, and Mulder thought it was the first smile of any
real emotion he'd seen the man give him yet..

"Then let's get at it," he said, and led the way out of the pub.
 

**********
 

TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO
3:13 p.m.
 

TO:  SpookyPapa
FROM:  RosesRedHotMama
DATE:  18 March 2003
SUBJECT: Re:  Trying this out
 

M,

First, the next time I see F., pray I don't I have my gun with me.

Second, the first time you "LOL", I K-Y-A.

I miss you.  There's no other way to say that.  I remember a line of
poetry I read years ago, when I was in college, I think.  I can't
remember who wrote it, but the line has always stayed with me.  It
goes:  "Your absence has gone through me like thread through a
needle.  All that I do is stitched with its color."  I know that
sounds trite and romantic-- blame the hormones. But it already feels
like a long time since I've seen you, and things are lonely here
without you.

I took a long walk out to the trailer again today, and it was almost
as though I was looking for you, expected to find you there sitting
on the edge of the bed with Bo again.  Thinking of that helps me, in
a way.  You looked so lost when I found you there.  I hope you've
found what you're looking for where you are now, or at least are in a
place where you feel you can begin searching for what you need to
come back again.

I'm interested to hear what this man R is like.  M. told me a little
about his reputation with the IRA this morning after breakfast,
before I went walking out behind the house. The IRA were
simultaneously afraid of him and admired him greatly.  He got people
to talk without using force.  M. still doesn't know how he did it,
and there's a strange tone when she talks about him.  It's the kind
of tone she uses when she talks about what she calls "The Old Guard"
of the IRA, this group of men who seemed to run the entire IRA
underground when she was a child.  She's been talking more lately,
though it seems to make her sad to do it.  She doesn't name a lot of
names, but I think her starting to open up a little bit is a good
sign.  It's all so entrenched with who she is, even after everything
she's been through with O.  It's like a limb she has.  She can't just
cut it off without losing something essential about herself.  It's
going to take some time.

Mr. H. is out with Sean.  They've been gone for hours.

Bo misses you, too.  He's sulking around the house.

The baby is moving a lot again today.  Sometimes I worry that she
moves too much, that something is wrong.  I know that's not rational,
and that I'd worry more if she didn't move much at all, but it's
strange to feel this all the time, this fluttering inside me.  Did
you know she's about a pound now, about ten inches long?  Sometimes I
swear when I put my hand on my belly I can feel her there, but I
think it's just my own pulse in my palm.

I think I hear a car coming up the driveway.  It must be G. coming
back from taking his things to V.'s.  He came by when he got in,
dropped off the computer and then went out right away to get settled
in.  And yes,  I know he hasn't been doing well since the surgery --
and I know he's been trying to hide it, too.  I was against the idea
of him coming here at first, but now I think he can probably use the
time away from the office, maybe get some extra rest and heal a
little better.  I'll do what I can with him, though you know he'll
chafe if I hover too much.

I've got to go.  Write me when you can.

I love you, too.

S.
 

Scully didn't read the email over -- she just touched the "send"
button and powered down the computer, hearing the slam of a car door
out front, Bo looking up from where he sat next to her on the floor
beside the bed.  The dog's ears pricked forward, and he whined.

"It's okay," she said, out of habit.  She'd been saying it to the
dog all day, all the time he'd followed her out into the desert
behind the house to the trailer, all through the time they'd spent in
the minivan down to where Mae was staying in Hosteen's brother's
trailer. He missed Mulder almost as much as she did. Perhaps more.

Placing the computer on the bed beside her, its power cord trailing
off the side of the bed, she stood, stretched her aching back, and
went out into the hallway, Bo trailing along beside her, to the
living room.  Someone was knocking on the front door, and Scully went
to the door, opened it.

Granger stood there, a slight smile on his face.

"Hi," he said, and Scully gave a small smile to him in return and
opened the screen door to let him in.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.  "I didn't pester you before."  He
smiled wider.

"I'm okay," she replied.  She noticed the Ruger at his hip, the
holster threaded through the black belt he wore with his jeans, his
gray T-shirt tucked into the waist.

"What do you think of your quarters?" she asked.

"They're fine," Granger said, and his brow creased down.  "But I
don't like to think of you up here by yourself."

She smiled the same wan smile.  "I'm okay.  I've got Mr. Hosteen
here with me most of the time, and a woman named Sara Whistler is
here usually when he's not."

"I meant without someone with a gun," he said, shaking his head.

She edged her hand down to the waist of her maternity jeans at her
back, drew out her Sig, which was tucked in its holster there.

"There is someone with a gun," she replied, and he shook his head
and laughed.

"Come on," she said, nodding toward the door.  "Drive me down to
Mae's."

"All right," Granger said, and followed her out of the house, back
out to his rental car, one of the small SUVs that were so popular at
the moment.  It gleamed, brand new, in the sunlight.

"I got a four-wheel drive at the airport," he said..  "I didn't know
if we might need it."

She climbed into the passenger side, moving carefully.  "You never
know."

And he took the driver's seat and they made their way down the dirt
road toward the stables and Victor's place.
 

**

Scully left Granger and went toward the house a few hundred feet
behind it, Albert's brother's house where Mae was staying with
Katherine and Sean.

Every time she approached it, she remembered that night all that
time ago, coming in from days in the desert, the porchlight on, and
Mulder waiting there.  It had felt like a tomb when she'd entered it
that night, a place of grief.

But so much more had been made there, that night and the nights that
followed.  What she and Mulder were now had been forged there, the
open wound of them closed over in that quiet place.

Now, as she approached it again, it had the same feel to it.  The
same quietness.  The same grief.  Not even Katherine's laughter,
sounding out of place in the silence around the house, seemed to
alleviate it.

Scully stopped before the door, rapped gently on the screen door,
and was told by Mae's tired voice to come in.  She did.

Agent Music sat with Mae at the table off the kitchen, Katherine in
a playpen Mulder and Victor had bought in Farmington, her blonde head
and bright smile peeking over the side.

"Dana," Mae called from the table.  She was sitting stiff in her
chair, Music across from her, a legal pad in front of him scribbled
with notes.

"I'm not interrupting, am I?"  she asked, and Music smiled up at
her, though it looked a bit strained.

"No," he said.  "We're all done for today, I think."  He pushed the
chair back, looking very much like one of Victor's ranch hands-- blue
T-shirt and stiff, new-looking jeans.  Only his 9mm in a shoulder
holster gave away who and what he was.

"I can come back," Scully tried again.

"No," Music said, more firmly.  "We've gotten as far as we're going
to get.  And besides..."  He winked at Scully, not rogueish but
playful.  "Victor said he's going to teach me how to ride."

Scully chuckled softly.  "Be afraid, Frank," she said.  "Be very
afraid."

Music laughed, touched her upper arm with the pad, and turned to
Mae.

"Tomorrow?" he asked, and Mae looked up at him, pinched and deeply
sad.

"Yes," she said softly.  "Tomorrow."

And Music left the house.

Katherine made a loud cry from the playpen, and Mae rose as if given
her cue, went to the baby, lifting her up and out.

"She's hungry," Mae said, and she seemed unable to meet Scully's
eyes, which bothered Scully.  "She's been good while Agent Music and
I were talking.  I don't blame her for being a bit restless now."

Mae sat at the table again, began undoing the buttons of her blouse,
and Scully sat across from her, in the chair that Music had vacated.

Once Mae had gotten Katherine to calm, the baby nursing quietly, her
tiny hands on Mae's chest, Mae finally looked up at Scully.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.  "I'm just..." She trailed off.

"You feel guilty," Scully finished for her, and Mae's face fell as
she nodded.

"A bit like Confession," she said, and laughed nervously.  "Rattling
the family bones."

"It's going to help us," Scully offered, fingering the corner of the
ratty placemat on the cheap wood table.  "It's going to help us both
get home faster if you can talk about the things you know.  You know
that."

"'Home'?" Mae said, something bitter in her voice.  "Where the hell
is that for me then?  You've got a home.  A life to go back to.  What
have I got?  This trailer is as close to a home as I'm going to get,
before this whole bloody mess is over and they cart me and the
children off to God-only-knows where."

Scully looked down, her face falling.  "I'm sorry," she said.  "I
shouldn't have said that."

Mae blew out a frustrated breath, looking down into Katherine's
serene face, her face evening out from its angry mask.

"No, I'm sorry," she said quietly.  "I shouldn't be angry with you.
You're doing all you can to help me in this.  I don't mean to take it
out on you. I've got no one to blame for the mess I'm in but myself."

"You're doing what you can," Scully offered, though she knew it
sounded hollow.

Mae didn't seem to hear her, her eyes on Katherine.  She began to
rock slowly from side to side, stroking the baby's wispy hair.

"She looks more like Joe every day," Mae said.  "The look in her
eyes.  The set of her face."

Scully swallowed, looking at the baby.  She had not known Porter for
long, but looking at the baby, she could tell Mae was right.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I can't imagine...what that must be
like."

"You don't want to imagine," Mae replied, and looked up into
Scully's face, the women's eyes meeting.  "I know it's hard enough on
you not having Mulder here.  You don't want to think about it."

Scully looked away, down at the baby in her arms.  Her brows crooked
as she thought.

"Where would you go?"  she asked after a moment.

"What?"  Mae asked, shaking her head in confusion.

"If you could go anywhere," Scully continued.  "With the children.
Where would you go?  Where would 'home' be for you?"

Mae looked out the screen door, past Scully, onto a land Scully knew
she would never see.  The look of longing on the other woman's face
told her that.

"I'd go back to Ireland," Mae said softly.  "Take Sean and Katherine
and go back to Belfast or Ballycastle.  Start again."

Scully nodded.  "Do you think that you might do that?  After your
sentence is served, after all of it's over?"

Mae laughed bitterly.  "I think the last place I'd be welcomed would
be Northern Ireland.  By the IRA or the Brits.  And I wouldn't do
that to Sean.  I don't want the legacy of being Owen's son to follow
him there.  I don't want that life for him.  Any part of it."

"Mulder and A.D. Skinner have said that the IRA isn't after you.
That they don't want you touched.  You might be safe there."

Mae's gaze hardened.  "What they say and what they mean are
different things," she said dismissively.  "Too much history there.
Too much time spent working against the way things work.  And I don't
know what I'd do in the Peace.  I don't know any other kind of life
than the one I lived there. Than... this." She nodded toward the room
around her, a hiding place on the run.

Scully looked at her, picking at the edge of the placemat.  "You
could change, Mae," she said softly.  "You *have* changed already.
You could make a life there."

Mae stood suddenly, jostling the baby, who squealed at the movement.
"I don't want to talk about it anymore," Mae snapped.  "This is the
life I've got now and I've got to live with it.  I can't go dreaming
about things I can't have."  Her eyes welled.  "It's like dreaming
Joe will come back.  It's not going to happen.  Not ever."

And she stalked off into the living room, leaving Scully behind at
the table, Scully's eyes down, frustration piquing her.

Then, a tickling in her head.

Her hand went to her forehead as if to smooth it away...
 

(Sunlight through windows.  The bedroom, her and Mulder's house.
Bars of light on the bed, on Mulder's back where she looks over his
shoulder, her teeth on his skin...

"Yes..." he whispers into her hair.  "Scully...yes..."

More tickling, a sense of movement.

"Mulder," she says on a breath.  "She's awake.  She's coming down
the hall."

Mulder shaking in her arms, a stifled cry against her throat.  Then
he rolls off her quickly, ends up spooned behind her, his face still
buried in her hair, his breathing heavy.

The bedroom door creaks open.

"Mommy?"  Light, like a bell.

She looks at the door and sees...

Rose.  Three or four.  A nightgown to her ankles covered with
strawberries, red on white.

"What is it, Rose?"  She hears her own voice say it.

The little girl, dark hair trailing down her back, long...

"Are you hugging?" Rose asks, rubbing at her eyes. Morning. Early.

"Yes, honey," Mulder says from behind her.  "We're hugging."

The little girl touches the doorframe, a finger against her chin.
"Can I come, too?"

Scully feels her naked skin, dewed with sweat beneath the covers,
Mulder's bare body against her.

"Where's Casey?"  she hears herself ask.

"In my room," Rose answers, pointing behind her.

"Go dress Casey in her daytime clothes and come back with her and
you can get in bed with us," Mulder says softly, his voice patient.
Gentle.

"Okay."  And then Rose is gone.

Mulder's lips on her throat, her cheek.  Heavy breath.

"Five minutes," he whispers.  "Get dressed...")
 

"Dana?"

Scully snapped herself back, drawing in a sharp breath as her hands
shot out onto the table in front of her, steadying her.  She looked
up, her eyes wide, into Mae's face, who was standing just beside her,
Katherine still clutched to her chest.

"What?"  she asked.  "What is it?"

Mae looked as wide-eyed as she felt, her mouth agape.  "You were
talking just then.  Talking to Mulder.  To your baby.  You called her
by her name.  And you asked me where someone named 'Casey' was."  Mae
shifted Katherine slightly.  "Are you all right?"

Scully felt heat rising in her face, looked around the room, trying
to ground herself.

"Yes," she said, and rose a little too quickly, unsteady on her
feet.  Mae put a hand out to steady her, clutching the baby with the
other hand.

"Easy," Mae said.  "Easy now.  What's wrong?"

Scully shook her off, taking a step back.  "I'm fine," she said
quickly.  "Fine.  I just need...I need to go back to the house."

"Dana, what's happening?"  Mae called as Scully went for the door.
"This is like what happened when Katherine the other day, isn't it?
Tell me what's wrong."

"It's nothing," Scully said quickly, firmly, opening the screen
door.

Mae still calling after her, her head swimming, sweat beading her
forehead, she went out of the house and back out into the light.
 

*********
 

OUTSIDE OMAGH
NORTHERN IRELAND, U.K.
MARCH 28 (10 DAYS LATER)
11:35 p.m.
 

"Turn! Turn!"

Skinner's voice hissed into the darkness, Mulder hearing it from his
left side as Skinner gripped the dashboard, half-turned toward the
back as he watched the headlights raking the rough road behind them.
The car behind them was moving fast, and Mulder pressed down on his
own car's accelerator, taking the turnoff to his right too fast and
sending Renahan nearly tumbling sideways in the small back seat.

Not surprisingly, Renahan, stinking of Scotch, laughed.

"Mr. Mulder, you're not going to lose them," he said in his thick
cockney, slightly slurring. "They've got you now and they're not
going to let you go."

"What the hell are you laughing at?" Mulder spat, flooring it into a
straightaway, no lights anywhere but his own lights and the streaks
behind him, a quarter of a mile back and gaining. His hands gripped
the steering wheel, his eyes wide open and fixed on Renahan's ragged
face in the rear view mirror.

"Don't you think it's even a BIT amusing?" Renahan replied. "I mean,
you two poking around like the bloody F.B. fucking I. in the middle
of a pub in the heart of the IRA, and then being surprised when
someone comes after you for it?" He laughed again, and Mulder
seethed.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Renahan," Skinner bit out, turning to face
the other man. "If you could quit acting like you're enjoying this so
goddamn much it would help immensely."

But Renahan only laughed again.

Mulder bit his lip, shaking his head slowly, feeling the comfortable
weight of his Sig at his side beneath his jacket. He pushed the car
forward, as if willing it with his eyes onto the road ahead of him.
Faster. Faster.

The car behind them gained, the high-pitched whine of a small engine
pushed too hard. Around them, nothing but countryside, no houses,
nothing. He knew from the drive in that there were low mountains off
in the distance, mountains he was heading toward as he drove the car
west, further away from Omagh and into the vastness around it.

Ten days. Ten days in this car with these two, going from town to
town, sleeping in rooms over pubs or in the houses of strangers who
let rooms by the night, people who frowned at their accents, handed
them towels and sent them into dark rooms that smelled of old smoke
and dust. He was worn to the bone, his nerves frayed. Too much time
with Renahan, and too much time in the back rooms of pubs talking to
people who did not want to talk to him, and who gave up little, if
anything at all.

Whatever you say, he remembered the poet once saying, say nothing.

"Renahan, tell me what to do," he said finally, his voice just loud
enough to be heard over the engine sounds, both of their own car and
the one now almost on their tail.

Renahan was still looking at him, the older man's eyes glinting,
wide and wet, from the back seat.

The car behind them caught up, and with a lurch bumped against their
tail. Mulder swung into the right lane, but the car followed, its
highbeams flashing.

"Tell me what to do!" Mulder shouted, every muscle in his body taut.

"Pull over." The smile was gone from Renahan's face now, though his
eyes were still amused.

"Pull over??" Skinner replied, incredulous.

"You're going to bloody well end up on the side of the road one way
or the other," Renahan said, sounding almost bored. "Best to pull
over on your own."

The car behind them tapped again, a sound of metal on metal, a dull
thud, and Mulder swung the car back into the left lane, the pursuing
vehicle staying and trying to draw the drivers' windows even.

"Do it, Mr. Mulder," Renahan said. "Before we've got a right mess
here."

Mulder glanced at the car gaining beside him, at Renahan, then at
Skinner.

Finally, he nodded, and his foot stomped on the brake as he pulled
the car hard to the left and onto the side of the road, green coming
into the headlights, the long grass of early spring. A sheep darted
out of sight in the headlights.

The car that had been chasing them had likewise braked and was
backing up down the road with great speed. Mulder reached down and
took out his gun, Skinner doing the same.

"Put them away!" Renahan sputtered, leaning forward and pushing
Skinner's gun out of sight. "You're going to get us all killed that
way! We're not in bloody Tombstone! Goddamn Yanks--"

"I'm not going to just sit here and let these people--" Mulder
jumped in.

"They're here to scare you, not to kill you," Renahan interrupted.
"But they see those guns and they'll think differently. Now do as I
say!"

The car had stopped on the other side of the road, the door swinging
open, and four figures piled out into the dark, moving across the
road.

"NOW!" Renahan hissed, and Mulder, seeing the men coming toward him,
glanced at Skinner and put his gun away. Skinner, obviously
reluctant, did the same.

Hands on the window, a fist rapping on the thin glass.

"Out of the fucking car!" the man said, and when Mulder looked up,
he saw the a ski mask, only eyes, the dot of a nose and lips pushed
too big by the fabric pushing through.

There was another man behind him, a crowbar in his hand, and the
other two had gone to Skinner's side of the car. Mulder looked over
and saw the blunt end of a very old looking pistol pointed at
Skinner's side.

"Come on, OUT! OUT!" the man said to Mulder's right. "And get those
fucking hands where we can see them!"

The door was yanked open, and rough hands reached in, grabbing
Mulder around the collar and hauling him out onto the road. He
reached up and gripped the fists around his jacket, pulling hard.

"Get your goddamn hands off me--" he began as he broke away,
knocking the first man down.

Then a sharp pain against the side of this head, and he toppled down
next to the car onto his side holding his head, his breath hissing
out against the gravel, his eyes on the shoes of the man with the
crowbar.

Black boots. Military issue. Blurring in and out of vision...

"Mulder!" he heard Skinner call from the other side of the car. The
other man's voice seemed to echo slightly.

The first man -- the one who had spoken and who was clearly the
leader -- picked himself up off the ground, brushing himself off. He
stood next to Mulder, his feet, also clad in black boots, coming into
Mulder's view.

"Don't touch me again, fucker," he snarled, and kicked out, knocking
Mulder's shoulder and forcing Mulder back onto his back. Mulder
stared up at him, feeling the wetness of blood seeping into his hair
above his ear.

He blinked, his head swimming, and tried to force his eyes to focus.

"Gun!"

The alarmed call came from one of the men searching Skinner, and
Mulder stared up into the surprised faces of the two above him, their
eyes in their masked faces wide. The leader's face shot down to
Mulder.

"Search him," he ordered, and took the crowbar from the other man,
who bent and began rifling through Mulder's jacket, his shirt. It
didn't take him long to find the Sig, which he held up, and the
leader took it.

"See if that stinking fuck in the back seat has got something on
him, as well," the leader said, and Mulder could hear Renahan chuckle
mirthlessly as he was hauled out of the car with much commotion.

"Easy, boys, easy now..." Renahan was saying, and Mulder heard the
sudden sound of Renahan's body striking the trunk of the car as he
was searched.

The leader was still looking down at Mulder, Mulder's own gun
trained on him now.

"Get up," he ordered. "Now."

When Mulder didn't move immediately, the bigger man who'd held the
crowbar reached down and hauled Mulder up, setting him on his feet
and smashing his back against the car. Skinner and Renahan were
hustled around to flank him on either side, the four masked men
standing in front of them, three guns trained on their three forms.

"What do you want?" Skinner snapped, all A.D., his hand going out to
Mulder's shoulder as Mulder swayed slightly. "Just who the hell do
you think you are, trying to run us off the road and--"

"Shut the fuck up," the leader said, holding his gun up level with
Skinner's face, and Skinner did. "What I want to know is who the
bloody hell YOU are, asking questions that shouldn't be asked all
over half the fucking countryside, eh?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Mulder said, his hand on
his head, which he pulled down as he stood up straighter, though his
hand was stained with blood. "And if I did, it wouldn't be your
business anyway."

The leader's eyes pinned him, the gun staying on Skinner's face, who
he clearly saw as more of a threat than Mulder on his rubber knees.
"Anyone asking questions about Eamon Neill is my business," the man
said, a dangerous rumble in his voice.

That was when Mulder saw it -- a thin scar, thin as a knife blade,
down the man's distended lower lip.

It was the same scar the red-haired man at the bar had worn, the one
behind the table where Mulder had sat with Renahan and Skinner and a
man named Joey Flannan, who smoked a pipe and let almost nothing but
smoke come from between his chapped lips.

"No, no Eamon around here," Flannan had said, his face weathered as
though he'd spent his life on the sea. The words leaked from his
lips, his mouth barely moving, and his eyes set on Mulder's face.

"I know you knew him, Joey," Renahan had said, taking a sip from his
highball glass of Glenfiddich. "You. Seamus Hanson. A few of the
boys. Tipped off by Eamon Neill about that bloke who got tea every
morning at The Exchange in Derry."

Flannan's eyes had gone to Renahan, though the rest of his body
didn't move. Smoke gathered around his face.

Renahan smiled a smile that looked like it had been drawn on with
crayon. "Killed that little ginger-haired bastard postman by mistake,
didn't you?" he said. "Only knew 'ginger hair' and 'uniform' and
opened fire on a man with a wife and a baby just come, didn't you?"

Flannan still didn't move. "I've got nothing to say to you, Mr.
Renahan," he said softly, and then his lip did curl a bit, as though
pinched.

Mulder had leaned forward then, nearly knocking over the pint of
Guinness he hadn't touched. "Mr. Flannan, we don't care about your
involvement with anything," he said, glaring at Renahan. "And we
don't mean Eamon Neill any harm. We just want to talk to him. That's
all. Just talk."

That's when the man at the bar had caught his eye. A young man. Red
hair. Eyes like arctic ice and freckles, and a scar down his lip,
trailing down his chin. When the man had seen Mulder looking at him,
he'd turned awy, back to the bartender, who'd been watching, as well.

"Mr. Flannan, please," Mulder had said then, and he felt something
rising in him, something akin to desperation. So many days. Too much
time with Renahan and his gruffness and his taunting. Too many dead-
ends, and towns and men who would not speak. "Please. This is about
my wife. That's all. It's about my wife."

But Flannan hadn't swayed. He'd stood, pushing the chair back,
holding onto his pipe in the corner of his mouth. He nodded to
Renahan. "I've got nothing to say to any of you," he said, and,
picking up his pint, he'd wandered away.

The man at the bar had turned and looked at Mulder once again, met
Mulder's eye, then turned away.

Now, his breath puffing out in front of his face in the cool of the
night, Mulder looked at the scar on the chin, recognized the strange
blue of the eye in the dim, obtuse light of the headlights.

"Now the two of you," the man said, pointed to Renahan and Skinner,
"are going to get in that car over there." He nodded to the car he
and the others had come in. "And you..." He stared at Mulder. "You're
going to get back into this one and drive with me."

"We're federal agents with the American government," Skinner rushed
in. "You can't--"

"I don't give a fuck who you are," the man snapped, and he pressed
the gun closer to Skinner's face. "Now go. Get in the car."

"Where are we going?" Mulder said, his voice rising. "Where are you
taking us?"

Now the man's face changed, even beneath the mask. Hardened.

"Those two miserable fucks are going back to Omagh," he said,
jerking a nod toward Renahan and Skinner.

"But you," he said, and now he turned the gun to Mulder, and the
man's mouth bore a predatory smile.

"You're coming with me."
 

*********
 

TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO
MARCH 29
5:32 a.m.
 

The sun coming up over the ridge of mountains that wreathed the
desert, the whole world a burnt amber, Paul Granger walked along the
sandy road that split the wash out behind Victor Hosteen's property,
a vast expanse of sagebrush and yucca and nothingness. He wore faded
jeans dusted with sand like ash, a sweatshirt from Johns Hopkins, the
waist of which was frayed, the lettering dotted away from 10 years'
worth of washes. It was still cold from the night, the desert holding
no heat, and the sun seemed almost wan in the way it was rising
through a thin layer of cloud, the moon still a claw hooked in the
deep blue of the night sky to the west.

Granger looked up as he walked, one hand in his pocket, the other
holding a long thin branch he was using both as a walking stick and
also as a crook of sorts to tap the sheep in front of him into a
jumble of woolen bodies that bleated plaintively as he touched their
sides. Several wore bells, and the muffled sounds of their jangling
rose into the brisk air.

They were coming up over a rise, one of the few on the property, a
fairly sharp incline when compared to the flatness of the rest of the
land. The sheep moved up it, zigging and zagging as Granger moved
them back together with his stick, and he wished, as they rose, that
he'd taken Victor's advice and ridden one of the horses from the
stable to do this task of moving the sheep from the pens behind
Victor's brother Keel's house back to their home base on Victor's
ranch.

It hadn't seemed a long walk when Granger had gone the mile to get
them, but now, coming back, it felt a great distance, a heavy burden
of miles.

Robin was on his mind this morning, as she was most mornings since
he'd arrived in New Mexico, the image of her lying in their bed
beneath the heath-green sheets clear in his mind, a smile on his
face. Then he was thinking of a night from last autumn, the weekend
she'd cooked a recipe from the Gastronome Cookbook he'd given her for
her birthday. The dish had a name he couldn't pronounce and in the
end it didn't matter what it was, didn't matter a bit, because they'd
stopped in the middle of her making it to make love instead on the
broad cherry table off the kitchen.

He remembered the peals of her laughter as the room had filled with
light grey smoke, the smoke detector screaming its shrill alarm as
they kissed.

Granger was still thinking this as he reached the top of the
incline, a nice view of light bleeding over the landscape, and that
was when the pain struck him in the center of his chest, a squeezing
inside him, a rush of burning that bloomed in him like a terrible
flower, and it was only the staff that kept him from falling.
Instead, he slid down it to one knee, then the other, his breath
catching and a low moan coming up from his throat. He clenched his
eyes closed against it, his teeth bearing down, his hand on his chest
as though he meant to claw the pain out.

"Breathe..." he rasped. "Just breathe..."

His pulse roared in his ear, and his face felt full and hot, the
pain coursing through him, a lightness in his head. His stomach
roiled, bile rising in his throat, and he had to staunch the urge to
vomit. He reached up and swiped at his forehead, knocking his glasses
off in the process, and held his hand over his eyes, willing the pain
away.

His pills were a mile away, hidden in his shaving bag at Victor's
place. He kicked himself for not having them with him, at least one,
tucked in the fifth pocket of his jeans.

Breathe, he told himself again, this time silently, and he
concentrated on slowing his heart rate as best he could, as slowing
it, being calm, would help the pain. That's what the doctor had said,
at least. The doctor had said little about how to stave off his
panic, though, the terror that gripped him when he wondered if this
would be the last time he would feel this, if his world were going to
fade to the sound of his heartbeat and a warm feeling in his chest
that would spread until it blotted out the rest of his life.

The infection that had taken over his heart shortly after his
surgery had come swiftly, his chest filled with blood from a severed
artery and swelling as a fever had taken him over after the first
couple of days in the ICU. Robin would never know how close he'd come
to dying from the infection that had overrun him; he'd forbidden the
doctors from telling her or his mother, the elder woman hanging onto
the side of his bed like a tattered old bird, her dry hand on his
cheek.

He'd forbidden the doctor from telling either woman of the prognosis
afterwards, as well, the percentage of damage to the broad muscle of
his heart, the lack of integrity in the vessels surrounding it from
the tearing of the bullet through his chest. The time that he might
have, and that he might not have, left.

He'd told them nothing. None of them. His doctor, a kindly, older
man, had reluctantly cleared Granger for light duty, talked quietly
about transplant options and possibilities and time, the things he
knew and the things he didn't, and then he'd let Granger go when
Granger had said he wanted nothing more than to get back to what was
left of his life.

There on the road he thought of all this, the pain beginning to ebb
slightly, sweat cold on his forehead. He thought of Robin, thousands
of miles between them and her even further than that away in the land
of the truths he would not speak. Everyone was there in that lost
land -- his mother, his friends. Mulder and Scully. Rosen and
Skinner. He felt like a man living on a ship that never saw a harbor,
alone in a way he'd never felt before.

The guilt crept in as the pain receded, his head coming back to his
body, his breathing evening out. The guilt of being here at all, of
not telling Robin. Of hiding in the desert to keep from facing --
with her -- the truth.

The sheep mingled around him, unsure, soft sounds coming from them,
the hollow sounds of bells.

They were enough to pull him back to the present. Finally, he
dropped his hand from in front of his face and looked at the animals,
pulled in a less painful breath, leaned on the walking stick and
managed to come up onto just one knee. Shaking his head to clear the
pain away, to ground himself, he rubbed at his chest, sweat sticking
his sweatshirt to his body, and then reached down and lifted his
glasses carefully off the sand. He righted them on his face, mindful
of the pain in his shoulder, as well, and stood slowly, brushed at
his pants, and waited for the sudden fatigue to wan.

A couple of sheep were off to the right, meandering through the
brush on the way to the desert to the side of the road. Willing his
feet to move, Granger stumbled toward them, tapped them, called out,
gathered them back with the others, and then moved back down the
road, the sun full-on the sand now, bathing everything with warmth
and light.
 

**********
 

11 SAMUEL STREET, #3
BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND, U.K.
6:35 a.m.
 

Rain pattering on the windows of the tiny rented flat, Christie
Collin lay beneath the thin blankets of his bed, a woman whom he knew
only as Bridget asleep beside him facing the wall. His eyes were on
the thin line of a scar that traced down the back of her shoulder,
each side of it dotted with stitch scars, though the scar itself was
wide and fairly jagged.

A sloppy bit of work, he decided, and he inched a bit away from her,
toward his own edge of the bed.

He didn't know why he'd picked her up at the pub the night before.
There was something about her that had reminded him of someone, a
face that seemed familiar but that he couldn't quite place. She'd
been drunk when he'd met her, his friend John Finney introducing
them. A few rounds of darts with her watching, a small predatory
smile on her face as she swung back another pint, and he'd simply
waited as the pub began to close, her against the bar on the far
side. He'd gone to her and taken her by the arm and led her out and
onto the dank streets, off to his place for the night.

The sex had been quick. Empty. Just after 2:00 a.m., she'd mumbled
something about work and called him by the wrong name as she drifted
off to sleep.

Now he only remembered her eyes -- blue. And the red of her hair, a
plait of it drifting on the pillow toward him like tendrils. Looking
at them, at the angry relief of the scar, he swung his legs over the
side of the bed and rose, nude, into the light coming in from the
street.

His military boxers were at the foot of the bed. Stepping into them,
he walked into the adjoining room, a kitchen and a small den, the
television still on and talking to no one. Going for it, he turned it
off and the room fell into a silence broken only by the rain.

He stood in the midst of it, listening, still as stone.

He missed the life in Curragh Camp, his life with the Rangers, the
Cciathan Fhiannoglaigh an Airm. He and Roy Killian would have been up
hours ago, making tea on the hotplate in the barracks, waiting for
Sergeant Malley to come in beating a metal trashcan to wake the
others for the morning run. Or he'd be waking in a forest, his face
painted tan and green and the world smelling of loam and the oil on
his A196 rifle, his first sight the view of the valley from the
ridge.

There in the rain, smelling the heavy scent of sausage cooking from
the flat across the hall, he missed his life as it had been before
with an anger that sunk into him and burned.

He'd learned not be easily startled, so when the phone began to ring
he simply went for it, picking up the black handle from its cradle
and placing it against his ear.

"Aye," he said, his voice low, graveled with fatigue.

"Christie?" The papery voice. The slight wheeze. His grandmother's
voice. "Are you dressed?"

He looked down at himself, felt color rising in his face.

"Aye," he said again. "Just up and getting ready to make the tea. Is
something wrong?"

A wispy breath, and his grandmother continued. "There are two men
asking questions, I'm told. Two Americans. They've got Mr. Renahan
with them and they're trying to find out who's responsible for the
trouble."

She paused, out of breath, and he waited. He'd expected questions,
but Renahan? The name was as old as he was. He didn't think the man
could ever come back from the dead.

"What should I do?" he asked.

"I want you back in the south," came the reply. "Today. Take a car
and go across the border. There's a man you're going to stay with.
Outside Dublin. Riggs is his name. You'll meet him at the Cloniffe
Bed & Breakfast and he'll tell you where to go from there."

"You're sure?" he said, the most vociferous a protest he could
muster. He said it under his breath.

"Of course," his grandmother replied, her voice cracking, like a
crow's. "I wouldn't send you away lightly, would I?"

"Aye, I reckon you wouldn't," he said, and forced a smile onto his
face so it would touch his voice. "I'll be on my way then."

"And Christie?"

"Yes?"

A pause. "You shouldn't let strange women into your flat or into
your bed."

He froze, looked behind at Bridget from the doorway, a chill running
through him.

"Goodbye, Christie."

And then the line went dead.
 

**********
 

TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO
9:12 a.m.
 

The black dog wandered down the dirt road that connected Albert
Hosteen's house to Victor's, his head down, his long black tail
tucked tightly between his legs. He darted from one side of the road
to the other, his nose busy on any scrap of anything he encountered,
the road littered here and there with blowing bits of paper and soda
cans.

Scully watched Bo making his way down the road, her hand on the
small of her back as she walked, the tails of the plaid shirt Albert
Hosteen had purchased for her at the Target in town flapping in a
wind that whipped sand into small clouds in front of her. She wore
maternity jeans, a pair of boots, her hair pulled back into a loose
ponytail at the base of her neck.

The baby jutted out in front of her, a small, perfect mound, making
her feel a bit off balance. Rose was growing quickly, despite
Scully's lack of appetite and fatigue. As Scully walked, she felt the
baby roll over inside her, head-up to head-down, a lazy motion that
made Scully smile. The tautness in her back as she leaned slightly
stood in stark contrast to her daughter's ease inside her.

Bo made a beeline for lump of trash off to the right side,
cluttering the base of a rough patch of sagebrush. He whined softly
as he discovered nothing there of interest, looked back at her with
his oil eyes. Scully might have wondered if he was hungry had she not
just fed him. There was no consoling him the past few days. He'd been
spending more and more time outside the house, disappearing for hours
into the space around Albert Hosteen's house, coming back looking
tired and afraid. He was reminding Scully of the stories Mulder had
told about how the dog was when Mulder had first found him -- a black
ghost haunting the area around the ranch.

"Bo," she called, a bit singy, and patted her thigh. The dog stopped
at the sound of his name and, still tucked in on himself, trotted up
to her side, pressing the top of his head into the palm of her
outstretched hand.

"It's okay," she murmured, rubbing his ears. If she could have
comfortably knelt down -- the pain in her back unbearable -- she
would have, just to get her face closer to the dog's. As it was, she
simply bent and stroked his head, listening to his faint whining,
until his tail came out and waved slightly in recognition, in
something like ease.

She smiled down to him, though it made her sad to do it. The dog was
like the part of herself that felt Mulder's absence so acutely. It
was as if that part of her had crept out of her body during the night
and drifted into the dog's dark body.

Pushing the thought aside, steeling herself, she straightened and
began to walk again, Victor's house in sight now, the dingy buildings
and the rising cloud of dust coming from the corral, the smell of the
place drifting to her on the wind. She'd grown to like the heavy
smell, to associate it with the cocoon of this place.

Albert Hosteen had left early in the morning, Sara cooking Scully's
breakfast as she also did Hosteen's laundry in the battered Maytags
off the back of the house. Sara had told her about a dream she'd had
the night before, something about turning into a dove, and she'd
finished the strange, unsolicited tale by turning to Scully, a
knowing smile on her face, and saying:

"Tell me about your dreams, Agent Scully. Tell me."

Scully had looked at her, something in her rattled, that feeling one
gets when another has somehow seen too much, and she'd withdrawn,
mumbling something about a shower and a walk to Victor's place.

The walk had helped to ease her mind a bit, though her nagging worry
about Mulder stayed with her as she and Bo entered the collection of
structures that made up the ranch.

No e-mail from him in days, and the last only a brief note.
Something about him and Skinner and this man Renahan staying at a
Protestant man's house outside a town called Ballymena. He was on his
way out to a meeting with someone, an informant of Renahan's, and
couldn't write for long. She gathered he was getting little sleep,
moving a lot, sometimes all night, criss-crossing and backtracking
across the country. He'd told her he loved her, though even in the
black on white of the computer screen the words had sounded sad. He'd
promised to write as soon as he could.

But since then -- six days ago -- nothing.

She was trying to push the worry away, but it was pressing down on
her. The what-ifs were beginning to circle her head like birds.

"Dana," came a voice from her right, Mae's voice, and the fussy
sounds of Katherine in her mother's arms. Scully had been so deep in
thought she hadn't seen Mae come around Victor's house.

Scully forced another smile onto her face, and Mae did the same. It
was a common gesture they did for each other, this attempt to pretend
that everything was all right. Scully thought that Mae was better at
it than she was, and she didn't envy the woman her ability to wear
such a mask.

"Just stretching your legs, or looking for someone?" Mae asked,
bouncing Katherine slightly to try to hush her impending cries.

"Just walking," Scully replied, and Bo fell in right beside her,
sitting up against her leg. "I thought I'd come down and see how you
all were, what you were up to."

Mae nodded toward the stables. "Mr. Hosteen came early and got Sean.
They're in the small corral with that pony and Mr. Hosteen's horse. I
was watching them until Katherine needed her nappy changed."

Scully nodded, met Mae's eyes, her face growing serious. "Has he
spoken to you?"

Mae's face fell, the mask slipping as though her expression were
attached with string. "No," she replied, her voice tinged with anger
and her accent growing clipped. "And it's not right. I'm ready to put
my foot down with him. It's been over a month. Enough is enough."

Scully put a hand out, brushing Mae's arm. "Mae, you heard what
Granger said. Mr. Hosteen's methods may be unorthodox, but he's
moving Sean in the right direction."

They'd eaten at Mae's house -- she and Granger -- while Albert
Hosteen had had Sean out for the day, off somewhere in the desert.
Mae had been fretting as the sun had started to fall low on the
horizon, a simple dinner of beef stew and fry bread. Sara, who was
staying with Victor at night now, had made the bread, and Mae had
made the Irish stew. Granger, looking haggard, had tried to explain
Sean's condition to Mae -- something he called Selective Mutism.

"Why the bloody hell does he feel it's all right to talk to a
fucking pony and not to me?" Mae had burst out with after listening
for a few minutes to Granger's psychospeak.

"Mae, he has to talk to who or what he trusts right now," Granger
had soothed, Scully nearly dropping her spoon with the suddenness and
volume of Mae's words.

"Why can't he trust me? I'm the only family he's got. Katherine and
I are all he's got. Not Mr. Hosteen. And certainly not a horse."

Granger had put his spoon down then, touched the nosepiece of his
glasses to push them up and cleared his throat. "Mae, I think he
talks to the pony because he knows the pony won't talk back. I think
that's what he needs right now. To just be *heard*. And by someone or
something that isn't involved with any of the things in his life that
he's finding too painful to speak about. He's lost so much. And
everyone in his life is associated with that loss. Except Mr. Hosteen
and the pony he gave him. You need to let this take its time."

"He blames me," Mae replied. "That's why he won't speak to me."

"Mae, after what he's been through, I think he blames everything,"
Scully offered softly. "Starting with Owen, and going right through
us all."

Mae had stared at her, unconvinced and fighting back tears, and had
finally risen and gone to the sink. They hadn't spoken of it again.

Now, bouncing Katherine on her hip, Mae relented again, though her
expression was still pained. Every day that went by, Scully saw Mae's
anger growing more and more intense. Her anger at the situation and
at her own helplessness.

"How are *you*?" Mae asked, glancing down at her belly.

"I'm fine," Scully said automatically, rubbing the mound of the baby.

"You don't look like you've slept," Mae replied doubtfully.

"No, I'm fine," she said again. "She's keeping me up some. Moving a
lot. That's all."

"It's more than that," Mae said, her voice dropping. "You're having
strange dreams."

Scully went still, searching Mae's eyes, feeling exposed.

Since that day ten days ago when she'd seen Rose as a child, her
doll Casey in her arms outside she and Mulder's bedroom, she'd hadn't
seen anything else of her daughter's life.

But there were other things she'd seen, asleep. She'd seen a man in
her dreams. A young man in a white sweater on a phone in an airport.
She'd seen another man. A man with a beard and shaggy hair. Wild
eyes. Brown sweatshirt and brown pants.

And a gun. Pointed at her.

She'd heard the screaming. A child's. And her own.

Then the old man, sitting in his wheelchair, his hand outstretched.

(Come with me, Dana. Come with me....)

Scully composed herself, pushing all of that away, rubbing her belly
like a charm.

"No, no dreams," she lied, and she could tell from the look on Mae's
face that the other woman saw the lie for what it was, and was about
to say so.

"Let's look in on Sean and Mr. Hosteen," Scully said, interrupting
Mae before she could start.

The deflection worked. Mae's face hardened again, and she turned and
started down the road toward the stables, Scully following, and Bo
trailing behind them like the shadow of a child.
 

**********

CLEW BAY
OFF CLARE ISLAND
REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
10:03 a.m.
 

"Keep your fucking head down, I said!"

It was a hissed whisper, and was punctuated by the kick of a boot on
the back of Mulder's neck. Mulder flattened himself onto the floor of
the van he was riding in, his stomach swimming, the pressure of the
foot on his neck growing stronger as a moan slipped up from his
chest.

It wasn't the motion of the van moving over curving roads, the
motion he'd had for most of the night, that was making him ill, but
rather the current rocking of the vehicle. He'd felt the tell-tale
bump of the van's tires as it boarded a ferry, the blow of a boat
whistle, and then nothing but the swell of waves.

Between the aching in his head and his tendency toward seasickness
anyway, he didn't know how much more he could take without his
stomach revolting, which he was sure wouldn't please his companions
one bit.

Only one of his current "hosts" was familiar -- the man who'd led
the group who had tried to run he and Skinner and that sonofabitch
Renahan off the road outside Omagh. The others -- and the van -- were
all new, picked up just before they'd crossed the border into
Ireland, Mulder covered with a thick tarp and threatened into silence
with a promise of a bullet as the border guards had questioned the
driver.

Then hours on roads that felt like they'd been paved by the Roman
Empire, struggling for breath and sweating beneath the tarp. Every
time he'd spoken or tried to shift or rise, he'd paid for it. His
body and face wore a collection of souvenirs from the attempts. His
mouth tasted like blood.

So now, the van rocking and someone smoking a pipe that smelled like
Christmas, the two men in the front laughing over some joke, Mulder
put his head down all the way and tried to relax as much as he could.
He was rewarded when the foot was removed from his neck.

"There's a good Yank," one of the men said softly, and one of the
other men chuckled softly.

"Fucker," came another voice, and Mulder had to hold his tongue or
risk another hit.

The boat whistle blew again, and Mulder felt the ferry slow, bumping
into the buoys that would guide it to the dock. The van's engine
started, and after a moment the vehicle jostled off the ferry,
revving up, and they were on their way again, onto another stretch of
rough road.

After a few minutes, Mulder could tell by the noise of other cars,
the starting and stopping, that they'd entered a town. It didn't take
long to be through it, however, and then they were out again, bumping
along, curving.

Then a turn. A gravel drive. Brakes squeaking as they stopped.

He heard the two doors open, then the side door slide open, sunlight
flooding the darkened interior.

"Get him up," the leader said, and the canvas was pulled off
Mulder's back, light hurting his eyes. The two men with him in the
back grabbed him beneath the arms and dragged him up and out onto the
drive.

Squinting, one of his eyes swelling, Mulder looked at his
surroundings. A small house, perched on the edge of a cliffside, the
ocean beyond. There were trees around the house, partially hiding it
from view. Smoke curled up from it, grey.

"Move," the leader said, and Mulder turned to look at him, taking in
his red hair, the set of his face. The thin scar over his full lower
lip.

Seeing Mulder seeming to memorize his face, the man grabbed Mulder's
shoulder and shoved him toward the house.

Three steps up, and the door opened without anyone knocking.

A man stood there -- fifty or sixty. It was hard to tell. His face
still had a boyish look to it, despite the grey beard, the high
forehead, and the creases around his eyes. He wore a black
fisherman's sweater, wide corduroy pants and boots on his feet. He
was looking at Mulder, taking in his face, the blood crusted around
his nose and mouth.

"Bring him in," the man said softly, a gentle tone to his voice that
surprised Mulder, given the treatment he'd received at the hands of
the other men.

The red-haired man with the scar shoved Mulder again, pushing him
down a narrow hallway into a living room warm with a fire. A window
to the side showed the ocean view, and there was music playing.
Something soothing. Low voice and a guitar.

"Let him be," the house's occupant said quietly as the others
stuffed Mulder into a chair. Outnumbered and more than a little
unnerved, Mulder held his tongue and held still.

Like dogs, the other men backed away from Mulder, retreating to the
room's sides.

The older man turned and retrieved a pipe from the mantle, stuffed
it with tobacco and gave it a light with a thick wooden match. There
was a grandfather clock against the far wall, and it ticked loudly,
sounding tired. When the man had his pipe lit, he moved until he
stood in front of Mulder, towering over him in the chair, the pipe in
the corner of his mouth.

His eyes were bright, inquisitive, a small smile on his face.

"Why don't you tell me who I am," the man said, and he sounded calm,
almost amused.

Mulder looked at him. "You're Neill," he said. "Eamon Neill."

The man smiled wider, and Mulder swallowed, his hands clenching the
arms of the chair. Though every inch of him hurt, he felt suddenly
hopeful. Hopeful and still very much afraid.
 

***********

CHAPTER 12

******
 

The clock was still ticking, the same tired beat beneath the sound of
an Irish folk singer and a guitar, as the silence stretched between
Mulder and the man he had just fingered as Eamon Neill like a road.

The men who'd brought Mulder to this place-- an island, he
guessed, from the ferry ride, the view out the large window facing
the cliff the cottage sat on nothing but sea-- stood around,
still as gargoyles and about as friendly, though the young man
with the red hair and the scar on his lip looked more nervous than
Mulder had seen him, gnawing on the scar as though the wound, long
healed, still pained him somehow.

Neill, who'd been pacing slowly, his steps soft sounds on the
wood floor as he put one booted foot in front of the other before the
fireplace, had his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes down as if
thinking, considering what to do. He looked up at the red-haired
man, met his eyes, and then looked back down.

Mulder didn't move, didn't even shift in the chair
where'd they sunk him, though his body was sore from the long
ride, face-down, in the van. It still seemed he could feel the
boot on the back of his neck, and his eye was swollen nearly closed,
a puff that his father had called a "mouse" forming on his lower
lid.

Instead, he listened to the clock. He watched the pendulum, old
brass, for a moment as it caught the light. He read the look on the
red-haired man's face.

(Whatever you say, say nothing...)

The song ended and Mulder could hear the strange whine of a CD
changing tracks. Neill seemed to find the sound his cue to stop and
turned to Mulder again, though he didn't uncross his arms or
change the curious expression on his face.

"Tell me what I want to know," he said, the same tone he used
when he'd asked Mulder to tell him who he himself was. Not
threatening. Curious as his face. Strange with something like
warmth.

Mulder met his gaze, licked a crack in his lip that was crusted with
blood. How much to tell, he wondered. How little.

"You want to know why I've been trying to find you,"
Mulder answered. "Why I've been asking about you."

Neill didn't move. The clock kept ticking. Another song began.
Penny whistle. A woman's voice, talking about farming a tough
and beautiful land...

"Aye," Neill replied. It was little more than a whisper of
sound.

Mulder glanced at the red-haired man again, back.

"Not in front of them," he said, a bit of his usual
confidence creeping back into his voice.

He didn't know why he felt as though he had any power. Perhaps
it was the juxtaposition of the men around him and the quietness he
got off the man before him. Violence on the one hand and something
that seemed to move against it in the other, though everything he
knew of Neill told him this was not the case.

He did what he'd always done as he watched Neill consider. He
trusted his instincts. He told himself that 99% of the time, they
were right.

But that 1%...Jesus, could it be a bitch...

"How about you blokes go have a smoke?" Neill said at last,
and the red-haired man began to protest. He got out one bleat of
sound before Neill's hand came up and silenced him.

"Not now, Eagon," Neill said, firm but not unkind.
"You've done a good bit so far and I'm grateful. But
give me the room."

The man, Eagon, looked at Mulder, at the others, who were watching
the exchange warily.

"Go on, boys," Neill said. "Go on." And, following
Eagon, they left.

At least now it's a fair fight, Mulder thought gravely, watched
Neill reach for a pipe on the mantel, reach for tobacco in a worn
leather pouch. Neill filled the pipe, facing away from Mulder,
pressing the flakes down with his thumb.

"Tell me," Neill said as he put the pipe to his lips and
struck a white-tip on the brick. A puff of smoke came up that
smelled like sugar and wood.

Mulder swallowed. "I'm here about my wife," he said. It
wasn't what he'd intended to say. He'd meant to say something else,
but he couldn't remember what it was. He only knew what he felt,
and it was that that he spoke from.

"Your wife?" the other man repeated, still not turning,
looking into the fire.

"Yes," Mulder replied. "There was a bomb. In
Washington. My wife was..." He hesitated.

Truth or lie?

Lie.

"My wife was killed," he finished.

"Whatever it is," Neill said quickly but with the same soft
tenor, "it's got nothing to do with me, I can tell you
that."

Mulder ran the tone through his mind, as though he were turning it
over for taste.

"You know," he said with conviction.

"Aye," Neill said, sounding tired. "I know. Scully.
The one who brought Curran and The Path down in the States." He
turned slowly. "That would make you Mulder. Fox Mulder."

Mulder nodded. "Yes."

"F.B.I.," Neill added, looking hard at him.

"I'm not here as an agent," Mulder replied. "I'm
not after you. I don't care what you've done or why. I
don't care about your politics or your past."

The last came out more bitterly than he'd intended -- years of
living at the mercy of this thing, this intruder in his life
called "The Troubles" biting it out of him -- and Neill
heard it, chuffed.

He moved forward, pipe in hand, and stood directly over Mulder,
looking down, standing almost too close. Mulder was very much aware
that Neill was standing and he was not. He was aware of the men
outside the door.

"Your trouble is all about my politics, Mr. Mulder," he said.
"You'd better start caring about them. Now whether it's
about my past... that I can't tell you. That I don't know."
Neill stepped away, took a pull from the pipe. A log fell
in the fire.

"This is about Owen Curran," Mulder pressed "Someone
associated with him. Are there any Path left?"

"No," Neill said, shaking his head. "Not here or up
north or in the States. Curran did quite a job on them himself in
that mess in Virginia. Quite a job. And to be frank, I can't
think of anyone who would kill your wife for taking him out
after that. Lots of families here still wearing black over
that. Lots of families who think he deserved exactly what he
got."

He looked at Mulder. "The story here goes that your wife or you
were the one who did him in. I can't see how someone would come
after her -- or you -- because of that."

"My wife didn't kill him," Mulder said grimly. "I
didn't kill him. Someone else did."

Neill raised an eyebrow. "Who?"

"I thought you would know," Mulder said quietly. "We
never found who it was. Curran was trying to kill my wife, his
sister Mae. Me."

Mulder reached down and raised the bottom of his shirt and sweater,
exposing his belly to Neill. The incision scar and the pucker of the
bullet hole stood out stark pink on his skin.

"How did he die?" Neill said, his eyes flicking from the
scar to Mulder's face as Mulder dropped his shirt.

"A single shot. From somewhere high."

"Clean hit?"

"Half his head was gone."

Neill nodded, gnawing on the end of his pipe and paced toward the
fire slowly. "One of yours? Merc? Secret Agent Man?"

Mulder shook his head. "Neither. Another man was killed, too,
and an agent wouldn't do that."

"Nor a merc," Neill added, breathing smoke. "It's one of ours,
all right." He chuffed again mirthlessly. "Glad about that. Owen
Owen was a shame to his father and all the rest of us. Humiliating."

"Yeah, we were pretty...embarrassed by him, too," Mulder
quipped.

A smile touched Neill's mouth, his eyes...apologetic? Mulder
couldn't quite tell. Neill took the pipe from his mouth and
pointed it at Mulder's belly. "So I see."

He went to the grate again, breathed deep from his pipe, billowed.
The smoke hung around his face like a veil. He was silent for a long
moment. Then he spoke.

"Your wife's not dead."

Mulder's eyes got wide and he started to protest, but again the
words he meant to say died in his throat.

"No," he said simply.

"Quite a pony show on the tele, though. My hat's off."
He'd turned at this point and gave Mulder a slight smile that
crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Liked the white coffin.
Innocence lost and all that."

Mulder returned the smile and a laugh came up, though it pained his
side. "Thanks," he said.

Why do I trust you? he wanted to ask. As his eyes hung with
Neill's, the other man's still hidden by the sheen of smoke
as he continued that strange, warm smile, he thought of this.

"I take it you've got her stowed away until you find
who's doing this," Neill said as the CD squeaked its way to
track four. A fiddle and a man's voice in Gaelic.

"Yes," Mulder said.

The clock struck an off-key note, then another, counting off the
hours. At the same time, from Neill's pocket, a chiming like an
infant music box. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a worn
but well-kept pocket watch attached to his belt with a small, gold-
linked chain. He snapped open and then closed again. The music
stopped, and Neill ran his hand over the surface.

"Was my father's," he said softly.

Mulder nodded.

"Everything about me was my father's," Neill said, waving
a hand to take in everything. "The house. The land it's on.
Everything." He looked at Mulder meaningfully. "You
understand me, Mr. Mulder?"

Mulder nodded. "Yes," he said. "I understand you."

"Sometimes what you do..." Neill continued. "Sometimes
it's like your blood. Sometimes you can't stop it. It's
like your heart in your chest."

Mulder had a sudden memory -- Samantha, three or four, frightened
in a thunderstorm, crawling into bed beside him. Her small hands on
his chest, a face against his shoulder.

"You know about family," Neill said, and Mulder snapped back
to reality, surprised, as though fearing Neill had somehow read his
mind.

"Your wife," Neill continued. "You know what you'll
do for family."

Mulder played the memory of Samantha over in his mind like a tape.
He thought of Scully's face. Scully asleep in a car. The
stakeout on Modell. Then again, after making love, her hair --
longer now -- a wave on the white pillow. Their bedroom. Their house.

"Anything," Mulder said at last.

Neill nodded, went to the fireplace and tapped out the pipe into the
embers there. They rained down and winked out. "Then you
understand more about my politics and my past than you think."

Mulder swallowed, treading lightly. "Some of it," he agreed.

Neill looked at him, placed the pipe on the mantel on its tiny
stand. "That's a start," he said.

Again, silence between them, a man singing in a language Mulder
couldn't understand. He liked the music, though. He liked it a
lot.

"Will you help me?" Mulder said softly.

Neill looked down at the floor, toward the door where Eagon and the
others were waiting. Mulder held his breath.

"Aye," Neill said at last, and let out a long breath.
"Aye."
 

****

Chapter 13

****

THE SLAUGHTERED LAMB
OMAGH, NORTHERN IRELAND
UNITED KINGDOM
MARCH 31
9:36 P.M.
 

"Do you ever think about anything but drinking,
Renahan?"

Skinner looked across the worn wooden table that
looked older than he was at Renahan's boozy half
smile. The other man's lips wore a wet patina of
saliva, the look one got when they were six or seven
beers in and about two more away from the toilet.

"Fucking hell, man," Renahan said, too loud, though
none of the men in the tavern even looked sideways at
him. "You've met me -- wouldn't you if you were me?
Eh? Eh?" He broke into a fit of chuckles, each one
snorty and swimming in dark beer.

Skinner scowled, stared down at the surface of his
own beer, the liquid still touching the rim. He could
see a vague reflection of his face in it, like a
black mirror. He wanted to say that Renahan was
right. He wanted to tell the man that if he didn't
spend so much time acting like an asshole people
might not keep mistaking him for one. But he decided
to save his breath.

Breath was what you needed in the Slaughtered Lamb, a
tavern so filled with pipe and cigarette smoke it
looked like the deserted roads they'd driven back in
from the roadway where they'd been forced off onto
the shoulder, the entire drive robed in fog the
headlights could barely break through.

Skinner could still remember looking up at the sign
over the tavern, blurred as he'd groped on the
sidewalk for his glasses after being tossed out of
the moving car with Renahan, the sign a wooden
placard festooned with an old painting of a lamb with
its throat slit. Its clarity as he righted his
glasses and got to his feet wasn't much comfort as
he'd listened to the Brit laughing on the ground next
to him, laughing so hard he couldn't get up without
Skinner's yank on his arm.

"In we go!" Renahan had said, brushing off his
clothes as though the care mattered. He still looked
like he'd just crawled out of a box underneath a
highway overpass.

"Why here?" Skinner'd asked, pointing at the sign. It
didn't seem a good omen.

Renahan smiled. "Because I'm thinking this being our
stop-off isn't a coincidence, Mr. Skinner, for one,"
he said. "And two, we don't have a place to stay yet
and they've got some rooms, and three," He smiled the
smile that seemed to challenge and apologize at the
same time. "I've got a bit of a thirst."

Skinner had no choice but to follow him in.

The night before they'd been their captor's guests in
a house outside of town, both of them locked in the
back room of a house out away from town. No one had
spoken to them, though they'd been giving a wedge of
cheese and a loaf of bread at one point, and access
to a toilet as needed off the back of the house.

Renahan hadn't seemed bothered by the treatment,
saying only once: "I've seen worse," and then
quieting as the unmistakable sound of a gun butt on
the door silenced them both until nightfall.
Skinner's mind had turned the image of Mulder
climbing into the other car with the young man with
the slit lip over in his mind, and he'd gnawed a sore
spot on his own lip at the thought.

"Fuck," he'd breathed at one point, forgetting
Renahan was there, the other man dozing in
the corner. Renahan had been awake enough to chuff at
the word.

Then it was out into the car wearing blindfolds, a
curving drive into town, and then the lights of the
pub as they'd had their blindfolds removed, a shove
and an obscenity for good measure and they rolled to
a stop on the ground.

"I think this was a mistake," Skinner said over the
din in the pub, clenching and unclenching his jaw
like a fist as he spoke.

"What part of it?" Renahan replied, taking another
drink. Beer clung to his beard.

"Sitting around here with our thumbs up our asses
while Mulder's Christ knows where."

Renahan smiled. "He's with Eamon Neill," he said.
"You know that as well as I do. Neill's nephew, the
ginger with the scar?" He made a swipe down his face.
"Little Eagon knows exactly where we are. We'll sit
tight. Wait it out."

"We should be looking for both of them," Skinner
spat, and now he did take a sip of his beer,
frustrated. He wished he still smoked.

"No need," Renahan said. "They just walked in the
fucking door."

Skinner looked first at the other man's Guinness
smile, then over his shoulder where Renahan's eyes
were focused. Sure enough, there was Mulder and
another man, shorter with reddish hair and a beard
and tired, wise eyes. Mulder's hands were in his
jacket pockets, and as he approached, Skinner saw the
swollen eye, the split in his lip. He was looking at
Skinner, a small smile on his face.

The man beside him was not smiling, and his eyes were
not on Skinner but on the man across the table from
him, who leaned back in the chair he was in, its back
creaking like bones. Renahan reached for his pint and
nearly missed.

Skinner stood, tucking in his shirt a bit more out of
habit, straightening himself up to his full height.
He felt his mouth curl into a wry half-smile as
Mulder stood before him, his hair mussed, a couple of
days growth of beard on his face making him look more
worn.

Mulder's mouth quirked, the slit gaping a bit, that
smartass smile that made Skinner want to belt him
from across his desk. "Sorry," he quipped. "I got
held up."

"We all did, as I recall," Skinner grumbled, and
turned his attention to the other man, and Mulder
did, as well. "I've been eating stinking cheese and
pissing outdoors for a day and a half."

"It's good you can keep up your regular routine this
far from home, sir," Mulder said dryly, and Skinner
rolled his eyes, the relief at seeing each other in
one piece released with the insults.

Mulder turned to the man beside him.

"Mr. Neill," he said, nodding toward Skinner. "This
is Assistant Director Walter Skinner with the F.B.I."
Skinner and Neill shook hands, one short shake, and
Neill angled his head in Skinner's direction.

"Mr. Skinner," he said, and his voice sounded like
the man should sing bonnie Christmas carols, Skinner
thought. Something warm in it, warm and quiet, almost
as if the tone of his voice was pitched on purpose to
keep people at ease. "I'm Eamon Neill. Glad to meet
you," he added, and Skinner nodded, watching Neill
turn his attention to Renahan.

"Mr. Renahan," Neill said softly. "Been a long time."
His voice had lost some of its warmth now, his eyes
looking tired and bit dim, as though a cloud of
memory had passed before them.

Renahan chuckled. "Not fucking long enough," he said.
"What was it? Eighty-four? Eighty-five? I can't
recall."

"You know exactly when it was we last met," Neill
said softly, though his voice seemed to carry.
Skinner realized it was because the noise level in
the room had dropped a touch. "I'd imagine you've
still got the clipping up on your wall from the day
you brought me into Derry. You still keep all those
clippings, Mr. Renahan? Like you used to do?"

Renahan took a swig from the pint, the foam clinging
to his moustache like a second moustache. "It was a
memorable day, that one, aye," he said, ignoring the
last part of the question.

"I know I'll never forget it," Neill said, and he
reached to his right arm, pushed the sleeve
of the thick sweater he wore up. There was a sunken-
in place on the side of his forearm where muscle was
missing, the area blotted with thick white scar.

Mulder and Skinner looked at Renahan, who laughed. "I
didn't do that to you now, Eamon," he said jovially.
"That's not me."

Neill smiled mirthlessly. "You didn't have to do much
of anything for yourself now did you?" he said
softly. "Ran your own bloody Nutting Squad right
there, didn't you?" His voice rose in volume, but not
in ire. "Kept it looking clean for the Yanks on the
outside, shiny and clean, while inside those walls
you were doing worse than you blamed us for. Weren't
you. Fucking Nutting Brits having their pictures
taken for the papers and you in there chatting it up
and then leaving the cell with your big smile while
we were in there with those blokes and God only knows
what."

The smile fell from Renahan's face, and other faces
were turning all around from the tables surrounding
them. A couple of men stood, pipes in their mouths.
Skinner couldn't tell if they were rising to move
forward or back, but their eyes showed they
understood everything Neill had said, their eyes
darting from Neill to Renahan and back again.

"I don't think this is the place for this
discussion," Skinner ventured, putting his hands
out, one toward each of the men. Renahan was still
leaning back in the chair as though someone had
poured him there, his hand tight on the glass. Neill
still had his arm out, his left hand gripping his
right elbow to hold up the sweater's thick sleeve.

Mulder reached out, touched Neill's arm just above
the scar's ruin, gently put his arm down as though he
were lowering a hand that held a gun.

"It's the past," Mulder said. "It's over now."

Renahan's knowing smile returned, and even Neill's
eyes creased with cynical amusement.

"You're not that naive, I know, Mr. Mulder," Neill
said.

"No," Mulder said. "I know there's no such thing as
'over' in the whole goddamn country." He couldn't
keep the bitter from his voice. Skinner lowered his
hands as Neill's lips curled in an almost sad smile.

Then he rolled his sleeve down, pulled out a wooden
chair and sat himself. "Not naive at all," he said,
sounding tired but somehow pleased. He turned to a
man at a table nearby, a younger man who wore a
stocking cap that Skinner hadn't even noticed was
there.

"Kevin, how about a pint?" he said to the young man,
who nodded and stood, going to the bar. "We'll be
needing two. And another for these two, as well."

Skinner looked at Mulder, and he could tell that
Mulder was tamping down the urge to gape at the whole
place, at every face, every set of eyes and every
curl of smoke from every pipe.

"Have a sit, Mr. Mulder, Mr. Skinner," Renahan said,
seeming pleased at the two Americans' discomfort,
which Skinner would have labeled further as fear.
Renahan's eyes didn't leave Neill's, the two of them
looking like they were about to play a particularly
intricate game of cards. Poker. With real clubs and
spades.

Mulder sat, Skinner following suit, both of them
moving slowly, aware of all the eyes, the subtle
lowering of the din of the room.

"Welcome to my Ireland," Renahan said to them both,
his teeth showing in a bemused smile. Skinner looked
at him, then at Mulder's dawning understanding as the
younger man looked at Neill and nodded with some
comprehension that Skinner couldn't yet reach
himself.

"And to mine," Neill replied, his voice quiet and
knowing again. He didn't even look up as the man he'd
called Kevin returned with their black, warm pints
and set them down in the center of the table for the
men to take.
 

*****

CLONIFFE BED & BREAKFAST
DUBLIN, REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
APRIL 1
7:02 A.M.

Another bed, this one without the woman called
Bridget, the woman he'd picked up and taken into his
bed with her strange, scarred body. Without her and
her smoky lips and her entreats for a couple of
pounds, but also without the small amount of warmth
she'd afforded. Christie Collin was dressing in the
gray light coming through the overly fluffed
curtains at the B&B and looking at the bed, thinking
of the woman's red hair sprayed out on the pillow,
how he'd looked down at her face as he'd fucked her -
- Bridget so drunk she was having a hard time keeping
her blue eyes focused on his face -- and how he'd
tried to turn that face into another face.

Something more like desperation than desire. Regret
rather than lust.

He wondered how long he'd be trying to bring the
American woman back to life in his mind. How long it
would be before he'd stop thinking of the baby inside
her, both of them wearing suits of glittering glass
and flame behind his eyes.

As he dressed (simple jeans and the ubiquitous white
fisherman's sweater he wore like his civilian
uniform), he thought about two things his Sergeant
had told him would happen to a soldier.

"First," Finney'd said, cooking over a silver tin of
Sterno in a mountain forest so green it had made
Christie wonder if there were any other color on
Earth, "you'll feel bad about some of the people
you've killed. You'll think about them, turn their
faces over in your mind like coins. Regret things.
Wish you'd go back and do things different."

Christie'd been younger then, probably too young
to think about such things but already in need of
doing so had stirred the tea in the metal teapot
and nodded.

"And second," Finney'd continued, "you'll have to
learn to get over the first and move past it or
you'll crack up doing this job. There's no going
back. Dead is dead and there's nothing to be done
about it."

Deaths had bothered him then, but at least then, he
thought grimly, they had been carried out for reasons
he could justify or even name.

As he thought this, he could almost feel his
grandmother's dry hand on his arm, hear that papery
voice that sounded like how an ancient crow would
talk if it could form his name.

A tap at the door, and Christie called for whoever it
was to come in.

The man he'd met the night before in a steady rain,
the man haloed by the gas light outside the cottage
and holding a black umbrella over Christie as he'd
ushered him into the house, stood in the doorway, his
face grim, though Christie suspected his face always
looked that way. Riggs was Old Guard, the I.R.A. his
life. The Troubles seemed to have lodged themselves
in the creases of the old men's faces. At least every
one he'd seen, and he'd seen quite a few.

"Mr. Collin," Riggs said, formal and steady. "Wife's
got eggs on for you like you asked. Lady Collin said
to call this morning. I've got a phone downstairs
where you can be a bit private."

"Ta," Christie said, running his hand over his
crewcut out of habit, as though he were actually
straightening the razored hair. He followed Riggs
out, closing the door to his simple room with his
duffle on the neatly made bed behind him.

The room Riggs led him to was a comfortable office
with dark wood, the desk clearly nearly as old as the
cottage itself. The phone on the corner was even
corded, the old handle feeling ridiculously large
against his ear as he turned the dial to put in the
number and it rang. The signal was as clear as water.

"Christie?" That ghostly raven voice. Early for her,
the voice not yet much used for the day.

"Aye, I'm all set where you said." He knew to keep
the calls short, and he liked them that way besides.

"He's in Omagh," his grandmother continued without
any nicety or prelude. "Omagh. With Eamon Neill and
Ed Renahan and that man he works with."

A good distance away. He was safe where he was. Then
why...?

"You sound worried about that," he ventured.

"Neill knows too much to be involved," she said,
which he could have guessed.

"He doesn't know me." It was why he'd been chosen for
this. Few knew him at all, and his life had frankly
felt just like that.

"No, but he does know me. Or...people...who know me.
People not far from where he is."

He thought of Omagh, drew a line to the coast on the
map in his mind, settling on the dot of a town whose
name he knew all too well, that everyone with
anything to do with the Cause knew and had managed to
keep secret.

Not far at all.

"We need to find out what Mr. Mulder knows," she
continued. "I've got someone whose going to go
through his things and see what they can find. But in
any case -- I think it's time for Mr. Mulder to join
his wife."

Christie felt heat come up in his face. "You said it
would only be the two. The ones responsible. You said
there'd be no more to be done to pay for this."

"It's not about John in this case." Her voice was a
faint wheeze now. He could hear the whine of her
chair and knew the call would end. "It's about
protecting us. What's left of us."

(You, he thought. It's about protecting you.)

"Mr. Mulder's curiosity has been unexpected. There's
too much too lose. When I have something for you,
I'll call. But I want you moving. Cross the border.
Go to St. Sebastian's. Wait for me there."

And the line went dead.

He walked past the smell of butter and eggs and
bread, past the sound of Riggs and his wife and
someone speaking French, a foreigner rattling a
newspaper at the B&B's kitchen table and speaking to
his child. Up the stairs and back onto the corner of
the bed.

The sun was coming through the drapes, flowers on
their fabric staining the ivory blankets faintly red.
He touched a spot of it, calloused fingers, hard on
soft.

Bridget sleeping there. He held onto the name, held
her face in his hands in his mind and she roused and
looked at him.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice tinged as if she
knew him or cared.

He hesitated, looking into her invisible eyes,
worrying the cotton beneath his fingers as though it
were her hair.

"She says..." he began, swallowed. "She says she
doesn't understand this Mulder and what he's doing."

"But it's what she's doing, isn't it then?" she said
softly.

Christie nodded to nothing. "Don't know how she can't
say she doesn't understand a man with a dead wife.
Dead baby..." He looked into the mirage of her eyes.
"She has to understand that sort of revenge, you
know? She must."

Bridget looked at him gravely, her face seeming to
vanish into white. "She understands the Cause,
Christie," she said, her voice lost on a gust of wind
pressing against the window.

He spoke to her as she faded from view, her eyes
showing she heard the final thing he said:

"Then she understands revenge."
 

********

CHAPTER 14.

****

TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO
10:15 a.m.
 

"Watch," Albert Hosteen said, his long legs, clad in faded jeans,
squeezing on Ghost's sides, a thin stick tapping on the dapple gray
of the horse's long neck. Just a touch, barely enough for Ghost to
feel through his sleek coat. As he did so, he said the Navajo word
for "left." Dutifully, the horse moved to the left and walked toward
a battered barrel in the center of the corral, close to where Sean
was standing with Cloud, the pony looking bored.

"Now watch again," Hosteen said, and Sean squinted up at him, his
face already growing a touch red from the sun beating down on the
corral. He said the word again, did nothing with the stick this time,
and Ghost turned to the left again and walked to the second barrel,
the one with the dent in the side from one too many rolls and kicks.

Sean looked at him, at Cloud, then back again, his face still
screwed up against the sun. He chanced a glance to the side of the
corral, too, where Mae and Scully and Sara were, Mae standing up on
the slats so that her head looked over the top and Scully seated on
the bleachers beside Sara, who was bouncing Katherine like a toy.

Hosteen glanced over, as well, met Scully's eyes, the woman's face a
bit pinched with concern. Sean had been ignoring Hosteen for twenty
minutes, watching him but not doing as he said, leaning over
occasionally to whisper something in the pony's cocked ear.

"Hmm," Hosteen said, speaking softly to Ghost, who walked slowly to
the fence near Mae and Scully. Scully stood slowly as he approached,
her hand on the small of her back.

"Not much progress today, I see," Mae said, and Hosteen noted that
she didn't even try to hide the bitterness in her voice. He only
smiled faintly as Ghost pushed his charcoal nose over the fence and
against Mae's hand. Mae pulled her hand away a few inches, her eyes
still on Sean talking to Cloud.

"There is progress," he replied, nodding toward Sean. "He's telling
the pony a story. Stories are important things to tell, don't you
think?" He smiled at Mae again, mostly with his eyes, as she looked
up at him almost accusingly.

"I suppose," she said, and glanced away.

"Does he like stories?" Hosteen asked, Ghost swishing his tail in a
sound like a brush. Scully crossed her arms and watched the exchange,
her eyes going between Hosteen and the side of Mae's face.

"What do you mean?" Mae said. "Of course he likes stories. More so
when he was younger, but he's liked them, yes."

"What sort?" Hosteen pressed.

Mae seemed to consider this for a moment, shielding her eyes as the
sun swelled behind a thin cloud cover and beat down on them, turning
everything almost white.

"It's almost funny, but you know what his favorites were?" Mae said,
looking up at him from slits for eyes. At Hosteen's cocked head, she
said: "Cowboys and Indians."

A laugh bubbled up through Hosteen's chest. "Bad stories about
Indians I would guess," he said. "From the way he looked at me when
we first met. Like I was going to put him on a spit and turn him over
a fire." He chuckled again.

"Not bad stories, really ..." Mae said carefully. "More
...just...you know. The kind of stories about Indians scalping
people. Braves and squaws and battles with people in bloody wagons
and that sort. People turning themselves into animals and dancing
around like monkeys for rain and painting their faces up. Rubbish
like that."

Hosteen watched Scully cringe and look down, stifling a laugh, and
she glanced at Hosteen to make sure he wasn't taking offense. Behind
her, Sara Whistler set off in a fit of laughter that startled a flock
of birds on the barn's sagging roof into chittering flight, a few
stray feathers falling down in front of the open doors.

"Hmm," Hosteen said. "I see." He winked at Scully, who said nothing.
"Agent Scully, you should rest. Go find Mr. Granger first, though. He
has something to tell you."

"Me?" Scully said, and turned, looking toward Victor's house, the
paddock behind where they'd all seen Granger fussing with the sheep
with Victor and a few of his men.

"Yes," Hosteen said, and then he turned Ghost with a word and headed
back into the center of the corral toward Sean.

Sean looked up, seeming almost guilty as Hosteen stopped in front of
him.

"Get on the pony, Sean, and come with me," he said, and Sean, who
had not listened to a thing Hosteen had said for some time, relented,
climbing on Cloud's back and taking the reins in his small hands.
Hosteen urged Ghost forward, and one of Hosteen's men -- dealing with
the other horses in a connecting corral -- opened the wide gate to
let them out.

Hosteen smiled as they rode toward the entrance to the stable,
something spinning out in his mind like a ribbon. The further it
spun, the more he smiled.

Finally, composing his face, he stopped Ghost in front of the
entrance to the stable, reached in his back pocket and pulled out a
red bandana. Sean had stopped Cloud behind him and sat, watching him
warily.

Bending to the ground, Hosteen picked up one of the plain feathers
dropped by the cloud of doves that had risen off the roof. It was
gray, the color of soot almost, and didn't even shine as he held it,
its dull color seeming to absorb the light. The quill was hard and
white and mottled with dirt. He put it in the pocket of his shirt.

He turned then to Sean, took the few steps that separated them. Sean
looked at him strangely as Hosteen got very close, standing right
beside him. He watched as the older man reached out, folding the
bandana into a strip against the side of Sean's thigh. When he had a
band, he reached up and, though Sean shied a bit, tied it around
Sean's head, just above his eyebrows. After he'd made a firm knot, he
reached into the pocket of his shirt and retrieved the feather,
inserting it carefully between Sean's head and the knot.

"Hm," Hosteen said, standing up almost comically straight. "Looks
good."

Sean reached up, looking at him with a surprised and slightly
distrustful expression. He touched the feather gently with his hand.

"This is a dove's feather," Hosteen said. "The weakest of the
feathers for a boy becoming a Brave. You have taken only the first
step in your path to becoming a Brave." He said it lofty, just as he
knew Sean would expect it all to be said. "If you wish it, you can
continue on that path, but it is a hard path."

Sean continued to touch the feather, looking into Hosteen's face,
searching.

"The next feather is a crow," Hosteen said. "To become a Crow, you
will have to come with me into the desert and complete a trial. That
is the way of my people. This is our way. Even though you are not one
of us, I see you can do these things, and I am a Holy Man and know
these things. Will you do them? Will you continue on this path?"

Sean stroked the feather again, his hand knotting the pony's mane in
his hand. Cocking his head, he squinted at Hosteen against the light
and finally nodded.

"Hmm." Hosteen nodded. "Very good. We will begin tonight. Go and
pack for a night of camping. I will bring you the things you will
need for the trial."

And with that, he turned, swung slowly but easily up onto Ghost's
back and, with a word, walked away from Sean, leaving him there in
his bandana and his feather as Hosteen headed back for the house.

*****

11:01 a.m.
 

Scully had walked the length of the ranch's compound to the area
behind Victor's house, a dusty area that was swollen with sheep, all
clotted together in the small space bumping against one another and
mewing softly to one another. In the midst of them, Victor and
Granger and two of the other men who worked on the ranch were pulling
females out of the flock, females with wide strips of color on their
rumps -- yellows and reds and blues and greens. They were taking them
out and putting them in a separate enclosure.

"Hello, Paul," she said softly as she neared his side of the fence.

He looked up, his face a strangely ashen color for someone with such
a dark complexion, his eyes wet and tired. He was sweating profusely,
dark stains of it circling his armpits and the neck of his T-shirt.
Her brow creased down immediately. It was hot, but it wasn't that hot
...

"Are you okay?" she asked, and Granger seemed to balk a bit at the
question, reached down instead for a ewe who was trying to run
between his legs, her rump a brilliant shade of purple.

"I'm fine, Dana," he said softly, wiped his brow on the arm of his
short-sleeved shirt. "You okay?"

She nodded. "Yes," she said.

"The baby okay?"

She smiled faintly, bemused. "As far as I can tell, she seems to be.
I think she'll be joining the circus, though, with the amount of
turning she's doing."

Granger smiled, though there was something pained in his face as he
heaved a sheep over another and toward the small gap that separated
the enclosures.

"What are you doing?" she asked, though she kept her eyes on his
face.

"We're moving the ewes who've already mated," he said. Victor was
across the pen, a ram dancing around the perimeter looking very put
out.

"How can you tell that?"

"They were smoking cigarettes when we got down here," Granger
quipped, and Scully chuckled. Granger grinned. "Actually, you can
tell by the color on their rumps. See?" He gestured to the nearest
one, a colored ewe in the midst of all the white. "You can tell from
that one that she's mated with one of Keel's while she was up there,
and only him. There's yellow but no other colors on her. The males
have these wax sticks on their bellies so that they mark any ewes
they've mated with and Victor can tell which lambs are from which
males, so if there are any problems, he can castrate the males."

"There's a few mental images I didn't need to have," Scully said,
and noticed that the male prancing around Victor with its head down
did indeed have a blue wax stick on its stomach, and there were many
blue-stained sheep in the corral.

"Yeah," Granger said. "Sheep Sex. Who knew how exciting it could be?"

"Only the sheep," Scully said under her breath.

"And," Granger added, "If the saying around Hopkins was true, some
folks at Virginia Tech." He guffawed.

Scully groaned. A common joke at Maryland, too.

Then, desperate for a change of subject and sorry she'd asked about
the whole thing, she straightened a bit. "Mr. Hosteen said you had
something you wanted to tell me?"

Granger straightened, his hands on his hips, and wiped his brow
again. "I what?" he asked.

"He said you had something to tell me," she repeated patiently.

He shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of," he replied.

One of Victor's dogs came galloping into the pen, its tail waving
like a flag and peels of barking coming from it as it rounded up the
sheep.

"FANG!" Victor yelled. "Get out of here, you mangy--"

"I'll get him," Granger called, and took off at a lope between the
sheep toward the dog, which was clustering the sheep into little
knots and then nipping them so that they leapt over one another and
fell.

Granger made it about halfway across the paddock, Scully watching
him and the sheep piling up around her, bleating, when something odd
seemed to happen. Granger stopped in mid-stride, standing so still it
was as if he were playing a child's game of Freeze. His fists balled,
his face aimed down. The sheep bustled around him and the dog circled
with even more frenzy, delighted at not being caught.

"Paul?" Scully called when he'd been motionless for what seemed like
a long time.

He said nothing. He didn't move. It was as if he'd turned to stone
right there in the dust and the sunlight, though even from where she
was standing, there behind the low fence, she could see that he was
trembling slightly and his chest was heaving.

"Granger!" Victor called again. "Get that damn dog, will you?"

"Paul!" Scully called again, and now she did move, toward the
rickety gate as fast as she could, moving through the sheep, the dog
still rounding them up in gleeful chaos as Scully picked her way to
Granger.

Victor had likewise moved, the other men going after Fang as Victor
worked his way to Granger.

"Paul, what is it?" Scully said as she stood beside him, winded
herself, panicking. Granger had gone even more ashen, his face
looking almost waxy. He was biting his lower lip hard enough to make
it bleed.

"Nothing ..." he choked out. "Nothing ..."

She reached down and grabbed his wrist, her fingers finding the
pulse there. The beats were irregular both in their rhythm and in
their intensity, and she could tell from the way he held himself so
stiff, his chest rising and falling with a strained cadence, that he
was in terrible pain.

"What going on?" Victor said, his hand going out to Granger's
shoulder. Granger shook his head.

"Paul, you're having some kind of cardiac event," Scully said,
taking him by the elbow. "We've got to get you to a hospital--"

"NO!" The word burst from him. "No hospital no doctors nothing ..."
He trailed off from the stream of words. "Nothing ..."

"Victor," Scully said. "Get in the truck and go up to your
grandfather's house. I've got a bag there -- you'll know it when you
see it. It's beside the dresser in my room. Go get it for me,
please."

Victor looked stricken, but nodded and ran out of the corral.

"Can you walk?" Scully asked gently, still holding his elbow. She
could tell by the way his face was relaxing that he was not in as
much pain. Beneath her fingers, his heart rate was slowing, becoming
more normal.

"Yeah," he breathed. "Yeah, I'm fine ..." He tried to shake her off
but she held on.

"You're not fine," she said, and she was angry now. She angled him
toward the gate, a bench on the other side, which she sat him down
on, pushing hard to get him to go down.

He wiped his forehead, still winded.

"How long?" she said, and she could see something frightened pass
over his face, which confirmed her worst suspicions as to his
condition's seriousness. He'd reacted as if she'd asked him how long
he had to live.

"It's nothing," he said softly.

"Paul."

"It's nothing that anyone can do anything about," he amended, and
his voice bristled.

She settled onto the bench beside him. "The gunshot wound," she
said. "Muscle damage from the bullet?"

"Some, but ..." He shook his head.

She nodded, though she blanched. "Post-operative infection."

He hesitated, nodded.

"Endocarditis?" She said it grimly.

He nodded and she felt color rising her face as her temper flared.

"And what else?" she demanded. She felt her eyes flare. "What else?"

He didn't answer her, looked away.

"What in the HELL are you doing out here?" she snapped. "My God,
Paul--"

"I'm out here doing what I want to do," he bit back, his eyes
hardening.

She swallowed. "Does Robin know?" Then she answered herself. "No, of
course she doesn't know ..." She ran a hand through her hair,
smoothing it off her forehead where a few strands had fallen.

"I don't want her to know," he said softly.

"You don't think she has a right to?" Scully exclaimed. "Paul, if
you don't get a transplant--"

"I'm on the list, but it's gone too far too fast," he said. "Getting
some distance from me is probably the best thing that could happen
for her."

Scully was standing before she even knew she had risen, glaring down
at him. "How dare you make that decision for her," she said quietly,
so quietly that Granger looked up as though she'd shouted.

"I'm protecting her, Dana," he said. "You'd do the same for Mulder."
He looked up at her. "You ARE doing the same for Mulder." He stared.
"Aren't you?"

The silence, broken only by the ewes, stretched between them as
their gazes hung.

"Not like this," she said, low and dangerous. "Never like this."

And even as it left her mouth, she knew she was lying. She'd never
told him when the cancer had spread. He'd found out the hard way.
He'd found all of that out the hard way, more from what she didn't
say than what she did, clues dropped like so much blood from her
nostril, a morning in late ...

And the dreams now. The man in her dreams with the brown pants, the
brown shirt and ragged face. The man in the wheelchair beckoning her.
Something just out of sight in every dream, and whatever it was
drenched in a child's screaming and blood ...

"I'll make a deal with you," she said, watching as Victor's truck
came ambling back into sight from the road, kicking up a cloud of
golden dust.

He squinted up. "What deal?"

She pushed her hair back again, composing herself. "I'll tell him.
If you tell her."

Granger looked down, his hands closing on the edge of the bench.
Victor's truck screeched to a halt and he came out, carrying a black
doctor's bag as he jogged towards them.

"Deal?" Scully pressed.

Granger heaved in a deep sigh, looked at her, and nodded.

"Deal."
 

******

12:14 p.m.
 

Victor Hosteen's barn was older than his grandfather, the wood so
parched by the desert sun that it had turned the color of ash. Inside
was one of the few places on the ranch that actually stayed
reasonably cool, even in the high months of July and August when the
desert here baked at over 100 degrees.

He didn't know if it was the quiet that came over the animals when
they were inside it, the sweet smell of oats and hay, or the way the
sunlight could only come in through the places in the roof where the
wood had finally given way, one board at a time, bars of it falling
to the floor like tiny spotlights for the lingering dust.

He'd gotten the sheep into the pen to one side, the pen's low fence
across from the stalls where some of the horses were sequestered. Two
lazy mares, older than most of the herd, swaybacked. A black and
white paint held the corner stall, coming to the bars with his eyes
flashing at whomever walked through the doorway.

As he'd come in with the sheep, the paint had tamped against the
stall door, raising a high sound of warning. Victor only smiled. The
horse had become too cantankerous to ride in the last six months or
so, but Victor didn't have the heart to put him down. This one, the
one he'd dubbed with a Navajo name that approximated "Killer," had
been the first lesson in respect for the ranch that many of the men
had learned.

Many, including Mulder all that time ago.

"Calm yourself down, old man," Victor said to the horse as he gave
the last of the straggling sheep a touch with a long stick, urging
them toward the pen and its shade and its dust. "We all kno