Author: jrfpatton
Feedback: jrfpatton@hotmail.com

Archive: At your pleasure.  Just keep these headers with it. OK
for awards consideration too.
Rating: R, V=3
Classification: X, A, MSR
Spoilers: through "Orison" in season seven only.
Author's Notes: to read all 20 chapters at once (and dustjacket!)
go to  http://www.fran58.net/new.htm
Disclaimer - These characters are owned by Chris Carter, Ten
Thirteen Productions, and Twentieth Century Fox.
Summary:  Mulder returns from an assignment to find a
disoriented Scully pleading to a felony. Her imprisonment leads
the agents on the trail of ghostly robbers and forces
them to question the bars between them.

     Prison of Innocents

The hair on the back of Charlie Duncan's neck stood straight up.
Something colder than air conditioning caused him to shiver.  The
security guard rose slowly from the table he'd been using to study
for college finals and looked down the long corridor of First
National Bank of Virginia at his partner.  Andy Paige was on his
feet too.

Oh hell! Charlie thought he had lucked into an easy part-time job
- the best one since he became a temporary security guard.  It had
been such
an easy gig he'd started studying on the job.  Easy until now.  He
took a quick look around hoping to God he saw nothing to be alarmed
about.

High arched ceilings, early 19th century marble columns that braced
and graced wide corridors, walls that seemed to do nothing more than
support a rotating art exhibit - First National Bank of Virginia spared no
expense for its customers and staff.  All this ambiance and college
money too.  He'd been thrilled.  They paid him to walk the floors of the
bank every hour from midnight to six a.m., listen for noises - never
anything more than his own breathing or his partner's incessant smoker's
cough -- and spend the rest of the night learning managerial economics.

Another sudden gust of cold air on his neck and shoulders had him
ducking as though he were under attack.  Still he saw nothing. The bank
was dark, silent.  Okay, he thought with a snort, the air conditioner
must be working overtime like his imagination.  He started to return to
his book when he heard a noise.  To his alarm, Andy Paige had drawn his
weapon.

"Stop!" Charlie shouted, pulling his own weapon.  He looked around
frantically for what had surprised Andy.  Charlie heard a shot.  He
thought he fired too then heard the report from a second gun.  The
young man's knees gave way, but he didn't feel anything even when he
hit the floor.  His blood soaked into the blue carpet in the hall and
he began to burn deep in his chest.  Charlie wondered where all the
shots came from.

Andy Paige stepped around him on his way to the vault.  His lips
moved but the voice didn't sound like Andy, "Damn fools! He got away
from me." The young man on the bank floor tried to breathe.  It was so
hard.

An angel watched Charlie.  He saw her eyes and knew he was dying.  He
wasn't afraid.  An angel had come to help him, why should he be
afraid?  The angel glanced in Andy's direction as he disappeared into
the vault, and knelt.  Everything felt unreal to Charlie and tainted by
red-hot blaze radiating from his chest. The angel put her hands out to
touch his right arm, but Charlie didn't feel it.  He looked into those
beautifully kind eyes that seemed shrouded by mist and fog -- and
blacked out.

Someone was still in the bank when he came around.  The fire in his
chest had cooled down and Charlie could feel a presence without opening
his eyes. "He on his way out." It sounded like a black woman.  The air
made a distinctive wheeze.  "If he die you die too?  Don't go in him
then."  The young man heard nothing until the woman's voice said, "Why
you hate being away?  You think yer body so bee-utiful?"

Charlie opened one eye painfully to see Andy in a grotesque dance with
the air.  "Free air," the voice from Andy's body said.  "I loves it.
Smells different."  No one else  was around.  Andy aimed at a small waste
can by a nearby desk  and kicked it down the carpet.  The tinny clang of
the small can echoed off the walls as it hit another desk.  "Damn!"
said Andy.  He looked at his foot with a painful grimace.

Charlie knew his angel was ashamed of Andy -- of something in
Andy.  He felt sorry for own angel, she seemed so sad.  He wanted to
reach out and tell her she was wonderful, thank her for helping him,
for being with him.  He didn't know where to find her, but she seemed
so close.

"Yer weakening me," said the voice in Andy.  The voice had a hint of
panic.  "I got to take them bonds outside -- then I let the boy go."

The cold settled over Charlie.  Just before darkness closed in again,
it occurred to Charlie that his great part-time job just got shot to
hell.
*****
FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder fidgeted at the airline check-in gate.
Tentatively he moved one foot out of line, then glanced over to see
if his partner was still watching.

Special Agent Dana Scully stood next to the desk in the boarding area
with her arms folded and his duffel bag at her feet.  When she raised
one eyebrow slightly to show she was indeed monitoring his progress
toward the airline ticket clerk, he flashed an innocent half-smile.
His foot returned to its original position and he shifted his weight to
make sure the morning newspaper under his arm was secure.

"Seattle?" said the clerk.

"Salmon capitol of the world.  I'm fishing for Big Foot
myself," Mulder said affably.

"Have a nice flight," said the clerk, pressing on to the
next customer.

"Big Foot?" said Scully.  She kicked his duffel bag with her toe.

"There haven't been any sightings in the northeastern woods," said her
partner.  " But I might get lucky."

"That's the kind of positive attitude we like to see at the FBI,"
Scully said.

Mulder tapped the newspaper.  "It's safe for you to go to work, a
federal judge says the FBI's not at fault for Waco.  Ever feel you're out
there alone, Scully?"  She answered with pursed lips and a scowl."We
should be looking for the phantom bank robber.  It says the guard
who robbed the bank two weeks ago had a ghostly accomplice," Mulder
said, thrusting the front-page at her.  "The wounded night guard said-'"

Scully took the paper, folded it, and handed it back without looking.
"It will be over before you get back."

"I feel like I'm being sent to summer camp so my parents can run around
the house naked," he said.

"That's a terrible thought," she said.

"Summer camp?"

"The other part," she said.  "Did you pack insect repellant?"

"Insects?" Mulder pulled his mouth down in disgust.

"It's only for a month.  Nice cool weather instead of a
hot Washington summer-."

"No phones, no television, no radio, no newspaper, no e-mail, no
take-out Chinese-"

"That's undoubtedly why they call it survival training," she said.
"They say the forest is beautiful.  All those junipers,
true cedars, hemlock-"

"I'll poison myself.  They'll have to send me home," he said.
"Why aren't you going?"

Scully rubbed her lips.  "They pulled your number."

"Women get drafted."

"Mulder, your flight's boarding."

He turned around to discover he was the only passenger
standing in the waiting area.  The tunnel into the aircraft gaped
at Mulder like a black hole.  He shuddered, "Why aren't you going?"
he said again, this time in a wistful whisper.

"You won't have to shave for a month," she said by way of encouragement.

Mulder took a strand of her hair between his thumb and finger absently,
then leaned close to give her his best sad eyed look.  "You'll miss me."

That was very true, Scully admitted.  She was finding it hard to let him
go for some reason.  Unable to resist, she kissed his cheek and gave him
a quick pat on the arm.  The power of suggestion made her believe she
could already smell pine on him.  "Wrap up your toothpaste and hang it
from a tree branch," she said.  "Otherwise you'll attract bears."

"Bears!" He held her at arm's length and their eyes locked.  She could feel
her pulse quicken as it always did when he looked at her like that.  "I
don't want to attract- bears," he said.  Then he did something
impulsive, but she thought later, very Mulder.  He kissed her.  She
responded to him before she had time or presence of mind to do anything
else.

"They're closing the door," she said, shaking inside from surprise and
the unbidden warmth.  What had been so natural now felt awkward, not a
part of who they said they were.

"Why would bears want my toothpaste?" Mulder said as she herded him
toward the gate.  "It's a generic brand."  She folded her arms across
her chest, but her chuckle followed him down the tunnel.
********
Still smiling to herself Scully drove back to J.  Edgar Hoover
building in heavy traffic.  Her uneasy feeling of the early morning had
lifted with Mulder's plane.  Like most mornings that began with air travel,
she awakened with a vague feeling that something bad was about to
happen.  Instead, she thought as two fingers tapped her lips, something
good happened.  Something probably good.

Mulder fought this last minute training session.  He'd even gone to
Skinner and returned fuming.  She knew he hated to take one minute
from the X-Files, although he admitted they had nothing pending right
now something might come up.  Safe bet.

Personally, she was sorry she hadn't been chosen.  Although she
normally preferred vacations near water, right now the northwest woods
sounded so free, open, fresh and -- she slammed on the brakes to avoid
a car --uncluttered.  Even survival training would seem like a
vacation.  As a person who prized quiet and the natural order of things,
she would appreciate a deep woods experience more than Mulder, who
needed chaos to breathe.

Traffic came to a complete stop.  She strained to look over
the car in front to see what was holding things up.  It appeared
to be an accident.  Where were the police?  Never a
cop when you need one.  Now she had to turn right and she was too
far to the left.  Beside her the cell phone chirped. "Scully."

"Hey, that tape you sent-"

"Frohike?"

He sounded worried.  "That tape-"

"What tape?"

"The one you sent last night.  Scully, it-."

"I didn't send a tape." She signaled to get into the right lane.  The
blue Corvette in that lane inched forward, refusing to let her in.

Bastard, she thought.

"What's the matter with you - putting funny stuff in your brownies?"
Frohike said.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Scully said,
smiling at the woman in the red mini-van who allowed her to pull
over one lane.

"I'm trying to tell you there's nothing on it.  It's blank.
A blank white sheet of paper wrapped over a blank tape."

"So we're talking about a blank tape that I don't remember sending
you?" Scully said.

"Maybe it was Mulder.  Is he there?"

"I just put him on the plane.  I'm late for work."

"I don't like it," Frohike said.

Scully could picture his eyes and jowls drop his face into
a serious expression. "I've been late before.  They get over it."

"Whatever was on that tape was very important," Frohike said.

Scully's eyes fastened onto the driver of a green sedan in
the next lane.  He looked slow, inattentive.  The perfect victim.
"Can we do this later?"  Scully pressed the accelerator and
darted in front of a green sedan in hopes of getting in the correct
lane to make a right turn two blocks later.  The sedan's horn blared.
"I deserved that," she muttered to the driver behind her.

"What?" Frohike said.

"I'm a little busy here," she said. She tossed the phone down and
just barely got into the right turn lane in time.  Her turn signal
clicked, the garage gate groaned mechanically, then clanged open.

As she pulled into the parking garage Scully thought with some
envy that in a few hours Mulder would hear the chirp of crickets,
the chatter of squirrels, the distinctive whip of wind through tree
leaves.  He would smell evergreens, earth, wood flowers.  She would
inhale carbon monoxide fumes.  She had to shave her legs every day.  He
would grow a beard and his face would be scratchy to touch.  She
decided not to dwell on that part.

Her fresh-air fantasies now completely evaporated, Scully
stepped into the underground garage aroma of car exhaust and
motor oil.  The garage was hot and muggy; her clothes began to
stick to her almost at once.  After she locked the car she didn't
notice the smell anymore, she was thinking about the work
waiting for her in the basement and realized she had no clear
idea of what to do.  Her purposeful steps slowed.  She scowled in
confusion as she opened the glass doors that connected the
garage and the Hoover building.

The hallways in front of the parking garage contained a
labyrinth of closets, storage areas, vacant offices and one
water fountain.  It all smelled like paper -- the odor of woods
after being subjected to a bureaucracy.  Framed photos of law
enforcement officers and gold or wooden award plaques hung along
the walls, so familiar to Scully now she scarcely took note of
them anymore.

As she leaned down to take a drink from the fountain she focused
on one serious photo of a rotund man in a brown suit.  Agents
were certainly robust in those days.

"Agent Arnold Calvin.  Killed in the line of duty, 1948.
One of two killed that month.  FBI agents have always been
prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for duty.  You're late,
Agent Scully.  Come in.  Did you have an errand?"

Water dripped from her mouth but she felt all her saliva
dry up.  "Yes sir." Her feet moved.

"I understand you like tea.  I have some special tea brewing for you.
Sit here.  This reclines.  Put up your feet if you like."

Scully blinked a few times; she felt a little dizzy,
uncertain, and her stomach was upset. She had a funny taste in her mouth.
She shook herself from daydreaming, straightened her jacket and glanced
about the hallway.  Few people appeared in either direction.
She frowned and consulted her watch.  It was off.  At least she
hoped it was wrong.  Exactly how late was she? Surely Mulder's
plane hadn't been that far off schedule.
***********************
Scully was hiding something, Mulder thought as he watched Washington
grow smaller beneath him.  She was the worst liar he'd ever met and for
the last week she'd refused to look him in the eye, avoided close
situations where he could quiz her and actually seemed relieved when he
drew this wilderness-survival assignment at the last minute.

She was preoccupied and, in typical Scully fashion, threw up a wall
that he couldn't penetrate.  She even snapped at him twice last week.
He had gone over and over recent events for what he had said - or not
said - that might have sent her to the barricades.  Maybe it wasn't him.
A case? No.  Whatever it was, something was on her mind, something that
made her anxious and secretive. Something that she didn't want him to
know or share.  That hurt.

Yesterday everything shifted.  She came into the office as though the
problem resolved itself overnight.  He looked into the depth of her
eyes:  blue and clear.  No ripples.  He had stared in  bewilderment.
She cocked her head. Then her face glowed with understanding. "Stop
looking stricken.  It's only a month," she had said.  Amusement warmed
her smile.  He was so relieved to have her back he almost wiggled
like a puppy.

Mulder opened the newspaper, stared at the front page without seeing,
and finally turned the page.  Only a month.  He hated woods and trees.
He hated being cut off from everything. And he hated -- he didn't want
to think it, but the truth was right there on his lips  - he hated
leaving Scully.  He rubbed his mouth.  She was too surprised to punch
him and, in fact, unless it was wishful thinking, he detected some
enthusiasm on her part.

He couldn't imagine why he'd kissed her like that at the gate.  Maybe
it was the hide and seek she'd been playing. Maybe it was his
realization that a month without Scully was 30 days without true vision
or sound.  Maybe it was the look, the I'll-miss-you-look.  Mulder
flicked his tongue over his lips to see if any taste of her remained.
He missed her already and the ground she stood on was still visible
beneath him.  He groaned, squirmed in his seat, moved the newspaper over
his lap and straightened his tie.  Nobody was looking.

Good thing.
**************
Henry J.  Donaldson, assistant attorney general of the United States,
served at the pleasure of the Attorney General.  She wasn't very
pleased right then.

He scurried out of her office and down the hall with her sharp
reprimands ringing in his ears.  It wasn't his fault. He
wasn't an investigator and those he relied on had failed him.  That
wasn't enough to satisfy the gargoyle, however.  Donaldson fumed his
way down the corridor.

His pointed nose, wavy gray hair and thin frame, not to mention the
furtive way he scurried in and out of the AG's office, earned him the
nickname Squirrel among the law clerks.  Donaldson would have been
mortified if he'd known.  He considered himself a sophisticated bon
vivant, a decorated war hero, dapper dresser, and intellectual giant
whose wit captivated his interns and clerks.  His wife and son adored
him, his lover waited on him, and the young blonde man in the third
floor research office went down on him at least once a week.

His appeal was lost on the Attorney General, however.  She only wanted
results.  Henry Donaldson was short on results.  His biggest and most
confidential assignment, given him personally by the Attorney General
at his request, lay sprawled across the front page of "The Washington
Post" and a dozen major dailies.

Now the AG wanted to know why he was no closer to explaining the
ghostly robbery that appear on the front pages.  And if he couldn't
handle this foray into criminal matters would he like to return to tax
and security fraud? Revisit Treasury Department legal matters? Look
into insider trader schemes?  Donaldson had no desire to retrace
his career path.

Fortunately, the media didn't know that the bank robbery carried the
same MO as a major securities heist five states west just two months
ago, a brokerage house robbery in New York four months earlier and
God knows what else.

A California bond company lost millions in bearer bonds a year ago and
a clerk was killed.  In New York a trader died of a heart attack after
a robbery there.  Each case contained similar facts: office workers or
security guards - all solid citizens -- caught flat-footed late at night
stealing from employers.  None of proceeds had surfaced.  In each
case the authorities had a suspect and in each case the suspect claimed
to be possessed.  Rational explanations for all the robberies abounded
-arrests made, convictions in one case, plea bargain in another. Until
this bank robbery cast a pall over it all.  All the same MO --
except there was a living witness this time as well as the suspect who
claimed to be possessed by a black woman.

Furthermore, the witness swore an angel comforted him during this ordeal.
He even had the police artist sketch the face for him.  What Donaldson
had in his file was a pastel drawing that could be every fine-boned
woman with dark hair between 35 and 45 years old in the United States.

Henry Donaldson knew that face.

The first time he saw that picture he had to fight back tears.  He felt
like he had cramps and nearly doubled over from the pain of longing.
The whole world had suddenly gone mad.  He took a deep breath to calm
himself, to push back anything inside him that was weak and soft.
The pressure was too much for his feminine side.  He was losing his
grip.  Correction: he had lost it.

That was the source of his current dilemma.  He couldn't do the things
he had done 30 years - no, even five years ago.  Age, distraction, high
living and divided attentions cost him his power of concentration and
his ability to focus.  That was the real problem.  Thank God he had
always possessed a compartmentalized mind.  He always had the
ability to shut things off in little boxes until he needed them.  He
was a natural.  Now things were rapidly spinning out of control.
Donaldson wanted a Hershey bar and a shot of scotch, not necessarily
in that order.

He had a hunch about these so-called angels or ghosts -- ever since
rumors about the robberies began circulating around Justice.
Donaldson had been so shocked by what he found he immediately
volunteered to take on the task of resolving the case.

He had no intention of letting anyone else uncover connections, however
tenuous, between him and the two ghosts in the Virginia bank.  He'd be
ruined.  Exposed.

Henry J. Donaldson knew the truth of the statement that some people in
your life were never meant to leave you.

In his post-luncheon meeting with the AG, Donaldson tried to tell her
these cases were just strong coincidences and criminals trying to use
the insanity defense.  She accepted neither his rational
explanations nor the ghostly reports.  She wanted something of more
substance.

So far the attorney general's office had succeeded in keeping most of
the information about the crime spree out of the newspapers.  That
would not last, the AG warned.  Donaldson had a plan.  It was solid and
scary.  He outlined it for her.  Plans did not impress the AG.  Plans
are not solutions - her favorite phrase.

At least he bought more time, a few months.  He convinced her the crimes
had a pattern and that pattern would buy them months -- the time they
needed to set up a trap.  He skirted the details of this trap: the AG
wouldn't have believed him if he'd told her anyway.

He hardly believed it himself.  He thought it was all behind him.  Far
behind him.  Perhaps it could still be.  No, he had to stay the course
or else all the sacrifices - everything was in vain.

God, Donaldson hated the air of superiority around that woman, the AG.
Where others saw competency he saw politics and affirmative action at
their worst.  He stopped outside his office to straighten his French
cuffs and make certain his trousers had maintained their perfect crease
through this ordeal.

Now that he thought about it, he hated a lot of women right then,
including but not limited to the treacherous ones he hunted, the
tight-assed one who could flush them out, and the weak one who failed
to produce for him.  Women had taken over his life, Henry Donaldson
thought.

He despised being under a woman's control.  And he wouldn't stand for
it.  He never had and he never would.  He would not be his father and
smile while a woman emasculated him.

The Attorney General had no idea how badly Donaldson wanted this bank
robbing angel in his hot hands.  He felt his career, his life, his
experience, his training all pointed toward this one defining event in
his life.  He was equal to the challenge.  He took another deep breath.
He may have lost a step, but he was smart.  He thought ahead, planned.
He was still strong.  His handmade shirt suddenly felt tight.

Donaldson pursed his lips and his green eyes narrowed into
slits.  Stupid women jeopardized everything he had worked toward.
He pictured himself putting his thumbs on the cartilage in this
so-called angel's neck, squeezing slowly until her eyes bulged
out, the bones crushed and she struggled uselessly for air.  He
could do that; he'd done it to grown men in the Vietnam War.
That had been 30 years ago when he and a Marine named Walter
Skinner served in the same combat zone.  Skinner served with the
grunts in country; Donaldson was a spook.

Now they would be in arena together again and, as before,
on the same side with different purposes.  Donaldson smiled to
remember what this day held.  His gloom dissipated somewhat.
Walter Skinner had an agent under him that Donaldson planned to
grill and he couldn't wait to burn her lovely little butt.  Her
self-assured facade would crack; she would be scared and
confused, sick.  His spirits lifted and he felt a measure
of control return.

"Good morning, Mr. Donaldson," said a clerk in his office.

"Morning, Miss Ames," he said.  "I read your brief on Mann
v.  Ohio.  I have a question about the appropriate role of the
police in the search, but otherwise, excellent."  The clerk's
eyes widened.  She started to say something, but he held up his
hand.  "It's nice to have a bright young person like you working
with me.  Now, where the heck is that black FBI personnel file?
It was just here..."

He noticed he needed a manicure.
****
Mulder smelled so badly he disgusted himself.  He pushed
aside the soup of roots and berries his survival team of FBI
agents made for dinner.  His stomach was in revolt.  What he
wouldn't give right now for a steak.  His feet hurt, his hands
were raw from rope burns, and his stomach growled.  He wished a
bear would venture into the camp.  After almost three weeks of
nuts and roots, the half dozen men assembled around the campfire
would make short work of the largest grizzly.

What he wouldn't give to try out Scully's theory,
brush his teeth and attract a bear.  But he had no toothpaste.
All the trainees had been allowed to keep was their dignity and
a canteen of water. He couldn't shake an uneasy feeling about Scully.

The incident today with an agent from Dallas only reinforced it.  As
Mulder's life went, the drop had been a minor scare.  Mulder
stood atop a cliff with the group leader, tethered to the agent
from Dallas who was climbing up a cliff face.  The Texan lost his
footing, and tumbled down the cliff.  Mulder leaned against the
rope just as it pulled taut, nearly dragging him off the edge.

"Mulder! Don't let me go!"  The voice over the cliff sounded hollow,
far away -- and very familiar.

The rope cut into Mulder and burned his hands as he
attempted to pull the Dallas agent over the top.  As the man's
hands appeared over the edge Mulder leaned down and held out a
helping hand.  Instead of the burly Dallas agent, the face that
appeared over the cliff was Scully's.  He grabbed for her with
both hands and yanked her up.  She was light as a child.

"Okay, I'm fine!" the Texan said, panting.  He sat up and
wiped his brow.  "Partner, I sure am glad you were there..."
Mulder peered over the edge.  No one there but the rest of
the team standing several feet below and looking up anxiously.
Some shielded their eyes; others shouted "what happened?" None
of them was a woman, he noticed.

That night with the stars and the small campfire as the
only light, Mulder folded his hands behind his head and thought
about it.  He knew what Scully would say: she was on his mind and
he projected her image onto the man.  Mulder tried to find a
comfortable place in the needle and leaf bed he'd made for
himself on the forest floor.  The Texan, who snored loud enough
to register on a seismograph, settled nearby.

Maybe Scully was right.  Maybe she worried his subconscious
because he knew he'd crossed a dangerous line with her at the
airport, an unspoken line.  Kisses in stress and on New Year's
Eve were not like sweet kisses in airport gateways.  That was
stupid of him.  But unless he mentioned it, Scully would overlook
it.  She must tire of always being the strong one. Mulder smiled
into the blackness of the forest. He was going to mention it.

Campfire discussions ignited a new restlessness in Mulder.
Two of the married men missed their wives and didn't mind
sharing after the first week.  One conversation lead to another
to fend off boredom.  He refused to talk about his partner - he
only said he was teamed with a redhaired woman.  It seemed a
betrayal to say more-- but the men had already begun to kid him.

"Man that closed mouth is protecting something real
important," the Dallas agent had said and the men around the
fire laughed.  Mulder liked the Texan, but he didn't care for
that laugh.

Lying a thousand miles from temptation he admitted he
wanted something more from the partnership than she did-than he
thought she did.  He never asked what she wanted.  She never
initiated anything between them, but Mulder knew in his soul
that all they had to do was reach out and it was all there for
them.  Lovers, friends, partners.  The question in his mind was not
if but when.  And who.  As with most aspects of their lives, it
was a contest of wills - who would prove more needy? Who would
break first? Who would put the friend and partner at risk to
have it all?

Any other time his thoughts went to Scully this way his
hand went to his crotch.  But this time, this time he broke out
in a cold sweat of fear.  Now that he'd decided to approach her
about it, he dreaded it.

He could talk to her about spaceships, alien invasions, and mutants
while they were knee deep in blood, but he couldn't tell her that he
wanted a close encounter of another kind.  He could paint vivid
pictures of universal destruction, evil and darkness, but didn't know
how to show her all that she brought into his world.

He could be professional, but not personal -- not that personal,
anyway.  Maybe this far along in the game he didn't have the
right to anything different.  For years he'd been so obsessed
with finding his sister he had no clear vision of anything
beyond the X-Files.

She'd accepted that as a condition of their partnership,
embraced his mission and, fascinated by what she could not
explain, made it her own at huge personal cost.  He'd already
taken so much from her, maybe asking for something more was
obscene.

The belly-tightening undercurrent of sexuality that ran
beneath the surface of their partnership was one of the staples
of his life.  Somewhere along the line he'd grown fearful of
pushing it beyond talk, beyond a quick touch or a comforting
embrace.  Initially he thought she'd come to take his work and
possibly his life from him.  Then he wallowed so deep in self-
pity and doubt he could scarcely see her.

After that he feared to trespass on her innocence - she
seemed to him innocent of the darker forces of nature at
work in the world.  Life as his partner initiated her quiclder
and painfully.  Now he feared she'd vanish if she knew how he felt.

Through the hiking, repelling, fishing and daylight hours
of survival training, Mulder had little time to think of
anything but the task at hand.  At night, looking through the
trees at the stars, he thought about food with no fiber, a beer,
and a comfortable bed with Scully in it.

(Headers and disclaimer on Chapter One)

Prison of Innocents Chapter 2 of 20
 

Scully knew she'd been drugged.  Her eyes burned blurry and
her limbs seemed disjointed, like they didn't belong to her.  Her
mouth tasted like burnt leather.  She wasn't frightened; she knew
she was in a safe place, but there was an annoying chirp in the
air.

Her alarm sounded far away and -only it wasn't the alarm,
it was her cell phone.  "Where are you?" It was Ichabod - no, a
man who looked like Ichabod Crane.  Her attorney.  Waters.  Her
attorney's name was Bobby Waters.  No, Byron Waters.

Her head ached and her dry mouth creaked when she spoke.
"Overslept." It was a lie.  She'd been drugged.  She couldn't tell
him that.  He wouldn't believe her and her credibility would
suffer with one of the few people in the world who still thought
she had any.  Yet the unmistakable signs of it dragged on her
body.

It dawned on her she wasn't in her own bed.  She was in
Mulder's.  She lay naked in Mulder's bed.

She sat up, brushed the hair from her face and tried to
remember how she got here.  The more she tried to recall last
night's events the sicker she became.  An image of Walter Skinner
flashed through her mind.  Beyond that she couldn't imagine nor
did she have time to think before nausea ripped through her.

She barely made it to the bathroom.  She hadn't eaten much yesterday
and the greenish bile that came up was acrid.  Her stomach heaved
again.  She finally collapsed on cool tile under the sink and
opened her swollen eyes.  She realized from what she saw that
she'd vomited before in this bathroom, on her clothes.

She had to brush her teeth; she needed a drink of water.
Struggling to her feet Scully splashed water on her face and
flung open the medicine cabinet to see if Mulder kept aspirin,
an extra toothbrush.  Only aspirin - she took several - and a
dried up tube of toothpaste.  Her head felt ready to explode out
the front of her eyes.  She had to content herself with putting
crusty toothpaste on her finger.  Scully looked at it with
distaste, stuck it in her mouth to rub her teeth and tongue
vigorously.

She splashed her face over and over.  The cool water felt
good on her hot face and it fell across her neck and chest,
spilling down onto the floor.  She frowned, noticing small bruise
on the left side of her abdomen.  From? She couldn't think.
Scully grabbed a towel lying over the side of the tub.  The towel
smelled faintly of Mulder.  She buried her face in the towel and
rubbed hard.  She missed him so much her skin hurt.  Mulder.  She'd
gone looking for him last night.

No, not him.  Someone else.  She had gone looking for someone to find
Mulder.  That could only be Skinner.  Had she arrived at his apartment?
She must have.  She noticed another mystery bruise on the inside of her
right arm.  It didn't look like a needle mark.  It looked more like a
thumb print.

She staggered in her efforts to turn her body this way and that in a
search for needle entry.  Scully couldn't remember how she came by that
bruise or the one on her abdomen.  Her mind refused to focus.  Ideas
and random images bounced off her head like rapid-fire laser lights.

Only one notion remained constant.  Drugs.  Skinner.  A seething
fury began in her toes, burned its way through her loins into her
chest and incinerated the cobwebs in her head.

She wiped off the dark skirt of her suit and examined the
blouse.  Beyond immediate repair, she could see.  She tried on the
jacket without a blouse and decided it would pass if she kept it
buttoned.  Her pantyhose was still in one piece, thank God, but
she'd thrown up on her shoes.  She washed them off in the
bathroom sink, and pulled them on her feet as she waited for the
elevator.

She would kill Walter Skinner.  She would rip him apart
with her bare hands and once they heard the facts no jury of her
peers would convict her.  They might even canonize her.

Where the hell was her weapon? She didn't have one.  Skinner took
it.  That's why she was meeting with Ichabod - no, Waters.  Skinner
took her gun and her badge.  She would kill Skinner.  Saint Dana
of Washington.  It had a ring to it.
*********
"This is what angels look like," one of the survivalists
shouted to Mulder.  The Army helicopter began its descend to the
rendezvous site in the clearing beside them.  He clapped Mulder's
shoulder.  "Hell, I hope not," the man from the Dallas field office,
drawled.  "I had something a little-softer in mind." And he
illustrated with the wave of his hands.  All the men laughed.

Mulder wondered if they were half as anxious
to get out of the woods as he was.  What had he learned
from his month in the wilderness-that he hated eating tree bark?
That your partner could be trusted to haul your ass out of
trouble? That keeping your powder dry was good advice? He
already knew all that.  So he'd learned nothing.  One of the men
punched him in the side.  It had served to reminded of what it was
like to feel accepted.

He'd known that once, but he'd lost it in the many
years after "Spooky" Mulder had been born.  He appreciated the
camaraderie of his survival school buddies and found himself
enjoying their company.  They talked of football, baseball,
women, their partners, their jobs.  He hadn't done that in a long
time.  They liked and respected him now.  In a month these men
would probably laugh at any Mulder or X-Files jokes they heard.

They listened politely around camp and a few even seemed to
think his work was worthwhile.  The Texan in particular asked
intelligent questions.  Still, he knew the agents did not
understand how tightly his life and his self-worth remained tied to
the X-Files.  No one did.

Correction, he thought.  One person understood.  Mulder
wondered what had happened in the basement while he was gone.
Idly he speculated on how Scully would handle any anomalies that
might have filtered down the stairs.  He was amused to find he
had no idea - she was constantly surprising him.

Mulder grinned.  He'd turn up the heat a little.  It was time.
Somehow he didn't think it would surprise her.

The men climbed aboard the helicopter for the ride to base
full of good spirits and fell silent as the bird lifted off,
each anticipating his return home.  The married ones smiled, the
single ones grinned.  Mulder floundered in the middle.  "How are
the Yankees?" he shouted at the pilot.  The man gave the thumbs
down signal and that broke the tension - the trainees began to
whoop and stomp, reveling in their survival, their freedom.

"Agent Mulder?" A corporal holding his cap down on his
head took Mulder's arm the minute he alighted from the chopper.
The corporal guided Mulder toward the military airport terminal.
When he could speak in a normal tone the soldier said: "I've got
orders to wrap you in cotton and bring you to Washington."

Mulder understood.  He wasn't to communicate with anyone
but this soldier or have contact with the outside world until he
landed in Washington where, presumably, someone would pick him
up with further orders.  "Corporal, could you send someone to the
PX for me? I promise to stand in the shower for the next two
hours."

The soldier, who'd been downwind of Mulder, grinned.
"Yes sir, I believe you.  What do you need?"

After he told the corporal what he wanted, Mulder smiled
with the first anticipation of his homecoming reception.
He was, therefore, bitterly disappointed and somewhat
embarrassed to find Skinner instead of Scully at the base
airport when he arrived.

He felt ridiculous carrying a fuzzy brown bear under his arm.
He tried to hide it with his duffel bag.  Skinner gave no sign
that he noticed.  He merely ordered Mulder into the car.

"How was the trip?" Skinner said, nodding to the soldier
who waved them off the base.

"I am tired of picking leaves out of my shorts if that's
what you mean," Mulder said.

Skinner's smile was small and vanished quickly.  They drove
on in silence until Mulder said: "Why the secrecy?"

"We have a situation." Skinner reached onto the seat and
put a thick envelope in Mulder's lap.

Mulder took the envelope.  "What's this?"

"Came up while you were gone." Skinner focused on the
road.

"What's the mystery?" He pulled out the case file and
laughed.  "The names, dates, places are all blacked out," he
said.  "Are you joking?"

"It pertains to a law enforcement officer.  I wanted your
take without any prejudice."

"Do I know this guy?"

"Read the file."

Mulder read.  Finally, he said, "Okay.  Who is this? The
only mystery I see is why this man isn't in custody.
Circumstantial evidence alone it's a slam-dunk embezzlement,
dead to rights on the grand larceny, and little iffy conspiracy.
Is that what you wanted to know?"

"There's been an arrest.  It's not that simple," Skinner
said.

"It looks that simple.  Not an X-File."

"You of all people should know that things aren't always
what they seem."

"This is one for the Stupid Criminals Hall of Fame," he
said and dropped the file on his lap.

"There's another case.  I suspect you'll find this one more
challenging."

"You don't waste any time, do you," Mulder said.  "I still
have dirty socks in my bag."

"I can't wait for you to do your laundry, Agent Mulder.
I'm short-handed," Skinner said.

Skinner was right.  This case was more challenging.  It was
a bank robbery that he'd read about the morning he left, the one
Scully said would be cleared by the time he got back.  The most
interesting aspects of the case were the statements of the two
witnesses: bank guard Charlie Duncan, the victim, and his former
partner Andy Paige, the accused in the robbery.  None of the
stolen bonds recovered, ghostly women, millions of dollars.
Mulder lost his place.  His eyes drooped from jet lag and
exhaustion.

"I know what Scully says- that the guard shot his partner,
what are we doing on this case, no such thing as ghosts-" Mulder
said.

"Safe to say she doesn't care," Skinner said finally.

Mulder leaned back in the passenger seat, yawned again,
and scratched his stomach.  It felt so good to be clean and full
of red meat.  He fantasized about soft pillows, clean sheets,
Scully, a hot meal, and a 24-hour nap - not necessarily in that
order.  He smiled to think how domesticated he'd become - sheets
wouldn't have occurred to him a few years ago.  A bed didn't
occur to him.  That was her doing.  Before he even realized she'd
done it.  He wondered idly what other cases they had pending,
then considered how little he cared about the answer.  He didn't
care about the files that lay in his lap.  Mulder hardly
recognized himself.  Had to be all that fresh air, he thought.
*****************
When Skinner pulled up in front of Mulder's apartment he
looked up to see a light burning there.  He wanted to say
something, knew he should.  He couldn't.  Initially he felt he
should be the one to tell Mulder about Scully.  He intended to
tell him what he could until he saw the bear.  Scully was right.
Mulder would never believe her guilty.

Skinner knew what Mulder been like before he partnered
with Scully.  He had a feeling that things would be infinitely
worse for a while and he wondered for a moment if Mulder would
even be salvageable.  Skinner had done his best for the man - and
for Scully too, though they might never believe it.  Now it was
up to them.

"I'll remember what you said about this first case,"
Skinner said.  "Keep the files.  Bring them in tomorrow.  Take your
time coming in."

Skinner had to proceed very slowly.

What he really wanted to do was twist Henry Donaldson's neck off his
shoulders.  Why hadn't the man stayed dead? He thought when Donaldson,
his aide, and his jeep driver disappeared across the Cambodian border
that was the last anyone would see of him.  And for two years they were
right.  But Donaldson came back - drifting down the Mekong River
in the bottom of a boat to safety.  Now 30 years later he shows
up on the Attorney General's staff.  Skinner's boss again.

Skinner peeled away from the Mulder's curb like a teenager.
****************
Mulder stood at the curb with a small smile and tightened his
grip his duffel.  He took the front stairs of his building two
at a time.  Slipping the duffel bag onto his shoulder he had a smile
on his face that didn't show his teeth, but his anticipation shone
through.

Scully stood at the window overlooking the street; the only light
in the apartment was a desk lamp that had no bulb in it when he
left a month ago.  She had, in fact, been sitting in his
apartment, staring into his fish tank and thinking since an
afternoon visit with her mother.  She listened there to the
silence, the creak of the boards, the slamming of doors in the hall,
and one telephone call.  She let the answering machine pick it up.
It was a man with a Southern accent in an airport or other public
place.

"Mulder? It's Dallas.  Ah, listen, I'm here with some of the other
guys - just heard about your partner.  It's been all over the
news.  Anything we can do, uh, call-Uh-h, bye." Sounded like
Mulder made some friends.  She couldn't say the same.

When she heard a car pull up and a door slam in the street below
her heart jumped.  She instinctively knew Mulder was home.  She
watched him alight from the car with a spring in his step.  He
hadn't called from the airport, hadn't called when he got back
from training.

Skinner drove him straight home, no stops at the
office or her apartment.  Glad to be back too, she thought, and
followed his leap up the front stairs.  What's going on, Mulder?
*****************************
He dropped the duffel just inside the door.

"Scully?" Half-hidden in the shadows, he could only see
she wore dark slacks and a light shirt - and wore them well.  Her
fingers played with the cross on her neck as she did when she
was nervous or thinking.  He was a little on edge himself.

"Home is the hunter.  Thought you might like to see the bear that
wandered into camp." He handed her the stuffed toy.

Scully examined the bear at arm's length.  "Hm-m.  No
external injuries." She came into the full light and the sight
jolted him back a half step.  She looked ravaged:
thin, sunken dark circles around her eyes, pale, high cheekbones.
His stomach hit bottom first then he thought: cancer.

"You look-fit," she said.  "Forest air must agree with you."

Her gaze wandered to the files under his arm and her lips parted
slightly in dismay.   Mulder followed her eyes and he knew.

All of it made sense now --the training, the special ride home,
the blacked out file on the corrupt officer.  They were after Scully.

He cursed himself for a fool and threw the folders across the room.
He lost his focus for one minute, relaxed for one second, and they
had gone for his jugular.

The papers made a series of fluttery noises in
the silence and scattered across the floor.  He wanted to take
her in his arms and tell her over and over how sorry he was,
that he didn't know.  His muscles ached he wanted it so badly.
She looked to be hanging on by her last thread of dignity.  The
comfort and reassurance he wanted to bring would only please him
and break her.

So he didn't move.  He stood there clenching his teeth, seething.
"What's going on?"

Her shoulders lifted and fell.  "Anything they want,
apparently." Her voice sounded strong.  She appeared to be all
business; the bear caught in the crook of her arm was an
incongruity.

"As you probably read, I've been arrested on
charges of grand larceny, embezzlement, and conspiracy.
Signatures forged.  Witnesses bought and paid for.  Since leaving
the bureau I've been working with a private investigator to
crack some of their stories.  He's thorough, but not imaginative.
My brother Bill's choice." She smiled without mirth.

"Langly coaxed some words off a sheet of 24 pound, all cotton fiber
official government stationary that you'll find interesting.  And
there's a blank VHS tape.  Messenger service delivered it to
Frohike from me.  I don't remember sending it.  Messenger's gone."

For the first time she seemed to notice the bear in her arm.  "Not
much, actually." The fish tank air filter gurgled in the stillness.

Her control slipped a little and Mulder couldn't be sure if she
was talking to him or the bear.  "I always thought justice moved
slowly.  On the other side, it moves fast, very fast."

"Why didn't you find me?"

"Byers and Frohike flew to Seattle and spent a few days
hiking around.."

"We were in deep.  We even got lost - a first in that
program by the way," he said.

"No convenience stores to consult?" A flash of the old
Scully blazed by, flickered, and went out.

"Skinner could reach me."

"He's protecting you."

"I don't need anyone protecting me from you-" Mulder
kicked his duffel bag across the floor with a vicious grunt. "-or
anything about you."

The bag twirled across the wood floor; his words spun in
the air.

Her mouth opened and closed without making a sound.

He sighed, looked to the ceiling for inspiration.  "Sorry.  I'm
sorry - never there when you need me."

She laid a hand lightly on his arm.  After a few deep breaths he
covered it with his own.  He grasped the bear's ears, eased it out
of her arms and tossed it on the couch. "That's supposed to be a
souvenir, not a substitute," he said, pulling her into a hug.

Scully slipped her hands around his waist and laid her head
against his chest.  He could hear what he knew must be the hallmarks of
this ordeal-- emptiness relieved only by sweaty outbreaks of blinding panic
- ease out of her in a long, low sigh.  His body close to hers felt solid,
safe.

"We've been in worse places." His voice resonated through his chest.

"Lackluster, Wyoming comes to mind," she said.

"Frayser, Minnesota."

"Rabbit Hutch, Ky."

"Oh, yeah, a lot worse places," Mulder said.  He drew her
down beside him on the couch and waited.  They sat in identical
poses, hands folded, touching knees, touching shoulders.  She
told him what she knew, what she suspected - but he wondered if she
could bring herself to say the worst of what she feared.

"I seemed to have lost time again," she said.

"Sounds like a normal reaction," he said.  When she didn't
say anything, he added: "It's not an alien quickie.  That would
be my last thought."

"That was my first," she said.

"Scully!"

She surrendered her first real smile.  "Until the a few days ago I
wasn't sure.  Then I knew.  They drugged me.  Two weeks after all this
started.  I was sick.  I attacked Skinner the next day..at a hearing.
I accused him-nearly assaulted him.  I don't know why.  I must have
had a reason."

"Skinner's not the bad guy," Mulder said.

"I'm inclined to agree.  How can you be sure? You're always
so sure of him."

"It's logical."

"Logical?" One of her eyebrows shot up.

"Skinner has nothing to gain and everything to lose by
all this."

"I thought so too, at first."

"He put me on the case, and he may have pointed me in the
right direction." Mulder said.  Scully looked confused.  Mulder
nodded toward the scattered papers.  "That's not just your file.
It's that bank robbery.  The suspect says he is possessed by-"

Scully groaned.

"-Skinner must think they're related," Mulder finished.

"That case -that's diversion," she said. "It's nothing."

His pulse picked up -- his body's unconscious testimony that it wasn't
nothing.  He decided to drop it and come back later.  "You said you
were missing time.  Those blank times..do you think you were
hypnotized?"

"I believe we've been through the question of hypnotism before.
I can't --"

"--because a post-hypnotic suggestion could lead to-"

"Successful hypnosis is voluntary process," Scully said sharply.  "Nobody
can hypnotize you against your will.  And before you say it, no one
can give you a post-hypnotic suggestion that compels you to do
anything against your nature.  I can promise you that prison is
against my nature."

"Psychosis-inducing drugs?"

"That's what I suspect.  I'm having trouble identifying it.
There are some, not many that can be ingested without taste.  Of
those, fewer still that produce these symptoms.  There are no
needle marks -- that I can find."

"Did you do a full drug screen right after these..episodes?
Blood work? Urine test?"

"My attorney discouraged it," she said.

"So what did you find?"

The corners of her mouth turned up slightly.  "Nothing.  All
the tests returned as expected.  I even did a hormone test and
all that showed were markedly increased levels of testosterone.
That worried me at first.  But as it developed, it was nothing.  I
did a re-test a few days ago and all hormone levels were back to
normal."  She smiled to herself, then at him in a curious manner.

"Scully?"

"There would have to be way of administering these drugs
that I wouldn't notice-or recall.  How is that possible?"

Mulder grinned.  "You attacked Skinner? Leave any marks?"

She rolled her eyes.  She turned to him and he realized they were so close
her nose was almost touching his face. He should have moved away; she
should have. He was clean-shaven. She leaned over just a little closer
and touched his cheek as though inspecting the sharpness of his razor.
His mouth nearly watered at what - logically - came next.  She dropped her
eyes and rubbed her lips.  Now she looked embarrassed.  Scully would.
Hormones
or not, it would rankle her to appear as randy as an adolescent in heat.
Her cheeks colored as evidence of Mulder's theory.

Mulder put the bear in her lap.  "Hey, don't worry."

"I've assembled what I've got in files on the desk.  I
don't know what Skinner gave you.." She glanced at the scattered
papers across the room.

"Ideas mostly," Mulder said.

"You haven't said a word about demonic possession, body
snatching, doppelgangers, transcendental states, or the
possibility that I'm guilty of these charges."

"Some ideas are so far-fetched they aren't worth
discussing."  She caught her bottom lip with her teeth and nodded.

Mulder thought he saw a genuine smile waiting to break out.  His
fingers under her chin turned her face up to him to be sure.  Her
eyes shone, then faded into something dusky and sensual.  Mulder
had the distinct impression he was about to get luckier than a
man deserved.

Scully's lips closed on his and her fingers slid between
the buttons of his shirt.  Mulder moved to bring her closer, but
the bear lay wedged between them.  Scully didn't notice; she
appeared too preoccupied with his lips, his teeth, and his
tongue.  Her other hand wandered up his back, a fingertip teased
his spine.  Mulder's entire body sprang to life.

"I did miss you."

"I noticed," he said, bending to take her mouth again.

"I have to go." One minute she was afire in his arms, the
next she was gone.  "I have an errand to run." She strode to the
door and paused long enough to fling back: "Welcome home,
Mulder."

He sat on the couch stunned. Smooth line -"I noticed".  He
nearly smacked himself in the head.  He couldn't have handled that
worse.  The brown bear beside him agreed.  "Shut up!" Mulder growled.
He slumped back on the couch into something hard.  He'd
stabbed himself in the ass with the corner of one of Scully's
medical school textbooks.  When he flung it on the floor, several note
cards fell out.
***********************
Odd pieces of paper floated off the bed.  Mulder lay
squirming uncomfortably between the sheets.  He wasn't enjoying the
comforts of a civilized bed as much as he expected.  He had, in
fact, just finished going over the material scattered across his
apartment when he heard a scrapping noise outside.  It didn't
recur so he dismissed it and tucked the bear under the
sheets next to him as an afterthought.

Scully generated a lot of paperwork - she appeared to have written
down everything she saw or heard in the month-long course of her
investigation.  Her attention to detail was, as always, impressive
and this time, excessive.  He saw a connection immediately between
what was happening with Scully and the ghost in the bank guard's story.
He wondered why she hadn't mentioned it.  Surely Scully would
notice the same thing he did --unless she hadn't seen the second
file.  Or, unless her mental state had been compromised.

He didn't like the direction his thoughts were taking.  He had just
made a grab for another pillow on the bed when he heard the
apartment lock catch with a sharp click.  It was after midnight.

Mulder only had time to register a faint perfume on the
pillow in his hand when the intruder propelled him into action.
He pushed back the covers and grabbed the gun on the nightstand.
In the living room he heard rustling, a crack at the coffee
table, followed by a sharp "shit!".  He eased cautiously to the
bedroom door and peered into the dark.  His eyes took a moment to
adjust.

"Scully?"

Headers and disclaimer on Chapter One)

Prison of Innocents Chapter 3 of 20

Scully left the door open.  Her shoes, blouse and bra were gone.  In
the light from the hallway Mulder saw them strewn just inside his
door.  Scully herself was in the process of ripping off the rest of
her clothes on the way to the bedroom when she staggered into a nearby
chair and knocked it over.  He caught her up in his arms as she fell.

"Sick-" That's all she managed to say before she was.  He helped her
into the bathroom, sat her on the toilet seat and dampened one end of a
towel to clean her up.  He had to hold her - the bear had more stuffing.
She shivered, goose bumps covering her bare flesh.  Finding nothing else
convenient to put on her, he peeled off his own t-shirt and pulled it
over her head.

"What happened," he said, angry with himself for letting her go alone.

She tried to put her hands on his shoulders but failed. "Sleep-" she
murmured and fell against him.  He picked her up and carried her to the
bed.  She nestled down and sighed into his pillow as though snuggling
there was the most natural thing in the world.  Before he could decide
what to do next, she was asleep.

Mulder grabbed up the pillow beside her, intending to go to the living
room, then tossed it back on the bed.  It seemed absurd to sleep on his
couch after a month in the woods and toss and turn there while he
worried about what was happening with Scully in here.  He went into the
living room to clean up the mess.  When he returned, he stopped in the
bedroom doorway with his heart in his throat.

Her bare legs and arms glistened in the light from the outside windows.
He could see one perfectly smooth cheek peeking out from under his tee
shirt.   Hair lay across her face, the pillow and her arm.  She curled up
across her side and most of his.  He groaned.

Her breathing was shallow and labored, the way he would expect from
someone ill and asleep.  The muscles on her legs rippled and she moved
them slightly.  Her arm clawed at the pillow and her breathing remained
rapid and difficult as though she had to drag in air from a great
distance.

She inched over to cover more ground on the free side of the bed.
How could such a little body take up so much room, he wondered.
He slipped into his side of the bed, nudged her over gently, and
threw the covers atop both of them.

Only then did it strike him that his woodland fantasies
had come true - he was in a comfortable bed with a nearly naked
Scully.  Not quite how he pictured it, however.  Mulder propped up
his pillow lengthwise and rested against the headboard.  His hand
caressed her forehead, her hair, and her shoulders.  His fingers
traced her hairline, pushed the hair off her face, trailed down
to the softness of her shoulders.  He slid his hand under the
neck of the big shirt and sprayed his fingers across her back.

She was beautiful and her hot skin slid beneath his touch.  He
wondered if she had a fever.  He teased the hair on the back of
her neck.  This was not a good idea, he thought, not a good idea
at all.  He was all dressed up and nowhere to go for the second
time since he got home.  He sincerely hoped this was not a
harbinger of days to come.

He should never have let her go out alone.  He should have
noted her behavior was erratic, her judgment impaired.  She had
surprised him by announcing she had an errand and leaving in the
space of one minute.  Now she was ill, hurting, and he could have
stopped it.  He leaned down, pulled the neck of the shirt aside
and kissed her bare shoulder.  Sorry, Scully.  Again.  Still.

The depth of his feelings for her surprised him - and
would probably shock her.  He wouldn't have many chances like
this, Mulder thought, to be tender with her without the fear of
ridicule or rejection, to enjoy the feel of her on his hands, to
comfort her without trespassing on her strength, to love her
without jeopardizing what she held dear.

He shouldn't be doing this, Mulder thought with a stab of guilt.
She would think him some kind of pervert if she caught him.
Probably not, since she already thought him a pervert.
He groped for the bear in the bed and tucked it under her free
arm.  She took it in next to her left breast with a murmur.

He wondered why she couldn't take him in as easily.

He could be - wanted to be -- a gentle, considerate lover
for her.  She might be surprised to find he aspired to be those
things for her.  He surprised himself.  He could do it,
since that's what Scully needed, deserved.  Maybe a month in the
woods had been good for him after all.  Put things in
perspective.  Allowed him some space to examine what had been a
pretty sad life until she came along.

Mulder traced the length of one bare arm. Maybe she had tired of
waiting for him to take the first step.  Or maybe he didn't measure up
to her expectations.  Maybe today was an aberration, a stress-related
passion.  Definitely he should slide out of bed and sleep on the
couch before he went too far.  She moaned and he pulled his hand
away from the nape of her neck.

He adjusted his pillow and caught her scent on his pillowcase again.  He
realized she'd slept on it before. Wondering how that played into the
larger problem, he thought about what he did know, what he had read.

Scully wasn't drunk, though she acted like it in many ways.  She'd
thrown up enough to get most drugs or alcohol out of her system-unless
they were injected instead of ingested as she thought this afternoon.

Mulder switched on the bedside light and began examining her arms and
legs with a professional eye.  He saw what might be a faint bruise on
the inside of her right arm, but no needle mark anywhere.  He pulled
aside her hair and checked behind her ears, down her neck.  Her
breathing eased somewhat, becoming not quite so desperate.  Her color
had gone from winter white to slightly pink - that was a good sign.

Satisfied that she was all right, Mulder switched off the
light, pounded his pillow into submission and prepared for a
long night clutching the side of the bed.  Still better than the
forest - or his floor.  There was always the couch...

Mulder had almost drifted off when Scully found him.  He
flipped from his side to his back, nudged her over, and realized
that was only a temporary solution to the problem.  Presently she
began a slow ascent up his body until she nestled in the crook
of his shoulder.  She sighed and her breath fanned across his
bare chest.  He gave in.  This was the way she wanted it; she had
him.  He tucked her up between his chest and shoulder, brushed
his lips against hers, then closed his eyes, decided to enjoy
what he'd been given, and damn the rest.
********************
Scully woke slowly.  She didn't want to wake up at all, she
was so comfortable and warm.  Wiggling a little she found her
body tingled with a sense of pleasant ease.  Safety.  She drew in
a deep breath, let it go slowly and realized she had to go to the
bathroom.  This was such a nice dream she didn't want to wake up.
She was sleeping across Mulder.  Okay.  Very.  Still groggy she
allowed herself to rest awhile in the first peaceful sleep she'd
had in many nights, to revel in what it must feel like with
Mulder under and around her.

In this dream Mulder slept with his mouth  open, his perfect mouth.
He stirred and a slow, sleepy smile started.  She could now feel the
heat of him along her full length, the warmth of his arm across her back,
his possessive hand on her bare..

A shock went through her.  God, god, god..what happened here?
What happened that she couldn't remember?

"Morning." His voice was thick.  His hand tightened on her
ass, the reflex of a sleeper awakening.  With a small, strangled
cry she scurried back off the bed, dragging the covers with her.
"Scully?"

Her eyes darted around the room then settled on him.  She was
righteously indignant, panicked, no --- more stricken.  All those
things.  Her body shook and her words sounded like the crackle of ice
on windows. "What happened?"

"What?"

"Mulder..."

"I like a naked woman in my bed as well as the next man,
but even I have standards.  She has to be conscious -minimum."

Her eyes flashed.  "That doesn't tell me what happened."

He shoved the remaining covers off, sending her into a more defensive
posture.  He yawned, stretched and made a great show of nonchalance.
"You staggered in last night after midnight, shedding clothes as you
came and leaving your dinner on my living room floor.  I put you to bed-
even gave you the shirt off my back."

Scully plucked at the baggy shirt and saw it for the first time. The
fire in her heart and eyes went out, replaced by confusion.  She sat
down heavily on the bed.  Her shaking hands rubbed her cheeks.

"Can you remember --?"

"Nothing."

Scully cursed under her breath and wished that were the whole truth.
She remembered waking up content for the first time in so long she
could barely identify the feeling.  She remembered feeling happy - now she
was bereft and frightened of how powerfully Mulder affected her.  No,
she told herself.  Not now when she wasn't sure of anything.  Shit! Her
disloyal body let her down, her heart followed meekly, and her mind
abandoned her when she least expected it.  He might be the enemy.  No,
that wasn't right.  This was Mulder.  Then the problem was..Scully moaned.

The problem was she slept with him and couldn't remember.  Like a drunken
college kid.

Drugs. She was drugged.  This happened before.  She wanted to tell him,
turned to do just that, but he stood there with such a hurt expression that
she
couldn't.
*****************
She'd lie - or at least it was a perversion of the truth -- he
saw that much.  Scully never lied to him outright, but over the
years with him she became skilled at misdirection.

Mulder became more annoyed than angry. Her obvious relief that nothing
happened between them last night pierced him to the heart.  Waking up
in his arms was clearly not as nice as for her as it had been for him.
It inflamed him to find her so willing to make something ugly out of what
had been a sweet experience for him.

"I felt sick," she said.  She mumbled something else into her chest.
He couldn't hear what she said, but it sounded melancholy.

"Don't you think it's time you told me-"

She picked up a nearby pillow and flung it at him with a ferocity that
stunned him.  "That's how it works, isn't it? I tell you everything and
you say nothing!" Her lips, pulled back, revealed her bared teeth.  She
looked like a wild animal backed into the corner of his bedroom.

Slacked jawed, Mulder walked around the bed and she threw up the palm of
her hand-- a warning.  For a moment she skewered him with an expression
that promised more pillows or whatever else came to hand.  He rocked
back on his heels, relaxed and waited.  At last she drew her knees to
her chin and stretched his t-shirt over them to her ankles, clasped her
hands around her knees and stared at the wall.  She sat stone
still in silent mourning until he couldn't bear it anymore and
disappeared into the bathroom to do some grieving of his own.

Mulder showered quickly and opened the door to find his
bedroom empty.  Pulling out a little used bathrobe he followed
the smell of coffee into the kitchen.  She had dressed in her
filthy clothes of the previous evening.  Her lips, pressed into a
thin line, matched the tension in her face, the stiffness of her
entire body.  He had never seen Scully so defensive.  The air in
the stuffy apartment crackled.

"What's is this?"

"What?" His heart dropped along with his mouth.

"Why weren't you here?  You're never here !  You go on some training
mission where no one can reach you on the same day I'm accused of
corruption,"
she said in chipped  tones.  "Now you're back on the deadline for signing a
plea bargain- no call from the base, no call from the airport-no need for
a ride since Skinner picked you up.  Why is that?"

"I'm a victim -- "

"--a victim, Mulder, is someone led from her mother's house in
handcuffs.  A victim is someone locked in jail by colleagues."

His eyes rolled away from the heat in hers.  He was so off-balance.
He felt as though he walked into a movie that was half over.

"I mean, surely is this-this isn't some scheme concocted to prove a
point about ghosts or goblins or-" she said.

"Scully.."

"However much the end result might be positive for the X-Files-" She
stopped, the last visage of color leeching from her face.  Her hand
covered her mouth as though she were going to be sick again.

"Skinner tied me up from the moment we left the woods
until I got out of the car," Mulder said.  His was not the role
of rational partner and he felt uncomfortable opposite someone
who spouted unbelievable ideas then became irate when he tried
to refute them.  "They're trying to keep us apart."

After a moment she said, "They've done a good job." Her eyes pierced him.
"But why? What did you do in the woods besides hunt bears?"

"Nothing.  It was useless - to me anyway." His shoulders sagged.

"I never know what you're doing.  You never tell me any --"

"Not this." For a long, interminable minute she searched
his face.  "You know that.  Not this."

Her eyes darted back and forth across him as though reading him page
by page.  She walked across the room -- carefully keeping tables and
chairs between them.  She did not seem to be afraid, merely gauging his
worth, searching inside herself for some shred of evidence that what was
solid had become vapor.  His gaze followed her, pleading.

At last she stopped and grabbed onto the back of a chair. Her shoulders
slumped.  "It doesn't matter." Scully dropped her head and rubbed her eyes.
"If you know any part of this, I'm betrayed at my very core."

"You're playing into their hands," he said.

That stopped her in mid-flight.  He held her in the room by sheer force of
will.  The silence between them deepened and he allowed her the space.

Finally she said, "I had to think - to be -- like both of us.  It's
been-difficult."

He wanted to bring her fully back to him, but he didn't know how.

"Scully, is-is it like the television thing - you thought I'd betrayed
you then.  You had elevated levels of serotonin."

Her head snapped around and he could see her thinking it
over.  "I checked that."

"It doesn't seem the same?"

"That was fantasy.  What is happening now is-" She shook her head.
"This is real.  You have no idea how real.  There are signed documents,
statements--" She stood as unyielding as the wooden chair she
clung to and said, "I made coffee.  I'm going home to clean up. Where
do you want to work?  Here or my apartment?"

"You have better food," he said.  "I read over the files.  I
think we should stop looking at the specific charges against you
and focus on where this all comes from."

"I've got some thoughts on that." She checked her watch. "I have a
10:30 meeting with Waters." She realized he didn't know that name.  "My
attorney.  Byron Waters.  One of Byer's friends."

"I'll go with you."

"No need."

"You shouldn't go out alone," he said.

She thought about it.  "I'll wait until you have some coffee then.  You
look like you could use it."

"Did you want tea?" he said after a silence.  "Or am I out?"

"I bought more."

He poured a cup of coffee and sipped, waiting.  She
fidgeted with the kettle, a cup of tea and a spoon, then reached
in the refrigerator and came out with some strawberries.  They
looked fresh.  He wondered when she put them there.  She looked at
the berries, then at Mulder.

"I've been sleeping here.  I hope you don't mind.  I woke
up here two weeks ago."  Her brows knitted.  She spoke slowly,
speaking as if some memories had returned.  "I was deathly sick,
headache, vertigo.  But not as severe as last night.  That morning
I chased Skinner --" She blinked and turned to Mulder with an
"oh" of understanding on her face.  She put the strawberries
down.  "The drugs.  It's happened twice now, followed by mild
paranoid or psychotic episodes.  The first time the psychosis
wasn't as bad, but the physical symptoms..."

Mulder saw she had figured something out.  She knew, as he
did now, that there must be a pattern to what was happening to
her.  She had come up with that on her own.  He knew that would be
as important to her as the knowledge she'd acquired.  He watched
the tension in her shoulders ease further.  With it, some of the
electricity in the room also drained away.

They were back, Mulder thought.  Something was lost, but
something had been gained.  She reclaimed some confidence.  And he
had lost any illusions about his place in her life.

"What happens after those nights you can't remember?
Temporary insanity aside, what do you do?" he said.

"Residual effects?"  She shook her head.  "None beyond the
physical, the paranoia and confusion I noted earlier."

"No, I mean, do you act-" Mulder groped for words
"-contrary to your own interests."

"What are you suggesting?"

"That the drugs - if it is drugs -- are designed to make
you say or do things until you can't help yourself in this
investigation, to keep you from seeing the truth."

"What else could it be besides drugs?"

"Mind control-"

"What mind control!" Her burning cheeks told him how the
idea enraged her.  "You can't just take over someone's mind
without weeks and months of psychological work - work predicated
on trust, I might add.  To do it by force you have to have
optimal conditions to keep the subject in stress,
disorientation, or use some fairly serious drug therapy - it
just isn't possible in this case."

"Unless that person was willing."

"That's insulting."

"Unless they offered you something you wanted very badly."

"I don't want anything badly enough to make this kind of sacrifice,"
she said.

"What if you started out a willing participant, but
changed your mind? That might explain why you are physically ill
and tense after they-do whatever it is they do.  You're fighting
now, but you weren't in the beginning."

She hesitated.  It seemed to make a certain amount of sense to her.

"You said yourself you can't remember- it could be a combination of
things such as drugs, psycho-hypnosis," Mulder said.  "Just as you
said: powerful stuff."

"Most of the time I'm fine." She massaged her temple.

"Perhaps the selective memory loss is a screen - a way to
mask the identities of the people behind this," he said.

"I know who's behind it.  Skinner." The way she massaged her forehead her
head must be pounding. Her pallor showed  her nausea had returned with
renewed
virility, and her squinting told him the lights must be  unbearably bright
to
her.  "I-I have to get some aspirin."

He barred her escape.

"Tell me about your tenth birthday," he said.

"What? Now?" She put her hand on the kitchen counter to
steady herself.  She stiffened and swayed.
 

"Humor me.  Did you have a party?"

Scully regarded him as she would a madman.  She had to
think a minute, to come up with a vision of that day.  "Yes.  My
father was home on leave and he took me fishing afterwards.  Just
me.  Melissa didn't care, but my brothers were so jealous."

"Did you catch anything?"

"A big one.  My father had to help me reel him in." She
illustrated.  "We threw him back."

"Because you felt sorry for the fish."

Scully smiled.

He clucked and shook his head.  "Such a girl."

She stuck out her chin. "I bait my own hooks."

"I bet you do."

She folded her arms in front of her, but she seemed more
relaxed.  "Why are you so curious about all that?"

"Just wondered.  Ever talk to Skinner about this case?"

She nodded.  "I tried.  I went to his apartment."

"When?"

"Shortly after the arraignment." She suddenly seemed deathly sick.

Mulder watched as all the color left her face.  She tried to moisten
her lips with the tip of her tongue.  "Was there anyone else there
when you went to visit?"

"He was anxious to get rid of me, then suddenly he pulled
me out of the hall and into his apartment." Her eyes widened in apparent
surprise at what she remembered so easily.

"I'd call that a clue."

"He called me Agent Scully."

"He pulled you in his apartment and didn't even call you Dana?" He
watched her carefully.

"He called me 'agent.' He treated me as an active agent," she said.
Her eyes narrowed and her brow furrowed slightly as if she weren't
feeling well.

"Who else was there?"

"I-I--." Her will snapped.  She fled to the bathroom; he could hear her
retching.

Mulder learned something from his experiment.  Every time
she tried to think of a conspiracy her physical symptoms
escalated.  He worried that pressing her memory too much might
trigger a more virulent response and decided he didn't want to
find out.  At least he thought he had an idea that might help her
control it.

When she came out of the bathroom looking more dead than
alive, Mulder explained his theory.

"Direct my thoughts elsewhere to something non-threatening when these
symptoms appear?" She didn't sound like she believed it.

"The closer you come to remembering, the worse the physical symptoms
see to be," he said.

"That can't be any drug I know," she said. "Mulder, your idea makes no
sense."

"It worked."

"For a time."

"Better than nothing," he said.

"Infinitely."

"How does it happen? How do they administer the drugs?" he asked.

"And who exactly is they?" Scully said.

"I thought you knew."

"I have an idea - no proof.  Skinner is involved, Mulder.
I'm sorry to shoot down your logic, but he is.  I can't think why."

Mulder shelved that for the time being.  Scully's forehead
furrowed, marking the return of pain and nausea as the physical
symptoms of the drugs took over again. She must be right: Skinner was
involved.

"How's your mother, Scully?" Mulder grasped at the first thing inane topic
that came to mind.  "Still trying to get you to taste rhubarb pie?"

"Actually she hasn't tried once this summer."

"Have you seen her lately?"

"I visit quite a bit.  This has been hard for her.  She's
ill.  I've tried to get her to see a cardiologist." Mulder
watched the pain in her eyes recede slowly.

"Heart!"

"I'm concerned.  I can't get her to take it seriously and this-."

Her cheeks reddened and her posture became unyielding. "They came to
her house.  Two agents. They threw me against my mother's dining room
wall, searched me, handcuffed me--at the dinner table. With a dozen
news cameras on her front lawn."

Mulder felt all Scully's humiliation, rage, her impotent fury rise up in
him too.  "The circumstances of your arrest-isn't that a bit extreme for
a simple non-violent felony?"

"It's by the book - you should check that out."

"Why didn't they just call your attorney and have you surrender? Why all
the fuss? All the media?"

"The bureau is making a point."

He scoffed.  "The bureau wants something like this to go away quietly."

"Perhaps.  The strings go all the way up to the Attorney
General's office.  Langly was able to pull up a seal.."  She
couldn't finish.

Mulder watched the nausea slam into her again.  Her hand few to her
forehead as though she'd been struck.  She barely seemed to hear his
words anymore.  The heels of her hands ground into her eyes.

"The Attorney General's office?  That explains some things. When was the
last time you saw a felon go down in less than four months? This is four
weeks," Mulder said.  "Why is the AG in such a hurry?"

"It might be best-for my mother," she said.  He watched her knuckles
clutching the
counter turn white.

"To have a convicted felon in the family? Every mother's dream."

"To have this over and done with," Scully said. "To have some peace from
the stress, the reporters on her sidewalk, the tension of the process."

Mulder scoffed.  "You don't believe that."

"Sometimes I think I do." Scully took a couple of shallow,
even breaths to beat back the nausea.  For a moment there was
silence in the kitchen.

Mulder sipped his coffee, brought her tea over to the
table and motioned her to follow.  "What kind of tea is that?"

"Herbal," she said, taking the seat opposite him.  "Peppermint, I think."

"Peppermint?" He made a face.  "Not Earl Grey? Go away for
a month and the whole world changes."

She swallowed a little tea and made a feeling better sigh.  "Whoever is
doing this, I know there's some urgency.  The speed of this-case.
There must be a reason."

Mulder was glad to hear she felt better, but her pallor worried him.  Her
face still had no color at all, making her hair seem even redder.  "Are you
okay?"

"Do I look okay?"

"You look fine to me," he said.

She grunted her disbelief.

His eyes flitted around the apartment searching for a new
topic - a safe one.  "You left one of your medical books here.
It's on the floor over there."

She must have recognized it, realized why she'd brought it over
and felt sick again.  He watched the flee/fight response take over.
She pushed back her chair, picked up the book, tucked it under her arm
and started out the door.  "Are you coming?"

"Shouldn't I put on pants?"

(Headers and Disclaimers in Chapter One)

Chapter 4 of 20

Scully thought she'd feel better in her own apartment, but
she didn't.  She thought a shower would wash away the feeling of
dread, the helplessness, the panic. Mulder's clever mind-over-matter
parlor trick didn't work when her self-generated fears and
doubts created the upheaval.  The sickness of doubt,
guilt, regret, resentment, fear never left her no matter what
thoughts she put into her head.

This morning she discovered a new torment: the more she depended on
Mulder, the more she needed distance between them; the more she
realized how much he meant to her, the harder it was to be around him.
She knew it was not the case -- that was her nature.  When she finally
emerged from the bedroom, showered, dressed and ready for her
appointment with Waters, Scully felt no better than when she arrived.

Mulder met her outside the bedroom door tossing a couch
pillow between his hands.  "You said slept at my apartment - why?"

To be near you, she thought, to be somewhere close to you. God, to
smell you on the bed and feel safe for one minute.  "I thought someone
was in my apartment," she said aloud.

"Were they?"

"I don't know," she said.

"That's what we FBI agents might call another clue," he said.

"To what?"

"That's the question."

On the drive over to Water's office she said, "Mulder, on
the face of it do you think there's enough evidence to convict
me?"

"I don't think that's the face you should show a jury.
We've got lots of time before it comes to that."

She didn't, Scully knew.  She felt as she had with cancer,
as though time was being pulled away from her like the weave of a
sweater.  Her level of dread rose with the elevator to Water's office.

They sat for a time in the dusty waiting room.  Water's
secretary worked on her computer and filed a broken fingernail.
She worked on the nail under the desk where no one could see
such unprofessional conduct.  Scully concentrated on the potted
plant in the corner of the office.  It needed water.  It needed
sunlight.  It was probably already dead.  A crash followed by a
howl of fury startled the three in the outer office.  Almost
immediately the buzzer on his secretary's desk rang.  "You can go
in," she said to Scully.

Mulder whistled under his breath.  Water's untidy office
looked ransacked.  Waters nursed the fist he'd obviously slammed
into the desk.  "Who is this?" he snapped to Scully.

"My partner.  Fox Mulder."

"Out, Fox Mulder.  You're too damn late to join the party."
Scully scowled and Mulder put his hands on his hips.
Waters had black circles under his eyes.  "Anything said
between client and attorney is privileged.  Anything said between
us in the presence of a third party is not.   Your partner goes."
************************
Skinner had expected Mulder all morning.  He even thought about
warning his assistant, then discarded the idea. But he knew he made
a mistake the moment Mulder threw open his office door and Skinner saw
his assistant's frightened face.  He should have told her.  As it was
he only shook his head at her unspoken question.

"I forgot the files, but I'll bet you guessed that,"
Mulder said.  "You want to fill me in here? I know you didn't do
this to Scully - but I bet you know who did."

"Sit down, Agent Mulder."

"Gee, I'd like to stay and talk, but I have to pick her up
at her attorney's office.  Did you know your playmates drugged
her again last night?" Mulder came at Skinner head on.  The AD
ducked and locked Mulder's arms down in an embrace.

"Get hold of yourself, agent!"

Mulder shook off the arms and back away.  "How do you look
at yourself every day?"

"The same way you do," Skinner said.  "With both eyes open."

"What does that mean," Mulder said.

"I think it's clear Scully's in over her head-"

"Did you shove her in the water?"

"You are way outta line," Skinner said.

"I'm real short of tact right now."

"Keep your voice down!"

"Scully's innocent."

"I can't stop what's happening.  Neither can you."

"I can try."

"Use your head, Mulder.  Use what's been given to you!"

For a moment Mulder considered what the AD said.  In the
context of the two files in his apartment it made a certain
amount of sense.  Skinner let him go.

"Not all the work's been done on either of the cases I
gave you," Skinner said.  "There may be more out there."

"I hope I don't find you played a part in this." Mulder's
voice was dangerously quiet.  His body fairly quivered with
controlled violence.  "I hope I don't find you could have stopped
it."  Skinner said nothing.  When Mulder slammed the door Skinner
let out the breath he'd been holding, took his glasses off, and
rubbed the bridge of his nose.  Then he picked up the phone.
**********************
Water's office looked no better than the first time Mulder
saw it.  Scully sat in a wobbly chair with her hands resting in
her lap.  She tipped once, but regained her balance quickly, a
small island of serenity in the middle of chaos.

"Did you wait long?"

She shook her head.  "We just finished.  Waters went to file some
papers.  The, ah, the handwriting expert's report came back. I signed
those fraudulent reports.  It's my signature," she said.

"It only proves they have woven a tight web," he said.

"It makes me wonder..."

"If you could have done what they say? If you've lost your mind and
done something like this? " He knew he'd guessed right when she pulled
her lips together.  Mulder shook his head.   "You are the most honest,
honorable person I know.  Even under the most extreme conditions you
could not be anything less than you are."

Her smile was a pale shadow of what it could be.  "Just checking."

"Don't doubt yourself.  Don't let them do that to you."
Mulder said.  "If they cause you to question who you are then
their plan has succeeded beyond expectations."

She only moved enough to take a deep, cleansing breath.
"Someone's gone to a great deal of trouble to send me to
prison." He nodded in agreement before she went on.  "I've decided to
find out why and the only way I know to do that is to give them what
they want."

"Which is?"

"I signed the plea bargain," she said.

Shock seemed to steal his usual snappy response.

"After the agreement is accepted it's customary to wait at
least two weeks before sentencing.  Waters will negotiate for
more time.  That should be sufficient to-"

"Use yourself as bait?"

She shrugged.  "It seems to make sense more than what I've been doing."

"You might have talked to me about it," he said.  His mouth set in a
hard line.

"We can't crack it from without, perhaps we can from within," she said.

"We haven't had a chance yet."

"It's a risk, certainly."

"It's a big risk," Mulder said.

"Most of the investigation's ground work's been done-" She watched in
stunned silence as he stood up and stared at something over her
shoulder.  "You want to know the terms of the agreement, what's at
stake?" There was little force behind her words; she knew what was at
stake and so did he.

Mulder glanced down and watched her balancing act on the chair before he
shrugged," I don't have anything on the line."

Scully absorbed the blow, but it made her flinch.  She hadn't
accurately judged how much she hurt him with her unilateral decision to
bargain.  An undercurrent ran through all this that she couldn't
identify; she felt the same tug this morning in his bedroom and his
kitchen.  It went beyond the usual banter, the sexual tension that was
a part of their partnership.  If nothing happened, what did go on last
night?  Something, she knew.  This was unexplored territory.  All she
did know was that she had to fix what seemed broken here.

She considered her words carefully, hoping to save the
best ones for some future date when the world was in its right
order.  "I've known for some time how significant-that you are
essential to ...  I never told you-I thought there would be time
-- a better time-.  You've become- vital, really." God, she was
doing this badly.

"You are important to me too, Scully."

"And the work." Shit! She'd done it again. She saw it in his shoulders,
his lips, the lines across his face.

He stared at her in thinly veiled dismay, hands back on his hips.

"Mulder, I need my partner and friend with me.  You'll be my only way out
once I'm-" She couldn't bear to say it, "-inside." She dared to look at
him and flashed a quick, tiny smile.  "God, I can scarcely say the word."

Somewhere on the street a car honked its horn.  An emergency siren
screamed its alarm.  A child cried.

"It's a gutsy call," Mulder said finally.

"It's the right thing."

He nodded.  "It buys us some time and you some safety.  The
pressure is off them.  And we have a week or two to work."

"Aren't you curious about the terms?"

"Irrelevant," Mulder said.

"Interesting - and generous.  The plea is changed to nolo contendo -
no contest.  The prosecutor's giving away the store - apparently with
the approval of the Attorney General's office. Five to 10, no bar to
parole," she said.

"Never come to that."

"They wanted elocution, but I refused.  I won't stand up in open court
and confess to something I haven't done," she said. "They'll accept it.
They have what they want."
********************
Mulder insisted on getting something to eat.  Scully snapped at him and
ragged at the waitress.  If she had been a child Mulder would have sent
her to her room.  She ate ravenously and the glint in her eye spoke of
more conflict to come.  They argued about what they should know first.

Scully wanted to focus on those who were her primary
accusers in the conspiracy charge.  Mulder promised they would do
that, right after they interviewed the wounded bank guard and
his partner.  The former was at home, the latter in jail.  Scully
thought it a waste of time to interview bank guards on a case so
unrelated to her own.  She felt certain it was a dead end.  Even
if it wasn't, she had another reason for not wanting to
interview the accused guard.  She started to tell him, but in the
end he had to guess:  she didn't have any desire to go near the jail
where she had so recently been a prisoner- and might soon be again.

To her obvious relief Mulder drove first to the apartment of the wounded
man, Charlie Duncan.  His mother opened the front door of the duplex and
peered at Mulder's ID.  A little belatedly Scully remembered Skinner had
her badge and gun.  Mulder introduced her as a consultant.

Although his arms and lap were full of books, Charlie tried to welcome
them when they walked into the modest study.  It was a cozy place, a
student's hole, his space.  Scully's mouth opened as she took in the
entire room.  It was dominated by a huge desk and surrounded by posters,
cut out pictures, drawings, photographs and art works that depicted
angels.  Angels hung on all the walls, dangled as bookmarks, and were
pressed under the glass of the coffee table.

"'Xuse the mess," he said.  "I'm trying to make up work
from last semester, from, you know, when I was shot." He waved
them to a love seat, hastily picking up papers from one of the
cushions.  "What can I tell you? You're about the 20th person I've
spoken to about this."

"There are parts of your story-" said Scully.

"I know.  The woman who took over Andy's body-You think I'm
some kind of nut, don't you?" He ran his fingers through his
hair.  "I'm getting letters from everybody from Jerry Falwell to
the KKK.  Everybody wants a piece of this.  That's the craziness."

"In my experience people-in your situation often feel
strange things, see extraordinary things," said Mulder.

"Sometimes our bodies come to the rescue when we're injured," said
Scully.  "Endorphins kick in - we don't know how - and-"

"How do you explain the angel?  She was as real as you are.
She saved my life," Andy said.

Mulder felt Scully tensing to lash into Charlie so he said
quickly, "Tell us."

"I told the other FBI guys -- Scully thumbed through the file
in the hand with the jerky motions of someone very annoyed.
Charlie's story was sketched in.  Mulder knew the file and he could
imagine the men who wrote the cryptic words and what they thought of
Charlie's assertions.

"Maybe they didn't think it was worth mentioning in their
reports." Charlie said.  "I know what I saw.  I know she healed me."

"What about your partner," said Mulder.

"Andy?" He looked at Scully when he said it.  "You think
I'm making this up? It was his body, but it wasn't Andy in it.
For one thing, Andy was talking like a black woman.  I mean, he
never did that kindda thing for fun or a joke or something.  It
sounded so weird coming from him." Charlie snickered. "Everything
that night was weird."

There was a distinctively heavy silence in the room.

"What are you studying, Charlie," said Scully.  Her eyes
swept the room.

"Ah-h, management.  I'm a business major." His look zeroed
in on Scully again.  "I'm a realist."

"I can see that," she said.

Charlie rewarded her sarcasm with a small sigh.   "I've
been trying to find out everything I can about angels, you know."

"How well did you know the man who was on guard duty with
you that night?" said Mulder.

"Andy and I worked together a couplea times.  No great
smarts, you know.  But a nice guy.  Real straight shooter." He
touched his chest gently.  "Maybe that wasn't such a good thing."

"Do you think he shot you?"

Charlie seemed surprised by Mulder's question.  He turned
his hands over a couple of times.  "No.  I think it was the
angel's friend."

"Angel's friend?" Mulder said.

Charlie continued to wring his hands slowly.  "I never said this
before - I mean, nobody believed me about the other, so I never-.
But I looked up from the floor after the angel stopped the
bleeding in my chest.  Andy-"

"She made the bleeding in your chest stop?" Scully's voice carried a
tone that hinted of disbelief.

"That's what they told me."

"Who?"

"The doctors at the emergency room.  They said somebody
made the bleeding stop," Charlie said.

"Could it have been the EMTs?" said Scully.

"I wasn't bleeding when they got there," he said.  "Ask."

Scully gaped.

"About Andy?" said Mulder.

Charlie related the strange dance he witnessed and the
monologue written in the file.  "He just got out on parole-"

"Bail?"

"Yeah, bail, sorry.  I called him-"

"You shouldn't have done that," Scully said.

"Legally, maybe.  But he's in trouble that's not his
doing," said Charlie.  He stuck out his chin.  "Sue me."

"I think we'll visit him too," said Mulder

"Want me to call him for you? We've gotten to be close."

As they got into the car Scully said, "Angels don't rob
banks, Mulder.  And if every word of his story is gospel, then
that angel was in there to rob the bank too."

"I never said she was an angel," Mulder said.

"What is she then?"

"Maybe she's a missing person."

Scully slapped the file in her lap shut.  "Missing from where?"

Mulder shrugged.
********************
Mulder had become distant since the visit to Water's
office.  Scully realized she was succeeding in pushing him away,
so far away it might be impossible to bridge the gap.  No bureau
to fall back on, no friends to speak of, her family sick or far
away.  No Mulder.  The thought was chilling.  It was like being
deprived of gravity; she floundered and flayed, seeking something to
hold to until she discern up from down again.  She used the
handrail to plod up the stairs to Andy Paige's apartment.

"You okay?" Mulder asked.

Paige lived in an apartment above a grocery store.  The
studio apartment smelled faintly of onions.  Paige was a
tall man sliding into his 30s.  He wore his hair slicked back.  He
had just gotten out of the shower.

"I shouldn't be talking to you people without I first talk
to my lawyer," he said.

"Call him," said Mulder.  He nodded toward the phone on the
nearby table.

Andy threw up his hands.  "Nah, that won't make it any
different for me." He sounded morose.  Andy sank down on the
frayed couch, then remembered his manners.  "Please, sit down.  It
isn't pretty, but it's clean." Scully sat beside him on the edge of the sofa
and Mulder took the opposite chair.  Andy tried to smile.  "You want to
know where I put the bonds, who I was working with, why I did it.  I
gotta tell ya.  I don't have the bonds, I wasn't working with
nobody and I didn't do anything.  Have any more questions?"

"Tell me about this woman in your head," said Mulder.

"Why?"

Mulder shrugged.

"Why should I waste my breath? Nobody believes me."

"Try us," said Scully.  Andy regarded her with some
suspicion, then spread his hands out.

"Yeah, okay, why not.  Charlie's the only one who believes
me and he saw an angel," Andy said.  "So that's my only defense -
a guy who sees angels.  This whole thing's makin' me clairvoyant.
I can look into my future and see prison bars.  Miles and miles
of bars."

Scully shifted uncomfortably. A lump rose in her throat.

"What happened that night?" said Mulder.

Andy clasped his hands in front of him.  "I just punched in
my nine o'clock round, Charlie had opened his books - I mean,
that guy studied all the time - and I felt this breeze on my
neck.  Cold.  I took a look around to see about it and it was, ah,
well all I saw was eyes.  A pair of eyes in the air.  Like
somebody wuz trying to play a Halloween joke.  A pair of eyes
hanging in the dark with no head or body." Andy paused to gage
his audience's reaction.  They were both still and attentive.
Encouraged, Andy went on,  "This woman's eyes - or somebody --
called my name, real soft and gentle over and over and over.  The
eyes got bigger."

"What did she look like?" Mulder asked.

"She didn't look like anything.  She did all the looking."

"What color were the eyes?" said Scully.

Andy seemed surprised by the question.  "Well, they were
brown.  Big and brown.   And some woman kept saying my name over
and over and suddenly she was in my head." He turned to Scully.
"When I say she was in my head, I mean she was me.  We were one
person.  I drew my gun- I don't know what I was going to do with
it.  Shoot myself in the head? She was walking inside me and what
I thought and did was her too." Scully became paralyzed.  He
touched her fingertips on the seat of the sofa and  she felt a connection.
He whispered to her, for her. "She saw things inside me-private things."
His last words were desperate and still, "Things I think!"

Scully jerked her hand away.  She became dizzy, sick, her palms sweated.
She knew she was the color of chalk and she shrank back into the pillows
of the sofa as though they would hide her.

Andy appealed to Mulder.  "I went to a magic show once and this guy
hypnotized me. Had me quackin' like a duck.  It was like that -- only
times ten."

"Most of this isn't in the report," Mulder said.

"I never told anybody that part.  I-I didn't remember it
for a while.  I woke up in jail and I was sick.  Throwing up sick.
My head hurt like a three-day drunk.  By then everybody thought
Charlie and me was crazy, I figured, what would they think of that?"

"They would think you were trying for an insanity
defense," said Scully.  Her voice was shaky and her eyes darted
away from Mulder to Andy and around the room.  There wasn't much
to see, to hold onto.  Nothing extraordinary.  No angels on the
walls.  No eerie eyes peering from portraits or voodoo masks or
books on mysticism.  She wondered if she opened a cabinet jars of
black spiders would fall out.  "Mind if I look around?"

He shook his head and rubbed both hands on his face.  "I
can't remember much about what happened in the bank.  In the
hospital," Andy said.  "Police, my attorney - everybody asking me
questions and I couldn't remember anything.  It was like somebody
came and washed the blackboard clean! And every time I tried to
remember, it just made me blow chunks."

"You seem fine now," Mulder said.  He pointed in the
direction of the file in Scully's hand.  "It says you were a
handful in the hospital." Scully felt Mulder's eyes on her as she
peered into shelves, opened desk drawers.  She was searching, but
she was listening too.

"Man, I was scared.  Fighting scared.  I was so scared I
was crawling the walls and everybody who came near me was out to
get me.  Now, it's like a bad dream.  Sometimes I think it is, you
know? The kindda dream where somebody's standing in shadows
watchin' and when I try to move I feel like my pockets got sand
in them - I can't move ---"

"Mulder, " Scully headed to the door; she needed air. She needed to get
out of this apartment.  "I'm done here.  Thank you for your time, Mr.
Paige." And she was gone.

Mulder got up slowly to follow.  Andy grabbed his arm.  "Do
you believe Charlie?"

"About his angel?"

"Yeah, but I never saw or heard Zelda."

"Who?"

"Zelda - that's her name -- the angel that Charlie says
saved him."

"From 'The Great Gatsby'?"

"I never saw her.  I felt something like a rush of wind
around me, but I never saw her.  I knew her name, called her
name.  I asked her to help me too.  I was weak -" He looked at
Mulder and his mouth popped open.  "Say-you believe me!"

"I don't think you're wrong."

Andy shrugged.  "Listen, Mr.  Mulder.  I don't have any
family - my mother died a year ago.  I don't have a lotta friends
and Charlie's the only person in the world who'll talk to me
now.  I thank you for whatever you can do.  Hell, I'm glad that
you don't think I'm crazy."

Mulder handed him a card.  "If you think of anything else-"

"I think sometimes that all this happened-to do something
for me," Andy said.  He turned the card over and over between his
fingers.  "Maybe like to make me wake up-or see things
different-or be different."

Scully waited, arms crossed, in the foyer of the apartment building.
The cracked white tile in the foyer beneath her feet needed a good
scrubbing.  She picked up her gaze and saw her reflection in the glass
front door.  She bit her lip.  What had that guard really seen, she
wondered. His story frightened  her.  Something that scared him seemed
to be working in her too. She discarded his story of possession as
impossible, but deep within her Scully knew she couldn't throw out
everything he said.

In the door glass Scully saw her partner come down the front steps
into the foyer.  She tried to seem impatient - that would be normal
and, something else.  What else did she feel? Startled? Thoughtful?
Mulder took the steps one at a time, regarding her curiously as though
he couldn't decide what to make of her. Was she frightened? Scully
would admit that even to herself; Mulder's face grew annoyed.

"Paige -you know, don't you?" Scully recognized the accusing tone in
Mulder.  "You know exactly what he meant.  It's happened to you too."

"I don't know that for certain," she said.  "I never felt
possessed, nor the 'presence' he described.  I had the sickness,
the memory loss, and the rage- But those symptoms could be
caused by a dozen different things, all of them very much of
this world.  Stress, for example-"

"You weren't going to tell me, were you?"

"I knew you'd do just what you're doing - link the two,
thinking of ghosts and spirits and phantoms instead of something
real!"

"This is real! He is real!"

"He's a young man who made up a fantastic story to explain
why he tried to kill his partner and escape with millions in
bearer bonds," she said.

"What about Charlie?"

"He was nearly killed.  You and I both know what that can
do to you."

"Andy's guilty, then."

"It appears so."

"It appears you're guilty too." He flung the words at her
on his way to the driver's side of the car.

Her cheeks flushed.  God, this was familiar territory.
Wearisome, familiar ground.  "I grant you some similarity between
the cases.  I'm telling you there is no ghost in my head, no
mind-reading, no-"

"Didn't you learn anything?"

"What was it I was supposed to learn?" Outrage dripped
from her mouth.  "That fantasy is an acceptable way to avoid
facing your own fears, your own guilt? That-that chasing ghosts
and visions is easier than living in the real world with actual
human beings?"

Her words seem to sting him.  "Open your mind to ---," he said.

She gave the car door a vicious slam and stalked across the street
toward a bus stop.

Mulder watched her go, hands on hips. Out of the corner of her eye
Scully saw him torn between his resentment at her stubbornness, his
own pain, his desire to soothe her, and his fear of what gripped her.
Neither of them appeared able to end the current stalemate.  The
D.C. Transit Authority made the decision for him.  A bus stopped
and Scully suddenly and inexplicably climbed aboard.  Mulder jumped in
the car and followed at a distance.

How had it come to this so quickly, Scully thought.  What was she doing,
where was she going?  Running physically this time instead of mentally.
Scully sat on an aisle seat holding onto the handrail as tightly as she
could.  They had this argument hundreds of times, but never so bitter,
so hurtful.  Just when she needed him, when she ached for him, they
leapt down each other's throats.  Perhaps that was the heart of
the problem - this situation brought her dependence on Mulder
into sharp relief and she hated it.  Until now she always thought
of them as equals, freely given and freely accepted.  Now she was
his dependent.  She hated knowing that.

Scully rode the bus to the end of the line nursing her
guilt and frustration.  Her greatest fear she shoved into the
back of her mind until at last she knew she had to examine it.
It had nothing to do with Mulder -- and everything.  Scully had
reason to doubt her own abilities and he bore the brunt of it.

She hadn't been honest with him or with herself about that and
it was information he needed.  She was the last to get off the bus.
Scully planned to take a cab back to her apartment.  She
did not expect to find him waiting at a nearby corner when she
alighted.  He had not cooled down, she saw at once and she turned
to walk in the opposite direction.

"What else haven't you told me," he called after her.
People on the street stared.  She stopped and waited for him.

Heat from the cement radiated up her feet, her legs, her
stomach, her chest, her head.  "This is a new game we're playing,
isn't it? You run and hide, I play catch up," Mulder said.

"It's not a new game - but I generally do the catching
up," she said in a rush.  "I may go to prison in a few days for
something I didn't do.  All you offer me is more of the same.  I
hoped for more."

"No, you didn't.  This is exactly what you counted on." He got in her
face and when she turned away he followed.  "You depend on me to see
what is too irrational for you to see. That's what I bring to the
partnership.  It's not fair of me to expect you to do all the work
here." She couldn't look at him.  She studied her feet, the
neighborhood, the sidewalk.  "I won't let anyone separate us again,
Scully -not them, not Skinner-not even you."

Finally she raised her eyes to him, her lower lip
quivering slightly.  "I can't tell you what I don't remember."

"Meaning-?" An unwelcome smack of panic caught Mulder in the midriff.

"It's not just those things the guard described.  It's not a-a
blankness.  It's forgetfulness.  It's better some times than others." Now
that she started, Scully's words tumbled out of her in a rush.

"But sometimes I have to fight to hold onto simple things- diseases or
dosages of medicine or the names of poisons.  I can't remember who I
interviewed yesterday or when my mother's birthday is.  I have to write
everything down." Her  recitation of the facts seemed to frighten him as
much as it did her.  "That book you found? When I can, I re-read old
texts to remind myself of symptoms, diseases, the names of bones!  My
medical books-- I take notes to recall things I've known by heart.  I
wake up and don't remember where I've been or what I did last night,
but my-my high school graduation is perfectly clear.  Lately I can't
find my car keys, although I always put them in the same place.  I just
can't remember where that place is.  I can't read because-because I
can't remember how." She licked her dry lips.  "It's a form of-f
dementia."

"Could be that stress you mentioned earlier," he said.

"Could be."

"I don't sleep either."

"You mean you don't sleep well."

She said slowly, "I mean, I haven't slept more than two or three hours a
night in a month." Mulder's brow furrowed and she went on hurriedly,
fearful she would lose her nerve if she stopped now.  "When I do sleep I
wake up-I wake up, ah-I have these vivid images.  Pictures of a man
whose face is never visible.  But something is clear--."

"His eyes?"

Her nod was almost imperceptible.  "He comes to me as a friend, I'm not
afraid.  Then I see shadows of him holding me, pressing on me." She
watched Mulder's expression and hastened to say, "As a - I don't know.
I tell him to stop, to release me.  He says-he says I'm crazy.  And,
I-I know I am.  I run to get somewhere safe." She slipped a quick look
at Mulder out of the corner of her eye.  "I run."

He knows where she goes and it warms his heart.  "Who is this man of your
dreams, Scully?"

"I don't think he's a ghost.  And I don't think those
guards saw ghosts.  I see a human face in this."

"Skinner's?"

Her shoulders moved up and down.  "I think he knows who is-" She gulped
and finished with a whisper "-who is stealing my mind."

Mulder tried to speak, but couldn't.  He jammed his hands in his pants
pockets; his fingertips had become cold.  "We'll talk with Skinner," he
said.  "Later."

As she fastened her seat belt it dawned on her.  "It's worse right after
the drugs." She brightened.  "Mulder, the drugs wear off."

He didn't bother to point out the obvious.  The drug screens she'd
taken came up negative.  If drugs were involved they were not one of
the Heinz 57 varieties covered by the normal full screen.  Mulder was
relatively certain she hadn't been drugged.

(Headers and Disclaimers in Chapter One)
Chapter 5 of 20

Mulder always liked the federal court building in Washington.  He'd had
to come there so often it was almost a second home at one point in his
FBI career.  When he first began coming to the court he thought the pure
white marble exterior that carried into the outer chambers very
appropriate.  In those early days as a profiler and investigator he
thought of justice as not only blind, but pure.  He quickly picked up on
the dark streaks through the rock.

Waiting to be called as a witness enabled him to exercise his restless
nature by exploring the building at his leisure.  He soon knew all the
out of the way restrooms, small conference areas used so little they
made excellent reading rooms, the cubbyholes where he could close his
eyes for a time and rest without being spotted.  The building was old,
with massive heating and cooling ducts that opened into hallways,
conference rooms, and offices.  The architects had cleverly disguised
the vents with coverings of ornate and, to Mulder's mind at least,
extremely compelling metal designs of Dame Justice, her scales, the
American eagle and the like.

Mulder felt comfortable in the federal court building.  Under the
cover of tying his shoe or helping balance a load of papers in
his arms, Mulder had often leaned his back against the rock.  As
a result, few people came to court who appreciated the truth of
the expression 'cool marble' like Fox Mulder.

Until now, coming to this building had been a pleasure. Today on
Scully's first court date since signing the plea bargain, he hated it.
He never realized how foreboding, impersonal, and cold it could be.  On
this morning, the first of what Waters said would be many brief hearings
and motions on the plea bargain, Mulder saw the building for what it
was: a facade.
********************
Scully told her mother not to bother coming.  She could hear Margaret's
shortness of breath in her responses.  She tried to persuade Mulder not
to bother either.  As Waters told her, she would have to submit to
psychological testing, pre-sentencing interviews before incarceration
became a possibility.  It's not like television, Waters reminded her.
Waters seemed to think she watched a great deal of courtroom drama.
Even though she knew most of the things he was telling her, his quiet
recitation of the procedures proved oddly comforting.

Scully felt much better, stronger.  Each day that passed she regained
more control, clarity and memories --popcorn kernels recollections and
ideas exploded into her head at the strangest times.  Besides, as she
told Mulder and her mother, what could happen to her in a federal
courtroom surrounded by armed marshals and court officers? She probably
wouldn't be there five minutes herself.  It was, as her lawyer said,
pro forma.  Mulder insisted.  He had barely left her alone long enough
to shower since the night she stumbled into his apartment, into his bed.

She was glad he came the moment they walked into the main
courtroom.  She knew the man in the expensive suit who lounged a
few rows behind the prosecution table.  "Assistant Attorney
General Henry J.  Donaldson." Scully pointed him out to Mulder.
"Some war buddy of Skinner's.  What's he doing here? Why should
an assistant attorney general of the United States care about
this case?"

Mulder couldn't recall the face.  And he couldn't recall
the name either.  "How do you know he's a friend of Skinner's?"

Scully blinked.  "I must have heard it."

"Do you know him?"

"Yeah," she said, nodding her head slowly.  "I do.  I know
him-well."

"From a case?"

She lifted her shoulders and shook her head.

"From this case?"

Scully felt a prick of worry, the start of a headache.  "Maybe."

"Well, why don't I ask him?"

Mulder rose to do just that.  He was too late.  The bailiff
called the case, the judge entered and those in the courtroom
stood.  When they sat down again and the case called by the
bailiff, Donaldson engaged in serious discussion with the
prosecutor.  Giving him pointers, no doubt, about sealing the
her fate, Scully supposed.

Scully recognized the judge at once.  Amos McDonald.  She
knew the name, now she had a face to go with it.  She had been in
his courtroom several years ago giving evidence.  He was an older
man - seemed old to her back then if she remembered correctly.  He
had thinning white hair around an oval face splotched with red
and the impatient, arrogant air of authority that many judges
wore like their robes.   She may have testified in this very
courtroom, now that she thought about it.  Her eyes ranged over
the high ceiling, the polished wood railings, bench, desks.

She glanced behind her, at Mulder and realized the courtroom was
full.  She frowned.  Why would the main courtroom in the federal
building be full of spectators and, unless she was mistaken,
members of the press, for a mid-week, insignificant hearing.
Unless it wasn't so insignificant.  Her mouth went dry.

"Mr.  Waters-" Scully leaned over, but the Judge McDonald's gavel
cut her off.

"This hearing was set to accept the plea bargain agreement
in this case, then find another date for pre-sentencing and
another date for sentencing." The judge sighed and took off his
reading glasses.  "I have read this document proposed by the
prosecution and agreed to by the defense.  I can understand why
the defense is pleased, but I'm not certain why the prosecution
is so-magnanimous." The prosecutor made some noise as if to rise
and the judge waved him back down.  The judge stared at Scully
for a moment, pursed his lips and rubbed them.  "While it's
within my purview to reject this document I'm inclined to accept
it.  Does everyone understand? Miss Scully, do you understand you
are pleading no contest to these charges in exchange for a five
year sentence in a federal prison?"

Scully didn't move or breathe.  She had to keep reminding herself she
had done nothing wrong, this was part of a plan.

Beside her Waters jumped to his feet, "Yes, your honor.  We understand."

"I know you do, Mr. Waters.  I'm asking if she does," said Judge McDonald.
His eyes were slits.  "Miss Scully, have you been in my court before?"

Scully found her feet.  "Yes, Your Honor.  I was a witness
in a trial several years ago in this court."

"I remember.  A conspiracy case.  You were an excellent witness." The
judge leaned against the tall back of his black chair and rubbed his bottom
lip again.  "Strange, sad turn of events that brings you back.  Do you
understand what is before us?"

"Yes sir."

"Your attorney has explained it to you?"

"Yes sir."

"And you accept it?"

"Yes sir." Scully found herself drawn to the McDonald's face.  His
expression struck her as familiar, the depths of his stare somehow
penetrating, and she realized with a shock that he was disappointed in
her.  As though he were her father.  With very little imagination
Scully could see her dead father looking down intently upon her from
the bench - his eyes revealing how ashamed he was of his youngest child.
She flushed with guilt and shame.

"Are you aware that you are telling
this court that you do not dispute charges you stole money from the FBI
and sought bribes? That's as good as saying you're a common thief."

Waters protested and the judge noted his objection.

"Miss Scully?"

"Yes sir."  Scully's fingertips on the table before her were so damp
they left marks on the highly polished surface.  The judge continued to
stare at her and Scully knew what came next, what had always come next
with her father.  He had never spanked her, never struck her with his
hand, but his punishment was always more severe tha