Sandcastles for Pele

By JL (formerly JaimeLyn)
aimerockifies@yahoo.com

 
Rating: PG-13
Category: post IWTB, MSR
Disclaimer: Apparently, I'm allowed to play with them but I
can't keep them. Damn it. (Do action figures count?)
Anyway. Please don't sue.
Summary: As they play a waiting game, Mulder and Scully
call upon the past and embark on their own little
adventure.
Feedback accepted at: jaimerockifies@yahoo.com

Author's note: This is the post-movie fic I wanted to write
after realizing that "I Want to Believe" might be the last
time we'd ever see Mulder and Scully. And as with most X-
Files endings, I thought there were a few untied ends that
I really wanted to tackle.  If I had to describe it, I
would say that it is... not at all what you think it is.
Take from that what you will.

Thanks to Alyssa for honest feedback, and to my sister for
the late night marathons.



Sandcastles for Pele
By JL


"Aloha mai no, aloha aku;
o ka huhu ka mea e ola `ole ai."
- When love is given, love should be returned;
anger is the thing that gives no life.
- ancient Hawaiian proverb


---

Kahoolawe, HI
February 1st
2:01am



The sky was still at its darkest, the night cradling those
last precious moments before dawn, when a red light
appeared at the door of room 201, flickering like the point
of a laser, like the blood red sun pushing against the
horizon. It skirted quickly up the door, seeming to almost
wink, and then it whispered its siren song, 'Follow,'
before slipping out like a thief into the balmy Hawaiian
night.

Fox Mulder watched from the comfort of his bed, his fingers
tracing abstract patterns on the soft skin of Dana Scully's
nude back. She remained still, silent, swept up in sleep.

Mulder rose quietly from the bed.

In another minute, he was following the little red light
down the beach.

Down the dunes, down into the cold wet sand, down where the
ocean met the shore, Mulder followed and followed.

"This way," said the red light, "Follow."

Further down, past the rocks, beyond the boardwalk, down
where the shells made a prickly carpet on the sand.

"Follow, follow, follow," said the little red light.

Mulder followed.

When the little red light finally disappeared, the beach
had spilled out in front of him and behind, the ocean
peaceful and quiet, waiting for morning. Mulder breathed in
salt and coconut and something elemental, something strong
and of the Earth.

When a lone figure stepped out from behind the rocks and
struck a match, Mulder startled and was momentarily
blinded.

"I believe this is the part where you threaten me with
violence," said the man, a trail of smoke from his
cigarette floating up, ever higher, into the ceiling of
clear evening sky. Behind him, water crashed against the
edges of rock and shore.

"I'm dreaming," said Mulder, doing his best to convince
himself of this very thing.

"And if you're not?"

Mulder's toes tingled, his teeth chattered, his fists
clenched and unclenched; a swirl of rage gathered within
him like the eye of a funnel cloud, building and spinning
faster, his heart racing so fast his ribs hurt -- and
Scully -- he needed to get back to Scully.

"She's asleep," answered the man with the cigarette, "And
still quite lovely, too. I think I may have mentioned it to
you before, but I'm rather fond of her. My affection for
her is actually what brings me to you."

"Right," said Mulder. "Abducting her, killing her sister,
giving her cancer -- funny way you have of showing
affection. Just do me a favor, let me know when we get to
the part where I get to kick your zombie, black-lunged ass,
because that's mainly where my investment in this lies."

The man with the cigarette smiled darkly. "Ah," he said,
"Same old Mulder." A puff of smoke curled up into the
night. "A word of advice, if I may - don't lose the
passion. Perhaps put it to better use than hitting a dead
man, but don't lose it. Might I suggest fixing your partner
a sandwich? My guess is she'll be hungry when she finally
wakes up."

"And what the hell does that mean?"

The curl of smoke grew higher and Mulder covered his ears
as the sound of crashing water got louder and louder and --

Mulder awoke to darkness, to the sensations of bed and
sheets and pillow, all soft and familiar, his toes curling
under the comforter as if to brush away sand. He took an
unsteady breath. Upon his bare chest sprawled a warm, nude,
and fast asleep Scully.

Mulder pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. In
his mind was a chorus of logic, of her reassuring voice
insisting the most rational argument: Just a dream, Mulder.
Just a dream. His fingertips brushed lightly in circles on
her back, heart pounding, as he repeated it one final time
and watched the newborn sun rising slowly above the sandy
coast of Hawaii.

---

Kahoolawe, HI
February 1st
4:00pm


They were surrounded by beach and ocean, a bright sun
overhead, the peek-a-boo stripe of white-crystal on water,
the palm trees whispering dirty secrets to the crashing
waves. Mulder had dug his fingers and toes into the sand,
burrowed inside where it was cool, and had begun to
excavate, his brows furrowed, his hands working hard at a
small, flat structure he couldn't seem to get quite right.
When Scully came up behind him, her palm resting on his
shoulder, the green-blue flecks in her eyes a match for her
sarong, Mulder turned and smiled. "What's up, Doc?"

Scully returned the smile and knelt down on the towel she'd
carefully spread that he'd later demolished. She kissed the
back of his neck. Vacationing seemed to agree with her, and
certainly, the sarong agreed with Mulder. Probably, it
would agree much more vigorously once it lay forgotten on
the floor, but everything all in due course.

"What's this?" asked Scully, gesturing at Mulder's
unskilled effort in the sand.

"Scully, have I ever told you about the ancient Oriyan myth
regarding the origins of sand sculpture?"

Scully's eyebrows both shot up at once, although she
remained silent. Waiting. Mulder grinned. Ah, Scully. This
was always his favorite part of the game.

"Three-hundred and fifty years ago," he began, "A young,
idealistic Indian poet, Balaram Das, in a fit of passionate
worship, made a pilgrimage to the small farming city of
Orissa to offer his prayers to the highest and most
merciful of Krishnas, Lord Jagannath. Unfortunately, the
high priests guarding the Lord's chariot refused to let Das
past. In fact, they insisted he go home. Instead, Das
retreated to the beach in frustration and carved the
likenesses of his superheroes into the wet sand exactly as
he'd seen them on the chariot. According to the mythology,
Das' passion and devotion to what he believed was so
strong, the original statues disappeared from the chariot
and actually reappeared on the beach."

Scully blinked, set one hand on her hip. "I have no idea
what I'm building, Scully -- that really would have
worked."

"Actually," said Mulder, "I was going to finish with 'I
suppose the myth must be true if I was sculpting you and
now here you are, Scully,' but who really believes in that
kind of thing anyway?"

Scully crept closer, touched an index finger to the center
of his chest. Mulder's pulse jumped. "I think that depends
on your phraseology," she murmured. "At the moment, I can
think of several things I believe in."

Mulder smirked. "Scully, are you attempting to talk dirty
to me?"

Scully touched a palm to his cheek, searched his eyes, then
nodded and looked past him, scanning the beach. Her long
red hair curled and frizzled in the humidity, unkempt and
ravished-looking. Certainly, Mulder loved nothing more than
a Scully who looked newly ravished - he didn't care how
long she spent cursing her hair dryer in the morning - and
after two days of vacationing, Scully had been ravished
plenty. And loudly. And in positions Mulder had thought he
might need to stretch first before trying again.

He tapped her wrist. "Looking for anything specific, Doc?"

"Just checking to see how alone we are," she murmured, and
drew herself closer to him. She tickled an elicit line down
his neck, down his breastbone, ending at the waistband of
his shorts; a spark flickered between them, the pause
between touching and tasting like the volatile ten seconds
between lighting a match and watching the fireworks
explode.

"We're alone enough," said Mulder, and he whirled on her
and had her beneath him before she could catch her breath.
His heart pounded, and he could feel her quick breaths, her
own heart pounding on the downbeats of his, a thunderous,
reassuring rhythm, an island symphony. His index finger
brushed the tie at the neck of her sarong, his other hand
combing through her renegade hair. Scully grinned and let
her nose trace a leisurely path along Mulder's jawline, his
cheek. Her own pale cheeks had been bronzed by the sun, the
bridge of her nose a youthful pink, her eyes like the
violet insides of clamshells.

"You forgot the end of the parable," Scully whispered into
his mouth. She wound her arms around his neck, her
fingertips executing a skilled and clever dance through the
hair at the base of his skull. "That the high priest
supposedly heard Das' prayers, passionate as they were, and
arrived on the beach to bless him. A nice, tidy little
ending for a man so devoted to his religion, don't you
think?"

Mulder pulled back slightly and gazed at her, feeling
drunk. "Why on Earth do you know these things, Scully?"

Their eyes met: a challenge.

"I don't know. Why do you, Mulder?"

He grinned at her. She grinned back. Her lips brushed his
neck as his fingers busied with the knot at the back of her
sarong. Nothing else seemed to matter anywhere in the
world.

"This is slowly degenerating into a beer commercial,"
Mulder muttered, and when Scully merely laughed, he bent
forward, kissing her soundly, swallowing the delighted lilt
in her voice.

"Years of obsessively collecting porn, Mulder, and that's
all you can see happening here? A beer commercial?"
Scully's quick breathing tickled his chin, and all the
blood in Mulder's body rushed south. She murmured, "I must
not be doing this correctly," and locked her calves swiftly
behind his, yanking him closer so her back arched into him.

Light-headed and overcome, Mulder was about to make a smart
ass retort, to one-up her as he so loved to do, when he
licked the corner of his lip and tasted the strange, salty
tang of blood. He frowned and licked again, searching for
the cut, but found nothing.

"Scully?"

Puzzled, Scully brought two fingers up to her face, brushed
them across her wet upper lip. When she drew them away,
examining her hand as if it were not her own, but perhaps
someone else's - a hand that surely belonged to another
woman, in another life - she gazed up at him, her eyes
filled with questions. "Mulder?"

Mulder pulled them both to sitting. His mouth opened,
although no sound came out, and instead, something dark and
frightening began to roar in his eardrums. The salty-
metallic taste still burned on his lips. Blood. Scully's
blood. He grabbed at the corner of the beach towel and
thrust it at her, spraying sand in all directions. He
pictured the murderous look on her face that morning - a
heady cross between love and disgust - as he'd leaned over
her and spit a thick glob of toothpaste into the sink. "Can
you really not wait five minutes?" she'd asked, her hair
pulled back messily, her face covered in some weird orange
gel, and he'd answered by backing her into the towel rack
and kissing her, turning them both the color of ripe
pumpkin.

Mulder's mind reeled again, trying to reconcile a Scully
who was healthy with a Scully who was not. Finally, having
long lost patience with the trajectory of his own mind and
the universe in general, he pulled her to her feet, grabbed
her by the hand, and propelled them down the beach.


--


Kings Hwy
4:20pm




Mulder could remember, from his time as a young boy in
Chilmark, a dazzling circle of trees that had hugged the
woods near his house.  Tall, thick, green, and secured in
an extensive root system that hugged the hill overlooking a
lake, they had been the perfect trees for climbing - if
only Mulder hadn't been so goddamned afraid of heights.  

For months after they'd moved into the Chilmark house,
Mulder came up with hundreds of complicated and perfectly
logical-sounding reasons as to why the trees outside his
house did absolutely not want or need to be climbed: there
could be bears in the woods that would pounce on him the
second he got near, there could be deadly squirrels itching
to attack anyone who invaded their nest, he could
inadvertently inspire Samantha to climb up after him, and
then she would fall and break her neck and his mother would
be heartbroken. The real reason, of course, the one he
never ever wanted to speak, was that it was much easier to
be afraid than to climb.

Finally one day, after a year of extensive debating and
weighing of the pros and cons, Mulder wandered into the
woods, hands shaking and sweaty, to hoist himself up the
trunk of the tallest tree, which had been marked with a
florescent orange "X." About an hour later, once he had
reached the top, a series of scrapes and cuts marring his
hands, his face dirty from leaning against the coarse bark,
his hair matted with leaves, he found himself watching the
explosion of a sunset over the water. The warm crimsons and
lavenders reflected out from the surface, making the sky
look endless; on all sides, a dark ring of shadowy forest
bordered.

In that moment, as he'd watched the colors change like the
swirl of paint in a glass of water, the world and all its
mysteries had seemed clear to him; Mulder had never been
raised religious, and at the age of ten, the Earth could
have orbited him and he would not have been surprised, but
as he watched the sky on that early Autumn evening, he'd
been sure of something -- something more, something
greater, even if he didn't know what that was or what it
might mean. This moment he would always remember, filed
carefully away in the cabinet of his mind marked
"childhood" -- right alongside his sister's abduction and
the day his parents had said they were splitting up.

When contractors had finally bulldozed the trees to the
ground - more houses, his father explained - Mulder had not
been able to speak. He'd only had the nerve to climb once,
and once had not been enough. And yet, life didn't seem to
care what Mulder wanted, and at the age of eleven, this
injustice had seemed insurmountable. So that evening, as
the sky turned navy, Mulder ran out to the woods. He'd
stood in the space where his tree had once been, and
feeling newly aged, grieved for all the climbs that could
never be.

Older now but no less surprised by the cruelty of life,
Mulder glanced over at the woman beside him as he gunned
their rental car down a long, winding stretch of road. Her
nose had not quite dripped so much as it had spontaneously
gushed, although the worst of it seemed to have passed.
Meanwhile, Scully's eyes, normally so focused and knowing
and alert, glazed as she watched the line of trees passing
on either side. Mulder gripped the steering wheel; in his
mind, a brilliant Massachusetts sunset blocked out the
rest.

"I think the clinic's just up ahead," said Mulder.

"Okay," said Scully, and she squeezed his hand.

Mulder nodded and breathed and thought absurdly of trees,
and tried not to look down.



----


Kula Medical Clinic
6:30pm


On one side of the doctor's inner office, a six foot high
window looked out upon a winding service road, palm trees
beckoning on either side, birds of paradise hugging the
soft, green hills, and beyond, the beach. In the chair
beside Mulder, a mute, distant Scully held a crumpled
tissue to her nose -- she'd gone through five in the past
hour, although she'd tried, unsuccessfully, to keep him
from counting.

Mulder, feeling suddenly trapped, coiled like a spring just
waiting to be sprung, leapt up from his chair. Out of the
corner of his eye, he saw Scully watching him, her hand
cupping the tissue over her nose, her eyebrow arched at
full mast. Mulder shook his head and began to pace, one
hand clenching and unclenching at his side, the other
digging invisible crop circles into his scalp.

He thought back to a time, early on in their friendship,
when they'd both been assigned away from The X-Files, to
other departments in other sections on seemingly opposite
ends of the universe. Without her company, the days had
inexplicably grown longer, the space all around him somehow
becoming emptier and less, although he'd been much too
young and too unwilling to understand why, for the first
time in all his years as an agent, he should miss anyone so
terribly.

After a time, they'd begun to meet by the reflecting pond
outside the Hoover building. Mostly, it was a way to share
information undetected, to brainstorm together about a
lead, or a source, or an autopsy finding, or a piece of
evidence. It was a way to complain, and vent, and stew, and
plot to get the X-Files opened again, to get them back
together, as a team.

But once that business would be exhausted for an evening,
and the two of them would still remain, their gazes trained
thoughtfully over the fountains in crescendo, one of them
would pick a subject: second sight, spontaneous human
combustion, voodoo, clairvoyancy, ESP, parallel universes -
- and for the next hour, they would fight a tennis match of
words, each lobbing and volleying back at the other, each
sparked by this idea of making the other fault first. Game,
set, match.

But then one day, as Scully rose as she always did, the
fountain crashing behind her as it always had, Mulder
realized, as if seeing the world truly for the first time,
that he wanted to kiss her.

"And anyway, it's impossible to prove," she'd been saying,
"If you're going to throw Dean Radin and Helmut Schmidt at
me, for instance, then surely you must also accept that
what they were doing was mere assumption. You simply can't
measure the difference between chance prediction and actual
outcome -- not unless you can start reading minds, and I
really think that's a phenomena for me to debunk another
night, don't you?"

She'd turned to face him, her eyes filled with the light
from the fountain, her red hair tangled by the breeze, her
full lips parted in wait for his answer, and Mulder had
been struck. This notion - of how Scully might look newly
kissed, or what her skin might taste like on his tongue -
threw him miles off balance; she had been his friend, his
confidante. But more than that, he had been desperate to
work with her again. Too desperate to work with her again.
Unsure of what to think, Mulder closed his eyes and
imagined that he had somehow discovered a great secret
within her as well - he wouldn't have felt so dangerously
uneasy if he'd thought it wasn't reciprocated. But
"goodnight" was all they'd exchanged that evening, and in
another minute, she was gone. Two weeks later, and she was
really gone.

Mulder ground the heels of his palms into his eyes and
paced faster; he wanted to dig himself a hole and then fall
through it, back to a time where he might be able to change
his own wretched behavior. What if he'd just walked right
up to her, curled one hand around her neck and told her the
truth - that he wanted her, that he knew she wanted him,
aliens and work and conspiracies be damned - and kissed her
until her toes curled, never to look back? Would they still
be sitting here now, together, the both of them like
frightened prisoners waiting for a judge to pronounce
sentence?

"Mulder," said Scully, and he turned to see her dabbing
gently at her nostrils with the bloody tissue, frowning as
if the blood had said something distasteful. She nodded her
chin in the direction of the chair. "Sit down. You're
making me nervous."

"I'm pretty sure I'm making myself nervous."

"Yeah, well. You're dragging me with you." Scully balled up
the tissue in her hand. "Mulder, look. It's been ten years
since I've had any..." She paused, shook her head as if
someone else had just tried to speak for her, took a deep
breath, and started again. "We could just be overreacting
to nothing."

"Nothing?" Mulder pivoted hard on his heel and knocked
heavily into an antique phone on the desktop. "Shit--" He
lunged forward to grab it before any real damage could be
done, and saw Scully watching him with tired eyes. Her
unsteady fingers massaged at her temples. Mulder
straightened. "Nothing? Scully, have you met us? Should I
introduce you?"

"Mulder, if this is isn't 'nothing,' then you realize it
means this thing in my neck has malfunctioned somehow." She
swallowed. "And that means my chances -- "

"No."

"The probability -- "

"Scully, please stop talking."

The opening door startled both of them, and their gazes
shifted to the doctor, a young, tired looking woman of
about thirty or so, with sleek navy pants and a white top.
For a second, Mulder pictured Scully conducting similar
meetings with her own patients; setting her charts on the
desk, clasping her hands in front of her, leaning back and
trying to remain impartial and objective even if her first
instinct was to growl in frustration and shake her fists at
the sky.

"Well, Dr. Scully," said the doctor, without preamble, "The
good news is that your physical shows nothing out of the
ordinary."

Mulder drummed his fingers anxiously on the desk, and
Scully stilled his hand with hers. "And?" she said, the
edges of the word traced with fear.

"And," said the doctor, "The rest of your tests -- your
bloodwork, essentially, will have to be sent out to the
labs on the mainland, and that'll probably take a day or
two because of the weather. Unfortunately, we're just a
barrier island and don't have a ton at our disposal here --
most go out across the bridge to Maui or Lanai for anything
serious. I can give you the name of a technician out there
who can do the X-rays you want, but with the storm moving
in off the coast, I don't know if the roads will be open
much longer."

"So you want me to wait."

"Unacceptable." Mulder's legs drummed out a ferocious
symphony beneath the desk. "Between the beach and here we
could have given someone a transfusion with the amount of
blood she's lost. Surely, there's a way to get the results
sooner."

Scully sighed. "Mulder--"

"Surely, there's a way to get on that fancy little antique
phone of yours and call someone who can help us." Mulder
could hear his own voice rising unnaturally louder in the
small, cheerful office, but felt little reason to lower it.
His heart hammered viciously. "I'm assuming you have her
charts right there, and I'm assuming you're capable of --"

"MULDER."

Mulder glanced at Scully. A flicker of warning flashed in
her eyes, and Mulder deflated, his chest filling with the
weight of his own nervous energy. He remembered a Scully
who was pale as quartz, wasting away as wires pumped poison
into her body and killed her. He gazed around at the
diplomas and happy artwork on the walls, and considered
either breaking the doctor's fingers or breaking everything
else. The doctor, for her part, set a pair of glasses on
her nose and otherwise appeared unmoved.

"As I said, Dr. Scully, you otherwise appear to be in
perfect health."

Scully glanced shortly at Mulder. "I haven't had any
problems swallowing, haven't had any migraines or swelling
of the lymph nodes or anything else normally associated
with a malignant nasopharynx."

She seemed to be saying this more for his benefit than the
doctor's, and Mulder, feeling guilty, tried to look
slightly less pained.

"I'd prefer to schedule a nasopharyngoscopy, although I
don't suppose you have the equipment to do that, either."

The doctor shook her head. "The storm should blow over
tomorrow," she said, "And by then, we should have your
blood work back. If there's anything anomalous on the
bloodwork, then by all means, I'd recommend the X-Ray and
the MRI -- I think a nasopharyngoscopy might be a bit
invasive given such inconclusive symptoms." The doctor's
glance passed to Mulder, his impatient gaze darting
everywhere. Empathy sparked in her eyes. "Look," she said
softly, "The weather report is calling for this damn thing
to blow in soon, and there are warnings all up and down the
coast. If it wasn't for that, I'd have been able to get
your blood results this afternoon, and I am very sorry for
having to make you wait. But if you try to get out over the
bridge now, there's a good chance you'll endanger yourself
far worse than any nosebleed could. My recommendation is to
hunker down at your hotel, wait until I call you with the
results, and go from there. I promise you, I'll do
everything I can to push them through as soon as possible."

"I, ah, appreciate that," managed Scully, her eyes blank
and unseeing.

Mulder said nothing until they got outside, where, under
the deceptive cover of the fading Hawaiian sun, he excused
himself from her for a moment, walked over to the other
side of the building, and punched the concrete wall so hard
a field of stars burst out along the insides of his
eyelids. If the doctor was surprised at all to see them
back again a few minutes later, Mulder's fist an awful,
shredded mess, Scully's tan, healthy face still filled with
something approximating toxic shock, she said nothing as
she bandaged him up and silently made Scully a copy of her
own medical chart to take back with her.


----


Kings Hwy intersection
6:50pm



"Right, left, or straight?"

"Hmm?" Scully turned to find Mulder staring at her. He
motioned to the four-way-stop. "Right, left, or straight?"
he repeated.

Scully gazed out the windshield. It was all so deceptively
lovely. Tall palms, their teardrop-shaped leaves like
swollen green fingers. Bright flowers hugging the road.
Grassy, emerald hills. The sky slowly turned to slate and
the greenery rustled nervously, cowering; the air smelled
of ozone.

Mulder had stopped beneath the turn-off for King's Hwy, the
road that lead either to the beach or the bridge. In the
fading daylight he looked impossibly young to her, and
Scully saw him as he once had been; his passion and his
purpose radiating off him like heat, his soft brown hair
curled into his eyes, his face alert but guarded. He was
still her protector, he was still that brilliant, beautiful
man, but age and one too many horrors along the way had
worn him at the edges.

"We can keep going, Scully," he said, tilting his head at
the grey sky, the swirling clouds. "I can gun it and we can
go across the bridge, and then I'll harass whoever I need
to harass to get what you need - at the very least, I have
enough experience barging unceremoniously into hospitals
that I feel quite confident I can get us kicked out of at
least two or three." He tried a small, frightened smile.
"If nothing else, we can bully someone into running tests.
We can--"

Scully stilled him with a palm against his cheek. Mulder
breathed in deeply and brought his bandaged hand to cover
hers. Scully closed her eyes, and in her mind she saw the
crevices and imperfections of his skin, the rough calluses
on his thumbs from trying to fix the sink, the whirls and
loops of his fingerprints, long memorized now from years of
experience bailing him out of tight spots.

"Tell me, Scully," he said softly. "Tell me what I should
do here."

Scully opened her eyes and unbuckled her seatbelt. She felt
restless.

"Turn the car off," she ordered.

"Scully?" Mulder studied her, his face a mask of concern.
"What is it? Tell me."

Scully shook her head. She took a breath. Without speaking,
she scaled the gearshaft between them, her leg crushed
against the dash at an awkward angle, her elbow banging
harshly against the steering wheel. Undeterred, she
muttered an ungraceful curse and managed to clumsily
straddle his lap, her back to the windshield, her lips warm
on his ear, her arms tight around his neck. She felt safe
here, wanted, protected; the rest of life could go to hell.
Just as long as she could stay here. Just as long as she
could crawl inside of Mulder and look at the truth.

"Just sit here with me," whispered Scully. "Let's just sit
here... for a minute."

Wanting to feel, wanting to touch, Scully opened her mouth
against his. If the surprise of her uncharacteristic act
registered in Mulder's brain, he thankfully said nothing,
merely held her on his lap and returned the kiss, his
fingers massaging through her scalp.

"Make me alive," whispered Scully into his mouth, and she
fumbled with the zipper on his jeans.

"Scully," said Mulder, and he held her close, stilling her
hands. "Scully. We're parked in the middle of the road."

"So?" muttered Scully, pressing her hands up beneath his T-
shirt, against his chest, where his skin was warm and soft
beneath her palms. Her hands shook. "It isn't fair,
Mulder." She ran her fingers in shaky, concentric circles
above his heart.

She remembered how she had passed the time while sick, by
counting each pulse of the heart monitor, separating the
hours into categories, and then dividing the categories by
days. Nonsense math with fractions and equations - nonsense
math with pieces of logic floating in it. Sometimes, Scully
would wonder whether an adequate representation was even
possible - did there exist a formula to measure the
potential of a life, or did static numbers and equations
make it impossible to follow the growth of something so
constantly in flux?

Tears gathered at the corners of Scully's eyes. "This isn't
supposed to happen," she whispered. "Not now. Not anymore.
It just... it doesn't make sense."

Mulder slid his arms around her. "Oh, my love." He kissed
the top of her head and sighed. "I think we have a better
chance of discovering the great mystery of Walter Skinner's
missing hairpiece than discovering why the world doesn't
give a shit about the things that are or aren't supposed to
happen to us."

Scully chuckled and nodded that she knew, that of course
yes she knew, and then she twisted in place, wrapping her
arms more tightly around him as the sky crashed and opened
up and the uncaring world finally cried.



---

Aikane Kahuna Hotel
12:00am



As Scully slept, shadowy visions flashed through her;
Christian Feuron, the crown of his seven-year-old head
shaved clean for surgery, his clear green eyes gazing
trustingly up at her. Herself but younger, her pale feet
dangling over the side of a hospital bed, her eyes squeezed
shut as a needle went into the back of her neck. Mulder
cradling their two-day old son in his arms, his tears hot
on her earlobe as he told her that he would marry her, that
he would take them everywhere, all over the world, all over
the universe if she wanted, and wouldn't that be a great
adventure, just the three of them.

As Scully struggled to break the surface of her own
memories, she found herself on an endless, familiar expanse
of sand, a windy, colorless beach that stretched for miles.

"Hello?" she called, anxiety rising within her. "Is anyone
here?"

She looked left and right, up the beach and down the beach.
She recalled for a moment a case she and Mulder had worked
together, back in the day -- a genie that had claimed to
grant wishes. Mulder, of course, being Mulder, had managed
to snag three wishes for himself, and later on, he'd
admitted to Scully that while he'd wished for world peace,
when he actually got what he'd wished for, the sound of an
endless hush had been much more frightening than the sound
of an agonized world. Scully had argued that perhaps the
yin and yang theory applied; the world as God had intended
could not exist without evil, and if hope and despair were
indeed interconnected, then perhaps this was the purpose of
life itself. Mulder had grumbled his agreement, although
when she'd asked him what he'd wished for as his final wish
- if not to better the world for all mankind, then what? -
Mulder had said nothing in return, merely smiled at her
over the lip of his beer.

Oh, God, she thought -- Mulder. Where was Mulder?

"Mulder?"

Scully shielded her eyes and searched.

In the distance, emerging from the horizon, a shadow was
growing larger. Scully's mind jumbled as she tried to make
it out, the sensation like falling down stairs, like
hitting every memory both recognizable and unfamiliar on
the way down; kind voices, the irregular pulse of a heart
monitor, a child's laughter, the sound of a woman sobbing,
the texture of a old stuffed animal.

Scully's heart hammered. Where was she? What was happening
to her? Her palm fluttered at her chest, and she was struck
with the image of a baby gazing up at her from the safety
of his wooden crib.

Which was when Scully realized a boy was walking towards
her.

"Christian," said Scully. Her smile was laced with
disappointment -- she wouldn't have known her own son,
wouldn't have known what he looked like if she'd
concentrated for days. Scully steeled her voice and asked,
"How are you feeling?"

Christian smiled. "I'm okay, Dr. Scully." He folded his
hands neatly in front of him. He wore jeans and a red T-
shirt; normal little boy clothes, Scully noticed, and not a
hospital gown. Scully hoped this meant good things for his
recovery, and as she crept the tenuous divide between sleep
and awareness, she decided to take whatever she could get.

"I had a dream about you," said Christian. "I just wanted
you to know."

"Did you?" Scully gazed out at the sand and the endless,
empty horizon. "Well, Christian, I'm pretty sure I'm
dreaming about you right now, so it would appear we are
even."

Christian grinned, revealing a missing tooth on one side.
"Yes," he said, happily. "I think you're right."

Scully took a slow, calming breath. Her feet felt warm and
sweaty in the sand. "Was there something you came here to
tell me?"

Christian tilted his head to one side. "No," he said. "But
my friend... He wanted me to tell you something."

"Your friend?"

"Yes," said Christian. "We talk sometimes. He said you used
to sing to him."

Scully breathed in sharply. "Christian?" She took a
cautious step back. "Why are you saying this?"

"He's says he remembers some things about you," answered
Christian. "He says he really wants to meet you, but he
can't yet." Christian smiled and outstretched his hand.
"Soon, though." Scully clasped her fingers with
Christian's, hearing as she did so the long beep of a heart
monitor, the roar of wind, a woman's cries, a flurry of
familiar medical-speak, the heart monitor changing tempo --

Scully awoke with a jolt to find herself alone in bed, her
nose dripping blood onto the pillow. With a stifled, angry
curse, she launched herself up and out, noticing Mulder
still glued to his laptop, a legal pad open and exposed on
the desk beside him, several sheets of paper crumpled on
the floor. Just exactly what he thought he was researching,
Scully was sure she had no idea.

Several candles burned low on the dresser, several others
spread out on the table and bathroom countertop. As the
outside world began to bleed in, Scully could make out
wails of thunder, the pattering of rain, the loud spirals
of wind driving leaves and branches hard against the
windowpanes. The room was hot, and she twisted her hair
into a knot at the nape of her neck to try and alleviate
the heat. The power must have blown at some point.

Like a tired child coming slowly back to her surroundings,
Scully kicked off her sweat pants, hurled her tank top to
the floor, and wandered absently to the bathroom in her
old, comfortable jockeys. She ripped a square of toilet
paper and wadded it against her nose. Her dream was already
beginning to fade from her, even as she tried to clutch at
its edges - the beach, the sound of wind, the feeling of
flying-- what had Christian been trying to tell her?
Perhaps she should call the hospital, just in case--

Scully looked up into the mirror, still contemplating, when
she saw Mulder standing behind her. Scully gasped and
jumped and banged her elbow hard against the wall.

"Jesus, Mulder." She turned to face him and sighed,
clutching her elbow. "I thought you were out there plugging
away at that laptop of yours."

"I was. Then I heard you get up." He leaned forward and
brushed an errant strand of sweaty hair back behind her
ears, smoothing it. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Oh," said Scully. "Thank you." She stared at her toes.

Mulder sucked in a hard breath. "Scully," he said. A plea.

Scully swallowed. She wrung out her tissue with both hands,
her knuckles whitening. She wondered what her body might
look like from the inside, a giant cavity filled with blood
and organ and muscle, held together with bone and tissue,
and something else, something dark lurking just beneath the
surface. Waiting. Itching to pull her to pieces. She took a
breath. "Mulder. I want to say... what I need to say..."
She took his hand in hers. "If... if this is true, if I...
if I'm dying -- "

Mulder recoiled as if struck. "You're not dying."

"How can you possibly -- "

"Scully, don't. Please." He shook his head. "I can't go
there. Okay?"

Scully dabbed at her nose one final time, tossed the tissue
into the wastebasket. She nodded mutely. "Okay." She
stepped forward into Mulder's arms. "Okay."

They stayed just that way for several quiet moments. After
a time, she spoke.

"Please tell me what you're thinking, Mulder."

Mulder pulled away slightly to study her face. In her head,
Scully saw the black mailbox peeking through a spray of
snowflakes, heard the barking dogs. Saw Mulder, lying half-
conscious on the ground, a second away from getting his
head handed to him. Saw the girl, still alive, floating in
a sea of ice as blood was drained from her. Scully had
found them, and they had lived. She had performed a
dangerous surgery on Christian, and he had lived as well.
There had to exist a reason for these things, a reason she
couldn't yet comprehend.

"You first," said Mulder, poking her gently.

Scully frowned. She took a moment to gather herself up. "I
think..." She paused, began again. "I think maybe we need
to call upon the past for help."

Mulder looked concerned. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning..." Scully took a deep breath. "What would Agent
Scully do?" She tried on a small, wry smile for his
benefit.

Mulder smiled back. "I should put that on a shirt."

"Creative, Mulder, but nobody would wear it." She breathed
in the musky scent of his skin, leaned against his
shoulder. "Maybe leave T-shirt making to the experts. Stick
to the unexplained."

"I would wear it."

Scully laughed, and Mulder kissed the top of her head. His
lips were warm and real and alive. In the darkness of the
room, this was all that mattered.

--


Aikane Kahuna Hotel
12:10am



Scully lay propped on her side, her head pillowed by her
palm.  She closed her eyes in the dark, listened to the
persistent hum of rain, and pulled an ice cube from the
glass on the nightstand. The room was filled with humidity,
the mattress like a heating pad. Grateful for the trail of
cold liquid on her tongue, Scully ran the ice cube across
her lips and passed it down to Mulder, who sat on the floor
in his boxers, buried in a mound of crumpled legal paper.
Mulder popped the ice cube absently into his mouth and
searched his laptop. Candlelight flickered against his skin
in the darkness, and Scully drew strength from the outline
of him, the black and orange dance across his arms.

"Sorry for the mess, I just feel a little like I'm not in
Kansas anymore." Mulder's voice was unsure and distant. He
uncrumpled and recrumpled papers, tossed them aside,
grabbed others. "You should probably know, I've actually
kind of taken a new route with my, ah, my truth-seeking,
here. It's the ghetto-rigged approach."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I'm looking for a different kind of answer now."

Scully's head tilted in curiosity, and Mulder cleared his
throat, continued, "Not having any real place to start, I
thought I'd google the history of this island, see if there
were any pervasive myths, anything that could perhaps be
reinterpreted. I've specifically been interested in the
local volcanic ranges, the myth of Pele, the Hawaiian
goddess of fire and lightning."

Scully listened, hypnotized, as Mulder's mouth made
beautiful love to nonsense. Oddly comforted, she ran a
second ice cube down her bare shoulder, down the length of
her arm; her eyelids fluttered shut as he leaned forward to
kiss away beads of water still lingering on the pulse of
her wrist. He added, "You ready for this?"

Scully nodded, and her eyelids fluttered open once again.

"Okay," said Mulder. He took a deep breath. "According to
local legend, Pele is the all-powerful goddess of lightning
and fire, and her brother, Ka-moho-ali'i, supposedly has
the power to raise the dead. The locals subscribe quite
heavily to this story, and claim that both Pele and her
Lazarus-like brother live inside Mount Kilauea, the most
impressive volcano on the island. Supposedly, the lava has
magical properties -- it can either heal or curse,
depending on whether you've stolen a piece of it or asked
the Gods nicely. Locals claim reports of stolen lavarock
being returned with frightened letters and peace offerings
-- food, money or jewelry -- as well as reports of healed
bones, cured illnesses, sometimes within days of being
given the gift of these rocks -- these tears from Pele.
It's said that those with great passion will be granted a
single tear and offered the chance for healing."

Mulder's voice dipped melodramatically at the end, a
sculptor of words signing his spoken masterpiece. Fifteen
years with him, and still, he was the same old Mulder,
still spinning her stories, still trying to turn straw into
gold.

Scully's eyebrow arched. "This is what you've spent the
past few hours researching, Mulder? Tourism literature?"

Mulder shot her a withering look.

"And your plan relates to this fairytale, how?"

"Who said I had a plan, Scully?"

Scully groaned. "If you don't have a plan, Mulder, then why
the hell are you reciting ancient island myth to me?"

"Because I thought it was cool?"

"Have you been drinking, Mulder?"

"Look," said Mulder, and he tapped impatiently at the pulse
of her wrist. "The truth is... the truth is I don't know
what the fuck the truth is, so I've been taking pages of
diligent notes on nonsense, just trying to find anything
that might be helpful - maybe if the volcanic ash of
Kilauea has extra terrestrial properties, or if some form
of the virus is living inside of it and that sparked your
bloody nose -- I don't know. It's all a lot of bullshit,
but it's kept me from going insane and punching much
heavier walls -- because believe me, I considered it."
Mulder exhaled. "Sorry. You were asleep awhile."

Scully nodded and squeezed his hand sympathetically. She
recalled an afternoon long ago, maybe eleven years earlier,
when Mulder had barged into the women's restroom looking
for her, his eyes wild and his tie askew, his voice
ruptured in a million pieces as he'd asked, "Scully, you've
been in here awhile and, um, are you okay?"

The first few stages of treatment had made her tired,
nauseous, and weak, and as she'd tried to answer that, yes
she was fine, and yes she'd be out in a minute, her stomach
lurched and she'd pressed forward over the sink. Mulder,
horrified, had rushed towards her; he'd cradled her elbow
and tucked her hair back and closed his eyes and stood
there and stayed. When twenty minutes later she no longer
had anything left in her stomach but finally felt steady
enough to move, Mulder had wordlessly smoothed back the
hair he'd mussed, touched his knuckles gently to her cheek,
handed her some paper towels, and walked away.

Later that day, after Mulder had viciously kicked in the
eleventh floor copy machine for seemingly no reason, Scully
had quietly gone out to the parking garage and bent forward
against the steering wheel of her car, and cried.

Scully traced the lines of the bandage on Mulder's
knuckles, brushing away the memory. "Were you able to find
anything on the geological properties of Kilauea? Reports
of abductions, strange lights, missing time? Has the ash
been studied, maybe by local professors? There's a
satellite campus for the University of Hawaii not far from
here. That could be a good jumping off point."

Mulder tickled her wrist and grinned somewhat stupidly.
"God, you're hot."

Scully chuckled, and Mulder pulled an ice cube from the
glass, leaned forward, and touched it gently to her lips.
Scully closed her eyes as the cold water trailed down her
neck, abruptly stopping at the valley between her breasts.
Mulder leaned in to scoop the ice cube into his own mouth,
kissing the water from her skin. "Thank you," she mumbled.

Mulder nodded.

"I checked all the online newspapers, local and national,"
he said, leaning back and chewing on the ice, "I logged on
to every search engine -- I haven't yet found reports of
strange lights over Kilauea, or anywhere else, and I
haven't found anything in the MUFON database, either. I
even checked reports from the local hospitals - anyone
visiting the ER complaining of nosebleeds, and those being
treated for cancer - there hasn't been much in the way of
unusual activity at all. The University of Hawaii may have
hours tomorrow, though, if you still want to check it out,
uh, while we...wait."

"ER reports?" Scully leaned forward on her palm, intrigued.
"How did you manage to gain access to triage records,
Mulder?"

Mulder shrugged. "The gunmen left me an exit-memo."

Scully touched his knuckles and grinned. Inside her was
this strange sensation of going both forward and backwards
at once, of moving in a direction she could not entirely
articulate. "So, what now?"

"Well," said Mulder, "We could sit here and do nothing, and
wait."

Scully was restless, on pins and needles. She steeled
herself and said, "Or?"

"Or," said Mulder. He paused and smiled and as Scully's
gaze turned suspicious, he continued, "Hear me out here,
but I was also reading up on the old ways associated with
island myths -- sacrifices to the gods, offerings of
alligator, turtle, and pig - no blonde virgins or squalling
infants, thankfully; it's apparently not that kind of
party. However, it seems the only way to have Pele's tears
offered to you at their most powerful is to offer the
goddess something equally palatable in return. Anything
else is considered stealing, and supposedly the effects
reverse."

Scully's lips pursed. She knew this familiar song and
dance, this dizzying sensation of being the quickstepping
Ginger Rogers to Mulder's paranormally inclined Fred
Astaire. Perhaps Mulder was fashioning new ways to the
truth now, creating lifelines for them out of battered
string and old paperclips, but this was still Mulder they
were talking about, and if the dance didn't involve at
least one crazy scheme she would later have to explain to
the police, Scully knew he probably hadn't finished telling
her the whole damn thing.

"Mulder," she said, "If this is the part where you tell me
I need to slaughter a pig in the moonlight while you gun
the engine through a tropical storm, I'm afraid this is
where we part company."

Mulder chuckled. "No, nothing like that." He ran his index
finger in lazy figure eights on her arm. "But I do think
there's something to be said for a generic Kmart sacrifice,
a passionate heart, and really, really nice breasts."

Scully tilted her head suspiciously. "What exactly are you
suggesting?"

Mulder said nothing.

"Mulder," said Scully, a dreadful sort of understanding
creeping into her voice, "Please tell me you're not
suggesting that we head out in a dangerous thunderstorm so
I can leave a leather handbag and a ham sandwich at the
foot of a thousand year old dormant volcano."

Mulder neither confirmed nor denied, instead answering,
"What do you think we could substitute for turtle?"

Scully shook her head. "No."

"It could be a really fun adventure."

Her eyebrow arched.

"What if I told you it's always been a secret fantasy of
mine, ever since that first case - to have my wicked way
with you in the middle of a thunderstorm?"

Both eyebrows.

Mulder leaned in to kiss her, his lips gentle and
undemanding and endlessly, beautifully manipulative.

A lamp in the far corner flickered on. The air conditioner
hummed gruffly back to life.

Into her mouth, Mulder challenged, "It's just a little
rain, Agent Scully. What are you so afraid of?"

---



"Aloha mai no, aloha aku;
o ka huhu ka mea e ola `ole ai."
- When love is given, love should be returned;
anger is the thing that gives no life.
- ancient Hawaiian proverb



--


Aikane Kahuna Hotel
12:30am


Scully waited by the elevator on the opposite side of the
lobby. She was hastily dressed in a pair of shorts and
Mulder's old Knicks T-shirt, both of which absorbed her
until she seemed infinitely small and formless. Mulder, of
course, he had always known better; Scully's size was her
dirty secret, her Trojan horse, and objects in mirror were
much more badass than they first appeared.

Mulder paused to memorize her as an artist might map out a
portrait; her red hair piled in bumps and knots at her
crown, her calves moving restlessly to the rhythm of her
tapping foot, those watchful blue eyes and her delicate
face, dotted with freckles, free of makeup. He had a flash
of making love to her for the first time, the two of them
tangled on his old couch, in his old apartment, his body
welcome inside hers, the power of release after so many
years of waiting like an out of body experience.

Mulder touched a hand to her shoulder, memorizing her
warmth, and Scully turned.

"So," she said, "Did you find the keys?"

"No," said Mulder, "but I overheard something about an
extra set hidden in one of the planters." He nodded his
chin in the direction of the pots in between each elevator
car. "I just don't know which one."

Scully nodded and caught sight of the security camera.
"Okay, then," she said. "I'll check. You just keep a
lookout."

Mulder peeked around the corner. At the front desk sat a
rather bored looking girl engrossed with her cell phone.
The brightly patterned couches were empty, and a TV above
the girl's head glowed and flashed. Outside the glass front
doors, the storm reached black fingers through the trees,
every few minutes or so rattling the windows and bathing
the dim guest lounge with bright white light.

Mulder folded his arms and leaned against the wall. He
watched as Scully buried a hand first inside one planter,
and then another. "I can't believe I'm doing this," she
said.

"I can't believe the kitchen closes at ten," answered
Mulder, keeping a watchful eye on the girl at the desk.
"Room service really would have sped this process up
considerably."

Scully ignored him, continuing to root around inside the
base of the planter, bending forward and peering in and
then digging around with both hands. Mulder licked his lips
and tilted his head and studied the attractive view of her
backside as she dug around some more, her spine arched
forward like a cat's. After a few moments of struggle, she
finally uprighted and blew strands of hair from her face
with a sharp exhale. "Found them," she said, with a grin.

The glint in her eyes was bright and ancient and rich with
history; the hunt, the discovery, the excitement, this
feeling of never standing still -

"Go girl," said Mulder, unable to hide his amusement.

Scully stepped forward into his space, dangling the keys
near his nose. "You'd better have a plan, Mulder," she
warned.

"I do," said Mulder.

He kind of didn't.

Nevertheless, Mulder kept watch as Scully turned the key in
the lock. It felt strangely like old times, and yet
ridiculously not.

Soon they were inside the supply closet, the door closing
swiftly behind them as Scully reached up blindly in the
dark and groped for the light switch. They gazed around.
The closet was little more than an enlarged shoebox with
shelves for supplies and uniforms, and it smelled of wood
and toilet cleaner and dust. Lacking a wide range of
motion, Mulder pushed far into Scully's space, enfolded her
at the waist and clasped his hands at the center of her
back.

"This was much more romantic in my head," he said, and
sneezed as the odor of bleach punched him in the face.

"Don't worry," said Scully dryly, her nose twitching, "I'm
quite familiar with your overwhelming sense of romance."

Mulder snorted. Scully's knee shifted and she knocked over
a can of paint.

"You know," he said, "In my defense, I was often busy
getting my ass kicked."

"Yes," replied Scully. "I do recall getting hit in the head
with a boot from time to time." She tilted her chin. "So
now what, Einstein?" Her hands mirrored Mulder's, clasping
together at the small of his back.

Mulder glanced up above Scully's head, where neatly folded
uniforms sat on a high shelf. "How do you feel about posing
as a conveniently forgetful chef?" He nodded at a white
triangular cap folded amongst a throng of other white
triangular caps.

"No, Mulder."

Mulder grinned. "Someone needs to be the chef, Scully."

Scully frowned. "Which automatically means I have to do it?
This whole thing was your crazy idea. I say you be the
forgetful chef and I'll be the long-suffering partner who
bails you out when they throw you in hotel-jail."

"Hotel jail?"

"I'm not putting on a costume, Mulder."

Mulder smiled his most dashing smile at her, his heart
pounding under the weight of their silly, makeshift game.
For a second, he pictured Scully still lying awkwardly on
the sand, her hand over her nose, her fingertips the color
of poisoned apples.

No.  He blinked it away. He wouldn't think of that now.

"Ah, Scully," he said instead, and leaned in close to
nibble at the underside of her ear, turning over in his
head whether the stupidity of his plan might inadvertently
overpower the very convincing argument of his tongue. "It's
just like putting on a lab coat and heading into work,
wouldn't you say?"

"No, I wouldn't say," Scully mumbled, her head tilted to
give him better access, "So you can stop," His mouth on her
neck, "your argument," Her jaw, "because I wasn't kidding,"
The curve of her ear, "When I said," She whimpered softly,
"No."

"Whatever you say," answered Mulder, and he swooped in to
kiss her more thoroughly as he yanked a clean white chef's
jacket from the shelf above her head.

"Don't," Scully mumbled against his mouth, her fingers
tangled in his hair, the eyes in the back of her head wide
and unblinking.

"Fine. Rock Paper Scissors." Mulder kissed a line to her
jaw.

"Interesting proposition." Scully arched into him as his
hand slipped underneath her shirt, his fingers playing at
the edges of her cotton bra, trailing the delicate skin
around her nipples. She sucked in a breath. "I hear it's
difficult to play Rock Paper Scissors with no hands,
Mulder."

"I can think of another body part we can play with."

"Hmm." Her fingers traced the waistband of his shorts. "I
think the outcome of that would be quite predictable, given
that particular body part's range of motion." She kissed
the rim of his ear. "Either way, I'd win."

Mulder pulled back slightly so they were nose to nose.

He raised an eyebrow at her.

She raised hers back.

Mulder tilted his chin. "Best two out of three."

"You're on."

---


Aikane Kahuna Hotel
12:45am


Scully walked up to the front desk, where a dark-haired
teenager sat chomping on gum and texting on her cell phone. 
Behind the girl, from its mount on the wall, a rerun of the
local news twittered softly on a plasma TV.   A bright
looking, pretty meteorologist filled the screen, pointed at
a map, and went on and on about the storm warnings still in
effect and how the bad weather would remain for the next
several hours at least.

Scully knocked on the counter and smiled somewhat stupidly. 
The more she tried to figure out why she was indulging
Mulder in this foolishness, the more she was blinded by
images from the past: of waking in the middle of the night
to find pairs of droplets on her pillow, blood red, like
eyes; of Mulder on the other end of a cell phone, his voice
laced with fear, as he agreed to bring her overnight bag to
the hospital; of her own face, pale and drawn and nearly
unrecognizable, staring sadly at her from the mirror, her
fingers clutching at her grandmother's rosary.  

No.  She couldn't think of that now.

"Can I help you?" said the girl, as she flipped her cell
phone open and shut.

"Yes, I think so," said Scully. Her smile was artificial
and filled with teeth.  "My name's Dana and I'm staying in
201.  I just had a real quick question."

The girl leaned forward, set her chin on her palm. 
"Shoot," she said.

"My partner and I, we had dinner at the cafe earlier, and
we both agreed, it was wonderful."  Scully smiled harder,
feeling ridiculous.  "Actually, ah, I was hoping you might
know the name of the chef, so I could send him a note and
properly thank him." 

"Oh sure," said the girl, and she reached beneath the
counter for paper and a pen.  She wrote as she spoke. 
"Chef Kiaanna loves to hear that sort of thing - not many
people think to thank the staff, and this is such a small
establishment and all."  She tore the piece of paper off
and handed it to Scully. 

"Thank you," said Scully.  She glanced at the paper and
folded it in her palm.  "I actually have another question. 
If you don't mind."

"Not at all," said the girl.

"The security guards at the gate, they usually make rounds,
don't they?"

The girl frowned.  "Usually, yeah.  But whenever there's a
storm like this, we have to operate under emergency
guideline procedure - the rounds get suspended and they man
the gatehouse instead, block the driveway out.  It's
amazing - we sometimes skirt right under the evacuation
criteria, but that doesn't mean we don't get screwed."  The
girl leaned towards Scully as if sharing a secret.  "I had
a date tonight," she confided, and made a face.  "Some
swell time I'm having."

Scully nodded, peeking out the corner of her eye at the
elevator bank, where a second set of eyes peeked back. 
Scully startled for a second, widened her gaze and jerked
her head.  Leave it to Mulder, a man who could successfully
fake his own death, to be discovered after only thirty
seconds of trying to break into a hotel kitchen.

"Everything okay?" asked the girl. 

Scully looked up sharply.  She forced a chuckle.  She felt
somehow like the unwitting star of a frat house movie, and
yet, with the delicious pounding of her heart, she also
felt alive.  She was reminded of when she was fourteen, and
had snuck out onto the front porch to steal cigarettes from
her mother's leather purse.  Or the time when she was
twelve, and had rigged a plastic skeleton with flashlight
batteries, bulbs and wires, so that when her older brother
Bill turned out all the lights in his room, the head
glowed, and he screamed.  These small victories had always
secretly thrilled her; she'd plunged headfirst into the FBI
because of that thrill.

"One more question," said Scully, as the girl continued to
stare at her blankly.  "Just because the weather's so
terrible..."  She chucked her thumb in the direction of the
window, where lightning lit up the night like the flash of
a camera.  She leaned in closely towards the girl and
drummed her fingers on the counter. "If I wanted to send
over some tea or something to the guard-booth, when would
be a good time to do that?"

"You want to send tea," the girl echoed.  "To the guard-
booth."

Scully nodded, heart pounding, as the reality of this
extreme foolishness rushed through her; she felt jumpy,
like a tireless child after one too many pixie sticks.  In
her head, could hear Mulder's amused laughter, the teasing
lilt in his voice as they drove back from an undercover
assignment. "Your so-called acting skills," he'd air-
quoted, "Let's say they leave something to be desired.  I
think I can safely say the last time I saw anything that
unconvincing, I was watching Another Stakeout."

Scully glanced up at the TV and caught the tail-end of a
Pepsi commercial.  She took a deep breath and willed
herself not to sound moronic.  "Yes, I want to send tea to
the guard-booth.  And I want to make sure it won't get
cold, either."  Scully straightened her shoulders.  She had
a ridiculous flash to her first day on the job as an FBI
agent; her too-hot, too big, double-breasted suit, her
stiff, short hair somehow not stiff or short enough.  She'd
gone up to the pharmacy counter of a Ma and Pop drugstore
to question the only witness of a serial shooting, and had
trembled so badly she'd dropped her badge and gun before
she could even introduce herself.

"Tea for the guards," said the girl, as if she weren't
convinced at all. "I guess that's a nice thing to do."  She
sighed, looking once again bored.  "The guards have their
last shift change for the night in about forty-five minutes
or so, so you should send it out before that.   They have
to close up for a bit.  Sign in and out and all."

Scully nodded thoughtfully.  "Thanks," she said, and
turned, glancing one last time at the news.  A jovial male
anchor was reporting live from Kauai Veterans Memorial
Hospital, something to do with budget cuts and financial
disputes.  "And although this little boy's condition, a
rare form of terminal cancer, has worsened this afternoon,
his parents remain hopeful that the new hospital
administration, unaffected by recent budget cuts that have
plagued --"

Scully paused for a moment, gazing at the screen, feeling
something strange and familiar flicker in her abdomen.  Her
heart fluttered, like the moment right before a kiss, and
she wondered for a second whether she should call the
hospital back home to check on Christian.  Then the girl at
the desk groaned, grabbed the remote, changed the channel,
and the spell was broken.  With a quick shake of her head
to clear her thoughts, Scully made her way back to the
elevator bank.  She found Mulder loitering in an alcove by
the soda machine, looking beautifully stupid in a too-small
chef's jacket.

"Robert Kiaanna," said Scully without further explanation. 
"And the guards will be away from the road blocks in forty-
five minutes."

Mulder grinned.  Inside him still lived the heart of a
wide-eyed, curious ten year old, and never was it more
evident than when he was dragging her off on some fool's
errand.

"You ready, Doc?" said Mulder. 

Scully smiled ruefully.  "Aren't I always?"

He reached a hand out to Scully, and she took it.


--


Aikane Kahuna Hotel
1:05am


When she was a teenager, Scully and her older sister
Melissa would often sneak downstairs in the middle of the
night to smoke marijuana in their parents' basement.

Melissa never told Scully where she'd gotten the stuff, but
would just miraculously appear at the top of the stairs
when least expected, a brown paper bag in hand, a dangerous
glint in her eye.

The two of them had entered into an unspoken agreement - to
meet at two-am at the top of the stairs whenever Melissa
had "gotten lucky," and then go downstairs together for a
forbidden, delicious playdate.  Right up until college,
Scully and her older sister had carried out these secret
meetings, curling up like French fries on the ratty old
rec-room couch, watching Breakfast at Tiffanys and How to
Steal A Million and giggling for hours.  At some point
they'd wander back upstairs in the black, liquefied silence
of the house, and pull open the refrigerator.  They'd run
their fingers over the selections, memorizing textures: jug
of milk, bag of apples, cup of pudding, bowl of leftover
fudge, bag of mostly-peeled carrots; cold, round, plastic,
sweet, wet.   Against the ugly lime-green refrigerator
they'd sit, two stoned rebels on the cold kitchen tile,
eating pudding out of cups with their fingers, closing
their eyes to savor the taste. 

This was the memory that came to Scully as Mulder came up
behind her and stuck some chocolate covered piece of
caramel in her mouth, sending tiny explosions of pleasure
across her tongue.  She turned and hummed appreciatively,
and licked the rest off the tips of his fingers as he
raptly watched. 

"Good," she said, a challenging twinkle in her eye, "But I
thought you were looking for ham."

"Turtles," Mulder explained, holding up a box of chocolate
covered caramels.  He grinned, looking altogether too
pleased with himself.  Although Scully would never admit
this to him, she secretly thrived on his confident
ingenuity, this ability he had of adapting to any
environment, of turning the ordinary and the mundane into a
workable adventure.

On the whole, the kitchen had been a strange but amusing
experience, and surprisingly easy to break into -- likely,
because the janitor spoke very little English.  Still,
Mulder had played up his costume well, insisting he worked
for the cafe and providing the janitor with a name for his
list, and then spinning a disturbingly detailed story about
having left his house keys in either the microwave or the
industrial mixer ("you know how the equipment all starts to
look alike after awhile," he'd said lamely) and the
janitor, seeming both bored and uncomprehending, had
unlocked the door for him.  "Fifteen minutes," the janitor
had declared, and then left for the supply closet.

"See? Easy as pie," Mulder had said, stripping off his
white jacket and discarding it behind a trash-can.  He'd
taken her hand and pulled her quickly through the unlocked
door, nibbling on her neck and finishing, "Mm, I hope
there's pie."

Scully tried to hide her grin as she swiped another piece
of stolen chocolate from the box of candy and popped it
into her mouth.  When Mulder leaned forward to lick the
caramel from her fingertips, her smile broke free, and she
felt both electrified and impossibly drunk.

"So how many licks does it take to get to the center?"
joked Mulder, as he kissed the inside of her palm, letting
his tongue linger on the creases of her skin.

Scully eyed him with quick, uneven breaths.  Her pulse felt
thready.  "You know," she said, eyebrow arched, "You're a
real cocktease, Mulder."

Mulder pressed his hand to his chest.  "Am I?"  He shook
his head.  "Such language, Dr. Scully."

Scully laughed and shoved at him.  "Find me ham," she
ordered.  "Otherwise, you're useless." 

"Look."  Mulder waved the hand with the turtles. "Don't
knock my strategy here.  Chocolate first, then ham.  The
best way to a goddess-disguised-as-a-volcano's heart is
through her stomach, and chocolate is simply more
tantalizing."

"Is it, now?" asked Scully, backing up against the counter.
"Because I have to say, if you think a ham and chocolate
sandwich is the way to any woman's heart, I think someone
ought to draw you a map."

Mulder walked forward into her.  "Woman, be appreciative." 
He set the chocolate turtles beside her on the counter.
"I'm making a fool out of myself for you.  Surely, you
realize that."

Scully leaned forward and kissed his jaw.  "Oh, Mulder,"
she said, "I think we both know you'd make a fool of
yourself anyway."

Mulder brushed his palm against her cheek.  He leaned
close, bending forward so their foreheads could touch. 
Whenever words failed them, there was always still this,
however small.

"Maybe," he finally said, his fingers gentle against the
planes of her skin.  "But it's only fun with you."


---

Aikane Kahuna Hotel
1:30am


The two of them stood at the window of their hotel room,
contemplating. 

Outside, squalls of rain slanted sideways.  The night lit
up and turned to darkness.  On the nightstand sat a little
plastic cooler with what might have been a picnic lunch on
any other day:  a ham sandwich, a (half filled) box of
chocolate turtles, a box of Swedish fish from the vending
machine (Mulder had insisted that if he squinted they
looked like multicolored alligators), and a container of
strawberries (half of which Mulder had pilfered along with
a jar of chocolate syrup, naughtily rationalizing, "The
tongue wants what it wants, Scully.") 

Mulder set his hands on her shoulders and rested his head
atop hers.  Scully leaned back into him and thought of the
day she'd come home from the hospital, Cancer-free.  She'd
been pale and hollowed in the cheeks, had developed dark
circles under her eyes the color of half-healed bruises. 
Mulder had walked her up the stairs, wandered into her
apartment, and meandered uncertainly as Scully had changed
clothes and returned to face him.  She'd not invited him to
stay and he'd never asked permission, although the
arrangement had been somehow agreed upon and understood by
both.  Not knowing quite what else to do or say, they'd
settled together on the couch, close but not touching. 
Scully turned on the TV.  Mulder shyly reached for her
hand.  He'd stayed with her until she began to nod off, and
then he'd carried her to bed, tucked her in, and quietly
let himself out.

"This is crazy," said Scully, brushing the image back, her
gaze focused on the banana leaves as they strained
sideways.

"Yes," said Mulder.  "It is."

"We shouldn't be driving in this."

"Probably not," agreed Mulder.  "Remember that time I drove
us through a hurricane?"

"Yes."  A crackle of thunder rattled the walls and a flash
of lightning followed, and the world went momentarily
white.  "I recall that being a stupid idea, too."

Mulder shrugged against the top of her head.  "You
delivered a baby that night, didn't you, Scully?"

"I did."

"I think that's pretty incredible."

Scully smiled.  "It was."

"You ready?"

Scully nodded.  "I am."



---


North Kahoolawe, HI
1:52am



Rain pushed past the car in ribbons, and still the car
shimmied slowly on.

Mulder squinted, gripped the steering wheel, and watched
passing side-streets for the turn-off to Kings Hwy, unsure
of what he'd say to her when they got there. He supposed
this idea of the two of them at the foot of a volcano, in
the middle of a thunderstorm, the pouring rain soaking
through her shirt as his arms wound tight around her, had
probably seemed much more romantic in his head.

Streams of water spilled as if from a pitcher down the
windshield, the wipers huffing and puffing their way back
and forth, not making a dent. Thunder came quick, popping
viciously like a cork, and was followed by the fire-hot
sizzle of lightning. Rain fell sideways and in loops and
swirls. The streetlights had burnt out, the road ahead of
them a black, watery hole. Mulder flicked on the high-
beams; twin cones of light trailed off into the pitch
black, and in his mind, Mulder could see the pulse of
Scully's flashlight coming towards him, its beam bobbing
frantically along hard stone walls. Occasionally, when
Scully worked very late at night, and he was alone in their
bed, he could still hear her frightened voice calling for
him, and his own flashlight desperately seeking hers, the
beams crossing in midair, the darkness all around them.

"Mulder, we need to talk."

Mulder startled slightly, but kept his eyes on the road.
"About what?"

Scully shot him a hard, knowing glance.

Mulder bristled. "No," he said. In his mind's eye, he saw
her as if through a plexi-glass divide; there she lay,
silent, pale as ash, tangled in tubes like an insect at the
center of a web, monitors reducing her life to a series of
staccato beeps. Mulder jerked in his seat to erase the
image, still so raw after ten long years. "I'm not doing
this with you," he said, keeping a close eye on the road.
"Not now. Right now, I'm driving you out to the beach so
you can feed a ham sandwich to a volcano."

Scully's brows furrowed.

Mulder frowned to himself.

"Mulder," she said.

"That came out a little more preposterous than I intended."

"Mulder."

"I actually intended to say some sweeping, poetic thing."
He shrugged.

"Mulder!"

"What?" Mulder shot her an angry, sidelong glance before
turning back at the road. Inside the whirls of rain, he saw
Scully with her head tilted up at a stormy afternoon sky,
her eyes closed, a small smile creasing her lips, her hair
wild and curling in the humidity. She'd think he was asleep
on the couch and would drape him with a blanket, kiss him
gently, and wander out onto the porch, alone, to wait for
the storm - to breathe it in, or to perhaps commune with
God. In secret, Mulder would get up and wait for her at the
window, still with wonder at the challenging mystery of her
mind, as she turned her face to the sky. To him, nothing
was more beautiful than this image.

"What do you want from me, Scully?" He saw her again, this
time pale and weak and distant, scribbling furiously in a
diary filled with poetic haikus of her own illness, her own
death. Trying to merge these two unlike Scullys in his head
made him dizzy, and he bit out, "Should I watch you
disconnect? From the world? From me? Should I listen to you
rattle off some flowery list of things you want to put in
order before you die?"

Scully reeled as if he'd hit her, and Mulder winced. "I'm
sorry," he said. "But I just...I can't. I was never built
that way." He sighed. "I love you far too much to watch you
give up."

Scully sucked her lower lip beneath her teeth. He could see
the battle in her eyes. With a shaky voice, she managed,
"That's not fair, Mulder."

"What is, then?"

For a moment, the car was filled with nothing but the sound
of a discontent sky.

Scully reached for his hand on the gearshaft. She wove her
fingers through his. "The darkness I can handle," she said,
"You helped me see that. But I need you with me, now."

Mulder turned to her with feverish eyes and gripped her
hand far too tightly. "No," he said passionately. "Not like
that."

Another wave of uncomfortable silence crashed over them,
and Scully turned away. The rain pounded its angry fists
against the car.

Softly, she touched the pad of her thumb to his, asked, "Is
this how you felt back then, too?"

Mulder exhaled sharply. "You mean was I in love with you
then?"

Scully said nothing. She withdrew her hand.

Mulder took deep, calming breaths, and trained his eyes on
the road, on the twin stripes of light pointed straight at
nowhere. How many times had he seen her bent in
concentration over a mutilated corpse, poking and slicing
and then lecturing up at him as if inviting him to some
macabre dance? How many times had he envisioned the
nightmarish possibility of that relationship reversed? How
many evenings had he stood alone at his window, imagining
the space between their apartments as something vast and
impenetrable, and wished he could see her, just to know
what she was doing, just to make sure she was okay, just in
case? How many times?

"You know that answer," said Mulder. "And we're not doing
this right now."

Scully massaged her temples, leaned against the passenger's
window. "Burying ourselves in a fantasy won't make this any
less real, Mulder."

"So we should break out your living will even though the
test results aren't in yet?" Mulder gripped the steering
wheel so tightly he began to sweat. Scully reached over and
touched his forearm.

"That's not what I mean and you know it." She turned back
to the windshield, unable to meet his eyes. "I'm afraid,
Mulder." Her voice was small, so small. "I'm so afraid."

That caught him off guard, and he said nothing.

"I need to talk to you about this.  Badly. But you -- " She
shook her head, clenched a fist in her lap, "Here you are,
still hiding behind a mystery, some quest, some unexplained
thing. But listening to me, really listening to me --
that's out of the question. You know, you're not the only
one who's frightened, Mulder. You're not the only one in
this car."

Mulder shot her a glare. Behind the frightened blue of her
eyes, he saw a woman who had marched headfirst into the
rain and asked him to start the engine.

He turned back to the road, answered, "I've never been the
only one in this car."

Scully's hand slid, defeated, down his forearm. "You know
that's not what I'm getting at."

"Then tell me, Scully," he said, the tips of his fingers
stinging as they dug into the steering wheel. "Tell me what
you're getting at."

Scully's breathing changed, the edge of each exhale like a
shudder.

Out loud she said, "How can I?" And swallowed and breathed
and swallowed and breathed. "How can I tell you that you
can't build me a sandcastle cure, Mulder? How can I ask you
not to believe when I know you need to so badly? How do I
tell you that I don't want to spend the rest of my days
fighting something I can't possibly fight?" She paused. "Or
worrying that you'll turn me into another quest, that
you'll get yourself killed trying to avenge the injustice."

Mulder had a harsh, quick flash to a time when Scully had
gone missing; he had felt like a man left behind, the
remaining half of a love unrequited. He'd gone to purchase
a headstone for her, filled out all the forms, entered her
name in the tiny blank boxes. Name of deceased: D-a-n-a S-
c-u-l-l-y. No. Not again. Not ever again.

Mulder let out a dark chuckle. "What a ringing endorsement
- both for me, and for a positive outcome."

"Mulder -- "

Mulder banged his hand angrily against the steering wheel.
"Tell me again why you're in this car with me, Scully."

Scully's tears spilled over.

Mulder deflated. He reached for her hand. "Scully, look --"

But Scully's eyes went wide and suddenly she leapt forward,
gesturing frantically out the window. "Oh, my God!"

"Scully, what - "

"Jesus, look out!" She grabbed his shoulder and pointed,
and his brain flashed roughly through images: the uneven
road, the storm, the windshield wipers, the blood red
blinking clock: 2:01, the darkness waiting for them,
lurking just outside. Scully shook him and pressed her palm
to the windshield, her expression filled with horror.
"There's a boy! A boy, there's a boy in the road --"

"What?" Desperately, Mulder searched the road for any sign
of a boy. Rain slammed against the windshield, bringing a
dangerous texture to the howling darkness, and Scully, wild
with panic, reached across him to roughly grab the wheel
and yank it towards her.

Everything slammed sideways.

"Scully! What the hell are you - "

The radio turned on suddenly and spiraled swiftly between
stations, garbling music and static that screamed madly,
and as Mulder reached for Scully and the car began to spin
out of control, a bright white light blinded them, and then
everything stopped.
---
END part 2