by JET
jetpaine@yahoo.com
eviljesemie@yahoo.com
 

December 2002
Scullyfic/Emuse Secret Santa Swapfic

Summary:
"The dead need peace, the dead need sleep, let the
dead have peace and sleep..."  -- Carl Sandburg

Distribution:
Please let me know.

Slightly Prettier HTML Version Available At:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/jetfic

Proprietors I'm Borrowing From and Would Like to Not
Be Sued By Since I Am Poor and Not Claiming Ownership
of Their Stuff:
1013 & Friends, Lewis Carroll, and, for one line,
quite possibly the people who made "A Christmas
Story."

Feedback:
Yes, please and thank you.  jetpaine@yahoo.com or
eviljesemie@yahoo.com

Author's Notes:
Go to part one for actual story.  :)

For minimum confusion (maybe), please pretend the
following for the duration of this story:

* the present-day action in "Paper Hearts" took place
no later than October of 1996, and everything that
happened afterwards didn't happen [It's alt-u without
colonization or historical reenactments!];

* local and state police departments keep files
forever and are always totally willing to help out
attractive FBI agents regardless of so-called rules
and regulations [Or: Boy howdy, research sure is
hard!];

* Mulder is capable of following a direct order from a
superior [Uh, did I mention the part about this being
an alt-u?];

* JET knows oodles about New England [JET lives in
Indiana.  Let's be reasonable.];

* underscores (_ _) equal italics.

An enormous Thank You and new virtual boss to Emma-M.,
and an enormous Thank You and many rolls of packing
tape to Lilydale -- your betas were indispensable and,
as always, deeply appreciated.  Any remaining errors
of logic and imagination are mine alone.
 

For MaybeAmanda, who gave me "The Answer," a beautiful
story you should go read: Merry Christmas
 
 

~~~
 

_In another moment down went Alice after it, never
once considering how in the world she was to get out
again._

---
She found him where she left him, that evening it was
confirmed they knew little more than was known years
ago.  Sophisticated lab, insufficient results, a scrap
of fabric with faint history and no future.  Its
origins were almost infinite: any nightgown, any
vanished child, any town on the cold coastline, any
city set down in Pennsylvanian hills or between New
Hampshire's towering white birch.

She found him asleep in his unheated office, head on
his desk.  She was the person who fetched him to beds
or out of meetings with Skinner, who stood between him
and smirks of evil, rotting things.  She wondered if
he felt lost heartbeats beneath his own sometimes, if
there were more ways than dreams that his grief
reached beyond him, heat or breath or wish as tangible
as cloth.  She touched his shoulder to rouse him.

He didn't stir and she put her hand on his head like a
priest would in blessing.  The softness of his hair
made him real, startled her.  She looked down at
herself -- she was wearing old jeans and an old navy
blue sweater, tennis shoes with ragged laces and holes
at the toes.  Her trenchcoat swung around her,
unbuttoned and splattered at the hem with dried mud.
She was pillow creased with uncombed hair and mascara
smudges, the taste of hasty toothpaste still in her
mouth.

His eyelashes were dark and long, his arms were reedy
pillows, his chest rose and fell.

He was real and that meant she was, standing there
with her hand in his hair at three o'clock in the
morning.  She had driven back to work through chilly
streets to find him, to play Princess Charming and
remove the binding spell.  She felt like that
sometimes, brave, loyal and well-armored.  She had not
realized, though, not until he opened his eyes, that
she was also there for another reason.  He did not
seem surprised she had come but she was, incredibly
stunned, and that wouldn't suffice.

Sitting up, he blinked once and said, "Scully," the
word containing a child's clarity, as though this time
she had been the dream he woke to find come true.

She smoothed the hair back from his face but could not
speak, and could not stay.

She crawled onto her couch again, later, and tried to
not think the words in her head.  They too were a
spell, one she could not trust herself to say aloud or
hold for too long, like a newly sharpened blade.
There were things that could not be undone.  She tried
to focus on the scent of spruce and grass and rain,
the grainy dampness of dirt, a child asleep in a
forest with no one to wake her.

---
The Ross's -- Caitlin and her parents -- and Mulder,
in a JEH hallway.  An apology falls at their
collective feet like the silence after a gunshot.

He must have been the one to apologize but has no idea
what he really said.  After the family leaves, he
realizes her presence behind him.  Turning, he catches
an expression on her face so protective of him he
almost steps back.  She straightens up, goes to grab
their files off the internal audit conference table.

It might not have been there at all, that look.
Probably not.  Almost 100% guaranteed it was not.

He misses his sister at this moment, he realizes,
because in every alternate world he's imagined, every
place Samantha is alive and well and his sister, she
has grown up to be the kind of person he would tell
about that look, and he might let something into his
voice that she would suspect, and it would be a secret
between them.

Would that make him stronger, better able to maintain
the secret, if it were shared, or would it just make
the secret stronger, more anxious to be discovered?

Scully closes a file and blots from sight a photograph
of a child's skull and the delicate crushed throat
bones found in that same grave.  What happened to him
should not be the issue.  What happened because of him
-- those things will always be more important.  It
will always matter more that his sister was taken,
denied, that girls died and another nearly so when he
could have prevented it, could have prevented
everything--

Scully's hand on his arm, Scully standing this near
despite what he is, what he's capable of.  _(Does not
make it right.  Does not save you.)_  He nods once,
and they head toward their office.

---
There were two snapshots for each girl.  In one there
was often a smile missing one or two teeth, a lock of
hair loosed from a braid, a glance off to the side,
where the classmates were giggling in line or the
little sibling was crying in mom's lap.  In the other
the skeletons were always dirty, fissured in the same
places, delicate cracks that proved both the strength
of the bones and the determination of the killer.

She put the photographs away and took out a notepad.
Skinner had sighed when she told him what she wanted
to do.  Skinner didn't kneel over any of those bodies,
though, didn't know their power and sorrow.  He would
keep Mulder busy, and she would continue the necessary
work.

There were people to call now, help to rally.  She
couldn't fail.  The days were getting shorter, darker
and colder.  There was one child left, shivering.

---
He steps out of warm, drifting fog into his motel
room.  Behind him the shower faucet sniffles.  Beside
him, the unmade bed looks more inviting than it
actually is, lumpy mattress and scratchy sheets
disheveled seductively.  He is heat pink, damp,
sleepy, wrapped in a thin towel.  He sits down on the
bed to yawn and fasten his watch on his wrist.

His weight cues five smallish eyeballs, which roll
toward him down the crooked line of the dented
mattress.

Surprised, he grabs them up and surveys the room.  On
one pillow, someone has left him a missive in a bright
purple envelope.

He opens the envelope, breathes a short sigh of
relief, and then feels sort of silly.  The front of
the card he removes portrays a glittery cartoon cake.
Only Scully would observe an event he stopped actively
celebrating about twenty years ago, and only Scully
would observe said event exactly one month late.

She is on the other side of a wall, like always.  He
can hear her moving around.  Is she pleased about
sneaking into his room without getting caught?
They've each violated the unofficial rules in the past
for certain occasions -- Halloween, April Fools' --
but her last attempt was thwarted when he ambushed her
with melting ice cubes.  It had been pure retaliation
on both their parts.  Sure, he shouldn't have put fake
cockroaches in her shoes, but she shouldn't have put
fake latex noses in his.  Aside from being squishy and
cold, the disembodied snouts had been disturbingly
life-like.

He mentally high-fives himself: she may have been in
his room while he was taking a shower, but he had
_not_ been singing "Yummy Yummy Yummy" in a falsetto
voice.  Not _this_ morning.

Today she's probably morning sloppy, half awake,
brushing her teeth twice because she forgot she
already brushed them once before bathing, grouching at
the portable hair dryer that never works for more than
a minute at a time, reluctant to put on pantyhose.
Perhaps her thoughts are on the victims who were
buried alive under a hill of cursed Egyptian coins, or
on the list of clients they have to go through today
-- museum curator, PhD candidate, president of largest
exhibit-sponsoring company?

Maybe she's looking out the window, her expression
soft and faraway, her dark eyes filled with rain.

Her phone rings.  He can hear her low murmur, a sharp
peak and then balance.  She's had a lot of phone calls
lately, and a shortage of DC pathologists has been
keeping her occupied when there aren't paranormal
tribulations taking precedence.  He has fielded the
majority of the X-Files' paperwork, for once.  He
keeps meaning to ask her if Skinner's persistent
requests are starting to overstep realism, if other
divisions are begging for too much, or if she's
competing for a Nobel prize of some sort.  She'd
resent him asking, though, since she is entirely
capable of putting other divisions, not to mention
Skinner, in their place.

Not that Skinner's a pushover.  Skinner is in fact one
of the most tenacious people on the planet, but Mulder
is trying to remember that the alternative to
Skinner's ground rules, in light of the Roche
"incident," included collecting unemployment.

But one heart left.  One girl.  Skinner said VICAP
would keep the case, would follow up on any leads, as
if there would ever be a lead.

Let it go.  Bad mistake, pay the price, could've been
worse, won't happen again.  He's shitty at pep talks
but also sick of moping.

You haven't lost everyone.

And it's hard to complain about a shortage of X-Files,
considering how they usually accompany a surplus of
victims.

He looks down at the paper in his hands.  Inside the
card there is a typical preprinted message professing
apologies for belatedness, about wishes coming true
and all good things to you and have a swell day.  But
he hardly reads it, eyes drawn to Scully's familiar
scrawl.  A hesitation mark, here, another.  She'd
thought about what she wanted to say, was careful with
the words she chose.  His vision is blurry suddenly,
and his chest heavy.  He sets the card on the bedside
table and takes a deep breath.  When the moment
passes, he twists off an eyeball's cellophane skin.
He pops the eyeball into his mouth and bites down --
GooGum (tm), with a squiggly strawberry center.

He stands up, starts to dress.  He chews the gum,
blows a few bubbles at his reflection while he ties
his tie and combs his hair.  If his hands are a little
unsteady, it's because he's tired, or hungry: long
drive yesterday, irritable case, bad coffee.

Shoes need a polish.  The suit could stand a trip to
the dry cleaner. It's raining, cold, and his
trenchcoat is in the car.  She's knocking, asking if
he's ready.  He opens the door.  She is bundled like
an arctic crusader, hiding a smile.  Before he
recognizes what she's holding, she gives the armload
to him.

Two presents in one hour.  He shrugs into his
trenchcoat.  He pulls the door closed, puts his hands
in his coat pockets, where more eyeballs crackle.  She
is awake, focused, brimming with smarts and sparks.

That secreted smile is unveiled suddenly, her face
turned up to his as though seeking similar sunlight.
He can't return the smile, but can't look away either,
not for a second, not with that warmth directed at
him.  Then he somehow does, turns toward the end of
the hallway, walks through the propped open exit door
into drizzle and nail-chill.

He is a year and one month older today.  She walks
down the steps a half-step in front of him, and he
doesn't put his hand on the small of her back or open
the car door for her.  It will be fine, he thinks.  It
will pass, old hat, no problem.  He has been lonely
before.  He has longed for things he wasn't supposed
to have.  Happy birthday to me.

---
She did not understand how Mulder could have done this
every day, every hour, for weeks.  For years, the
details saturating his subconscious like permanent
ink.  She attempted to categorize the current files,
neat piles on her kitchen table, but neatness and
categorization were part of her problem.  What she
needed was the ability to step into Roche's psyche, to
hear what rattled and pushed, to feel intuitively
where he might have started, why, where he might have
taken this last girl.

Her courage was faltering.  She should sleep but it
wasn't time.  She didn't have the system memorized
yet, she didn't see the pattern.  Scully had a piece
of cloth the size of her hand.  It wasn't enough and
it had to be.

---
She is using his phone when he enters the office.
Stepping around his desk, he brushes her arm and she
flinches, ready to strike before seeing it's just him.
 Her mouth is set tight and she nods in no particular
direction, agreeing to whatever the caller has said.
She hangs up.

"New case?" he asks.

"No.  No.  Agent Newcom was following up on an autopsy
I performed last week."

She sits down in front of his desk.  She picks at her
suit jacket.

"Was anything wrong?"  Mulder cocks his head and waits
for her answer.

"No," she says finally, looking off to the side.

Okay.

"Is there a case pending?" Scully asks.

"Not that I know of."

"Newcom wanted to know if I could take another look at
a body that might be connected to their
investigation."

"How long will that take?"

"A few hours.  This afternoon.  It'll be the last
thing I do before going home."

The back of his neck tingles.  Her words mean nothing
bothersome by themselves, but she sounds angry.  Or,
she sounds discouraged.

No, he thinks.  She sounds weakened, a vapor of
herself.

"I'll call if anything comes up," he says for lack of
a better response.

She stands and leaves.  He should run out into the
hallway and call her back.  He should tell Newcom to
get another pathologist for the afternoon.  He should
ask what's wrong, like someone would if he were well
adjusted and concerned for his partner within all the
suitable parameters.

He stays at his desk.

---
Scully snapped the file on her lap shut.

She paced the living room, wanting to get away from
it, to get out from beneath it.  There was dirt in her
hair, her eyes and throat, dirt squirming like grubs
and maggots.  She took deep breaths and circled the
end table, paced the kitchen, the hallway.  At the
hallway window she pressed her fingers against the
cool stained glass panes and wondered what the night
air felt like.

Twenty-three years.  There would be nothing left but
rags and bone.

Massachusetts, Delaware and DC were crossed off her
list.  She had left inquiries with two offices in
upstate Pennsylvania; one in New Jersey; one in North
Carolina, a long shot -- she didn't think anyone would
even call back until sometime next week or later.  Not
until after this holiday, certainly, but maybe not
until next year.

Her throat hurt all the time.  This isn't about what
you want, she said silently.

This was her new hobby, when there wasn't a case and
often when there was.  There was no real pressure she
could bring to bear.  It was unofficial, what she was
doing, a lost cause.  No noise in it, no rumor.  If it
didn't work, Mulder would never know because she'd
always taken side pathology gigs when she could, and
she could these days, when he was on a tight leash and
the maniacs and monsters were settling in for
hibernation.  She was busy enough to camouflage
herself and there was hardly time for dwelling on the
ethics of not disclosing certain things to one's
partner.

She hoped he was okay.  He made jokes in the
cafeteria, chatted with old VICAP cohorts about
Thursday plans and the weather -- wet, unseasonably
strong storms turning to snow.  When he left at five,
he said "Happy Thanksgiving" like it was any other
day-before.

He also said, "Be careful driving tomorrow, Scully."
When she looked up he was sheepish, obviously
regretting having given condescending advice to
someone who could shoot him.

"I will," she managed, wanting at that moment to be
better than she was at about a million things.  Words
were in her way, had been for weeks, little cement
roadblocks.  Treacherous traveling.  He was leaving
and she wouldn't see him until Monday and Samantha was
taken twenty-three years ago today.  Scully wanted to
rush him, throw him against the wall in a hug fierce
enough to...to what?  Make it all right his sister was
gone?  Red light hung at the corners of her eyes, hazy
and burning.

She picked up the phone, once, twice.  She placed it
on its charger.

He's okay, she told herself.  You have to help him
this way now.  You have to find the match.

The living room floor was layered with the files of
those found and the files of those who weren't.  One
of the girls whose whereabouts remained unknown could
be Roche's last victim.  Or none of them could.  She
took the photocopies from Tiverton, Williamstown,
Atkinson, Oakland.  A fax from Killingly, whose
sheriff had commented that despite his town's name,
all he had were a few cases that might match if he
squinted.  There wasn't much hope that one could be
linked to Roche.

Clock ticking, turkeys thawing across the country.
Her mother wouldn't mind if she were late to dinner
tomorrow.  Find the girl.  Help him this way.  She
knelt in the middle of the files, touching her throat
gingerly where it was rawest.

Hours in the dark, with the lamps draping shadows.
For a long time she was awake and reading.  For a long
time she pretended it was another day on the road, and
he was in the next room, and if she wanted to, if she
were honest enough, she could go in, take his hand,
curl up beside him.  Release and be released.

_Isn't about what you want._

She turned the pages over and over.  Names, nicknames,
birth dates, places last seen; cities Roche worked,
number of units sold per year, awards given for
outstanding contributions to Electrovac's Boston team
and community spirit.  Was wearing her softball
uniform, a church dress, a Halloween costume made out
of aluminum foil.  Had freckles, liked peanut butter,
could do long division, could cut paper dolls, loved
hiking in the woods.  There were more pages than would
ever be answers.  Red lines slipped in front of her
eyes and dissolved.  Went down.

Went down into the pine, into the thick and green.
Sharp needled and sandy, swollen with mud and moss,
slicked with ice, sweating under beams of sun fallen
like swords.  Went down the warped stairs, over the
smoothed skipping stones, rock with devil horns and a
rise of razor teeth, streams that rushed, late, late,
over the incline.  Went down into the wiry feathers,
the nests of brush and thorn, the pockets of rancid
rats, acorn, eggs, crisp hollow cicada.  Weeds
threaded through, worms came with small mouths, leaves
floated and warped and froze.

There were so many missing.  They had thin wrists,
split lips, flannel pajamas, fierce growls, pigtails,
tennis shoes, tutus.  They slept with the covers
pulled to their chins, with fairy coins under their
pillows.  They were jumping rope in the driveway.
They were learning to drop cookie dough on baking
sheets.  They were Cindy desperate to be Marcia.  They
were reciting vocabulary words, climbing trees,
kissing the bathroom mirrors, wearing white for
Communion, beating up the boys on the playground,
besting their brothers at board games.  They saw out
the passage that the gardens were lovely.  They bit
hard when Roche's hand covered their mouths, they
struggled with the car locks but couldn't keep their
eyes open, they went out like candles, they ate
currants and cake.  They wandered away to catch
butterflies and never came back.

Went down into the dirt.  The cord tightened around
her throat.

When she woke she stumbled into the bathroom, filled
her water glass and took a long drink.  She tried to
forget choking.  She tried to forget holding Mulder,
sometime in the dream before she died.

---
His mother's house is always warm on Thanksgiving,
fires eating logs in the hearths, the heat turned up
so that it fogs the windows.  Hired help,
inconspicuous in pressed white Oxfords and black
slacks, move from kitchen to dining room with
practiced grace, carrying silver trays of wild
mushroom pate with poached salmon, maple syrup cured
ham, roasted turkey and chestnut stuffing, cranberry
relish, fresh corn, sweet potato casserole, squash
pie, white turnip soup, a green salad with leeks and
garlic, dusty bottles of chilled white and red wines.
 

There are twenty invited guests at the long table and
candle flames twitch every three inches on almost
every surface in the room.  Teena Mulder sits between
her accountant and her landscape artist.  She cuts her
food slowly and talks of spending December in Naples
with a cousin, Khelsy, who has recently retired.
Mulder is seated about five chairs away, with a museum
curator on one side and the widower who lived next
door to his parents when he was four or five years old
on the other.  Everyone speaks in low tones about the
weather and politics.  Mulder is wearing an immaculate
wool suit and there is a fire popping behind him,
steaming food on his plate and hot cider in his glass.

He's never felt so cold.

When dinner is finished, the party retires to the
sitting room, the enclosed porch and the oak-paneled
room Bill Mulder would have used as a cigar closet,
had he ever lived in this particular house.  Pumpkin
bread pudding with rum sauce, coffee, spiced tea and
spiked eggnog are served on the Spode settings Teena
inherited from Great Aunt Elaine.

"Done much Christmas shopping yet?" Mr. Darling asks
Mulder.  They are standing outside, taking in fresh
air, while snow drifts and shifts around them.  Mr.
Darling runs a private Greenwich law practice.  Mulder
has a vague recollection of the man sitting calmly at
a kitchen island while Teena and Bill raged over some
insanely small piece of the estate they were
splitting.  Bill banged his glass of sour mash on the
counter and broke the heavy-bottomed double
old-fashioned in three pieces, amber liquid rolling
across a tentative and unsigned contract.

"I say, much shopping?" Mr. Darling inquires again,
giving a little cough.  He is a meek man, a kind man.
Mulder shakes his head to focus on the question.

"No," he says, "not any yet.  I'm sort of well-known
for my, um, last minute decisions."

"It's the same for me," the lawyer agrees.  "My son
says every year that he half expects me to try putting
litigation in a box with a bow on top.  I've been a
lawyer for close to fifty years, can you believe that?
 All I know.  Never was good at choosing presents."
He chuffs his feet along the sidewalk.  Dry snow
scatters, catches light from the window and glitters,
briefly, before settling.  "Many people to buy for?
Your mother, of course."

"Mom, and a handful of close friends.  My partner."

"Oh, right, you're still working for the FBI?"

"Still there."

"Been keeping busy?"

"Extremely."

"Good to keep busy."

"It is."

The two men stare out on the snowy lawn.  Mulder
realizes that he's no colder out here than he was
inside.  He doesn't think it's a good omen.

"Your partner is...well?" Mr. Darling asks.

"I think so," he says.  He isn't actually convinced of
that but it isn't the sort of thing one mentions to
casual acquaintances.

"Good, good," Mr. Darling says.  "Going to go have a
taste of puddding, I am.  Care to join me?"

"I'll be in shortly, yes, thank you," Mulder says, his
voice sounding formal and awkward in his ears, as
though he has agreed to some higher social obligation,
such as marrying a Kennedy.

Mr. Darling smiles and goes inside.

Mulder stays in the snow and wonders if he should go
by Scully's apartment on his way home.  An envelope
for her came to his office by mistake last week; she
seemed very happy at first, before she knew what was
inside, like she expected it to contain a million
dollars.  Not wanting to pry, he'd surreptitiously
watched her open it.  The defeat he witnessed almost
made him speak.

Phone calls, long absences from the office, strange
mail.  Maybe she's networking, sending out resumes in
a desperate attempt to find a job unrelated to
unidentified substances that ooze from the several
maws of creatures that aren't supposed to exist.
There could be something wrong with someone in her
family, or a relationship struggling, a conflict
between her career and her heart.

That's it, he'd bet.  She could be trying to find
right way to say to him what needs to be said, an
explanation for how quiet she has become, for how she
shrinks from him with guilty shrugs.

The snow is heavier, making the lawn look like a wide
swath of cellulite.  Mulder pinches the bridge of his
nose.  He needs to go home, far from this house, far
from thoughts of visiting Scully tonight.

He says his farewells, finds his coat.  Drives home,
straight home.  Does not go to her and kiss the
bruised shadows under her eyes, does not tuck her
inside a blanket and whisper that he will always want
to be her friend, no matter what, that she can tell
him anything, anything at all, even good bye.

---
On many of the tombstones in Parkway Cemetery there
were fresh wreaths and holiday sprays, and on just as
many there were dusty, weather-battered arrangements.
Beside one marker, a vase had tipped over, spilling
dried red roses that were shriveled like the fists of
old men.

Bill Mulder's tombstone stood unadorned.

They were in Boston investigating a slew of Melusina
sightings at the Harbor.  This detour was Scully's
suggestion, and she was not sure it was a good one.
Mulder had not shown much of his normal enthusiasm
over the possibility of dredging up mermaids.  She
couldn't begin to say why she'd thought a trip to a
cemetery would cheer him in the least.

It seemed like he needed to go somewhere that meant
something.

And it seemed like he was standing there out of
obligation -- but to her, not his father.

Just in case he was having some protracted inner
dialogue with Bill, she waited another minute before
breaching the cemetery's hush.

"You about ready to go?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"I hadn't been out here at all this year," he said as
they walked back to the car.  "So thanks."

His voice was wan, and he didn't say anything else for
a long time.

---
She has brought over shredded duck soup, stuffed crab
claws, moi shi pork and kung pao shrimp even though he
insisted he wasn't really hungry.

She shakes a packet of soy sauce over the remainder of
her rice.  "You put a decent dent in that for a person
who wasn't hungry."

The pile of pork is gone and the crab claws are
nearing extinction.  He explains, "I didn't want to be
wasteful.  There are starving kids in China, you
know."  She chuckles.

He's glad she's here, plying him with rich food and
acting more like her old self.  He owes her a meal
now; with the holidays coming up it might be nice to
take her somewhere fancier than the IHOP in
Alexandria.  If he calls tomorrow, he could probably
make reservations at The Caucus Room -- she said not a
month ago that she hasn't been in years.  He pictures
her there against the restaurant's dark leather
browns, linen creams and royal blues.  A bottle of
wine, filet mignon or timbale with lobster and crab or
rack of New Zealand lamb, warm coconut cream cake; and
still nothing as opulent as the way she talks to him
sometimes, when everything's okay.  He can hear her
unraveling a story, pieces of her he's never seen
before, and laughing her goofy, wonderful laugh.

He breaks from the unspoken soliloquy.  He clears off
the hotel room table, closing up the little take-out
boxes and bowls so that the scent of leftovers won't
be quite as obtrusive in the morning.  Scully pitches
her plate and napkins in the garbage after him and
they end up stuck, briefly, in the tiny corner behind
the table, askew chairs crowding their path out.

"Oops.  Thought there was more room," Scully says.

"Wait," Mulder says.  "We can
just...scoot...the...table..."  The table must be made
of lead.

"Here, I'll move the chairs."

Scully manages to crash the uncooperative chairs into
the wall before climbing over them.  Mulder follows,
his left foot snagging obstinately on the second
chair.  He stumbles and Scully grabs him around the
waist to keep him upright.

"Y'okay?" she says.

"Yes," he says, his arms going around her reflexively.
 

Scully looks up at him, her ripe mouth open just a
little, her eyes bluer than sky.

He drops his arms and steps away, fast.  He busies
himself with pushing the chairs into less treacherous
positions.

Near the door, she says in a small voice, "See you in
the morning."

"'Night," he says, deliberately not turning around
until she's out of the room.

"Asshole," he whispers to himself.

- - - - -
End part one.

~~~

Things That Lie Outside
Part Two of Two
Headers and disclaimers in part zero

---
"Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" was being piped over
the sound system and twinkle lights were twined around
every doorframe like some definitive testament to the
difference between urban and rural police stations.
Deputy Hunt's face contained all the information she
needed but she waited for him to pronounce the bad
news anyway.

"This looks like a dead end here, Agent Scully.  None
of our missing kids fits the description closely
enough."

She let out a small sigh that she hoped was not
noticeable.

"I reread the files our database tagged, '74 through
'91," Hunt continued.  "There were a couple of red
flags -- girls with stay-at-home parents, one girl
whose father used to be a vacuum salesman himself --
but two-thirds were investigated as runaways and a
third were considered, well, cases of abuse, and there
was nothing discovered during the investigations, in
my opinion, to contradict those theories."

The King and Queen County deputy had a Virginian lilt
and manners like royalty.  He poured Scully's coffee
into a china teacup, sat it on a saucer, and handed
both to her with a linen monogrammed napkin
underneath.  "Cream or sugar?"

"One sugar," she said.  He dropped one sugar cube into
her cup and she stirred the hot liquid with a dainty
silver-plated spoon.

"Winter Wonderland" started chiming above them.

"You're welcome to look over the files yourself, of
course, while you're here."  Hunt poured himself
another cup and drank it quickly and neatly.  When
Scully's eyes widened, he grinned.  "I have to be
awake for another...for many more hours.  When my
shift's done, I promised my sister I'd load and drive
the U-Haul she's rented.  Moving from King and Queen
Courthouse to Chester Gap tonight."

"That's a nice brotherly thing to do at this time of
year."

"Well, I owe her.  She sewed my wife's wedding gown
two years ago and has been threatening to cash in ever
since."

Scully nodded.  She finished her coffee and mentally
calculated what to do next.

Hunt gave her a sympathetic look.  "My cousin over in
Pine Grove, I think you talked to her?  Brenda Dunn?
She's the one who called me after you contacted the
Wetzel County department."

"In West Virginia?"

"Right."

"Yes, there were a couple of possibilities that turned
up on the Missing and Exploited database.  But then we
took a closer look and the leads disappeared.  I've
called in a lot of favors, networked a lot -- I
haven't been this sociable in a decade."

"I doubt that," Hunt said, waggling his eyebrows.

She rolled her eyes.  "This isn't my full-time job."
She shook her head, frustrated.  "And I shouldn't be
complaining about it to you."

"It's not a bother.  And you're not the first person
with a badge and gun to try running down elusive leads
and solutions to cases decades old.  Don't feel bad
for trying to do a good job."  He took a stack of
files out of a bottom desk drawer and slid them over
to her.  "The perp was killed?"

"Yes.  Thankfully," she said, holding off a shudder.
Roche's blood had left a bright red starburst on the
dusty bus window.  Caitlin's sobs had been huge and
tremulous, but all Scully could think about, holding
the frantic child, was her partner, standing in the
bus, staring at that blood.

Hunt scratched his ear.  "It's hard when there's so
little evidence to go on, and when there isn't anyone
left to confess.  I almost regret having worked a
couple of similar homicides -- not similar in the
particulars of the crimes, but in what wasn't there to
solve them.  No witnesses, no leads, no bodies.  Just
blanks.  Maddening."

Scully gathered the armload of files and stood.  "Do
you have a spare office I could use?"

"Around the corner, out by reception."

"Thanks," she said, shaking Hunt's hand.

"Good luck," he said.

The spare office was occupied by a folding table, a
metal chair, and a thin layer of dust.  Scully put her
winter coat back on and sat down with the files.
Nothing expected besides eye strain and a neck crimp.
Nothing gained, three hours later.  She left the files
with the receptionist, who gave her a candy cane and a
merry "Happy Holidays!"

She checked her voice mail in the car.  Mulder had
left three messages, sounding increasingly puzzled at
her absence.  He was worried about her, she knew, and
had been for weeks.  He wasn't hovering but was paying
attention to her in a way that unnerved her.

She wanted to tell him everything but Skinner had said
he was off the case, off every aspect of the case, no
exceptions.  Skinner had been very serious.

Excuses, excuses.  Scully was serious too.

The roads were snowy this afternoon, sun gone at four
p.m.  Her cell phone rang when she was thirty miles
from Annapolis.  Mulder had a case.

---
"The fruitcakes always come out at Christmas," Mulder
mutters.  Walter, the head of mall security, shoots
him an amused smirk.

"You think this is bad, two years ago Santa's elves
went on strike.  Demanded higher wages and longer
costumes.  Somebody threw a potted Christmas cactus at
the picket line and an elf riot ensued."  He whistles
as two cops and two mall guards try to keep a
seven-foot poinsettia tree from toppling onto the
crowd of merchants security hasn't yet been able to
get rid of.  "Damn shame management met their
demands."

Mulder recalls those skirts the elves wore.  They left
little to the imagination, which no doubt had made
Santa a very jolly fellow.

St. Nick's tall throne is blackened and covered in
extinguishing foam.  Wisps of smoke hang near the
rafters like leftover Halloween spiderweb.

"You said on the phone you thought these kids were
involved in the same cult that turned up yesterday,"
Mulder says.

"Yeah, they were screaming about some war against
humanity, and E.T.s landing to turn us all into pod
people."

Mulder grimaces.  "It's a common lament in the culting
industry."

"They screamed, and then they started setting fires,
and chaining themselves to burning snowmen.  We, uh,
we got the fires out but a couple of the kids were in
pretty bad shape.  The EMTs didn't know if they'd
arrive at the hospital alive."

Mulder says, "We didn't find anyone alive at the last
scene.  Self-immolation is consistent with this area's
cell."

Scully is with another cop on the other side of a
light-up gingerbread house.  The cop struggles with a
stringy teen, a girl Mulder tried interviewing
earlier.

"The parent cult is more prone to small explosive
devices," Mulder continues, watching the scuffle.

The teen is yelling, kicking, stomping and panting.
Sweaty blue streaks crisscross her cheeks and
forehead.  The cop tightens his grip and Scully snaps
a pair of handcuffs on the girl, who abruptly calms.
She looks in Scully's eyes with her crazy bloodshot
gaze -- Mulder had suspected typical drug abuse in
addition to the cult's mind control, but the girl's
eyes held an eerie sharpness and coherence, and he had
suspended the interview before she could convince him
she wasn't dangerous -- and says something he can't
hear.  Scully's posture goes rigid.  The color drains
from her face.

"No," he can see her say.  "I don't."

"So you're saying we should count our blessings that
these kids weren't carrying bombs."

"Yes."

The cop hauls the teenager into the mall's
administrative office.  Scully leans against a
garland-wrapped rail.  She is dwarfed beside the
mall's fake trees and giant lollipops.  Something very
bad has happened.

Walter sighs, shaking his head at the scene.  "Well.
Merry Christmas," he says.

By the time Mulder almost catches up to Scully, she is
in action again, back to being an efficient, detached
investigator.  She evades him ably throughout the
day's efforts.

At eleven p.m., he finds her talking to Walter.  "The
police are taking it from here, it's in their
jurisdiction now.  We're about wrapped up," Mulder
says.

Walter gestures at a rhino-sized present and says, "No
pun intended," before heading toward his remaining
guards.

"If you want I'll go on out and turn the car on, get
it heated up.  Dorian said the wind chill's around
thirteen," Mulder offers.

Scully bites her lip before answering.  "I, I think
I'm just going to call a cab, Mulder, but thanks."

"It's no problem to take you home, Scully."

"I need to run a few errands," she says, looking at
the floor.

"That isn't a problem either."

She shakes her head quickly.  "I can't ask you to do
that.  The cab will be fine."

This has to stop, he thinks.  Who the hell runs
errands at eleven?  She's shivering from fatigue and
he doesn't know what's happened and she's injured, he
realizes.  This isn't about her and some romance, or
even her and some desirable other job.  She's been
harmed.

"Let me help," he says, stepping closer.  She moves
back, maintaining the space between them.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she says, walking away.

He leaves the scene a few minutes later.  His car
sputters and shudders.  He lets it run in park until
the heater blows warmth.  He stays cold and cannot
bear to go home.

---
She kept her head under, hair curtained over her ears,
blocking out all sound but the water.  The shower
stall was beginning to induce claustrophobia but that
was preferable to actual thought.

To the teenager's voice.

She had met people before who were able to see what
was inside of others, their pure essence -- she didn't
tend to admit this often.  Her mother possessed the
skill on occasion, as had Melissa, and there had been
a handful of empaths discovered over Scully's years
with the X-Files.

_He's frightened for you, down deep.  Don't you hate
that?  Aren't you sick of him trying to protect you?_

The teenager was a thief and a corrupter, a cultist
emptied of her former humanity, restocked with
violence and fear.  Any empathy she produced would
disregard context, would only twist the truth.

Scully knew this.  It didn't make the words less
potent.

_If you wounded him like he deserved, he would never
heal.  If you wanted to, you could fuck the gentleness
right out of him.  You want to, don't you?_

I don't.

It wasn't what she wanted.  It wasn't what he wanted
either.  "Mulder," she whispered, turning off the
water.

She dried off, put on pajamas and climbed in bed with
a stack of notes and three files that had arrived
yesterday.

Two files from West Virginia, one from New Hampshire.
The West Virginia files came courtesy of Deputy Hunt's
cousin.  "Found another box in the basement, thought
these should be looked at by an expert," Brenda had
written on an attached post-it.  Scully could find
nothing in any of the files to necessitate further
investigation.  She put them aside.

Mulder's original notes were starting to disintegrate,
with corners folded and edges tearing.  The rest of
the file on Roche was in equally poor shape.

She thumbed through it once more, too tired to sleep.
Comments from Roche's employers and neighbors;
transcripts from the pre-trial hearings; content lists
for Roche's El Camino, closet, kitchen drawers --
spare tire, pinking shears, white cord, bottle caps,
match books, a ratty business card for the Mock Turtle
Soup Kitchen, nine brown neck ties, window scraper,
"The Hunting of the Snark," black dress shoes (bagged
as evidence).

She rubbed her eyes and fought a yawn.  The list swam
back into view.

Mock Turtle.  That was peculiar.  "Chapter nine," she
said.

She went to her computer in the living room and logged
on to the 'net.  Yahoo.com was slower than Congress
but her search yielded one result: Angel House and
Mock Turtle Soup Kitchen of Williamstown, mentioned in
a newsletter about New England charities.

Williamstown.  Wasn't there a file from Williamstown,
Vermont?

Scully found it in the kitchen in the stack of files
she was planning to return at the end of the month.
It was a partial file that didn't look like it had
ever been fully complete.

Denise Elder, age five (estimated).  Blonde, green
eyes.  Reported missing 9-14-70 by Donald William,
administrator of Angel House -- local half-way house
-- Williamstown, VT.  No photograph.

1970.  Addie Sparks was the earliest, wasn't she?
1975.  Did Roche ever live in Vermont?  She took the
file back to her bedroom and spread out the Roche
file's pages.  Roche lived in Delaware until 1973,
when he moved to Boston.  Family?  She scanned the
personal stats: parents both died prior to 1968, no
siblings.  One uncle.  His address wasn't listed.

Her breath quickened.  She was positive she'd read
where the uncle lived.

Mulder's notes, bottom of page nine.  Reggie Purdue's
handwriting: "Uncle, Jerry Roche, lived in Foxville,
VT until death in 1978."

Foxville, Foxville...  Scully tapped her pen on her
bedspread.  She had a map of Vermont somewhere, didn't
she?  A U.S. atlas on the bookshelf in the guest room
closet.  She ran in and flung open the closet, moving
a mountain of her father's camping equipment to get to
the shelf.  She peeled the atlas open, Tennessee,
Texas, Utah, Vermont.  Foxville--

"Oh my God," she said, pulse rate increasing.
Foxville was about five miles northeast of
Williamstown.

In the bedroom she snatched her phone and called
information.  A snoozy sounding operator gave her the
number for Angel House.  Scully dialed, throat aching.

"Angel House and Mock Turtle, may I help you?" a woman
inquired.

In a rough voice, Scully said, "Is this the Angel
House half-way house?"

"Yes, it is."

"May, may I speak to a Donald William?"

The woman made an odd noise.  "I'm sorry, Father
William died in, let me see, back in the early
eighties, I think."

Scully almost choked.  "_Father_ William?"

"He wasn't clergy," the woman clarified.  "It was his
nickname.  He founded Angel House."

"And Mock Turtle, that's a soup kitchen?"

Scully thought she probably sounded slightly deranged,
but the woman's voice betrayed no hint that she felt
Scully needed sedation -- she may have taken hundreds
of these sorts of phone calls in the night.

"It is, open every day from noon to two."

The old routine clicked in her head.  "My name is Dana
Scully, and I'm an FBI agent, badge number JTT0331613.
 I'm investigating a murder -- there was a child who
was reported missing by Donald William in 1970."

The woman said nothing.

"Ma'am?" Scully asked.

"Yes, Agent Scully.  I have heard about that
incident."  Her tone was considerably less soothing
than it had been before.

"Ma'am?"

The woman sighed.  "Mr. William, I--  It's always been
rumored that the girl was missing for almost a week
before anyone noticed.  Mr. William always said the
allegations were ridiculous and he was good friends
with the sheriff at the time...  Listen.  I shouldn't
say more, it wouldn't be prudent."

Badgering this woman over the phone would accomplish
little.  "Could you give me your name, please, and
directions to Angel House?"

After hanging up with Natalie, Scully redialed
information and had them ring her through to the
police station nearest Williamstown, the state police
in Middlesex.  After dumping a ramble of information
on the first person who answered the phone, Lieutenant
Shannon put her on hold.

When he picked up the line again, he said, "Yep.  That
was Liston who pulled the file and sent it in.  Heard
from a pal in Maine you were investigating a missing
kid."

She arranged to meet with him as soon as she could get
there -- if she got on the roads now, she'd be there
by ten a.m.

"I'm going to fax the information I have to you in
fifteen minutes."  She could be at the office that
quickly, oh yes.

"I'll call if it doesn't come over," Shannon said.
"See you soon."

She was on I-95 for the length of one CD before she
remembered she hadn't left Mulder any message that she
wouldn't be in the office later.  She called Skinner,
who didn't sound like she'd levered him from a REM
cycle, and he promised to relay news of her stomach
virus to Mulder.

She had no idea what was going to come of the trip.
Probably nothing.  Probably nothing.  She sped up,
braced for whatever she would or wouldn't find.  Her
eyes were dry and scratchy.  She had no business
relaxing now, but she pretended Mulder was in the
passenger's seat anyway, mocking her taste in music
and cracking sunflower seeds.

"Please," she said out loud.  Spells and prayers.  She
let the words rest in her sore throat and drove on.

---
The short priest shuffles when he walks.  Mulder
remembers him with better knees and more hair.  Votive
flames knock together like chimes in the quick breeze
the man creates.  Settling on the bench next to
Mulder, he takes a moment to start.

"You're still not a member of the Church?" the priest
asks without accusation.

"No," Mulder says.  "Not any church."

"But you have come here tonight looking for guidance."

"I think, I think I came here looking for someplace
devoid of interference."

The priest smiles.  "At a quarter 'til five in the
morning you may have found this lack of intrusion.
Excepting me, of course."

"I'm used to you."

"After how many years since you last visited?  Should
I consider that a compliment?"  The priest's tone is
not defensive.

Mulder quirks a grin at him.  "It's as close to a
compliment as I usually give."

He stares at the candles.  He used to hate coming here
and would arrive anyway, all hours, dripping wet or
slightly drunk, fresh from breakfast or budget
meetings.  Whenever the need hit.  This month it is
the least intimidating, least decorated cathedral in
the area.  The candles are its most lavish
ornamentation.  The priest beside him has been walking
the night halls for decades, keeping the candles
company.

"Bad day?" the priest asks.

"A bad couple of days."  Hedges: "Saw some depressing
stuff on the job."

"And?"

"I have a friend who is hurting," Mulder says slowly.
"A lot has happened in the last year, but she's, she's
very strong and I thought she was handling everything.
 In fact, I do think she handled everything, which
means this is something else."

The priest raises an eyebrow but doesn't interrupt.

"I don't mean for it to sound like I think she's
invincible.  She is strong, though.  This is
different, whatever she's going through.  It's been
going on for a few weeks but it's getting worse."  He
thinks of her bent head at the mall, the line of her
back nearly curved with grief.  "I don't know how to
make it better for her and I've tried all the normal
options."

"Such as?" the priest inquires.

"You know, fart jokes, pinching, replacing her diet
soft drinks with regular ones."

"Ah."

"We don't have the kind of relationship--  I can't
just ask."

"Could you just hug?"

"I could.  I think she'd be suspicious, though."

"Of?"

Mulder squirms.  "We don't hug much.  She would
probably assume I was going to run off to a foreign
country and potentially lose a limb."

The priest gives him a long look.  "I recommend the
hug, nevertheless.  You have about you the air of a
person who is very bad at saying the right thing.  But
you are probably an excellent hugger."

Mulder isn't sure if the man is joking and opens his
mouth to comment.  The priest beats him to it.

"Sometimes the best we can do, at the end of some days
or seasons, is be there.  I think you need to take
your friend in your arms and prove that you are there,
because when pain arrives and stays it can be
difficult to remember that we are not alone, that we
can be healed."

Mulder thinks about this.  "You make it sound very
simple."

"If you wanted something complicated, you would have
gone someplace less obvious than a cathedral.  You
would have gone to a 24-hour liquor mart."

Mulder drops his head into his hands with a small
groan, but quickly reverses his posture and gives the
priest an acquiescent look.  "I'll take that under
advisement."

"You do that."  The priest stands, supporting himself
with the bench as much as he can, and shuffles away.

Mulder stays a while longer.  The small, purposeful
candle flames in front of him waver and stretch as if
unfolding for each other.

His home phone is ringing as he unlocks the apartment
door.  He manages to grab the receiver before the
caller hangs up.  His shin doesn't appreciate the
lunged gesture.

"Ugh, hello."

"Agent Scully, please," a man says.

"Um, Agent Scully isn't here -- I'm her partner, Agent
Mulder."

"Oh!  Sorry.  This is Shannon with the Williamstown
PD.  I was looking at the wrong number on this fax
coversheet.  You don't know if Agent Scully's already
left, do you?"

"No," Mulder says.  Left?  "May I ask what this is
regarding?  I'd be happy to pass along any message you
have."

"That's okay, I've got her number right here.  I
thought maybe you were working this case too."

"Case?"

"Denise Elder, the little girl who disappeared in
'70?"

"I just got home," Mulder says, feeling completely out
of the loop.

Shannon continues unfazed.  "Agent Scully thinks this
might be linked to that, uh, Roche fellow who made all
the papers a few years back."

"John Lee Roche?"

"Yeah.  Anyway, if you talk to your partner before we
do, let her know I'll be in Williamstown for the town
Christmas parade before 8 a.m., and I'll meet her at
Angel House, okay?"

"I'll let her know."

The lieutenant hangs up.  In a five-second trip to the
kitchen Mulder makes his decision.  When Skinner calls
to tell him Scully will be out "sick," Mulder all but
smacks his head against the refrigerator.  Of course
Skinner is in on whatever Scully is doing.

Well, with that in mind, Skinner can help.

---
Blue Devils were marching through the 1st and Main
intersection, rousing the crowd with a brassy
rendition of "Sleigh Ride," so she took the designated
detours and after ten minutes ended up five blocks
from the original starting point.  Angel House was set
between a consignment shop and a public accountant's
office, and Scully parked in the lot at the end of the
street.  The lieutenant's brown hat was losing snow
off the brim as he helped Scully out of the car.

He greeted her with an apologetic, "We weren't
supposed to have snow until tomorrow."

"It's fine," Scully said.  "It's beautiful, actually.
And not too bad to drive in."

"Yet," Lieutenant Shannon grinned.  "By nightfall
it'll be a lot less scenic."  He stuck out his hand.
"Dale Shannon."

She shook his hand and their gloves generated static
electricity.  "Dana Scully."

They maneuvered through the wet snow and stepped up on
the long sidewalk in front of the businesses.

"You've driven a long way for what I've got to tell
you."

A few snowflakes caught on Scully's lashes and made
her blink.  "I've heard that a lot recently."

Shannon knocked on Angel House's bright red door.
"Been working hard on this?"

She shrugged, not wanting to seem immodest.  "It's
important."

He looked at her sharply like he would have taken
offense to any other suggestion.  "Of course it is.
I'm surprised you're here in person, though."

"I needed to come," Scully said.

The door swung in.  A tall grandmotherly woman said,
"Welcome."

"Natalie, this is Agent Scully," Shannon introduced
when they were inside.  Lunch was being prepared
somewhere, the scent of turkey permeating the front
room.  By the front door, a tall shelf was filled with
apples, oranges, and loaves of bread tagged for
reduction prices.  "First come, first serve," a sign
read.

"Nice to meet you," Natalie said.

"I was just about to tell Agent Scully what we found
in William's files," Shannon said.

"I wish there was more."  Natalie went to a small desk
and removed a folder from a flat basket.  "Donald
wasn't known for keeping detailed records.  The town's
so small, 3200 people and smaller when he was alive.
He apparently always said that records made people
feel ashamed, like someone was keeping tabs on them.
I started working here in 1990 for the current
director, Angie, after the school system had cutbacks.
 Angie's in Florida this week visiting her parents,"
she added.

"Well," Shannon said.  "She didn't have a problem with
us accessing William's files."

"I think she's long been embarrassed at the reputation
Donald garnered."  Natalie pulled two chairs out of
the nearby dining room.  Scully and Shannon sat down.
Natalie sat behind the desk.  "Don't mistake me.  A
lot of people were sorry to see Donald go, sorrier
when he died.  But there were some who weren't."

"What services were being provided in 1970?"  Scully
opened the folder Shannon gave her.

"The soup kitchen, and emergency shelter.  Pretty
threadbare, if I understand it.  A few cots in the
upstairs rooms."

Scully was scanning the folder's contents.  "It says
here Denise Elder arrived in late August, no known
guardian.  Was it common for William to take
unaccompanied kids?"

"I doubt it," Natalie said.  "But maybe he liked her."

"If he was friends with Sheriff Stuckey like you say,
Natalie, Stucky probably kept child welfare out of
here completely."  Shannon took off his hat and wiped
his forehead with a handkerchief.

Scully licked her lips.  The folder's contents told
hardly anything.  How, for example, would Roche have
come into contact with this child?

"Natalie," she said, "is there a vacuum cleaner here?"

The woman frowned.  "Yes.  It was donated last Easter
by a local youth group."

"What are you thinking?" Shannon asked Scully.

"Roche was a traveling vacuum salesman, but he stated
at trial that he started selling Electrovacs in 1973."

"He chose his victims while working," Shannon muttered
to Natalie, who looked disgusted.

"Well, there might have been another vacuum cleaner
here at some point, but I can tell you I swept the
floors with an old broom for five years."

The door opened and a crowd of people poured into the
building.  The ringleader, a forty-something in a blue
Angel House sweatshirt, loudly proclaimed, "Turkey and
dressing for everyone!"

A hurrah burst from the crowd.  The people exited into
the dining room.

"That was Nan," Natalie said.  "She's the assistant
office manager.  Would you like to have lunch with us?
 We start serving today at noon.  Big meal to
accompany the parade."

"If you don't mind, I'd like to have a look around and
go over the file again."

"Sure."  Natalie stood.  "Lieutenant, you staying for
lunch?"

"I need to get back to Middlesex, actually.  Agent
Scully, if you need further assistance, just call the
department.  We'll send someone out."

"Thank you," Scully said, shaking his hand again.  "I
appreciate it."

Shannon plopped his hat on and tipped it.  "Merry
Christmas."

"Would you like to use our consultation cubby, Agent
Scully?" Natalie offered.  "It would be a bit
quieter."

---
By the seventh hour, Skinner has taken away a
half-empty bag of sunflower seeds, a squeaky Big Gulp
lid Mulder kept flipping at the dashboard and all
access to the radio dial.  Skinner glares piercingly
when Mulder reaches his hand toward the heater
controls.

"Does Agent Scully let you behave like this when she
drives?" Skinner says, jaw clenched.

Mulder slumps back in his seat.  He knows he's sulking
but does not care.

"Whatever you may think about my recent state of mind,
I could've driven to Vermont unaccompanied."

"Consider this your Christmas bonus.  I was headed to
Berlin Falls anyway; I'll just get there a day before
the rest of the gang."

A gang of Skinners.  It's hard to imagine Skinner with
friends, period, but they say combat forms
relationships that last a lifetime, if you don't die
in a trench.  They're probably all big guys who press
250 without breaking a sweat, who each took government
positions that let them put to use a wide array of
growls and scowls, guys who spend every December
vacation competing on the slopes and generally being
manly.

"What if Scully isn't even in Williamstown by the time
we get there?"

"Well, I'd start walking south as soon as possible, if
I were you.  You're a long way from home, Agent
Mulder."

Great.  These off the record passive-aggressive
punishments are infinitely more annoying than the ones
where Skinner just docks him a week's pay.

"You know, you could have saved us all a lot of
trouble if you'd just let me continue working with
Scully on the case," Mulder says.  Waited as long as I
could, he thinks.  He shifts, trying to put the
seatbelt someplace it won't bug the shit out of him.

Skinner exhales.  "To be honest, I expected you to
figure out what she was doing weeks ago."

"Then why bother yanking--"

"You needed a break."  Skinner narrows his eyes at
him.  "Or should I have fired you as soon as you were
back in DC like any other AD would have?"

"You could have at least given her some back up."

"She wanted to work it alone."

"Look--"

"I thought she could handle it."  Skinner turns the
windshield wipers on to disperse a crunchy build-up of
tiny snowflakes.  "She handles _you_ every day."  The
wipers squeak and stutter.  "I did trust that you
would pay at least as much attention to her as she
does to you.  However well that may or may not have
worked in the past," Skinner grumbles.

Mulder rubs his eyes.  Attention is one thing; action
is another.  He hopes Scully is already in town, off
the snowy roads.  He hopes she's okay.

Does she remember she isn't alone?

"I knew something was wrong," Mulder says, tracing a
dull patch of window with his thumb.

"And you didn't do anything about it."  Skinner
doesn't say it as a question.

"No."

Skinner doesn't speak for several miles.  "You're
doing something now."

Yeah, Mulder thinks.  Some friend.

---
In the small cubicle, Scully unpacked the notes and
files she'd brought.  She was searching for anything
in the inadequate information that would connect the
dots.  Her head was throbbing.  Such a long shot --
and if Roche did kill this girl, where would he have
buried her?  He always took the girls away from their
towns.

God, she was tired.  The weight of a hand on her
shoulder didn't register with her quickly.

She turned in her chair.  "Mulder?"

He looked as beaten as she felt, still wearing his
suit from yesterday underneath his misbuttoned
trenchcoat.
 
"Next time, pick someplace warmer.  Skinner hates
driving in this weather."

"Skinner's here?"  She brushed a clump of snow off
Mulder elbow.

"He dropped me off."

Scully didn't know how to respond to that.  She
couldn't gage his real mood; at least she wouldn't
have to pretend she was vying for FBI Pathologist of
the Year.  Changing the subject, she said, "I think
it's almost time for lunch.  Hungry?"

He laughed without humor.  "Can we get that to go?"

"I have a room reserved in Berlin."  No response, not
even a leer.  "We'll take lunch and I'll check in and.
 And."  Tired, God, she was tired.

"And," he said.  He seemed to realize she was looking
up at him, and he touched her cheek almost like he
didn't believe she was really there.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, and he nodded.  For a
minute it was enough.

---
"I guess it would be tacky to ask if you've had any
more prophetic dreams, wouldn't it?"

Mulder swallows a bite of turkey.  "What, you think I
would have kept that to myself?"

Scully scrapes a cranberry back and forth on her
styrofoam plate.  He has the intense desire to slip a
sleeping pill in her remaining glob of corn casserole.
 

"I am sorry," she says.  "I haven't handled myself
very well in this matter.  I think I got too close in
certain ways."

"Been there," he says, tapping his plastic fork on her
head lightly.  "Have the official reprimand."

She almost smiles at that.  She throws away her plate.
 A gust of wind tosses snow at the motel windows, and
Scully turns the heater up a notch.

"Mulder," she says.

"Hmm."

"What are the odds that Roche didn't follow his own
pattern with the first victim?"

"Before today, I would have said they were very slim.
However, there are a lot of coincidences I don't like.
 Maybe Denise was the first.  I don't know how to move
us from this theory to actual proof."

Scully lists a bit and sits down on the bed with her
eyes closed.

"The uncle," she says.  "During the initial
investigation did anyone find out more about him than
where he lived?"

"I think I remember Reggie saying the uncle had a
bakery."  He gets off the bed and walks around to face
her.  "Why?"

She opens her eyes.  "A bakery."

A second later she's in her coat, searching for her
car keys.

"Wait.  Scully, what?"

"The soup kitchen takes donations of fruit and bread
-- if Roche visited his uncle in 1970, maybe he helped
deliver gifts to Mock Turtle."

"Okay, but how does that find Denise Elder?"

She stalls at the door, stamping her feet like an
irritable cat.  "Call Angel House.  I'm going to
Foxville, see if anyone remembers where the bakery
was."

Mulder follows her with one shoe half on and the other
untied, his trenchcoat wadding up in the right sleeve
and turkey crumbs on his tie.

Scully drives and the car doesn't slide once during
the short journey.  On his cell phone, Mulder talks to
Natalie, who confirms Mock Turtle's long-held
tradition of asking for and taking donations from
local food merchants.

In Foxville, the Red Fox Diner fry cook recommends
they ask Bart at Dry Cleaning and More.  Bart
recommends they ask Glory-Dell at the library, and she
recommends they talk to Lucia, who is most likely
rolling pie dough at the Qwik Stop.

"They have a bakery," Glory-Dell says, eyes narrowed
shrewdly.

Lucia jerks a floury thumb towards the west and
resumes her dough massage.

"Roche's, yeah, I used to buy their eclairs at least
once a week.  They also made good dinner rolls --
Roche's Rolls, they called them.  It was down the
street.  The building was torn down nine or ten years
ago.  There's a video rental store there."

Miller Video.  On the sidewalk, Mulder and Scully look
at the store's plain taupe facade.  Scully has her
hand over her mouth, bewilderment stained around her
eyes.  She's close to collapse and he stands nearer.

"There has to be something here," she says, sounding
bitter.

Been there, he thinks.  Been tied in that awful knot,
the solution existing and taunting, if only you could
unravel it.  There weren't guarantees that you could
ever be extracted from what you learned, the crimes
committed, the pressing horrors.  The solution might
not be discovered in time.

"Where next?" he asks, turning to her.

She's gone, has run across the street and is cutting
through a patch of untouched forest.

He can't imagine what she's seen or what she's running
after.  He ducks under icy pine branches and dodges
around rough chunks of exposed rock.  She is wrestling
with a thorny bush, kicking at its slender trunk until
there's a snap.

"Scully, what is it?"

She looks up wildly.  "The stream hasn't frozen yet."

Twenty feet away, a creek trickles between rocks and
under a few rotten logs.  Ice is forming on the
surface.

"Yeah," he says, wishing she'd given a better answer.

She is tossing off the bush's remnants, dragging away
limbs and snarls of ivy and discarded birds' nests.
He stands back.  If he grabs her, shakes her until she
comes back from...wherever she's gone, will she lash
out?  Bite?  Her forehead is creased with effort.  She
definitely looks like she'll bite.

She grabs his hand, jolting him out of his plan
preparation.

"Mulder," she says, jerking his whole arm so that he's
kneeling beside her.  "Look."

Her impromptu forest clearing has revealed a door.  A
door?  He studies it.  A cellar door?

"A storm shelter," she says.

---
They looked at each other for a beat and then started
prying the door open, scratching at the edges with
twigs to loosen the cold mud and any roots the bush
grew there.

The door came up with an awful moan.

"_'Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs,'_" Scully
whispered, a chill creeping over her scalp.

They slowly crawled down the misshapen steps, Scully
first, taking Mulder's hand to stabilize him.  At the
bottom they gingerly used more twigs to dig, and used
their fingers when the dirt started to release.

Shallow graves, Scully thought.  Roche always laid
them in shallow graves.

Insect casings, gravel, slimy leaves.  Bones.

Their hands crossed and more dirt was removed.
"Here," Scully said.  Mulder's hands followed hers and
they worked a different spot.

The nightgown was hardly well preserved, but the
heart-shaped hole was there.  She fished the last
heart out of her coat pocket, mud smearing the
evidence bag.

"A match," Mulder whispered hoarsely.

"It's her," Scully said.  She sat back on her heels.

"You found her," he replied, taking her hand.  "Thank
you."

He placed the heart atop the bones.  Tiny bones, tiny
girl.  Five or six years old and there wasn't a
picture left, not a locket or gymnastics ribbon or a
soul who had known her.  She went missing for days
before anyone noticed she wasn't there.

"Thank you," Mulder repeated, voice cracking, his
dirty fingers tangling with hers.

---
He sits on the steps and watches his partner.  She is
removing the dirt along the ribcage and collarbone,
the jaw, the centipede turn of spine, all visible
through the disintegrating gown.  It is easy to watch
her even here, where the dim light tilts darkness on
her delicate features and makes her seem slight and
fading.

It is harder to think of the girl, the last found, the
first gone.  (Please let her be the last.)  He thinks
of Roche's voice, calm and daring, saying things that
left deep scratches inside Mulder's chest, in his ears
and stomach.  He had not known how badly he wanted to
find this child, and how badly he wanted to never find
her.

It isn't Samantha, he tells himself.

Scully looks up then, eyes full of intense sympathy.
He has spoken aloud.

He starts to say something to correct the words --
they aren't wrong, he thinks, but it's wrong, somehow,
to have said it -- and she takes his hands again,
stilling him.

She is beside him on the stairs saying, "Shh, shh,"
and pressing her mouth to his forehead and beneath his
eyes.  "It will be okay."  He shuts his eyes against
the stinging.  In the dim light she stays, she has
found her, she is alive, this astonishment, this
friend he has and will protect with his life.  Saves
you, he thinks.  Save her too.

---
Scully called Lieutenant Shannon from the phone at
Miller Video, saying as little as possible while
expressing the need for a crime team's presence.  She
took the state cops into the woods and showed them the
tomb.  She drove to the motel with Mulder in the
passenger seat.  He was mute, wandering in thought.

The child had been named.  She was no longer vanished.
 There was peace in that.

They made it to Scully's room.  Coats and shoes on the
floor under the towel rack.  Water running clear, with
speckles of dirt in the sink and drips of brown
beneath the tissue holder.  Heat turned on, clouding
the windows.  Snow flicking at the panes and sills.

Scully felt her skin split and fray.  She seemed to
weigh a thousand pounds, or maybe three ounces.
Somehow she wasn't bleeding or bruised, not her neck
nor her clean hands.  Somehow her bones were not
crushed.  The silent sobs hitched in her throat and
could not escape.

Mulder stood beside her, eyes dark and wet.  "Scully,"
he whispered.  We're together, she thought.  It wasn't
a spell that fastened them to one another.

He gathered her in a gentle embrace and lowered her to
the bed.  He held her, was solid and real all around
her.  He enveloped them both in blankets.  No one was
dreaming or lost.  She found his mouth with hers,
softly, as promise, as prayer.

---
an end

---
they / said it was a dream /  which is the kind of
story / no one can argue with / because dreams come /
to us - we do not call them, /  which is what gives /
them their power / to enlighten & confuse / the facts,
by which we mean / those things that lie outside / our
selves. Those / important things insisting / we are
not dreaming / but awake here, now.
  -- from "Magical Thinking: What Counts as Evidence,"
Joseph Duemer

- - - - -
An extra big Thank You to the Secret Santa
participants, whose stories have provided enormous
heaps of holiday fun.

Best wishes to all for a wonderful 2003,
JET, proud to be in the company of such talent and
kindness
 

http://www.alanna.net/JET
http://www.livejournal.com/users/jetfic

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