Summary: "I saw old Autumn in the misty morn stand shadowless like
Silence, listening to silence..."  -- Thomas Hood
Or, The First Nine Days.
Disclaimer: Not mine.  Grr.
Category/Rating: Oddness. Angst. NC-17.
Spoilers: Through "Amor Fati."  In my world, the World Series happens
in September.  Does that make this an Alt-U?
Feedback: Nicer than gummy brains.  Please and Thank You.
eviljesemie@yahoo.com or jesemie@hotmail.com
Notes at end.

October 2001
 

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~

Since I lost you I am silence-haunted
  -- DH Lawrence

- - -
When did it first happen?

Yes, Scully says.  When did you first realize?  She takes a sip of
milky tea.

Gretta answers, I was seven and Fredrick was nine.  We lived on the
same road and sat next to each other in class because of assigned
seating, but we'd never spoken.  Fredrick, like most of our
classmates, usually pretended I didn't exist.  One day in early
October, our fourth grade teacher was drawing a large multiplication
table on the chalkboard.  It was after lunch, after recess.

Another cup?

No, thank you, says Scully.

Gretta says, I glanced out the window.  Clouds were building up, and
it thundered once, like the growl of an unsettled dog.  I wasn't
afraid of storms.  I was, in fact, indifferent to storms.  Mrs.
Sanders asked me a question; I don't remember what it was.  I knew
the answer but didn't want to provide it.  There was nothing worse
than being different, and any seven-year-old who knew the answer to a
fourth grade question was different.  A bright green bolt of
lightning jumped from one cloud to another.  I looked around the room
but no one had seemed to notice.  Something was starting to buzz in
my head.

She pauses to stack the empty teacups and saucers.  Scully tips her
head, a slight gesture to indicate slight impatience.

I can never explain this well, Gretta says.  I was sitting there,
unconcerned about the storm--  And then all of a sudden I'm nervous.
No, not nervous.  Anticipatory.  Fredrick is looking out the window,
and Mrs. Sanders has turned to the chalkboard again.  The clouds are
thick and my insides wiggle.  Fredrick is not smiling, but his face
is transformed with delight.

She smiles at Scully.  I saw a hint of what he'd look like in five or
ten years, she says.  Scully returns the smile, and prompts, Then
what?

Gretta continues, The sunlight is running ahead of the clouds, and it
hits the October trees around the playground in such a way that they
appear lit from within, like flame.  There are words in my head.  The
storm is washing in closer and closer.  Fredrick's thoughts are as
warm as wool in my mind.  He doesn't know I'm watching, much less
that I'm listening.  He is beautiful, secretive, kind; waiting.  He
is thinking, Soon there will be rainbows.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
11 October 1999
 

He hates that his hands tremble.  He's shaved as best he can.  His
black dress shoes are newly polished.  He folds his suit jacket over
the back of a dining room chair and goes to the living room windows.
Doesn't check his watch.  She probably had to park down the street.
They're not supposed to be at the church until 8 p.m. and they have
plenty of time to get there.

And afterwards?

The vividness of her resolve and the strength of her beliefs are
nothing compared to the veracity and swallowing depth of love of
which she is capable.  He understands that now.  What he heard in
her, when she came to his bedside, was intoxicating: she sounded like
a dreamscape, like starlight, like joy distilled to its purest form
and then expanded, exploded and rushed to all corners.

But there was also desperation, ache, fear -- he saw the edge of a
machete, a man touching her temple in benison, percolating water, a
ship that was not supposed to exist, insects swarming, blood-waves
splashing at her feet; puzzle pieces of DNA, religious texts,
prophecy; himself, in her stunned heart, as she tried very hard not
to cry, as she tried to tell him that he had to be strong, her mind
opening fully to him, every emotion spilt and ruptured so that he
would know, hoping that it would help him fight.

It is too quiet in the wake of such music.

He can't take another five minutes of sitting and recuperating.  He's
swallowed antibiotics and vitamins and Advil.  He's slept seven and
half hours a night every night for the past week.  He needs to be
with her.  They have work to do.  He refrains from scratching at the
stitches on his scalp, which heals and itches.  He paces his living
room.  There are files on his desk he can't fix on.  He needs her
here to sharpen things, to make things real again.

They haven't really talked about what's happened, which is in no way
atypical for them.  He said some things a few days ago, but they were
just words in that cloaked, measured way he always seems to be
speaking to her in his hallway -- if he can hold her in his arms for
thirty seconds at a time, once every two or three years, if he can
say 'saved' and 'touchstone' and 'whole person,' eventually, decades
from now, he might also finally string together enough of those words
to fully explain what she means to him.

Which might be less important than a more pressing matter: she is his
dearest friend, and she has been hurt.  They are closer and more
apart than ever.  He has no idea how to correct this or comfort her.
He strains to see past his own reflection in the dark glass, strains
to remember the pulse of her thoughts inside him.

The elevator dings at the end of the hall.  He goes to the door.  His
neighbors have arrived home.  He's already stuck his head out, so he
says hello and prepares for the onslaught of polite conversation.
She isn't very late.  He shouldn't worry.

- - -
"Fredrick, these posters are fabulous," Carole says.  She slings her
scarf over one shoulder and flips her hair in the same direction.  "I
know I've said it before but I'm utterly thrilled you've joined the
fund."  She giggles.

"Thanks," he says, using the level to adjust the frame across from
the door.  The large Artober Fest print is currently the focal point
of the entire room.  The Whisperwood Arts Association has one week to
raise enough money to cover their expenses for all of 2000.  Carole
is the fund's broker, and Fredrick's newest patron.  Everyone
involved with WAA has spent three hours sweeping and scrubbing and
redecorating the fund building's lobby.

Fredrick thinks, Carole has been my unasked-for personal assistant
for three hours longer than anyone not on medication should have to
tolerate.

"How's Gretta these days?  You guys see much of each other?" Carole
inquires in an innocent voice.

He puts the level in his toolbox and rummages around for a permanent
magic marker.  He'd really enjoy writing all over Carole's face with
it, but he needs to mark the paint cans for tomorrow's kids' classes -
- free workshops after school in the field by Joleen's Hot Potato.

"Haven't run into Gretta lately, no.  I hear she's doing well.  The
market's busy this time of year.  With the harvest and all."

"Of course."  Carole smiles her fakest smile.  "Well, I'll be going.
Have a great kickoff tomorrow."

"You too."  Fredrick juggles five bottles of tempera and sighs with
relief when Carole shuts the door behind her.

He's the last person left in the building.  He should go home and eat
something.  Do laundry.  Finish up the flyer designs or take notes on
the website proposal.

He could call Gretta, ask if she wants to go for a stroll, or if she
needs help loading all those pumpkins into storage for the night.  He
opens the door and leans out into the sharp autumn evening, spirits
near in smoky air, the sort of night during which he once thought
he'd propose...

What a fucking sap, he thinks.  If she heard you thinking that--

Sort of the problem, wasn't it?  The wind slaps at him, scrambles his
black hair messily.  He should go home and go to bed alone and wake
up when it's March, and everything's covered in snow and he's too
cold to think about anything but not dying of frostbite.

Yeah.

Two blocks down, he can see the lit jack o' lanterns lining the yard
in front of the small market Gretta owns.  They have wicked, fanged
grins, and flickering eyes.

- - -
The suspended leaf flutters in cold night breeze, rotates in
levitation, its silk cord catching silver light for an instant before
becoming invisible again.  Spider magic.

Scully stops on the sidewalk to button up her trenchcoat.  She
shivers, peering up at the oak with its decaying foliage.  She is
four blocks from Mulder's apartment and ten minutes late.  Her heels
compose the only noise on the street save the breeze whistling low,
clashing melodies against her clompy rhythm.  Her ears are cold, and
she regrets both her new haircut and her unreasonable refusal of
hats.  (She thinks they make her head appear unnaturally round.)

The orange-tinted moon seems to have been eating too many carrots.
She knows it's just smog reflecting city lights, but she thinks of
celestial dairies and lunar cheese, moon mice with tiny pick-axes.
She hadn't expected it to be so dark just yet.  She isn't quite used
to autumn.  Her internal clock ticks with hot sunlight, salt-watered,
gritty with sand and sleeplessness.  Less than two weeks ago she
looked out over the choppy surface of a bloody tide, slept in a tent
woven with locusts, dreamt she'd lost his heartbeat.

They saw each other at lunch, when she dropped off a few files and
they made plans to attend the memorial service together.  Now she
wrenches open the front door to Mulder's apartment building, rides
the dim-lit elevator, steps out into his yellow hallway.  A vaguely
familiar woman -- neighbor -- and a small girl are chatting with her
partner.  The girl in pigtails and corduroy jumper is bouncing with
happiness.  The woman has her hand on the child's head.  Mulder
responds to something Scully doesn't hear.  He sees her and smiles,
gently, holding her gaze.  She walks right up to him, puts her right
hand in his left one and rises up on tiptoe to kiss him, as though
the greeting was ordinary, practiced.

He kisses her back, and looks down at her with something like wonder
in his eyes.  The neighbors disappear into the hallway ether.  Mulder
opens his door and ushers Scully inside.  He helps her out of the
trenchcoat, and stops.

"What?"

He points at her collar, and then his.  They each have on a button-
up, medium blue oxford.  We have been working together too long, she
thinks.

"You should probably change," she says, smiling.  "Otherwise, it'll
be weird, like we're dressing as twins."

"This blue looks very good on me," he says.

Yes, it does, she thinks.  "I don't have anything else to wear with
me."

"Wouldn't want people to start thinking we were weird, though."

"Right."

"Too bad you have to wear anything at all," he says absently,
wandering into the bedroom.

Too bad we have a memorial service to attend, she thinks.  On his
coffee table is a book of apocalyptic Indian prognostication, and a
top level clearance entry pass into a room where she found him
sprawled and borderline-septic, his invaded skull swathed in gauze.
While sitting at red lights, or when she dumps the bathroom waste can
into the larger kitchen one, she flashes on the memory of his
delicate eyelids, speculates about the death that tempted him.  She
can't make herself stop.

She did not know if she would be able to wake him; she thinks of his
weight against her as they staggered away.  She's positive she could
not find that room again with a map and a team of specialists.  That
room, if it has not already been, will be transformed, renovated,
disappeared.  Skinner said the FBI meant to put a crime scene unit in
there, but it didn't happen.

Besides, the team was busy with Diana's body, discovered slumped in
the doorway of her posh Watergate apartment.

"Scully?"

Mulder stands beside the couch, waiting for her answer.  He is
wearing a white shirt with a dark gray suit and a dark red tie.  He
looks almost healthy, almost steady.  Very proper for a man going to
pay his last respects to the redeemed double-agent with whom he
reopened the X-Files so many years ago.

She shakes her head.  "Hmm?"

"Ready?"

"Yes."  She reaches up to smooth down his hair.  He stands very
still.  He concentrates his gaze on her face, puts his hand on her
arm.  She cannot conceive of a life without him.  The revelation is
terrifying and liberating.  "I'm ready," she says.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
17 October 1978
 

Under his breath, he says "My name is Fredrick" to Marcus, who keeps
calling him Freddy.  To Barney he says, more loudly, "Stop stepping
on the backs of my sneakers."  To each of the eleven boys he's in the
ninth circle of hell with, he says, in his head only, I hate
dodgeball.  Someone's elbow pokes at his ribcage.  Someone's sweat
splatters the side of his cheek.  I hate dodgeball a lot, he thinks.

Fredrick Roberts' father talks a good deal about the ninth circle of
hell, for reasons obvious to Fredrick.  The ball swings past his head
and he ducks, crashing into Stevie, who yelps and thumps his shoulder
hard.  Eric and Jacob are aiming the ball fast and brutal.  Thomas is
out, flat on the pavement like a steamrolled cartoon character.

His dad might be referring to anything from Dante (whoever he is) to
a career as an insurance claims adjuster, but Fredrick understands
that fiery pits of lava and brimstone have nothing on fourth grade
recess rituals.  Brad Brendle will probably threaten to beat him up
just for fun.  It'll be better than having Lucas Swank sit on him.
He could hit back, but then he'd have bruised knuckles and a fat lip.

He zigs and zags and the ball smacks him right in the stomach
anyway.  As he goes down he wonders if he looked like one of those
circus guys who gets hit with a cannonball.  Probably not, he thinks,
taking a chance to enjoy the full benefits of a concrete bed.

"Quit napping, Freddy!" Marcus screams.  "You're done!"

Someone kicks the dodgeball away from Fredrick's prone body.  He sits
up slowly -- the game has resumed.  Dust and gravel spray around him
while nine-year-olds out for various forms of revenge and
recrimination try to harm each other with a rubbery sphere.  When he
stands up the ball bounces off his left ear with an enormous thwack
and goes out of bounds, rolling across the playground before anyone
can scramble to catch it.

"Your fault," Eric whines.  He pushes at Fredrick with his squishy
hands.  "Go get it."

Fredrick sighs and looks around.  He can see the ball still rolling,
headed toward the school building.  He jogs over to retrieve it.
It's Jupiter out of orbit, he thinks.

The ball comes to rest at the feet of Gretta Carlisle.  She is
sitting with her back against the school.  Her math book is open.
She has a piece of paper and a pencil, and as Fredrick approaches he
can see she seems to actually be working some of the problems that
are at the end of every section.  She appears to be on the thirtieth
chapter.  They've been in the fourth grade for seven weeks.

Freak, he thinks.

When he bends to pick up the ball, she looks up.  "Hi," she says in a
pleased voice, as though he's come to see her personally.  "How are
you?"

He palms the ball and grimaces at the sound of eleven irritated boys
twenty feet away yelling for him to hurry up.  Lucas advances with a
threatening expression.

Fredrick doesn't answer, but turns and throws the ball to him.

"Why do you play if you hate it so much?" Gretta wants to know.

She's always asking him stuff like that.  Strange little nosey
questions, like she has a right to the information or something.  He
hates sitting next to her in class.  It's bad enough she lives on the
same street he does, with her dumb grandparents.  Ignoring her hasn't
made her stop asking stupid stuff so far, but if he walks away he
knows she won't follow, and that's what he always does.

Today he is tired and dirty and his ear's ringing, and he hates
Gretta Carlisle every bit as much as he hates dodgeball.  The first
recess bell begins to chime and he thinks he'll go in early and sit
at his desk in blissful silence for just a second, before everyone
else starts to pile in after the second bell.

She lets him go, and sure enough, there's no one else in the
classroom when he dashes in there, hall door banging shut behind him
like a delayed cue in a play, the otherwise stuffy calm quite welcome
as he drops down in his seat and lays his head on the desk.  Soon the
second bell sounds and other kids appear, wound up and filthy, morose
or laughing or just a bit meaner than they'd been before lunch,
before the chance to work on their socialization skills (as Mrs.
Sanders was fond of saying).  Thomas and Jacob pinch at each other
and stick out their tongues at Fredrick.

Gretta slides into her seat next to his and lifts her desk top to put
her math book away and get out a notebook and her science text.  Mrs.
Sanders raps a ruler against the chalkboard and gives off her stern
look, like one of those high-pitched alarms only dogs can hear.  Kids
start to shut up.  Gretta leans over and whispers, "The dodgeball was
red.  The dodgeball looked like Mars out of orbit."  She smiles at
him the way someone smiles, Fredrick knows, when they really want to
be your friend.

He ignores her.  He's getting good at it.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~

11 October 1999
 

The church is out of town, by a tiny man-made lake in the middle of a
new subdivision.  White candles light the sidewalk from the parking
lot to the wide cherry-wood front doors.  He recognizes a handful of
FBI field agents, a few officious women from the CIA, an NSA advisor,
a guy who used to be Secret Service, all mixed with a copious number
of complete strangers dressed in Sunday best.  Cousins, maybe, uncles
or aunts.  Friends, neighbors, contacts?  Syndicate operatives,
turncoats, traitors?  Mulder doesn't know.  The sheer amount of
people, good, bad or indifferent, who are attending the service
startles him.

So Diana managed something like normalcy in the last ten years, at
least on the surface.  Do any of these people know what she's done?
Scully is hanging up their coats, her hair deep bronze in the lobby's
shadows.  A part of him wants to start screaming.  He would like very
much to know what Diana knew about Scully.  There was something to be
said for ranting insanity: whatever was done to him has restored,
theoretically, his mental health and his pedestrian human senses.
He'd have no excuse, then, if he stormed her coffin, shook her corpse
and demanded she reanimate long enough to tell him everything.
Skinner hadn't put him in a headlock at the hospital but Mulder was
fully aware of the man's ability to do so.

'FBI Agent Arrested at Funeral for Fallen Comrade; Charged with
Desecration of a Corpse.'  Best not to chance it, he thinks.

Kersh and Skinner are just inside the foyer, talking with another AD
(Harvey? Luden?  Maybe Jolie) about the World Series.  Skinner gives
Mulder and Scully a tight smile when he sees them.  No one else makes
such an effort.  Whispers and gazes dart away from them.

There are pale pink roses in a vase by the guest ledger.  Diana,
Mulder remembers from some long-ago dinner, loved pink roses.  How
pedestrian, he thinks.  She probably thought it made her unique, to
want pink ones instead of red.  Scully puts her elegant signature
below his harsh scrawl.

It is almost eight o'clock.  Seats at the back of the auditorium are
chosen, Scully sitting by a porch door, Mulder on her right.  The
crowd settles in.  A man at the pulpit opens a Bible.  The casket to
his left is closed, pink roses draped over its rounded lid.  Mulder
remembers kneeling by Diana, her hair tinged with gray, wrinkles at
the corners of her eyes.  Lifting her veil, holding a squalling
infant with her coloring, watching her die in increments.

The man at the pulpit says, "We are gathered tonight to say goodbye
to a beloved friend and colleague, a woman of courage and dedication,
Diana Beth Fowley."  Mulder takes one breath and then another.  Diana
once threw him a birthday party complete with barbecue and three beer
kegs, once deep-throated him in a shower stall, asked how anyone
could quantify the spiritual, believed his theory about gashadokuro,
the skeletal ghosts of starved victims, sometimes fifteen persons
tall, who were thought to devour the heads of the living.  Diana once
slipped a key under Scully's apartment door.

Scully has her head bowed, her eyes closed.  He would give up his
normal boring blatantly inferior human abilities to see, touch, taste
and smell to hear one more minute of her thoughts, to have her
emotions mainlined directly into his, the intensity of her
overwhelming everything he feels at this moment.

Diana's thoughts had been like a strong drink of turpentine, sickly
sweet, bitter, sour, scalding.  Poisonous.

Amen, the pulpit man says, amen, glory be to God in the highest.

Mulder puts his hand over his mouth.  Selfish, he thinks angrily.  He
takes it back: he would give up any sense but touch if it meant he
could take Scully's hand in his and tell her that it doesn't matter
what she saw in Africa; tell her and have it be true.  If he could
apologize for Diana.  Her fingers are laced together, and she's
biting her lip.

Not everything that occurred in the last three weeks was Diana's
fault, but she has hurt Scully.  The man at the pulpit finishes his
remarks with a proverb or a psalm, Mulder doesn't know which,
something about absolution and grace.  It doesn't matter, Mulder
thinks.  I couldn't forgive her anyway.  The man steps down.

The auditorium is filled to capacity with people breathing and saying
nothing.  Scully's eyes are closed.  Diana is dead.  Mulder takes one
breath and another, isolated in alien deafness.

- - -
At ten the register is cashed out and Gretta is exhausted.

"All right, Jacks, time for sleep."

She snuffs the pumpkins' candles and carries each head into the
market, lining them up on the countertop by the baskets of gourds.
Before locking up, she tells them bye.

How macabre, she thinks, that the last things I say good night to are
a bunch of decapitated heads.

Just pumpkins, she tells herself.

Across the street, Fredrick is closing up the fund hall.

She almost yells hello -- it's still instinct after, what, twenty-
some years.  But she quells the urge.  He is walking the other way,
hunched a bit, probably cold.

She thinks of holding his hands between hers, trying to warm him
after an afternoon of snowball fights or faux ice hockey on the creek
(tennis shoes don't make the best skates).  She thinks of his cool
hands on her hot skin, when he'd insist on guessing her temperature
during her annual bout with the flu, making her laugh until, well,
snot came out her nose.

The last memory of his thoughts sits resonant and soft in her mind.
She watches his lean figure until he is out of sight.  She doesn't
realize she is shaking until she arrives at her darkened porch, until
she notices how smothered all sound is in the sleeping night, in her
empty house.

- - -
Scully listens to him rattle around in the kitchen, boiling water for
tea.  She thinks maybe she should let him get some rest.  Their
shirts no longer match but their weariness might.  She toes off her
heavy shoes and pads to the doorway.  The kettle puffs so much steam
she can't see any liquid water at all as he prepares two coffee
mugs.  He slides one down the counter toward her.

She picks up the mug and swirls the tea bag a few times.  He passes
her and drops into a chair at the dinner table.

"Can I ask you something?" he says a minute later.

"Sure."  She removes her soggy bag and stirs two spoonfuls of sugar
into her hot tea.  She brings a saucer and the sugar bowl with her
and takes the chair next to his at the table.  He prepares his tea,
takes a quick sip, and sets his mug back down.

"Mulder, what did you want to ask?"

He gives her a quick look, a rueful grin.  "I just...  I wanted to
ask if you were okay."

"If I'm okay?"  There's a hint of stridency in her tone.  He's been
watching her like she might disappear all night.

As if he wasn't the one who'd been lost.

"Scully--"

"No, it's okay.  _I'm_ okay."  It's a fib they both need to hear.

"I didn't know whether the service would, I mean, you and Diana
aside, the service was pretty, um, religious.  Far more than I
thought it would be.  Diana wasn't really big on religion, that I
knew of, but I guess someone in her family arranged things."

Scully stares at him.  He clears his throat.

"I was just wondering, if you felt uncomfortable, I, I wouldn't want
you to not share that with me, I, uh, you don't have to share
anything you don't want to, honest, but if you did want to, just
someone to talk to sometime, I don't know, about anything, I just--
I wouldn't want you to feel awkward and then sit there and take it
because you were with me."

He is babbling, and blushing, and she begins to answer but he starts
talking again.

"Which is moot, I know, because the service is over and if you'd
really had a problem it's sort of too late to apologize for it now,
but I will anyway because I really didn't think, I didn't think
there'd be such an emphasis on religion and everything, I've been to
actual Christian sermons that weren't that preachy, and--"

"Mulder," she interrupts.  "I'm fine."

"Okay," he says meekly.

She considers her answer.

"Actually, I'm not."

His head snaps up.

"I'm not _not_ okay, really, but yes, tonight was hard."

His face is full of compassion.

"And, you're right, not only because of Diana.  Mulder, she _was_
your friend."  She stops.  Diana was more than his friend, doubtless,
but she doesn't want to go into that.  "It's going to take some
time.  For me to reconcile what I experienced in Africa, what I
witnessed when I returned."

He nods.

"Thank you, though."  She leans over and kisses him on the
forehead.  "I know tonight was no holiday for you either.  Are you
okay?"

"I think so."

They smile at each other shyly.  She hates that what has happened to
them almost defies verbalization.  She wants to tell him everything,
and has no idea how.

How can she possibly describe how afraid she feels when she thinks of
all she was taught growing up?  The anger that she may have placed
her faith in something that doesn't exist, that may be nothing more
than a deception, a fantasy conjured by other simple humans to
explain mortal frailty and pain, to fuel wars, to hide truths, to
pretend that after this life there is nothing to fear?  That there is
anything after this life, period.  The emptiness she felt in Africa,
confronted with answers she could not penetrate.  The transcendence
blossoming in her as she and Albert joined hands, her wretched hope.

What if I had found you too late, she wants to yell.  What if I
hadn't found you at all?  How can you possibly trust me?  How could I
have told you the truth when I don't know what that is?

Something drips into her tea.

"Scully," he says, brushing her jaw with his thumb.  She looks at
him, her vision bleary, her throat sore.

He stands and takes her hands in his, drawing her up.

They're walking -- drifting, she thinks, the apartment hazy around
her -- and someone, no, she is saying, Mulder, Mulder, Mulder.

Shh.  Shh.

- - -
She rests in his arms, her head heavy on his shoulder.  They are on
top of the comforter, his bedroom lit by one candle.  After a time,
she raises her head and kisses him more gently than he thought
possible.

I hope you can hear me, he thinks.  I hope you know.

She sits up and begins to unbutton his shirt.  He does not let
himself think it is a mistake.

- - -
She has never been with someone so patient, so meticulous.  Her body
feels like it has been roused one nerve ending at a time, until her
blood hums.  It is not like sex at all, she thinks.  More like
suturing, mending -- she is straddling him, and he is stitched inside
her.  She runs her finger along the slick seam their bodies make,
where he disappears into her.  She looks up at him and sees her own
amazement in his eyes.

She feels a sting only when he's separate again.

- - -
Illuminated by a single flame, her pale, bare body carves a shallow
indentation against the deep green of his sheets.  He caresses the
length of her arm over and over again, her skin a marvel.  She sleeps
with her left hand curled on his chest, and this seems somehow as
intimate as what they were doing when she was awake.

He is lonely for her in a way he could not have imagined four or five
hours ago.

He misses her thoughts as though she were separated from him by
thousands of miles.  The remnants of her emotions surge and ebb in
his mind.  When she stirs, he lays his hand over her heart.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
26 October 1978
 

On the bus, they end up in the same seat.

"All right, everybody shut up, we've got a full load today 'cause bus
four, route one is outta commission," the bus driver snaps, her gum
popping.  "Gonna be a longer trip and I don't want no shenanigans."

Fredrick is the last to sit, and the last half-taken seat is
Gretta's.  He sits beside her as far away as possible and begins to
lose his balance, perched on the edge.  He recovers and hopes no one
saw him almost fall into the aisle.

Gretta is reading her history book even though they just got out of
history class and what kind of imbecile doesn't want to throw up
after the sheer torture that is Mr. Landon's history class?  She
smiles, studying some map of the USA circa 1775.  Fredrick shakes his
head in disgust.

Lynn Caldwell hangs over the back of the seat in front of them and
nudges at her friend, Carole Lykins, who also turns around.

"Check it out," Lynn sneers.  "Gredda and Fredda.  Huh."  She snorts.

Carole says, "Why you hanging out with her, Fred-der-rick?  She's got
lice and crabs and shit.  Look at her clothes.  What a geek."

"I'm not hanging out with her," Fredrick says hotly.  "I didn't have
a choice."

"Whatever," Lynn says.

"She won't hafta make a Halloween costume.  She can go as herself.
OooOOooOOoo," Carole warbles.

Gretta keeps reading, as though no one has said a word.

Fredrick looks at his wristwatch.  Fifteen minutes, and the bus is
less than halfway done with bus four's route -- thirty more minutes,
he calculates, of sitting next to Gretta.

Yuck.

Lacking anything better to do, he takes out his homework folder and
reviews the assignment from Mr. Landon.  What are the key
differences, states the first question, between the maps on page 43
and page 103?

"Page 103 is a current map of the US," Gretta says.  "But that's not
really what the question's about."

"Yeah, I know," Fredrick says, annoyed.  "I can read.  I even saw the
maps in class.  I'm not an idiot."  Shut up, he tells himself.  If
you talk to her she'll talk back.

She takes two pieces of stick gum out of her pocket.  "You want one?"

He squints at her, suspicious, but takes a piece.  "Thanks," he says.

"I liked the map you were drawing earlier."  Gretta gives him an
expectant look, then shrugs when he doesn't respond.  "Whisperwood
isn't on most maps.  In fact, I've never seen a map with Whisperwood
on it.  If you drew one, you really could put all the interesting
places in town on there -- people would like that, to see where the
frog pond is in relation to the farmers' market, or how far the
interstate exit gas station is from the end of Main Street, which is
where most people figure out that they've taken the wrong exit."

He looks into her guileless brown eyes, shocked.

He hasn't even made one mark on paper yet.  The map is just in his
head.  It is absolutely nowhere else, he thinks.

It finally makes sense to him: she can hear every thought he has.

Witch, he thinks.  Monster.

The bus shudders to a halt.  It's their stop.  He grabs his bag and
folder and rushes out.

He waits for Gretta to come down the steps.  The bus drives away and
the other kid at their stop, Lance, a fifth grader, hops down the
sidewalk.  Gretta stands, for sure knowing that Fredrick has
something to say.

Anyone who can't figure out what I'm thinking right now, Fredrick
says to himself, isn't paying attention.

"You stay away from me," he snarls.  "You come anywhere near me and I
will give you a black eye.  You keep out of my head, and tomorrow
when I tell Mrs. Sanders I want to change seats with someone you
better not argue."  His face is aflame, his stomach quakes.  Gretta's
gone specter-white.

"I didn't mean," she starts.

"NO.  Stop it.  Get away from me."

"Fredrick, listen, I didn't know--"

"That I'd be upset?"  He can't believe it.  She's the stupidest
accelerated seven-year-old on the planet.

"I'm sorry," she says in a raw, frightened voice.  "I really am.
I'll try not to listen anymore, I swear."

"You better," he says, panting with rage.

"I promise," she whispers.  She's shaking and he feels like throwing
up.  Neither moves from their spot in the road.

He hears his father call his name down the street.  Gretta swallows.

"Get out of here," he says, kicking gravel at her.  "I hate you,
don't you know that?"  She turns and runs toward her grandparents'
farm.  "I hate you!" he yells at her retreating form.

At home he does his chores, and then has dinner with his dad and
Agnes, and then opens up his homework folder.  But he can't stop
thinking about it.  Someone can hear his thoughts?  That's crazy, he
thinks.  I must be nuts to believe that.

"Watcha drawing?" Agnes asks him an hour later.

She breaks the spell -- when he stands up from the kitchen table he
sees that he's drawn a quick sketch of a very elaborate map of
Whisperwood.

"Here's our house," Agnes says, excited.

Their mom comes in, her cap in one hand.  "Did you arrest anyone
today?" Agnes asks her because that's what Agnes always asks.

"Not today," their mother chuckles.  "What's that you're working on
there, kid?" she asks Fredrick.

"A map of the town."

"It's beautiful.  You going to make a bigger version?"

"Yeah.  And color it in."

"That'll be a lot of work."

He nods, thinking.

His mom and Agnes go upstairs.  His dad comes in for a glass of milk.

"Can I go out for a little while?"

"Fredrick, it's dark.  And raining.  What do you want to do?"

"I need to ask a classmate about a homework thing."

"A classmate, eh."  His dad drinks another glass.  "Who?"

"Gretta Carlise."

"Oh, the Carlisle's granddaughter."

"Yeah."

"She's in your class?"

"Yeah.  It'll just take a minute."

"You can't call?"

"They're right down the street."

"Uh-huh.  Okay, whatever, but be back in an hour."  What this means
in Fredrick's-dad's-speak is, If we notice you're missing at dawn,
your mom will file a missing persons report at the office.

Fredrick races for his coat, is still yanking it on as he runs down
the wet sidewalk.

The Carlisle house has a wrap-round porch that groans as Fredrick
knocks on the front door.

Mrs. Carlisle answers wearing her yard clothes, with bits of corn
shuck stuck to her sleeves.  "Yes, dear?"

"Is Gretta in?"

"No, hon, she's probably down by the stream.  That's where she was
headed after supper."

"But it's dark," Fredrick says, exasperated.

Mrs. Carlisle laughs.  "Well, you're out running around, aren't you,
Mr. Roberts?  I suppose it's safe enough for man and beast tonight.
Gretta knows her way around the woods.  Do you?"

He shakes his head.

"You follow the path around her tool shed and through the asparagus
patch, and then keep following the path until you hit the stream.
Easy as pie."  She cocks her head.  "Your parents know where you are?"

"Close enough," he says.

"I'll turn on the lights in the backyard.  That should give you
plenty of light for the trip."

She laughs again and closes the door.

He picks his way down the muddy path, determined not to slip.  It's
not far to the stream, and he sees Gretta after a few minutes through
the sparse trees, light striping across her legs.  She gets on her
hands and knees and leans into the creek, pulling something out.  He
hears her gasp and speeds up.

His foot slides when the path declines and he grabs onto a rock.
Gretta is picking at what she's hauled from the stream.  She gives a
quick sharp sob.

Fredrick knocks on the rock with his heel, to announce his presence.
He walks to her cautiously.

She doesn't say anything.  A deteriorating paper sack lays beside
her.  He peels it open, dread and curiosity making his stomach fizz
again.  The sack is slimy with rainwater and darkened blood, and the
dead kittens inside have small fuzzy scalps that look like wet walnut
shells.

"Why would anyone do this?" she asks him.  "They were just babies."
She wipes the back of her hand across her eyes.  She is crying and
his throat is tight with sympathy.

Wind spirals down through the trees and kicks rain and leaves
everywhere.  Fredrick takes Gretta's elbow and leads her under a
rocky overhang.  The dirt there is strangely dry and they sit, his
arm around her waist.  She cries and he smoothes her hair off her
face like he's seen his mom do with Agnes.

Heavier rain weeps into the forest, clouds settling low.  A
flashlight beam smears inside black fog, and heavy footsteps follow.

"Gretta!" a deep voice bellows.  "Gretta, dear, come out!"  Her
grandfather puts one large foot into the creek and steps across.

"Hello," Fredrick says, his voice breaking.  "We're here."

"Hello, then, young man," Mr. Carlisle says.  "Gretta, are you well?"

She stands up and runs to him, throwing her arms up, and he lifts her
as easily as breeze.

"They're gone," she whispers, and sniffs.

"Who?" her grandfather asks, looking around, the flashlight casting a
glow in a random direction.

"The kittens," Fredrick says.

"A lot of wrong-headed people around," Mr. Carlisle says, flashlight
beam trained on the crumpled sack, and sighs.  "Would you like a cup
of hot chocolate, then?"

Fredrick nods, and Mr. Carlisle lets Gretta down.

"You'll follow close behind me.  Your grandmother know you're out
here?"  Gretta mumbles yes, and the old man pats her
shoulder.  "It'll be all right, dear."

She bobs her head, a sorrowful motion that makes Fredrick's chest
ache.  Her grandfather starts to walk out of the woods.  Fredrick
walks beside Gretta and wants to reach for her hand.  He does not.
As the silver edge of the woods comes into sight, she reaches for his.

He holds on, and she leads him home.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
12 October 1999
 

Scully does not seem changed to him, exactly, perhaps because she
isn't.  Something's up, though.  She's making him nervous.

They have not spoken of this new thing they are meshed in, this
transition that cannot be retracted.  Lunch together has been part of
their temporary routine anyway, and he lounges on the couch with a
super-hoagie while she bangs around in her bathroom.

He isn't sure she wants to see him right now.  She's spent a lot of
time in other rooms for the last hour.

She comes out of the bathroom looking flustered.

"What's wrong?"

"I can't find my glasses," she says.

"Maybe you left them at my apartment."

"I have an autopsy to do in an hour.  This is driving me crazy.  My
left contact has been torn for weeks.  I have to find those glasses."

"Why don't I go look for them?" he offers, hauling himself off the
couch.

She squeezes his arm, in gratitude perhaps, and stalks away toward
the back of the apartment.

He's halfway to his apartment when she calls his cell.

"They were in a pile of laundry, Mulder," she says, sounding
relieved.  "I'll call you after work."

- - -
The autopsy, a favor for Skinner, takes twice as long as it should,
and she is finishing up some paperwork when she notices the blinking
light.  She dials into Mulder's office phone mail and her mother's
recorded voice relays a message about her arriving flight.  Scully
slaps her forehead.  Her wristwatch says it's 8 p.m.  Her mother's
plane will land in thirty minutes.

Scully hates forgetting things.

In the car, her mother chatters away as though the world is the same
old place, full of rude passengers and grandbabies who say the
darnedest things and Dana, have you been eating well, tell me, what's
been going on with you?  I never hear from you, Dana, we live twenty
minutes from each other and when your brother wanted to know what
you've been up to, I said you'd been busy with work like always.

Scully helps Margaret grab her luggage out of the trunk and hugs her
goodnight on the front steps.

Will you be at church Sunday? Margaret asks.

I don't know, Mom, Scully says.  I don't know.

She drives away and is opening Mulder's door before it registers that
she hasn't gone home.

He is washing dishes in the kitchen sink and calls out, "Hello?"

"It's me," she says, sagging against the door.  It's still me.

- - -
He rinses and dries his hands.  She is here.

"Scully," he says, his smile falling at the sight of her.  She does
not react.

He walks to her, puts his hands on her waist lightly.  She seems
unreachable, and he feels the same sort of panic rising in him that
he has felt when she was locked away from him, her wrists taped down,
when she was missing from her hospital bed, an open journal left
behind like last goodbye, when her daughter was dying, when her pulse
became jagged, when he found her entombed in ice, left in a wash of
blood on his apartment floor.

More loudly, he says again, "Scully."

She stiffens and looks up at him.  A tear skips down her cheek.

"What if it was all a lie," she whispers.  "They almost killed you
and I can't, I didn't know where you were, and it was all a lie,
everything, everything I believed."

"What happened?" he asks, moving her further into the apartment.

"It was, it was nothing," she says, shaking her head.  "It's nothing."

He most definitely does not agree.  "Talk to me."

She shakes her head again.  "I'm fine now," she says, stubborn.  She
sniffs and gives him a quick hug.  "Sorry.  Didn't mean to scare you."

He decides to give her some space, some time.  "Have you eaten?"

"No," she says.  She takes off her coat, her suit jacket.  "I'm not
hungry."

The faint outline of her nipples is visible through her thin silk top.

"Wanna watch some TV?"

"No."

"Play poker?"

She smiles.  "No."

There is something predatory in the way she moves toward him.  We
need to talk, he thinks, but what he says is, "I'm going to fold some
towels."

"I need a drink of water," she says.

He understands the craving.

- - -
She keeps saying things that aren't right.  She swills ice water in
his kitchen.  She is thirsty, yes, and she said that truthfully, but
she said she wasn't hungry and that couldn't be less true.

She's starving.  Her chest hurts and her mind feels skewered and he
did almost die and what if God is just another word for alien, but
right now -- _right now_, she thinks, fierce -- she is more hungry
for him than anything.  Right now everything else will have to wait.

She puts the empty glass in the sink, strides out into the dining
room and secures his front door, the lock giving a loud brassy
click.  She walks through the apartment feeling wild somehow, as
though she has set a fire, damned fate, thrown up a ferocious wind,
challenged her enemies to defy her.  He is in his bedroom, expectant,
eyes bright.  There is no noise intruding, no sign they are not alone
in the dark city.  He is entirely hers, hers to destroy or cherish
and she cannot wait, oh, she cannot wait to make him moan again.  She
covers his mouth with hers, to hush the terrible silence.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~

13 October 1999
 

"I have to deal with some lab reports at lunch," she says, finishing
her cereal.

"Okay."

Scully pitches a wadded up napkin into the garbage can and flings her
coat over one arm.

She gets to the elevator before he remembers.

"Hey," he says, trying to sound nonchalant while mildly out of
breath.  "Dinner?"

She presses the up button.  "Sure."

"We could go out, or--"

"My place," she says.  "If you feel okay.  Carryout."

"Great."  He puts his hands in his pockets.

"We'll be okay," she says softly, and gives him a goodbye kiss.

The elevator steals her away.  He spends the afternoon attempting to
scrutinize expense reports for budget cut recommendations while
sitting on a dryer in the basement laundry room, which he concludes
must double as a meat locker.  The spreadsheets are dull, dull,
dull.  As opposed to the incredibly lascivious fantasy he's--

Not thinking about it! he commands.

In a week they'll return to full capacity professionally, and who-
knows-what personally.

We're breaking each other in, he thinks.

In two hours he will drive to Scully's apartment with a loaded box
from that deli she likes (he should get directions this time, instead
of ending up in the wrong city, searching for the right kind of
pretentious chicken salad) and argue with her about pseudopods, since
he read an article about them yesterday.

Mulder has decided that his subconscious, which would have had him
believe that a house in the suburbs with Diana was preferential to
anything with Scully, was a fucking moron.

- - -
Two huge sandwiches and an order of extra spicy stuffed olives wait
in the fridge.  The pseudopod discussion gave her actual cause to
say, "Mulder, I don't care what Frohike told you, sexual repression
cannot manifest itself as an ectoplasmic extrusion -- navel tentacles
may well exist, but no one can grow a third arm during a seance."

"Even someone who--"

"No one."

"Okay then," he said, amused.

It was a thankfully short debate.

She's confusing him, she notices, by rearranging the sheets and
blankets on her bed, making a nest with the pillows.

"You want to eat?"

He's always asking her that.  "Not right now," she says, switching
off the lamps.  She lights three candles.

Mulder wraps his arms around her from behind and hooks his chin over
her shoulder.

"What do you want to do?"

We ought to slow down, she thinks, but she doesn't want to.  Not yet.

She steps away, untying her robe and climbing onto the bed.  He makes
a small squeak as she starts to unbuckle his belt and he kisses her
like she's still a surprise.  She unzips his pants and says, "I want
to see you come."

His response is less than verbally coherent and exactly what she
intended.

Later, he will be stroking the side of her throat as she works her
hand between her legs, as he watches.  When the orgasm starts to
thrum, he will lean forward and kiss her without closing his eyes,
and he won't let her look away.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
October 1992
 

Paul has moved to Whisperwood to breathe nature in, he says.  To be
with salt of the earth folks.  He's going to grow greenbeans and yams
and those cherry tomatoes that are shaped like miniature lightbulbs.

"Yes, ma'am," he says to Gretta, "nothing's finer than small town
life."

He's a scoundrel, she thinks, all white teeth and collegiate manners,
twenty-five-years old and never worked a hard day in his life.  He
courts her at the market, chit-chats while she washes off produce and
without breaking a sweat lends two muscular arms to the farmers who
bring in cartons of brown eggs and box after box of squash.  On the
weekends, the yuppie crowds jam into town for the trees and the cider
and the quaintness that costs seven dollars a bushel at the Samuel U-
Pick Orchard.  He praises it all, even her trade savvy, and barely
lets his smile droop when she informs him that inheriting a store is
a lousy way to start a business.

She and Fredrick howl until they cry over Paul.  Paul is a joke that
gets funnier every time it's told.

"He's very amusing, Gretta," Fredrick says once, wiping his eyes.

"That he is."

"Why are you dating him again?"

"I need to laugh more."  And they sputter and hold their hands over
their mouths and cause a serious ruckus at Joleen's Hot Potato.  That
night Gretta goes to bed with a migraine.

Paul cooks dinner for her, and she browses his bookshelf.  He owns a
lot of books by former star athletes.

The steak and salad are quite tasty.  He calls the main dish
something fancier than steak, and she smiles encouragingly.  Two
glasses of claret are poured and they retire to the living room.

He is a joke that tastes like spiced wine.  A joke with a fabulous
pair of hands and a nice thick cock, and when she cradles him in her
thighs what goes through her mind is barely an emotion, just white
steamy pleasure.  As the night progresses, the pleasure thins,
becomes stringy, sore.

She dumps Paul the next day.  Tells Fredrick the day after that.

"What happened?" he asks, and his thoughts burst and glitter in her
head.  She bears down, and they vanish.

"We weren't compatible," she says.  "Would you have been able to
tolerate me if I'd kept dating him?"

"Of course not," he says.  "But I'm sorry it didn't work out."

Something about his voice makes her wonder if he's lying, but when
she looks into his sage-colored eyes he doesn't seem to be.

She takes a long shower that evening, her head aching.  Sits on her
porch with wet hair in icy wind and shivers.   Fredrick drops by with
a bouquet of white daisies and gathers her into his arms, concerned.

His thoughts -- cresting, gleaming -- sink into her as though she
were a sponge, a conduit, a lightning rod.  Her head throbs.  She
holds on to him, lets him rock her to sleep.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
31 October 1987
 

Fredrick readjusts his eye patch and swaggers up to Gretta's hay
fortress.

"Arr.  Ahoy thar.  Avast ye scurvy dogs!"

A gaggle of goblins and trolls, two Madonnas, one Han Solo and four
Muppets run screaming from the opposite end of the fortress, where
there is an eerie tunnel kids can crawl through before receiving
their treat from Mrs. Carlisle.  Someone very short with huge ears
knocks Fredrick in the shin accidentally while rushing to attack the
battlements.

Gretta sits atop a crumbly turret.  "Come on up."

He hoists himself up the hay steps, careful not to impale anything on
his plastic sword.

Gretta is wearing a spangly fairy costume, her strawberry-blonde hair
a tumble of curls, streaked with periwinkle ribbons.  She gives
Fredrick a square bun topped with currants and raisins, wrapped in
orange cellophane.

"It's a soul cake," she tells him.  "Now you're supposed to pray for
the dead."

He bumps her shoulder with his.  "Am I also supposed to repent of my
heathenish ways?"

"That'll be the day!" Mrs. Carlisle says loudly.

"Ha ha," says Fredrick.

"Are you the dread pirate Roberts?" Gretta asks.

He sticks out his tongue at her.

Inside the house, the phone rings.

"Can you pass out candy for a minute, Gretta?" Mrs. Carlisle asks.

"Sure."

Gretta makes the kids climb up to the turret to get their treats
after they've climbed out of the tunnel.  Fredrick can hear her
grandmother laughing in the house.

In a kid-lull, he scoots a little closer to Gretta.

"Misty's in town?" she asks.

Shit.  "Just for a couple of days."

"Hmm."

Next door, Mr. Pratt is scaring three headbanging kindergartners by
rolling his eyes back in his head and dribbling fake blood.

Gretta smiles at the shrieking.  Fredrick's mouth goes dry.  Her
smile fades.

Before she can say anything, he abruptly says, "Why aren't you going
to college?"

She frowns.  "Why aren't you?"

"Because I already know how to draw."

She shakes her head.  "That's a lousy reason."

"You didn't seem upset when we graduated in May."

"I'm not upset.  It's your life.  I think you'd like studying at an
art school, that's all.  You looked at Savannah for a year."

Fredrick bristles.  "Well, I think you'd like going to school
anywhere, but you're not.  You didn't even apply to one university.
Didn't meet with one rep, or visit one campus."

Gretta looks away.  He can still hear her grandmother laughing.

"I can't leave home right now," she says quietly.  "You know that."

"She would let you go, Gretta."

She wipes her nose.  "She's dying, you know."

He didn't know.  A frog, a princess, and half a baseball team arrive
wanting their share of Snickers.  Gretta gives each child a handful
and a huge grin, and Fredrick watches her, grieved.  When the kids
scatter, Gretta squeezes his elbow.

"I want to keep the market open as long as possible," she says.

He nods, tears threatening.  I would marry you, he thinks.  I would
be your family.

If she hears him, she isn't compelled to share her reaction.  At
nine, when the official trick-or-treating curfew goes into effect,
she climbs off her turret, gown trailing behind her, and goes inside.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
15 October 1999
 

"Did your doctor give you the OK on coming in to work?"

Even in heels Scully can be sneaky, and Mulder lurches at the sound
of her voice, almost dropping his armload of files.

"Hey," he says, recovering smoothly, happy she's arrived.  "You're
late.  It's almost 4 p.m."

"I was in a projections meeting upstairs.  And you're early.  A week
early, if I recall correctly."

Mulder slaps the batch down on his desk and falls into his trusty old
wheeled chair hard enough to scoot it into the shelf behind him.  A
contested photograph of the infamous Snarly Yow slides off the
bulletin board.

"I'm ready to work, Scully.  It's been almost three weeks.  I'm ready
to be in the field, the real field."

"Not the fake field."

"_Not_ the fake one.  And I have a series of reports we should be
investigating."  He rehangs the photo with five red pushpins.  Mulder
loves that dog.

Scully crosses her arms in front of her chest and raises one eyebrow.

"Head's healing, got a juicy new stack of leads, Scully."

She says nothing.

"I'm guessing you haven't read your email from Langly."

"Mulder.  If we investigated every activity or occurrence that the
three stooges would like us to look into, by your logic we'd have
discovered countless cases of radiant boys and silkies and whirlwinds
and the original phantasmagoria blueprints by now."

"Why would this be something to complain about?"

"Mulder."

"Have you heard the legend of the Faceless Woman?"

Scully props herself on the corner of his desk and massages the
bridge of her nose.  "I know one version."

"Hit me."

"A traveler is climbing a mountain or a cliff or something on his
way...somewhere, and he spies a beautiful woman crying.  She's
dressed very well, very expensively -- great hair, great dress, knock-
out body -- and she's just boo-hooing all over the place."

"Boo-hooing?"

"All over the place.  And the man would like to offer her a fresh
handkerchief and maybe a little companionship, wink wink, but when he
finally reaches her, she raises her head and he sees that she has no
face."

"Which is pretty strange, one must admit.  Some women need a little
makeup and some need a lot--"

"A-hem," Scully says.

"And some don't need any at all," he says, "but it's one thing to
need to draw on your eyebrows, as my mother used to say, and another
thing entirely to draw on your eyes, and your nose, and your mouth,
etc., etc."

"Did a cosmetics kiosk get knocked over somewhere?"

Mulder gives her his crooked grin.  "Hawaiian legends occasionally
feature legless women instead of faceless ones."

"Okay."

"But the oldest versions of the story are of the Japanese Mujina, who
were sometimes men and sometimes women."

"Yes."

"But always beautiful, though faceless."

"Yes."

"So what would you theorize we might be up against if there've been
four reported sightings of at least two decidedly unpretty faceless
men in the last week in rural Missouri forest?  One witness described
the men as 'maybe having had a lot of acid poured on their faces.'
And when these faceless men realized they'd been spotted, they just
seemed to disappear."

"Big hulking guys?"

"Who seem to have a pyro bent.  All the fires were put out before any
real damage was done."

Scully's jaw is squared and her spine straight.  "There is no way in
hell I'm letting you go out there."

"Scully."

"If those are rebel shapeshifters, Mulder -- no.  Just no."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but it really isn't your call.  And
since when do you admit that shapeshifters even exist?"

She stands, draws herself up.  "You want me to go talk to Skinner
right now?"

"Skinner signed off an hour ago."

"I repeat my question," she spits, anger coloring her cheeks.

"Scully, I really don't think these are shapeshifters.  But this is a
lead that needs to be followed up and if we don't do it, who will?"

"The police who took the reports?" she says with sarcasm.

"The police would've filed those reports in the trash can.  The guys
pulled these from a couple of chatrooms they're into.  We'll go out
there, we'll look around, we'll talk to the witnesses.  Low stress."

"And what if our sniffing around attracts the wrong sort of
attention?"

That stumps him for a minute.  "Then it wouldn't be anything we
haven't dealt with before."

She goes over and puts her palm flat on the door, head bent.  He
waits.

She turns.  "You don't think these are shapeshifters?"

"Actually, I don't.  There isn't any correlating evidence to suggest
that: no UFO sightings, no lost time, no abductees.  No reports of
any influx of humorless white men in dark suits driving expensive
cars.  And the fires, maybe I failed to mention, were campfires."

They stare at each other.  After a long moment, Scully says, "Okay.
When do we leave?"

"Monday morning."

"Fine," she says, taking her purse off the coat hook and shutting the
door behind her.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
16 October 1999
 

The cathedral courtyard is decorated with pumpkins and hay bales that
have been made into thrones for the statues of Mary and St. Peter.
The midnight service has just begun.  Scully could go in as usual,
take a seat near the children's choir.

She stays on the concrete bench, staring up at the stars until her
eyes burn.

- - -
When she was eleven, Gretta was the only girl in her class who didn't
have a boyfriend.  She had a boy friend, yes, but it wasn't the same
and she knew it.

Her grandfather was sick.  Fredrick would come over to play but they
couldn't roughhouse, which was all right because Fredrick and fun
hadn't been a sure bet for a few months.  When he was near, she was
bombarded with his strange purple moods.  They were distressing
sometimes, when his thoughts were frantic, and restless, and though
Gretta had learned how not to hear the precise words that were in his
mind, neither the violet weight nor pushing out the words felt good.

Finally her grandmother said, "Fredrick's two years older than you.
He's going to go through some changes that you aren't, or aren't yet
going to understand, and you need to decide whether it's worth being
around him right now."

Mrs. Thomas wasn't quite as vague about it.  "Gretta, there are days
when I literally want to strangle Fred with my bare hands.  You think
he treats you like crap?  He treats me and his father like we have
the plague.  At least he talks to you."

Agnes chimed in with another side to the story.  "He washes his
sheets a lot.  Sometimes every day!  Acts like it's a big secret
too.  I don't know what that's all about, but I bet it's nice to have
clean sheets that often."

So occasionally he was a real pill, but then he'd come over and bring
a bag of fresh popcorn or two little bottles of 7-Up or a book he
thought she'd like, and he'd talk to her.  His mother was right about
that.  No one talked to her like he did.

They'd talk about building a spaceship or what they'd save if they
had to go live in a bomb shelter; those were two frequent
conversations.  She showed him all the pictures of her parents and
they made up elaborate tales about what had really happened to her
mother and father: they'd gone undercover, they were haunting an
English moor, they'd hitchhiked to Vegas to have their vows renewed
by an Elvis clone and ended up two addict amnesiacs working the slot
machines after they ate some bad bologna.

He told her all about his mom's hysterectomy and his dad's caul, a
sliver of which was in a locket that his dad kept on his keychain at
all times, in case of flash flooding.  And when he was happy, or
excited, or tickled, his thoughts were like orchestral accompaniment:
the closest she could come to describing it was to say that it was
like soaring inside a prism, and Gretta knew that didn't make a lot
of sense to him.  She knew he liked being heard.

And she knew she liked listening, as he did -- as well as he talked,
he was a superb listener.  The world seemed coarse and unrelenting at
eleven.  She told him about the shapes that crept across her bedroom
floor in the earliest hours of the morning, about her fear of
parties, about being the last girl in the eighth grade to try
lipstick and the first and youngest to find that straight blue jeans
didn't fit right anymore.

("Why not?" he demanded.  "I've been wearing this same style for ten
years.  They're just jeans."  She slapped her hips, which had
appeared as if by wizardry overnight.  "Ah," he said, and his
thoughts turned redder than his face.)

He helped her help her grandmother with the garden and the market --
he could stack pumpkins as well as the Doyle twins, who were
nineteen, and he wasn't as picky about the pay.  He hugged freely,
and knew when she needed to be by herself, and liked being with her
anytime she wanted.

When her grandfather died he brought her a bouquet of white daisies
that lasted three weeks, even though she thought people only gave
flowers to the person who was being buried.

He did that too.  A basket of white daisies with bright gold centers.

This year he's also brought some white mums, her grandmother's
favorites.  The flowers are arranged in a grapevine basket situated
between the two gravestones.  Gretta reads the card tucked down in
the blooms -- 'To my dear old friends.'

She replaces the card and walks out of the cemetery.

There's a basket of daisies on her porch when she arrives, their
sweet yellow faces turned to the moon.

- - -
Mulder is waiting at her dining room table when she unlocks her
apartment door.

Scully puts away her coat and shoes and gets a drink of water.  Leans
against the kitchen sink, eyes on the floor.

"I worked through dawn the first night I was in Africa.  I saw the
sun pour across the water and realized that I hadn't slept in 36 or
37 hours.  The tent was hot already, humid and buggy.  I collapsed on
a cot and didn't move until one or two in the afternoon.  I don't
remember what I dreamt.

"When I woke, I was disoriented.  I thought I heard you calling my
name, and I bolted outside, sand skidding everywhere.

"For days this puzzle unfolded before me and I had no idea what I was
doing, Mulder.  I could not fathom the whole picture -- I didn't want
to believe it.  I told Dr. Ngebe that it was like a work of art but
that was too profane a word to use, I think.

"I don't know what I saw, not really.  I know what I felt.  It was
just...a howl...

"It was worse when I stopped thinking I'd heard you."

She stops and raises her eyes to his.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"You said that I told you that you had to fight."

He nods.

"If you fight, I fight."

"I'm scared too," he says.  "Not of rural Missouri, but--  The
implications of what's happened.  What may be ahead."

"I know."

They are silent while she changes into pajamas, brushes her teeth.

They lie close on her couch.  He traces the contours of her fingers,
her wrists.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
17 October 1999
 

The orange bittersweet berries have split open, revealing their dark
coral bodies.  As lush as the wet inside of a lip, Gretta thinks.
She lifts up the vase of berries to dust underneath.  On the other
side of the window, three Whisperwood farmers discuss the annual soy
crop while their families choose pumpkins from the wide selection in
the market yard.

Steve Knear, his infant daughter Josie strapped to his chest, sets
two gallons of cider on the counter and says, "Whoa, Gretta, almost
didn't recognize you."

"Hi, Stevie."

"Sorry, Jo's got some kind of hoof and mouth disease or something,
she's keeping us up all night, every night."

The baby snores, drool making the front of the carrier slimy.

"She's sweet, Steve.  Can't fool me, you and Kendra wear each other
out."

"No kidding.  Kendra wants the house, the car, and use of the boat
May through September."

"Shouldn't have married someone who was late to the wedding because
she was getting a snake tattoo."

"Now you tell me."

On Sundays, Gretta notices, everyone would rather be someplace dozing
in old sweats.  In another hour, she can close shop for a while, a
respite three hours longer than she grants herself Monday through
Saturday.

After she puts away all the jacks and locks up the cash, she goes
home and does a few irritating little personal chores, like shaving
her legs and hot oiling her hair.  She tells herself it would be
awful if someone burst into the house with stupid gossip right now,
or if someone called her up and said, You've got to come over this
instant, Mr. and Mrs. Knickers are arguing on their roof again.  She
appreciates the solitude, the lack of connection to other people once
she's home.  She listens to classical music on the cheap transistor
radio in the kitchen and eats a steamed cup of cauliflower and two
boiled eggs, and there isn't anyone there to complain about it being
the worst meal ever.

She reads for a while, underlining passages she would have once
shared aloud.

- - -
"Be quiet, Fredrick's probably already in bed," Agnes tells her son.

The little boy carries his beginner's telescope gingerly and tiptoes
up his uncle's stairs, and Agnes tries to hustle three big lilies
into the front hall without dropping any of them.  Her brother has
left the lights on downstairs.  She closes the door, locks it, and
unties her sneakers.

"Hi, guys," she says to a framed photograph of her parents grinning
under a shady palm tree.

She notices Fredrick's daily planner, open to October on his tiny
desk at the bottom of the stairs.  'Go see Gretta' is written and
crossed out on the 3rd, 5th, 9th, 12th and 15th.

On the 17th, the box reads, 'Investigate moving to Guam.'

Agnes rolls her eyes.  "Always with the melodrama," she says.  She
considers waking Fredrick and giving him her standard Why Are You
Being Such a Dork? speech.  She's held off for this visit so far, but
she's sick of seeing him suffer.

It's funny, she thinks, how someone can act whole even when it's
obvious they're broken.

Tomorrow, she decides.  She looks at the lilies, spared a frosty
death.

"Honestly, Fred, you'd just let anything go."

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
18 October 1999
 

A small brown bat hangs upside down on her window screen, tucking in
his wings.  The sun is nowhere to be seen, locked behind clouds at
4:30 a.m.  Gretta pushes the quilt to the foot of the bed and
stretches.  She rises, greets the bat with a groggy hello, and stubs
her toe on the end of a hope chest that had belonged to her
grandmother.  She yelps, hops, and limps into the bathroom.  She
always tries to have the market open by 6 a.m. at the latest, but
this morning it will have to wait.

In her bathtub, she soaks in suds that sizzle as they dissolve.  She
is remembering his mouth on the back of her neck as he sluiced water
from a washcloth down her shoulders, her spine.  When she laid back
in his arms, concentrating on keeping his thoughts at bay, he washed
her thoroughly, abandoning the washcloth to move his hands higher and
higher up the insides of her thighs.

They were not supposed to be doing this.  He was pressed against her
hip, hard, and she did not move, her muscles limp as wet leaves.
When he was done washing her, she turned around, sat up on her knees,
and repeated the process on him.

She never kissed him.  She could not look at his face.  She knew then
that she loved him, but she could not bear whatever pity she would
find in his eyes.

She cannot remember why they were bathing together.  She thinks about
it, foam barely floating in the still bath water.  It must have
mattered at the time, she thinks.  There must have been a catalyst.
After they climbed from the tub, he carried her into the bedroom,
dried her off.  She remembers gasping and trying to focus on the
diamond designs of sunlight on her ceiling as he cupped her bottom in
his hands, as he lowered his mouth.  She remembers the crisp bite of
autumn breeze unraveling through the window.

Her arms and chest aren't even damp.  Her long hair, the color the
same reddish blonde of her childhood, covers her shoulders like a
shawl.  The bath water is a sheet of glass into which she's been
secured, like a statue.  She remembers the spike in her mind, the
crash of ecstasy, and the pain afterwards.

- - -
He dreams her thoughts, conjures that crushing heat from longing.
Then the sky shifts and he's pinched off in a wormhole, drowned in
quantum foam.  Wakes coughing.

"Don't let me watch 'Nova' right before I go to sleep," he rasps at
her.

"What?"  Scully is eating a pear and steering with one hand.

"Wait."  He sits up.  "We didn't watch TV yesterday."

"No," she says, wiping juice off her chin.  "We're almost to
Whisperwood."

"Urg," he says.  "Did you happen to inquire about a room at Hostile
Missouri?"

"'Hotel Missouri,' Mulder."

"Whisperwood's answer to carsickness.  The manager hung up on me."

"I'm sure I don't want to know what you were asking for in the way of
accommodations.  She has one room left -- everything else is being
rented long-term.  Wow, the trees here are wonderful -- check out
that coral.  And the big Bradford that's turning burgundy."  She
reaches over and brushes something off his eyebrow.  Her perfume is
some mild concoction of lavender and vanilla and ginger; he has found
that scent in luxurious locations on her body, and smelling it now
perks him up quite a bit.

"You know Agents Carry and Amos out of St. Louis?" she asks as he
rearranges himself in the bucket seat.

"Nope.  Why?"

"Because Skinner called and wants us to talk to them about our stint
with Domestic Terrorism and we're meeting them at the exit.  They're
on their way to interview some farmer thirty miles over who's
suspected of selling radiological supplies out of his barn."

He groans.  "Wonderful.  A guy in a seed cap with filked atomic
sludge and a box of soggy TNT."

"He has some shady contacts at the uranium refinery in Paducah,
Kentucky."

"Hmm."  Switched subjects, he asks, "The motel manager thinks we're
married?"

"The manager did not seem to care if we were escaped convicts."
Scully crunches on the pear.

He scratches his rough chin.  Sits up again.  Scully is in prim FBI
mode, unwrinkled.  The Whisperwood exit is just ahead.  He takes the
pear away from her, and presses a kiss in her palm.

- - -
Nine years passed before Fredrick told anyone about Gretta.  Most
people could figure out they were friends, best friends even, always
studying together or teaching each other dangerous acrobatics in the
forest or pairing up for community projects like canned food drives
and Christmas caroling.  They were a team adults found charming and
kids found bizarre, and after a while it was sort of like Gretta and
Fredrick had always been together.  When they fought, it was hot
gossip.  When they made up, it was a town holiday.

In places like Whisperwood, Fredrick thinks, friendship is an
anomaly.  He knows spouses who married while they were still in high
school.  Sometimes more than once.  Love rarely had much to do with
it.

He and Gretta were aberrations.  Everyone knew that.  It took a
special kind of nosiness to figure out more precisely why his and
Gretta's relationship was so very unique.

It took a little sister.

"May I have some more juice?"  As the firstborn nephew, Robbie
commands a great deal of respect from his uncle, who can't figure out
why the kid is this well-behaved, considering who his mother is.

Agnes stumbles into the Fredrick's kitchen with mashed hair and her
pajama top twisted.

"Unbelievable.  Robert, your mom has been staggering into kitchens
looking just like this her whole life.  It's like she's caught in a
time warp."

"Ha ha," Agnes says.  "Pass me the damn cereal, would you?"

"Are we going to visit Gretta later?" Robbie inquires.  He is smitten
with Gretta, has been since he was two, when Agnes finally came home
from Canada for a vacation.

"Maybe later," Fredrick says evenly, avoiding Agnes' gaze.

"'kay.  I'm going outside," Robbie says, glugging the last of his OJ.

"See ya," Agnes says.

She fixes Fredrick with a hard glare.  "We should go see Gretta."

"Not a good idea."

"You don't have to go.  I'm going to make a pumpkin pie, and Robbie
would like a jack o' lantern, and since we're staying until the
beginning of November these are not unreasonable desires.  There are
less than six hundred people living in this town, Fred.  Main Street
is exactly eight blocks long.  How you've managed to avoid Gretta in
the first place for a year is completely beyond me."

"I have workshops to teach," Fredrick says.

"I know it was hard, having her hear everything--"

"No, it wasn't.  It was incredibly easy.  There was no subterfuge, no
miscommunication, no lack of understanding.  She knew exactly what I
was thinking and she didn't want to hear it anymore.  I was not what
she wanted to have in her head every time I was within twenty feet of
her and I certainly wasn't who she wanted to spend her life with."

"How do you know?  Could you hear her thoughts?"

Agnes has always been infuriating.

"No.  But I could hear what she was actually speaking out loud, which
was more than enough to get the point across."

Agnes narrows her eyes.  "You are lying, Fredrick Roberts.  You are
lying through your teeth."

"I am not."

"You are," she crows.  "You're scared shitless that you totally
screwed up a year ago--"

"Stop it."

"I was thirteen when you told me.  Thirteen when we all sat on the
Carlisle's porch with hot chocolate and you told me that Gretta could
_hear_ you.  You know what?  I thought you guys were joking, playing
a prank.  I thought that for ten years.  All I wanted you to admit
was that you were having sex when Mom and Dad weren't home."

"We were not having sex, Agnes."

"Yeah, yeah.  You were having sex with Misty Priktin because she was,
like, the ultimate rite of passage for the males in the class of '87,
and Gretta was...  I don't know what Gretta was doing.  That's not
the point.  I didn't believe you, that she could hear your thoughts.
I don't know if I believe you now, even.  But I know that you're
pretending you don't miss her, and you're pretending you don't miss
her because you're pretending you don't know what you know.  You know
how _I_ know, Fred?  It doesn't take genius, or especially sensitive
senses.  Haven't talked to her in a year -- what a crock.  You're her
best fricking friend.  Act like it."

Agnes slams her oatmeal bowl on the table.

"Did Mom put you up to this?"

"Mom thinks you are doing swell.  Our parents live in Florida, where
it's warm all the time and no one can hear a damn thing because the
average citizen is one hundred years old."

Fredrick laughs, just a bit.

"Would you just, just go over to the market with Robbie and me?  Just
walk in there and say, 'Hey, Gretta, how's it going?'"

"I've got these workshops."

"So you've said."

"You come home once every two years.  Don't act like you control the
weather here."

"Whatever."

Fredrick scoots away from the table.  "Dinner'll be around eight."

He leaves Agnes and grabs his jacket.  Haven't talked to her in a
year.  The morning is bright blue, with clouds swarming in the
distance.  After a year he was supposed to miss her less, but that
equation was very wrong.  In another year, at the same rate...

On the other hand, he thinks, zipping up his jacket, how could I
possibly miss her more?

- - -
Agent Carry is a simple woman with simple tastes: she enjoys a cell
phone with roaming service that actually finds what it's searching
for.

"I swear, the call will ring and ring like it's going to connect and
then nothing."  She throws up her hands.

Scully nods.  "I've been there."

"Hey, thank you," says Agent Amos.  "I know this isn't your usual
field, but AD Skinner said you and Mulder were able to dot your i's
and cross your t's.  Said you had some experience with this sort of
thing, after Houston."

"Hopefully this won't involve any explosions," Scully says.

"Should be pretty dry, but you never know."

"Good.  Call if you need anything.  We'll be in the neighborhood."

Amos grins.  She and Carry wave to Scully as they pull out of the gas
station parking lot.

From a distance of five feet, Mulder hits her in the head with a lime
mini-jawbreaker.

"Ow."

"C'mere.  This place is loaded."

Inside the convenient store, Mulder has created a hill of candy next
to the cash register, behind which a bored twenty-something looks at
them both with utter contempt.

"Halloween extravaganza, check it out," Mulder enthuses.  "Ten
flavors of Nerds, and peanut butter kisses and candy corn and bubble
gum measuring tape, wax fangs and eyeball chocolates and gummy
brains!  It's a smorgasbord of sugar!"

"You're getting all that?"

An electronic Frankenstein head sings along to 'Monster Mash.'  The
bat-shaped cookies in the cookie case by the cigarette lighters look
tempting.  And Fruit Roll Ups.  And are those Pop-Rocks?

"A guy's gotta eat."

"We ate breakfast thirty minutes ago."

"Your point?"

"I want these.  I'm going to the bathroom."

He takes the packets of strawberry Pop Rocks and the bag of
strawberry Nerds away from her.  "A theme," he comments.

She ducks into the closet-sized restroom.  It would be roomier in
here, she thinks, if there were fewer things to buy.  The thought of
purchasing perfume in a gas station restroom has always intrigued
her.  Cologne, tampons, rubbers.  Enchanting, she thinks wryly, but
the strawberry condoms prove impossible to resist.  Two for $.50, a
lubricated bargain.

Definitely got a theme going, she thinks.  It's probably just PMS.

- - -
Check-in at the motel, then Mulder makes a beeline for the scent of
fresh bread wafting through the quiet streets -- street -- of
downtown Whisperwood.  Scully stands outside and takes gulps of air
and smiles at passers-by and pets stray dogs and generally acts like
a local.  Though the pale gray business suit probably gives her away,
he thinks.

"I'm taking Laurel and Hardy," he says upon her arrival at his tiny
table.

"Lawrence and Hart," she corrects.

"Whoever.  The two who live off Berry Blvd."

"I don't get to meet them?"

"Why should you have to suffer more than necessary?  Byers says the
other two will meet with you at Joleen's Hot Potato, on Main Street,
at three."  Mulder wags his eyebrows.

"Promise me that when we get home, we'll stop using the Gunmen as
both a main source of leads and our personal secretaries."

"You bet."

Scully hops off her chair-a-la-giant-thread-spool at the Whisperwood
Bakery and Cafe.  "I guess you're taking the car."

"Yo."

She takes a bite of the crawler he's been savoring.

"It's almost noon, Scully," he says defensively.

"I didn't say anything," she says after swallowing.

"No, but you were chewing in a very accusatory way."

She wipes her mouth with a napkin.  "Don't act like you don't enjoy
being punished."

He doesn't have a snappy response to that.  He takes a drink of
coffee instead.

"Mulder."  Scully hesitates.  "You're sure we don't need to do these
interviews together?"

"I don't think so.  But if there's anything further that needs to be
investigated, you're my first phone call.  What are you going to do
until three?" he asks.

"I don't know."  She looks out the window, wistful.  "I think I'll
just go for a long walk.  Maybe read a book."

"Sounds nice."  He stands and buttons his suit jacket, flicks off the
crumbs.  "Guess I'll be going."

"Be careful," she says, her voice almost professional.

He brushes her hand with his.  "You too."

- - -
Ghosts dangle from the bark-stripped limbs like tattered mummy
strips.

"Our spooky forest is almost complete," Fredrick tells the four-year-
olds, their faces smeared with plaster and chalk dust.  He gives a
bucket of stick-on googly eyes to Patrick, another WAA teacher.
While Patrick helps the kids give their poltergeists the ability to
see, Fredrick wipes down the picnic tables with wet paper towels.

A few parents sit in folding chairs at the edge of the field,
chatting and eating pumpkin seeds.  Fredrick hears one of them
say, "Robbie Miller, how are you, sweetie?  Where's your mom?"

He waves to Robbie, whose cheek has a pink pinch mark on it.

"Is the class over?" Robbie asks him.

"This one is.  There's another tonight during the BBQ."

"So we can go see Gretta now?"  Robbie tugs at Fredrick's sweater.

"Robbie!" Agnes is yelling down the street.

"Go with your mom," Fredrick says.  "I need to take care of a few
things here."

"But Gretta will miss you," Robbie says.

"No, she won't," Fredrick says.  "Go on."

Agnes stands at the spot where the sidewalk ends and stares at him
with a cross expression.

- - -
"What I'm saying is, there's a larger conspiracy in motion here.  A
cover-up of monumental proportions.  The town council knows about
it.  The shopkeepers' association knows.  The principle of the school
corp, what's his name?"

"Mr. Bradley Brendle," Lawrence Telley says, disgusted.

"Brendle, he knows.  They all know, Agent FBI.  You work for 'em, I
work for 'em, the whole damn planet is under their control, you with
me?"  Gabe Hart pokes a finger near Mulder's nose.  "These, these
faceless men, they come and they go with impunity.  Lighting their
little fires.  And what are we to do about it?"

"You've stated that these faceless men have been in the woods outside
your property twice in the last two weeks."  Mulder gestures toward
the east window of Lawrence and Gabe's ramshackle house.  "Any idea
what their larger purpose might be?"

"I think they're trying to signal the motherfucking mothership.  How
should we know?  They're up to no good, sir.  We saw the smoke go up
a week ago and we ran out there with our shotguns and they scattered,
like cockroaches.  Lynn Caldwell shows up on our doorstep the next
morning, all puffed up about something, saying she's going to call
the cops we try anything like that again."

"Bitch," Hart concurs.  "Tossed a bunch of propaganda in our
mailbox.  I'm not reading it; no one's brainwashing me, heh."

Mulder blinks.  "If you have those papers, I'd be happy to take a
look at them for you, give you my professional opinion."

"I bet you would," Lawrence says.  "Richard claims you're on the up
and up.  Friend of a friend of a friend, he is.  Can't see why he'd
lie to us, but you try anything funny, mister, and we'll call up our
legions of supporters."

"Yeah!" Hart says.

"You don't want to mess with us."

"That shouldn't be a problem, Mr. Telley," Mulder says.  He flips his
notebook shut and stashes it in his coat pocket.  "I have one last
question -- did the faceless men drop anything?  Anything left behind
at the scene of the fires?"

"Well, the fire," Hart says.

"What would faceless men need with tangible objects?" Lawrence wants
to know.  His right eye is beginning to twitch.

"Any sort of incendiary device?  Matches, lighters, lighter fluid?
Any kind of unidentified metal rod?"  Mulder gives them a meaningful
look.

They give him a blank one.  Hart says, "I think you've been reading
too many tabloids, son.  Maybe you oughta take it easy for a while."

- - -
"He was ten feet tall," Ewan Campbell says.

"The guy I saw was probably only nine-foot-three, or so, but he had
on some killer stacked boots," says Ewan's buddy, Dorin No-Last-Name.

"You tracked down the other two witnesses yet?" Ewan asks.  His neon
pink antennae bobble.

"My partner is handling the rest of the interviews," Scully
says.  "So.  You two didn't see anything...out of the ordinary?
Besides the facelessness."

"And the disappearing."  Dorin quacks twice.

"Dude," Ewan says appreciatively.

"Can I get you another plate of potato cakes?" Joleen asks.

Scully flips her notebook shut and slides it into her coat pocket.

She'd say the trip has been a monumental waste of time, but what
she's honestly thinking is, Thank God.

- - -
"I can't believe how tall you are, Robert," Gretta says.  "And
handsome, goodness."  She grins at the little boy, who's two inches
taller than he was a year ago.

"Gretta," Robbie says, "Fredrick's in the field.  Come play with
us."  He has his arms around Gretta's left leg.  She gives his hair
an affectionate tousle.

"I have to stay here at the market, dear.  Sorry."  She looks at
Agnes for assistance.

"Robbie, you want to go get an ice cream cone?" Agnes says quickly.

Robbie shakes his head.  "I wanna stay with Gretta," he whines.

"Robert," Agnes says, stern.

"I wanna hear about what Gretta hears," he says.

Gretta's stomach twists.

Agnes looks shocked.  "What are you talking about?"

"You know, Mom.  How Gretta can hear what Fredrick's thinking."  He
squeezes Gretta's leg.  "Can you hear him right now?  Is he thinking
about, like, ghosts and stuff?"

"It doesn't work like that," Gretta hears herself say faintly.

"We're going to get some ice cream," Agnes says, hauling Robbie out
of the market.  "Bye, Gretta," she yells.

Gretta rubs her forehead.  She does not notice the tall man in the
fruit aisle, his mouth agape.

- - -
"According to the flyer, there's going to be some kind of Artober
festival at the end of this week.  A big party's being held in the
woods where our witnesses claim to have seen the faceless men.  I'd
bet whoever they saw are involved in the WAA -- Whisperwood Art
Association."

"You're going to talk to someone tomorrow?"

"The secretary said he thought I should speak to," Mulder flips open
his notepad, "Fredrick Roberts.  He's in charge of some of the big
projects.  The secretary thinks the festival committee has been
making a mini-film or something, maybe out in the woods."

"Another 'Blair Witch' parody?" Scully inquires.

"Whatever.  I have an appointment with Roberts at 7:30 a.m.  Guess
we'll find out what he has to say.  What'd you find?"

"Same thing you did, a couple of yahoos who give the town of
Whisperwood a bad reputation."  She expertly licks the rim of her
cone of pumpkin frozen custard and looks Mulder in the eye.  He makes
a strangled sound.

She is sitting next to him on an unmade bed, its striped mattress
exposed, in their horrid little rented room.  The linoleum has a waxy
film, the walls are covered in pea green plaid wallpaper, the ceiling
is a galaxy of stains that emulate puddles of urine.  It's the sort
of place, she thinks, in which two people on the lam really would
hide, this nasty room with its scratchy blankets and lumpy pillows
and cruddy bathroom tile.

She imagines the way the bed would squeak, the way the headboard
would thump if she were riding him.  The custard is cold in her mouth
and her skin feels entirely too small -- good Lord, she thinks, I've
finally developed a fixation for shitty motel rooms.

"Where are the sheets?" Mulder asks.

"They are reputedly being washed as we speak."

"Ah."

He has a wary air about him.  He's probably exhausted, she thinks
with a pang of hesitation.  He's still recovering, it's been a very
hard couple of weeks...

Her thoughts catch on the word 'hard,' though, and she uncrosses her
legs.  In her mind she is thinking, Filthy room.  In her mind she is
unrolling a condom onto him and when she kisses him in reality, he
must be able to hear her, because he slides his hand up her shirt and
his tongue into her mouth.  Her custard drops onto his lap and she
thinks, Ah-ha.  Nice catch.

- - -
He wants to ask her to tell him more about Africa.  He wants to know
that she's healing, that with every passing day she regains her old
footing, that she's come up with a justification for what she saw,
some way to make her peace.

He wants to know that she isn't letting him touch her because it's
better than confronting everything that's happened.

They were frenzied strangers earlier, and she kept her eyes closed
while they screwed in this crappy bed.  She became vampiric, her
teeth sinking into his shoulder, her nails scratching at the base of
his spine.  Now it's slower, and she's paying attention, watching as
he takes her with his mouth.  She tips her head back when she comes,
her legs opening up more widely for him, and he eases back inside,
his hands massaging her hips.  Deeper, she says, before they kiss.
Now they are reverent.  He wants to hear her.  He wants to be heard.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
30 October 1998
 

As soon as she's through the door, Fredrick stands.  "Well?"

She hangs up her coat, her purse, puts away a bag of grapes.  He is
wearing jeans and a t-shirt that are splattered with turquoise house
paint that isn't yet dry, having finished a job in record time just
so he could be here when she arrived, and she's moving like she's
ninety.

"Gretta?  What did the doctor say?"

She comes in from the kitchen.  "Everything checked out.  They can't
find anything wrong: no tumors, no plaques, no signs of aneurysm or
disease.  My ears are fine, my sinuses are fine."  She smiles weakly
and he feels like doing cartwheels -- she's not dying, she's not
dying, she's not dying, he thinks.

This morning it was a prayer.

"Dr. Bowling gave me a prescription for the migraines and said to
come back if their frequency or strength increased again.  She seems
to think it's just stress."

"It probably is," Fredrick says, relief rushing through him.  "And I
have a solution -- why don't I work at the market full time?"

Gretta takes a sharp breath.  "I can't ask you to do that."

"I've been saving thirty percent of every paycheck I've earned since
we graduated high school," he says, grinning.  "The house painting
business has been very good to me.  If you don't want me to work at
the market, what can I do to help you out at home?  I could be your
personal assistant -- vacuumer, duster, toilet bowl cleaner.
Launderer, yard mower, tree trimer, chef-fer."  She smiles and ducks
her head, and he puts his arms around her waist, draws her
close.  "Chef."

Gretta kisses his cheek, and gently steps out of his arms.

"I can't ask you to do that," she says.

"You don't have to ask, I'm volunteering."  His chest
tightens.  "What's wrong?"

"We need to talk," she says.

The ache in her voice tells him whatever she has to say is going to
be very, very bad.

She will say, Fredrick, Maybe we should see other people.  We're
never going to find those special someones in our lives if we spend
so much time together.  She will say, You're my best friend and I
want the world for you.  She will say, I hear what you feel and I
know I'm important to you, as you're important to me, but we should
move on, move apart.

He will be mute, nodding his head.  It will not be until days and
weeks later that he'll realize she thought she was agreeing with
him.

It will be almost an entire year before he starts to wonder.  Almost
an entire twelve months before the idea begins to grow in his mind:
what if she thought I didn't love her?  What if she hadn't heard me
at all?

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~

19 October 1999
 

"You think this is a coincidence?"

"I think it's something a little kid said.  I don't think it's
anything."

Scully props up on one elbow.  "Have we met?  Dana Scully; and you
are -- ?  You always think everything's connected."

"I just--  We don't have any cause to investigate the woman who owns
the market because I suspect she may have some sort of supersensory
powers.  It's not like I think she has the sort of ability I had."

Though as soon as he's said it he regrets it intensely.  He sketches
invisible lines on Scully's stomach and hip and wishes she would drop
the subject.

"Never stopped you before," she says instead.  "Mulder, we're in town
for another day.  I could go talk to her."

He grunts.  "Because you're such a believer in this sort of thing."

"After seven years, I have some idea of what to ask, yeah," she huffs.

"Fine.  You go to the market, I'll meet with Mr. Roberts."  He gets
up and stalks into the bathroom.  Something in him shudders.  He
wrenches the faucet on, drenches himself in cold water.

- - -
Somewhere Scully honed the knack for striking up peculiar
conversations with total strangers.

Gretta Carlisle seems a little less strange than most, stacking
bananas into a wicker bin before pouring their tea.

"Agnes is the only person we ever made a point to tell," Gretta
says.  "My grandparents and his parents -- if they ever suspected
anything untoward between me and him, they kept it to themselves.
And there wasn't really anyone else to inform.

"When we were little, it hardly mattered at all, once we were
friends.  By the time we were in middle school, I'd learned how to
limit how much I could hear of Fredrick's thoughts.  I didn't want to
invade his privacy.  And by the time we were out of high school, I
_really_ didn't want to invade his privacy.

"He never acted like he minded, but I felt bad sometimes.  It made me
uncomfortable.  He seemed so vulnerable."

"How so?" Scully asks.

"I'm not sure he was vulnerable in any way that most people aren't.
In fact, I'm almost positive that he was completely normal -- jumbled
thoughts or clear, happy, sad, mad, whatever the emotion.  It wasn't
what he was thinking that started to bother me as much as the fact
that he had no protection from me."

"Do you believe you could have hurt him somehow?  Interfered with his
thoughts?"

Gretta takes the teakettle off the hot plate behind the cash register
and pours water into two cups.

"I don't think I was dangerous like that, no," she says.  "It didn't
seem fair to him.  I was at such an advantage."

Scully studies the woman.  Something about her claim is off.

"Are you sure you weren't the one at a disadvantage," she asks
carefully.

"How's that?"  Gretta stirs milk into her tea, eyes downcast.

"You were able to not hear everything.  Was there any side effect to
actively attempting to block his thoughts?"

Gretta sips her tea.  "I had these headaches all the time.  For a few
years they'd only be bad occasionally.  They got worse and worse."

"And you essentially parted company with him because of this?"

"He didn't know that I only got the headaches after I'd been around
him, trying not to listen."  She pauses.  Softly: "It gave me an
excuse."

"How's that?"

Outside, leaves trickle out of the sky from unseen limbs high above
the market's roof.

"I fell in love with him."

"Oh," Scully says.  She hedges, "And he didn't fall in love with you?"

"I don't think so."

The pain in Gretta's words makes Scully wince.  She knows she should
ask about implant scars and sudden lights in the sky but Gretta is
obviously not suffering from Frequent Abduction Syndrome or anything
paranormal enough to make it into the record books.  What she is
curious about is what those thoughts Gretta heard sounded like.

(What did Mulder hear in me? she thinks.)

"When did you first hear him?" she asks.

Gretta tells her.  Gretta does not cry.

(Did I sound like that? Scully wonders.  She thinks of Mulder above
her, watching her, her legs around his hips.  He was listening for
me, she thinks.  He was listening.)

- - -
The child known as Robbie is eating an egg salad sandwich and waves
at Mulder as though they're long lost friends.

"I know you!" Robbie says.

"You do?" Mulder asks, walking over to the picnic table.  He nods at
the man giving Robbie a napkin.  "Are you Fredrick Roberts?"

"Mr. Mulder?" Fredrick says.

"Yes, I was told you could tell me what the WAA is up to in the
Whisperwood woods."

Fredrick smiles.  "You've been talking to the Whisperwood Quad."

"Who?"

"Lawrence, Gabe, Ewan and Dorin?  They'd been spreading a lot of
rumors lately.  Nothing particularly new, but they usually spread
rumors about people they know instead of people they don't."

"You've heard about the faceless men?"

"I've helped with the faceless men."  Fredrick picks Robbie up off
the table and sets him on the ground, and the child starts running in
large circles in the field.  "If he throws up, I'm going to kill my
sister," he says under his breath.  Off Mulder's perplexed look, he
explains, "The WAA made this short movie -- it's supposed to be sort
of a scary story for kids, to introduce them quickly to several of
the classes the Association is going to offer during the winter
sessions: filming techniques, for one, and costuming and makeup."

"And the faceless men--"

"Were Hy Allen and Randy Raque.  They run the S&L on Fifth Street.
We slathered on this putty-thick makeup, put old pantyhose over their
faces and then added some more grease paint.  They looked pretty
creepy.  We were very happy with the results.  Plus, community
involvement is always a bonus."

"Sure," says Mulder.

Robbie runs up to them, panting.  "He was at the market," he says to
Fredrick.  "When we saw Gretta.  Did you buy a pumpkin?" he asks
Mulder loudly.

"No, 'fraid not."

"It's okay," Robbie says, solemn now.  "You don't want to buy one too
early and have it go all rotten and stuff."

"Right."

"Robbie, why don't you go on home and wake up your mom.  She won't
mind."  Fredrick massages his temples.

"'kay."

"I don't have a workshop until nine this morning.  Where did you say
you worked, Mr. Mulder?  I'd be happy to answer any other questions
you may have," Fredrick says.

"Actually, I do have one other question," Mulder begins.

- - -
"Wait," Scully says.

"What?" Gretta asks.

"You didn't let yourself listen to this guy fully for, what, years?"

Gretta doesn't answer.  She bites her lip.

"How do you know, then, what he was really feeling?  Wouldn't you
have been hearing the abridged version?"

Scully's gaze goes to the door, eyes wide.

Gretta turns.  There are two men at the market door, one unfamiliar,
the other blessedly not.

The sensation is all the colors of autumn tipping and blending
wholly, and what he feels is a torrent in her mind.

"Hello," Fredrick says.  "May we come in?"

- - -
Scully and Mulder move towards each other reflexively.  Their
conversation is held in silence.

The quiet between Gretta and Fredrick blares as the two long
separated friends stand close together.  Mulder sees both of them
begin to reach for the other's hand and then pull back.  He wants to
push them together, make them hold on to one another like children
fleeing danger through a wicked forest.

"Well," Gretta says.  To Scully she asks, "And who is this?"

"Ms. Carlisle," Scully says, "this is my partner, Agent Mulder."

"Agent?" Fredrick says, his eyebrows shooting up.  "Agent of what?"

"The FBI," Gretta answers.

Fredrick blinks.  "Are we under investigation?"

"Not anymore," Mulder says.  Scully tries to catch his eye, but he
studies his shoes.

Gretta and Fredrick start to chat, dreadful awkward small talk that
excludes Mulder and Scully completely.  It will get better, he
thinks, wondering if Gretta can hear or is willing to hear all of
Fredrick's thoughts as plainly as she once could.  He steals a glance
at Scully, who watches them with a small smile on her face.

God, I want to hear you, he thinks to her.  She looks at him then,
fixedly.  She soothes her fingers over the back of his head where he
was cut, ever gentle.

- - -
"You didn't have to close early, Gretta.  I could've waited."

"It's okay," she says, unlocking her front door.

They stand in her living room, the world fastened away.

"So, who were those FBI agents?"

Gretta smiles.  "I have no idea.  What did, how did, um, how did the
one who talked to you know that you were who you are?"  She looks
away, embarrassed.

"I think he overheard Agnes and Robbie.  Or maybe just Robbie."

"What did he ask you?"

"His questions actually reminded me of most everything Agnes wanted
to know when we told her."

"'Are you lying?'  'Is Gretta pregnant?'  'Prove it, punk ass'?"
Gretta says.

"Most.  I said most."  Fredrick grins.  "He wanted to know when it
started, and why I believed you.  And if I liked having you hear my
every thought and what happened that we weren't together and did you
have any side effects?"  He reaches for Gretta's hand.  "He asked me
if it hurt you, physically, to hear me."

Gretta's eyes fill with tears.  "No," she whispers.  "It's never hurt
me to hear you.  Just the opposite."

Fredrick holds her gaze.

"How long have you known how not to hear me?" he asks.

"Years.  Years and years."

He looks distressed.

"I'm sorry," she says, "I should have told you."

"No, I should've...  Gretta, I should have paid more attention.  I, I
let you think...I...you thought, and I didn't, I was so...  I should
have argued with you until my voice disappeared.  I should've called
you on the phone and sent you tacky postcards and I should've never
walked away for a year."

"You've never been under any obligation to me.  You deserve so much,
and I felt...  You're my friend, I never wanted to intrude or
interfere and I certainly didn't want to invade your life."

"No," he says, smiling, "you were the loveliest astonishment in my
whole existence.  You were -- are -- the person who knows me best."
The smile weakens.  "I just thought...you'd finally figured out that
my best wasn't enough."

She takes an unsteady breath.  She shakes her head.  "I was awful.  I
pushed you away and this was all my fault and--"

"_No_.  Just listen," he says, kissing each eyelid, her head in his
hands.  "Do you hear?"

"I--"

"Do you hear?" he whispers.

His thoughts bury themselves in her mind, seep into her: they are
rich-hued, ardent, kaleidoscopic, gilded, voluptuous.  He is primal,
blood-warm, beautiful.

She kisses him, twines her hands with his.  "I hear," she says.

Their laughter can be heard on the street.  Then he hugs her like he
will never let go.

There is no way to reciprocate with words, she knows.  She leads him
into her bedroom, undresses him while he undresses her.  She takes
him into her body in this new way.  Something dearer is spoken in
this silence.

- - -
It is excruciatingly unhurried, their deliberate merging.  Fredrick
is left stunned in its wake.  She is like candlelight.

- - -
On the trip home, Scully's nerves jangle.  Unpredicted rain causes
some turbulence, but he doesn't even flinch as the plane skids over a
pocket or bubble or whatever the flight attendant calls those bumps.
(Not that Scully is bitter.)

He has the window seat and spends the whole flight staring out into
the thickened sky.  He keeps his fingers loosely threaded with hers.
He doesn't talk at all.  She does not know how to find him.  She
wonders if he feels the same way about her.  His reflection in the
tiny pane stays unattainable, haunted.

- - -
He's keeping a low profile in her bathroom.  She has been puttering
around the apartment for an hour.  She's assembled laundry and
changed the sheets ("last night was more than enough of slumming it")
before she notices the angel.

"Mulder?"

He sticks his head out.  "Yeah?"

"Where did this come from?"  The wooden angel on her kitchen counter
has wrought-iron branches for wings, a wiry halo, and is carrying a
small lantern on a staff.  "She's beautiful."

"The WAA was selling them."

"Thank you, I love her."

He ambles into the bedroom and leans against the wall.

"Hey," she says.  "Why don't you get some sleep?  Mulder?"

She rubs his arm.  She coaxes,  "Mulder?  Talk to me."

He screws his eyes shut.  "Do you have any idea how fucking terrified
I am of screwing this up, Scully?"  She steps closer.  "Of losing you
because of some asinine mistake I make, or worse, because then I get
there too late or I don't get there at all?"

"It is not your sovereign duty to save me, Mulder," she says,
concerned.

"You are my friend, you are my partner, it is fucking well my duty to
try," he says, ire giving way to sorrow.  "I should know when you're
in danger, I should be able to help you when you're hurt, I should
take care of you when that's what you need.  No more, and certainly
no less.  I don't have any intention of usurping your independence or
belittling your strength or disregarding your rights, but Scully."
He scrubs at his left eye with the heel of his hand.  She tenderly
bats his hand away and wipes his lashline with her thumb.  Defeated,
he says, "I can't lose you."

"I know."  She sits down on the end of the bed and tugs on his
elbow.  He sits, and she says, "It's exactly the same for me.  I'm
not sure that's the only thing we're dealing with here."

He shakes his head.  "What do you mean?"

"Mulder, are you jealous of Gretta Carlisle?"

"No," he says, taken aback.

"I know it's been an awful few weeks," she says, her voice
choked.  "We have so much work to do.  There is so much ahead."

"Scully," he breathes.  "I.  Hearing your thoughts, your emotions, it
was like...  You were the most precious..."

Her eyes are dark lustrous blue.  He strokes her hair back from her
face.  "I love you more than I've ever loved anyone."  He brushes her
temple with his thumb.  "You've been hurt so many times because of
me, lost so much -- why should you trust me?  Why should I think
you'd even want to be my friend?  But it isn't just about us,
Scully.  It's what you saw in Africa, what you learned.  Your faith
is just as important as mine, and both are as important as we are
together."

"Mulder, it's going to get better.  That's what I have faith in.  If
I try to force some sort of resolution right now it's going to fail.
I need to be with you now.  I need to regain my old equilibrium, yes,
but I have to do it properly.  Each time I think I've left my faith
behind, I come back to it more determined than ever.  I need to build
up my strength again, and I will take all the help I can get."

"I never wanted this for you."

"I know."  Her right palm is on his chest.  She brushes his mouth
with hers.  "I trust you with my life.  Do you believe what you heard
in me?"

He nods, their foreheads touching, her left palm on the back of his
neck.  "All you ever have to do is show me," she whispers.  "And
fight with me, not just for me.  Okay?"

He kisses her, pushing from his mind any thoughts of a crumbling,
burning world beyond the windows.

There is nothing delicate about their coupling -- it is greedy and
hot, profound and rough.  Their sex is mindful, deep and intense,
every emotion and sensation as loud as the blood pounding in his
head, silencing all other noise for a long time.  They do not speak
afterwards.  The wind wails outside.  Their hands do not still.
Listen.  Listen.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
An end.

- - -
Notes:

- This story has been sponsored by the letters M., S., and R.  (Only
a teeny pun intended.)  Many chocolate eyeballs of lurve to these
wonderful betas.  Everything good here is their fault; all remaining
errors are mine.

- The uranium refinery in Paducah probably doesn't have any shady
employees.  At least, I hope not.  They've had enough trouble in the
last few years.  ::rolling eyes::

- Whisperwood doesn't really exist.  Missouri, however, is quite real.

- Happy Halloween!
 

http://alanna.net/JET (Thanks, Alanna!)
http://www.livejournal.com/users/jeviltwin