Focus by GeeLady

Title: PhaHks 02 - Focus
Author: GeeLady
Written: August 1999
Rating: NC-17.
Keywords: MT/ScSkR/MScR/MOR/MAJOR ANGST!, language, violence, sexually explicit scenes, Minutum Slashius, violent rape, adult situations.

*As a friend commented: "So, basically, it's about a hurtin' Muld'?" Yep.

Spoilers: "PhaHks" by GeeLady. Various X-Files episodes.

THANK-YOU's: I thank this Mulder/Torture Site maintained by SMILEY! (everything else I did on my own). This story is free for archiving anywhere with my full permission and gratitude. But please let me know where so I can brag.

Disclaimer: The X-Files series, movie, characters, and related props: ugly pajamas, anal probes and rusty urinals are all the property of Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions and the Fox Network. I don't want any credit, fame or fortune from X-Files, I only want to write about your show and characters to entertain myself and others.

This story is fictitious. If there appear to be people or places (names of supporting characters & hospitals for example) bearing any resemblance to actual institutions or persons, it is by COINCIDENCE ONLY. All names of places and secondary characters I made up! Therefore no insult is intended toward the Physicians, Hospitals or Institutions of America. BTW: I am not a doctor in any way, shape or form. I've only read a few books and journals in that field so if, in the story, the therapist's methods seem a tad unusual, it is MY lack of knowledge, and not the practices of psychology, that is to blame.

*This is my fourth posting to Mulder Torture (the BEST, Shirley, The BEST!). As always, I drool stupidly for feedback. [email protected] or [email protected]

Summary: It is eight years later and Mulder has been returned by his abductors only to face new battles for his mind, his freedom and his future.

@ Although I think this story stands on its own, I do suggest you first read "PhaHks" even if you don't like Star Trek, it may help you catch the small stuff in FOCUS.

~~~~~*~~~~~

*"PHAHKS" AND "FOCUS" ARE AN ALTERNATE Time LINE SERIES IN A WAY. WHILE THEY ACKNOWLEDGE "The BEGINNING & "FIGHT The FUTURE", THEY TAKE DIFFERENT ROADS THEREAFTER. THERE IS NO KERSHE.*

FOCUS. Part I

("To adjust the focus of the eye...", "The point or space towards which light rays converge or from which they emanate.", LATIN: "hearth, fireplace. Home.")

*

Somehow, she steered him toward her building, and inside to her apartment. Then, once her door was closed and the lock flipped, right into the bathroom.

Scully was afraid that if she allowed him to sit down anywhere on the way, Mulder would go to sleep and never wake up.

Scully had seen her partner in many conditions of illness or anguish.

Never like this.

After finding him at the bus station, dressed in old, ill-fitting clothes - clothes that must have fit him at one time but now hung off his thin frame as if they'd been sown for a healthier man - his eyes were now dead of emotion and a phrase had started repeating in her mind:

- Broken to death, broken to death -

Scully ran the bathwater while her silent guest sat slumped over on the toilet seat. He was trying to untie his running shoes and being unable to, his fingers fumbling and dropping the laces.

"Here." She finished for him and pulled the sneakers off. His feet were bare.

Speaking very gently, "Stand up, Mulder. Let's get these clothes off."

"I can do it, Scully." His voice was small.

"Mulder, you can't hardly stand on your own. Just let me help you, okay?"

He nodded. No more arguments came after that.

Scully stripped his shirt off while he leaned against the sink to keep balance. She had to bite her lip and hold onto a gasp when she saw his chest, decorated with scars. One or two were old, ones she was intimately familiar with.

But the others,..especially the long, horrible one on his abdomen...

Stubbornly blinking back tears, Scully helped Mulder remove his jeans. No underwear either.

She skipped speculation on how down and out he must have been to not manage underwear. But maybe he'd been given none. Maybe his captors had dropped him off in a ditch, naked and bleeding.

Maybe the fuckers had laughed as they drove away, leaving him to die.

Perhaps this ensemble was all he'd been able to come up with just so he could be allowed aboard a public vehicle in order to make his way to her.

One tear rolled and she bent over to test the water's temperature, wiping it angrily away at the same time. Mulder was upset enough, in the numbed center of him, that she felt he didn't need to see her lose it too.

Adding a dab of bath gel to the water, Scully swished it around. But Mulder had sat back down, hunched over - embarrassed - she realized, about his nakedness. He still felt some things.

"Come on." She tried to find a middle ground in her tone and manner - clinical but not cold, familiar but not intimate - to ease his shame at having to be helped to undress and now bathed as if he were a baby or a cripple.

But he _was_ crippled, in a terrible way. A new chant invaded her thoughts:

Dying on the inside. Dying, dying...

Scully helped him balance as he stepped one foot at a time, into the apartment-typical shallow tub.

The first thing she did was get a pitcher and wet his hair down. A small dime of shampoo, then lathering - she felt bumps on his skull. Old injuries or new? She then repeated the shampoo. Rinsing took only a moment. Not bothering with conditioner, she started to wash his back with a soapy sponge, it slid over white skin and washboard ribs. Leaner than she had ever seen him, it was an unhealthy, neglected thinness.

Then she did his chest, soaped his underarms, both legs, and finally his feet.

She didn't fail to notice that he kept his knees bent through- out it all, leaning toward her and at the same time against the side of the tub. He was hunkered over as if protecting himself against her and her too much touch. His eyes were focused else where, somewhere very far away, she thought, as he blinked every minute or so, even that motion sluggish. Maybe it was a lack of things seen.

Maybe he was watching nothing, behind his eyes or in front.

However, though still and mute, he was allowing her to wash him, putting himself into her hands with an almost child-like relief. He trusted her, she thought. //- That I won't hurt him, that much at least.//

But it was clear he was not liking the physical contact and that made her uncomfortable also.

And a little sad.

Just a short two hours ago, they had been sharing warm hearts, hands and words in a public place. Desperate kisses and clutching had been exchanged. Smiles, tears, promises...

Two souls reunited after eight years. Mulder gone - kidnaped - with no word, no reason ever discovered and no offering of hope.

Those moments of togetherness in the crowded Greyhound Terminal had waned the closer she drove the Explorer to her home.

Now it was almost gone, it seemed. Now he appeared ashamed and cowed at her and everything that was happening. She'd walked him through the journey from the Station to her small corner of life and he had appeared at first mistrustful and, soon after, simply oblivious to all of it.

Mulder was far, far worse off than she had originally thought. He was way down deep inside himself somewhere. Maybe even deeper than where he'd been kept physically. In some filthy prison. Locked away in a windowless basement. Held against his will in a cold hole that offered neither light, warmth or hope. Eight years in some second hell where the concept of heaven was never debated.

She'd spent those eight years in her own kind of hell. The hell of keeping hope in something hopeless.

"Hungry?" she asked, mostly to fill up the silence that hung painfully in the steamy bathroom. He shook his head.

Scully handed him the soap and the sponge. "Are you okay? Can you do the rest on your own?"

He accepted them, nodding, obviously glad she wasn't going to attempt cleaning his privates herself.

Scully closed the vinyl curtain (large yellow canaries perched on green branches) halfway, and the bathroom door almost all the way, giving him the privacy he needed.

Running a kettle under the tap in the kitchen, she busied herself in making tea.

Teabags, sugar, readied the cream and the spoons and the cups. Took a tray down from the cupboard and wiped off the dust. How long since she'd had any company?

Mundane, time-killing, infuriating things that meant nothing except to fill in a gap of time while she listened for him to finish up yet not knowing what to expect when he did and not really wanting to face whatever it would be.

The kettle sang.

Scully heard a choking noise coming from the bathroom and almost went back. It would have done him no good. If he wanted to sob then she would let him. If he decided to give up the fight right there in her bathtub and quietly slip away, she had no right to force him not to.

But she prayed to god he wouldn't. Her own sanity, she felt, was on the line as well. Certainly her heart was feeling pinched.

Scully forced herself to Stand Still And Prepare Tea to serve up to a very sick man whom she hadn't seen in eight years while he sobbed his heart out in her bathroom.

She cried silently herself, wanting to have the tears over with by the time his tanks were empty and she'd have to find some way of looking at him, helping him. She needed to be strong so he wouldn't have to be.

A bath and tea.

//Some prescription! Good start, Scully. "Cookie, Mulder?" "One lump or two?"//

What does one say to the freshly scrubbed mentally shattered?

//Doctor Scully, clearly, you've been working on corpses too long//.

Scully listened to his snorts and gasps as his heart spilled over into the dirty water. Nothing she could do was going to cure this size of wound.

Finally the sobs subsided but only after she'd consumed three cups of tea alone at her kitchen table. She hadn't entered the bathroom again the whole time. Even when she'd heard his crying transform to choking coughs and moaning sobs.

For nearly one hour, he'd cried.

The kind of sobbing that most people did maybe once or twice in a lifetime. The kind that tore you in half and left you sick and feeling like crumpled paper.

She had cried like that once. After her daughter died. After Emily - her arterial system growing grotesquely malformed and polluting her body and brain by the unidentified toxins carried within - stopped breathing and turned cold.

Scully herself had cried those horrible kind of tears.

When the bathroom had been silent for several minutes, Scully returned to find him slumped against the side of the tub where she'd left him. He was asleep and he was goose fleshed, the water barely warm.

Rousing him, she helped him out, wrapped a towel around his waist, tucking it in place, and towel-dried him down with another before leading him to her guest bedroom.

"Feel better?" she asked as he slipped in and she arranged the covers around him. His eyes were red-veined and puffy. "Headache." He spoke just above a whisper. Didn't look at her.

She nodded and fetched him three pills, two Tylenol and one Gravol along with a half glass of water. He swallowed all without any questions.

It was worse, that he was so quiet. She would have preferred the usual arguments of yesteryear. But wanting him to sleep undisturbed, she said nothing about the unsolicited sleep aid.

After his eyes closed, he was out in a flat minute.

*

Scully looked at her watch: eleven-twenty-one AM.

"Director Skinner? Sir?"

Scully had to track him down at home since it was Saturday.

"Scully." He sounded surprised. She hadn't called him in over a year, and then it had pertained to work. Over the last two years their paths had rarely crossed.

She cleared her throat.

"How are you?" he asked before she had the opportunity to speak further.

"Ah, I'm fine, Sir,...I ...uh...I need to see you."

"Well, is it something you can tell me over the phone?, I have a plane to catch in two hours."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Sir, but...this is...I,... I don't think I can handle this on my own..."

She cleared her throat, it was hard to say.

"...it's very important."

Skinner's silence at the other end told her his "spidey sense" had just activated. "I can cancel the flight. What's going on?"

Scully, took a breath and let it out.

It was morning. A new day.

Mulder had slept for fourteen hours straight in her guest bedroom and was now sitting in her livingroom, slumped on her couch, drinking gallons of Sunny Delight and idly flipping through the television channels. She heard "Chicken and Cow". Looked like he'd finally stumbled upon something not too emotionally taxing.

They hadn't really talked much that morning when he'd finally awakened. He had politely asked to use the washroom and then, declining the bacon and eggs she'd prepared, she had fed him a bowl of Cherrios.

He'd then eaten bowl after bowl, starving, managing to put away the entire box. But it wouldn't be enough to pack meat back on his accordion-like chest.

Nothing much else had been said.

She'd watched him eat and then settle into her couch like he planned on staying there for a long, long time.

And that frightened her. Mulder back in her apartment, sitting on her couch like nothing had happened.

So, at the first opportunity, she'd slipped into her bedroom and dialed a few numbers, speaking quietly so as not to disturb him. She sensed somehow that, for Mulder, right now anything other than peace and quiet would be a bad thing.

Skinner was waiting.

"He's home, sir. He's back." Scully heard nothing for two seconds.

"I'll be there in thirty."

*

"Is he awake?" Skinner entered her apartment building. It wasn't yet noon.

Scully had quietly padded down and met her old boss at the bulding's entrance, wanting that few seconds of privacy to bring him up to date on the extraordinary event of Mulder's return.

"Yes, but he's not okay."

"Are you?" he asked and it surprised her. She'd given no thought to herself except for the tingle of fear that had sprung to life and settled down in her psyche, prompting her call to him.

A stranger with Mulder's face had woke up in her apartment and ate her food. The Bus Station Mulder was gone and she didn't know precisely why that was.

Scully did not know who sat in her living room now.

Mulder of yesterday, kissing her and at least somewhat like the norm was now a silent body sitting in jeans and faded out, ragged T-shirt denting her furniture.

She'd laundered his meager wardrobe while he'd slept. Had contemplated slipping out and buying him some things to wear but was afraid to, not wanting him waking up alone. He might panic.

One year ago, she'd thrown out the last few items of Mulder's clothing that had hung unused in her second bedroom closet. It had been one last painful task. She'd thrust them into a black garbage bag, quickly tied it and tossed it in the bin out back. And then cried for an hour and a half.

So, nothing else to wear, he'd dressed in the rags in which she'd found him. He sat and said nothing. A presence with empty eyes filling up on cartoons.

Very scary.

Scully re-entered her apartment and stepped aside to allow Skinner access and a clear first view of his old agent.

Mulder heard the door open and close and twisted around to greet them both. "Sir?" He didn't stand as he would have years ago. He just stared, a bit surprised but that was all.

"Mulder." Skinner kept his voice even and pleasant. He didn't ask for Scully's permission but just seated himself opposite the man-with-a-problem.

Looking at his old agent while trying to not stare, it was hard to reconcile this current example with the Mulder of eight years ago.

Skinner absorbed and recorded the pale face, the dark bags, the expressionless, far away look in the older eyes, and, through the holes in his shirt, the ribcage that looked like it could barely hold the organs inside. "It's good to see you."

A fucking miracle is what it was.

"You too, sir."

Scully seated herself next to Skinner. It gave her strength for what they were about to do. Hard things were about to be said and soon to occur and there was no choice in them.

An overwhelming sadness enveloped her as she sat beside Skinner's confident control. He'd taken the situation in hand and thank god because she could barely trust herself to speak. She wanted to scream.

Because life was so goddamn unfair.

Because she wanted Mulder.

She wanted back Special Agent Fox Mulder and he wasn't there.

Her old partner, she wanted, in their old office in their old life. She wanted him back in his gorgeous skin draped in Armani pants hanging sexily from his masculine hips.

She wanted the humor and the smile and the eyes that hurt.

She wanted that old arrogant prick who always thought he was right about everything.

She wanted anything but the abused and lifeless husk staring dully at them both from across the coffee table.

"You want to talk about this? You want to tell me what's happened?"

Scully's chest tightened at Skinner's questions. They were F.B.I Director's questions and she wondered if they would carry any meaning to Mulder.

"Why are you here, sir?" Mulder asked the big man.

Skinner glanced to his left as Scully answered.

"Mulder, I think - we think - you should be taken to a hospital so you can be checked out."

Mulder frowned a little, looked down at himself as if trying to see what they were seeing, trying to find what it was that was worrying them.

"I'm okay, Scully. I may be a bit thin but otherwise I'm just tired. I just need a few days."

"A few days and then...what?" Skinner asked.

Mulder looked at him and could give no detailed answer to such an open question. "And then Uh-I'll see."

Skinner removed his glasses, rubbed fingers across his eyes, trying once again to see into the mind of a man he'd never been able to.

Scully watched the exchange. Skinner had aged as they all had, but had done so well. Salt and pepper hair fringe, the slightest thickening of the middle but otherwise as straight, self-assured and sharp as ever.

"Mulder, you've been gone, vanished, missing for eight years. _Eight YEARS_. Then yesterday you show up, at a bus station of all places, without any explanation." Skinner pointed out.

Mulder was acting like he'd gotten lost on vacation.

"I need some rest, that's all."

Scully pleaded. "Mulder, no. You are not well. You don't even sound like yourself."

She found strength enough to crouch before him and take one of his boney hands in her own, resting both on his thigh. "Something terrible has happened to you and we have to find out what it is. We have to find out who did this to you."

"I'm back, Scully." He spoke it as if he couldn't understand what all the fuss was about and it hit her like a hammer. He wanted it to be enough for them. Clearly he felt it should be. "And you promised me you wouldn't ask."

"You can't just expect us to sit here and accept that you're back to pick up where you left off and that everything's normal." Skinner said.

"All I expect is to be left alone to rest for a few days. I just need rest and,.." Mulder's words faltered as his mind did, as it couldn't give them the logical plans that should have been there, "..just tired. I'll figure out the rest as I go."

"Mulder..." Scully started, stopped. Felt helpless.

"I'm okay, Scully, really." He pasted on his best "See? I'm perfectly fine" face.

"No, you're not. You're thin, you *look* sick..."

"Why are you fighting this, Agent Mulder?"

Mulder threw black pupils at Skinner. "I'm not your agent anymore." Turned to Scully, intending to ignore Skinner from that second forward.

"Scully. Let's go away somewhere. I don't care, anywhere. You pick the place. I meant what I said. Let's just go. Cash in all our securities, I'll sell all the properties and we'll leave, we'll just get out of here."

"Mulder. There is no cash. All your securities were liquidated. I had to. The taxes on your parents houses, your mother's medicals bills,... there's nothing left."

He stuttered in his efforts to convince. "Then,...um, ...I'll get a juh-job."

Scully saw his eyes watering, darting around the room, getting scared. It was heartbreaking, what was happening to him. Mulder wasn't himself. He hadn't even asked her about his dead mother.

That was not like Mulder.

Not at all like Special Agent F.B.I man who looked out for the innocent and chased the bad guys, trying to make the world a better place while trying to understand why things had to be that way.

Her former partner who could remember what kind of cake he had for his fourth birthday but couldn't count how many times he had lost his gun.

Her friend who had endured the destruction of his whole family and had still walked into work each day like he had a purpose.

The man she loved who used to be.

Her heart was tearing.

Because the sweet little fantasy in which she'd been indulging for the last twenty hours was now at an end.

The meeting at the bus station, the overwhelming joy in seeing him, his talk of marriage and her teary, emotion-blinded answers that had nothing to do with the deep pain she'd seen behind his eyes, the sharing in his warm, loving, lips,...all of that was being replaced by cruel practicalities.

Reality had just brought its fist down.

Mulder was sick in body and possibly in mind. He was forty-five years old, out of a job and flat broke.

The obstacles before him, before them both, were enormous.

She wanted to sob.

"And do what?" Skinner pointed out to him.

Mulder didn't even look at his old boss. "I don't care, anything. Scully?"

She sensed he was questioning her, asking her: *What's wrong? Did you lie to me when you said you'd marry me? Was everything a lie? Was I wrong to come back? Am I crazy?*

Scully couldn't stop her own grief then, at his frightened, needful eyes.

*Give me something, Scully.* He was saying as her tears rolled unstoppably.

"Mulder..." Helpless. Mute. Guilty as charged.

Everything she'd said to him in the station had been swept away by the call to Skinner.

Mulder was very ill. Ill and maybe even dying.

Three souls, one broken. The acknowledgment of it settled over the healthy two like a Cloth of Mourning.

The guilt. The sorrow. What could she or any have done for him anyway - really? A few kisses and everything would be just fine? Is that what she had thought?

How shortsighted. How lovesick. How stupid.

"Do you want our help?" Skinner asked him.

"I was hoping, yeah." Mulder answered, tentatively. He was unaware of the decisions secretly being made for him. He did not feel the Grieving Blanket.

"Then I think we should make sure you're really okay." Skinner answered.

"A physical exam, Mulder? Okay? Just to be sure." Scully urged.

"That's all?" Mulder asked, suddenly wary, watchful, mistrustful.

"Yes."

Mulder nodded once. "Okay, but I want Scully to do it."

"Why Scully?" Skinner wanted to know.

"Because that's what I want."

"Okay." Scully shot Skinner a warning look as if to say it was the least they could do. "Okay, but I'll need help. Will you let me choose a friend, a practicing doctor? One who'll keep it under wraps? I can't do that kind of examination without the proper equipment and somewhere to do it."

Mulder nodded, once, reluctantly. "But I want to be awake the whole time."

Of course. He wouldn't want to be under anyone's control anymore. Did not want to be vulnerable or helpless. Ever again.

Scully realised this.

She also knew that would be impossible.

Making herself a liar, she nodded. They had to know, whatever it took, they had to know if he was really all right.

*

Scully studied Mulder's eyes. They had an alertness within despite the drug. She'd talked him into a sleeping draught just to lessen the discomfort he might feel from some parts of the exam and it had taken her fifteen minutes to convince him of that. No way was he going to accept anything stronger.

Finally locating Doctor Roberta Nizarhan, an old and trusted former "what-the-hell-ever-made-us-consider-medical-school?!" pal, they had set up in her private and well equipped clinic. Mulder had followed Scully in with tiny cat steps, hugging the walls and staring suspiciously at Nizarhan.

One bad move on anyone's part and he'd be out the door. Now he lay shivering in a disposable open-at-the-back gown on the padded examination table. The clinic was closed for the night.

They hadn't even begun and Scully was already dead tired just from the constant strain of a whole day of bearing his mistrustful questions about what would be done to him. The pressure-cooked anxiety had given her a headache.

Skinner had declined to join the midnight medical duo on their intended quest and returned home. It was passed midnight and he had an early day but had insisted more than once that she phone him on his cellular with the results when all the tests were complete.

Scully decided she would fill him in, in person. Skinner'd been there from the beginning, when all this had started. There when it had begun all those years and years ago. The day a clean cut, brilliant agent just inching out of studness walked into Skinner's office and shook his hand.

The A.D.'s newest underling, just escaped from three years in a purgatory called Violent Crimes where head Devil was bald and wore a trench coat, had proved an Enigma with a capital E.

And that intelligent, good-looking, smart-as-they-make-'em former analyst then proceeded to turn Walter Skinner, Deputy Assistant Director of the F.B.I.'s world upside down. Had Skinner managed a decent night sleep post-Mulder? Scully doubted it.

But Mulder'd gotten away with his sabotaging of rules with suprisingly smooth-sailing. It was some innate ability or an aura he'd projected that made some people want to ruffle his hair and all but say "Try to be a good boy.".

He'd limp up to Skinner's pool table sized desk, hand over the case he and Scully had closed after risking life and limb, apologize for the lateness of it, ease himself painfully down into an empty chair and wait for the reaming.

Not very often had Skinner availed himself of that release.

Not very often.

Maybe it was the muted, decades old pain beneath Mulder's brows that caused people, young and old, to want to either bake him cookies or nuzzle his cheek. Even some male colleagues, including one former FBI Assistant Director boss-man, had done their best to protect him, advise him, lessen the risks around him, body and soul.

Skinner had been there at the germination of the Mulder/Scully years and she would keep him in the loop now. Especially since she knew he was mad as hell at whoever had done this to one of his.

Because he cared.

And because she needed his support to keep herself together.

Scully prepared the little sample bags and slides they would need for the exam at a small counter, her back turned on Mulder. But in the small mirror above the sink, she could see him now sweating in nervousness, his eyes raking the ceiling and walls as if looking for an opening, an easy escape if the walls started closing in, the sky started falling or if things didn't go as he liked.

Scully'd left the door open hoping to lesson the feel of claustrophobia in the room, one not meant to hold a patient and _two_ doctors.

"Oh, damn," she said.

Nizarhan, the dark-haired second physician in question, looked up from her microscope that she'd been adjusting. "What?"

"I left something in the car." Scully looked sideways at Roberta, who knew by long years that the shift in Scully's eyes said otherwise. It said they needed to talk privately.

Scully touched, very lightly, Mulder's shoulder, "I'll be right back. Two minutes, okay?"

He only nodded.

One minute later, Doctor Nizarhan left the room and joined Scully down the hall out of earshot of the patient.

"What's going on, Dana?"

"I want to see him completely under. I don't want him to be aware."

"But I thought-"

"-I know. But there are some tests I need to do that we can't if he's conscious, some that would be very distressing to him. Not to mention uncomfortable."

"Okay. I take it, though, he doesn't want that? That's why we're out here, whispering like a couple of med-students?"

"Yes. But if you distract him for a second, I can inject him. He'd be out in about five seconds."

"Five seconds is a long time if he gets violent."

"All we have to do is hold his arms and legs for that time, he won't be able to move." Sadly, "He's weak."

"He is going to be very _ticked_ when he wakes up."

Scully nodded, cleared her throat. "Yes. But it can't be helped. We have to know-", //Breaking another promise? You're getting good at it Dana.// "-there's no choice."

"Well, it may be my arena but it your game. Let's do it." Nizarhan said.

It hadn't gone as easily as they'd hoped, but after two curse words and lots of twisting, Mulder had slumped back like a sack of flour. Nizarhan breathed a sigh of relief.

And was shocked when they peeled back the examination gown to reveal the man's chest. Someone had sliced him up like a pie.

Nizarhan watched Dana stroke the drugged man's forehead with her thumb two, three times. Nizarhan was struck by the compassion in the gesture. It was old affection she was seeing and also that this situation was a repeat for both of them.

Scully nodded, as if satisfied that he was under deeply enough to begin.

"Okay, I want pictures first. External exam, every square centimeter."

"You make it sound like we're about to autopsy him."

"We are. But without an internal obviously, so I want X-Rays. I wish we had access to MRI."

"Sorry, can't help you there, I'm just a clinical physician. I can brew you a kick-ass cup of coffee though."

Scully smiled. "That would be great. I know _I'll_ need it."

Referring to the intended examination, "What else?" Nizarhan asked.

"I want blood gasses, bone marrow, skin, and hair samples. Umm, muscle tissue too. And X-Rays, EEG, EKG, liver and kidney tissue chemical analysis, sperm and saliva samples, stomach lining,...I want bronchial and lung tissue visuals..."

"Wait, wait, are you kidding me? Do you know how long all this is going to take?"

"As long as it takes. This is important."

"What are you not telling me?"

Scully pulled on non-latex examination gloves. "Ask me when we're done."

Nizarhan didn't follow suit. "This is going to take all night, just the basics even. Getting the samples analyzed is on your time. Friend or no, Dana, you're gonna owe me big for this one."

"Name it." she answered succinctly.

Nizarhan kept her mind on the task of preparing a strong pot of caffeine, but made a mental note: to watch Dana as much as the patient. She was very curious about Dana's connection with this man. He was Dana's former partner, yes, she understood that and that Dana wanted to help out an old friend. But something more was here, in the background, something very deep and very important.

The coffee pot was set to brewing and she heard Dana crumple up the patient's gown.

Nizarhan noted that her friend had laid a clean hand towel over the man's groin. It was unnecessary as he was out cold but she understood the gesture of respect for the poor guy's privacy.

Nizarhan pulled on her own gloves and proceeded with her task of external examination while Scully placed an oxygen mask over Mulder's nose and mouth.

Christ almighty. The scars. Nizarhan catalogued each and every sign of foreign penetration of the surface while Scully handled the overhead photo machine.

He had a nice skin. A smooth, still relatively youthful skin. But he was thin to the point of skinny and every square foot or so, Nizarhan would find another old wound marring the perfection.

It was a shame. He was a real looker.

Stark evidence of past cruelties looked back at her as she made notations of each and every mark or irregularity. But the scars were what got to her, blunt, stare-back-at-you brandings. No portion of his body had been left virgin.

Left shoulder, left upper thigh: old bullet wounds.

Right shoulder, outside right lower thigh, right forearm: deep knife penetrations.

Right side of face: faint scar over brow line. Small white scar at the left corner of the bottom lip.

Palms of the hands - what looked like severe rug burn scars - the pads of his fingers had actually been rubbed smooth on several didgits.

Left side of head: a deep, gouge behind the ear, long healed.

She wondered what the x-rays of his skull would reveal.

But the worst, the scar that made her stomach chill and roll, was the long, even-edged slice that began to the side of and slightly below his left nipple, curved down and around, only ending up just above his groin.

Another two inches and he'd have been divested of his manhood. It had been an hateful and inhuman assault. It had not been deep, but it must have bled and it sure as hell must have hurt. Sometimes those "clean" cuts were the worst.

The perpetrator had given it to this man to carry for the rest of his days. And maybe to bear the memory of it's infliction each time he looked at himself after a shower.

These were memories that could only temporarily be hidden and forgotten about beneath clothing.

"Finished?" Scully's question brought Nizarhan out of her private, unscientific thoughts.

"Um, yeah, I'm finished."

"Okay, now we flip him and the same for the back."

"All right," Nizarhan crossed Mulder's legs, one over the other and Scully folded his hands on his chest. "Ready, roll him."

The table was wide and Mulder, limp as cooked spaghetti, was no difficulty for the two women.

Scully took a moment to ensure he was comfortably positioned. Nizarhan again watched her friend take the extra time to do things of which an unconscious man could neither be aware nor appreciate.

Scully took her samples, this time not of skin and hair, blood and stomach cells, but of bone marrow, semen and feces. Nizarhan kept her tone neutral as she watched Scully extract an Anal Spreader from the utility tray behind her. "You must be checking for something else in there." Nizarhan commented.

Numbly, "Trauma." Scully said, giving her a look that said I'll tell you if you want. Nizarhan neither shook her head nor nodded.

Scully inserted the thin cable of an Optioscope into Mulder's rectum and peered into the viewfinder. The tissue was covered with scars. Strange, long dark marks, as if someone had shoved a metal hairbrush up into him and twisted it around before yanking it out.

Scully's hands shook as she pulled the Scope out slowly, not wanting to add to the damage.

"Well?" Nizarhan took the instrument from her friends fingers. Scully nodded.

"I'm really sorry, Dana."

"It's okay. He's home now. He's safe." She discarded her old gloves.

"Can I ask what happened to him or is it some Government secret?" Tried to lighten the atmosphere and watched it fail miserably when Nizarhan got the answer she hadn't really expected.

"He was held captive and beaten for years. Tortured maybe, we think. There may have been some...violent rape involved." Scully pointed to two curved very faint lines on his upper left shoulder blade that appeared to be a human bite mark. "I want pictures of that. Maybe a forensic computer can extrapolate the form of the bite. Maybe we'll luck out and can get a dental record."

"Jesus." Nizarhan whispered. //No wonder you wanted him under.// She swallowed, her gag reflex hinting at an opposite action, noting on her little pad the bite marks, then positioning the camera over them.

Pulling on fresh gloves, Scully pulled over another machine on rollers. "Okay, X-Rays now." Scully took their attention back to getting it all done. Time was short as the clock struck five. In two hours, Nizarhan and junior partners would have a waiting room full of patients, all wanting attention.

An hour later, when the films were developed, Nizarhan saw what she had expected to see. Several old head injuries and one newer one which must have concussed. Also clear indications of a compound fracture of his left Ulna, two fingers of his right hand and each and every rib. Nizarhan shook her head. Christ, would the list of injuries never cease?

"Let's clean him up." Scully announced when at last they were done.

"I can't stay for that. I have a meeting in an hour. You've got about forty-five minutes to bring him out of it and get out of here. Here's the keys and the alarm code. Make sure you're gone before my secretary shows. You can drop the keys off to me later here."

"I'm sorry this took so long. I can't tell you how grateful I am for your help."

Impulsively, she hugged Scully. "Take care of your friend, Dana. You owe me a night on the town. I want to visit every sleazy bar in this damn city." //I want to forget I ever participated in this scary shit//.

Scully smiled. "You've got it."

Scully tidied up and, before waking him, gave Mulder a quick sponge bath to remove the stains of iodine around the tiny wounds made from the skin and muscle biopsy sites. She checked the small gauzes she'd taped over them to make sure they would stay put.

Mulder was still lying on his stomach and out like a light. Time was short yet Scully lingered over drying him off. Her small hand towel gently rubbed cheeks, the small of his back and across his shoulders. Turned him and repeated her minist- rations.

She had just performed a living autopsy on her best friend. Just invaded and pilfered pieces of him without his consent in an attempt to discover the identity of his tormenters who had pillaged him, body and soul.

The irony of it was not lost on her.

She wanted to touch him with magical fingers and remove the evidence of her intrusions into his privacy and human rights which had been repeatedly violated in this room.

"I'm sorry," she whispered into his unconscious ear. Kissed his shoulder, a light peck. "I am sorry I had to do this to you, Mulder. I am so very, very sorry."

*

"So how is he?" Skinner nursed cold coffee in a Styrofoam cup. He'd shed his trench coat and they both sat facing each other in the quiet of his BMG outside her apartment. "I'm running out of excuses for postponing my meeting."

Scully had phoned Skinner's cellular, waking him up from a sound sleep late Sunday evening, and requested his assistance.

Early that morning, after struggling a groggy Mulder home to her apartment, she'd sedated him again and left him to sleep the day away while she delivered her tiny biopsies of him to a pathologist friend. Both had then worked 14 hours to elicit the results she now held in her hand.

Scully knew it was time to let common sense lead and decided a hospital was what Mulder needed. As much as she hated the idea of him being out of her direct care. As much as she knew he would hate her for it.

A still unconscious Mulder faced her upon returning home and getting him out to her own car alone would be impossible.

Contacting Skinner again seemed the best course, circumstances being what they were...

Pathologies showing what they did...

Again he'd canceled his flight out for her and came. When was the day, month and year that Skinner had become to her more than former superior and colleague? All she knew was she needed his help and she thanked God each time Skinner answered his phone; each time he drove up to her door.

Together they hauled Mulder out once again and now he lay on his side in the back seat of Skinners brand new vehicle, long legs curled up, still in drugged sleep.

Without any real agreed-on plan, Skinner started the engine and started driving more or less in the direction of Mercy Memorial Hospital.

Scully filled him in. "Physically, the only definite conclusion that can be drawn is that, due to the number and nature of the injuries that were inflicted including multiple broken bones and some very serious invasive wounds..."

Skinner waited patiently for Scully to complete her step by step itemization of Mulder's physical damage. By experience he understood she was maneuvering toward the worst news.

"...it seems likely he was systematically tortured or at least beaten on a regular basis during the time of his abduction."

Her voice was dead-pan. She was reciting the horrors for him for the first time and the dozenth time for herself.

"There are scars indicating stabbings - deep wounds. At one point he suffered a broken jaw as well as five broken ribs somewhere along the way. A fractured arm and fingers. Numerous head injuries, some which had concussed..."

"Scully-"

She stopped and looked at him. He kept his eyes on the road. "He's still alive. What about his mental and emotional state?"

"Well, you saw, sir. Mentally, I believe he is unstable but without the intervention of a trained psychologist,.." She left off. Then swinging it back around, "We did, however, discover something very disturbing in his blood work."

Skinner's stomach turned over. "What?"

"What appear to be antibodies in his cells. Specifically, in the DNA, what could be called a fingerprint. Indications are these antibodies are the result of a viral infection of some kind the nature of which we thus far have not been able to identify."

Skinner shook his head. Not a shake of disagreement, but one of sadness. "Is he dying?"

Scully swallowed - a painful throat lump refused to move - shook her head. "No. But we can't pin down the pathology of the infection. Before we put him out, I asked Mulder about it. He remembers being sick but that's all he's able to tell us."

"I'd like to know how he made it back at all. That's a question we haven't asked."

"I don't think he wants to talk about it, either because it's too painful or maybe because he doesn't remember."

"This is bizarre." Skinner said. "What was the purpose?"

"You mean behind his kidnaping?"

"Yes. No demands were made. If they wanted the X-Files shut down for good, why not just kill him? Why all _this_?"

Scully wondered too. About all of it. Mulder had walked into Chilmark, she knew that much by seeing the black, cut bottoms of his feet after she'd removed his sneakers.

No one had stopped to give him a ride. No one would.

Seeing a lone man stumbling barefoot along a highway in the middle of the night?

Mental patient. Loser. Drifter. Nut. Steer clear.

That's what they - what anyone - would have been bound to conclude.

And she, Doctor Scully, trained pathologist, _forensic_ scientist, had helped Mulder wash away any trace evidence (anything that might have existed to give them a clue to the identity of his abductors and abusers) right down the drain.

Given him a _bath_!

Stupid.

All she had thought of last night was getting him home, somewhere safe. A place she could keep watch over him. Comfort and help and heal him. Heal herself a little too, she now recognized.

Gathering evidence had crossed her mind, but it had taken a secondary position to wrapping him in her arms and hugging out the Boogie-men.

It had been a serious error, one she had confessed to Skinner soon after his arrival at her apartment yesterday morning.

He had huffed, not angrily, but in disappointment, and then he had understood. This was Mulder, her old friend and partner. And - Skinner had inferred from the silent confession of her watery eyes - her love.

She'd acted impulsively, with her heart instead of her head. Anyone would be forgiven for it once in a career.

"Sir, these antibodies,.. Mulder has been infected with something. It is unidentifiable. It matches no DNA on record. Yet it's left behind a fingerprint, it's own genetic string INSIDE his cellular DNA. One which cannot be classified."

Skinner blinked. "Are you saying his DNA has been altered? Or what he has may be contagious?" When she didn't answer, he asked the question they'd both been tip-toe-ing around since the conversation began. "Are you saying it's extraterrestrial?"

Frustrated, Scully spread her hands. "I don't know. Where has he been? Eight years. In eight years, wouldn't we have found something? Some kind of lead? He disappeared without one trace. No clues what-so-ever. Nothing."

"It happens to thousands of children every year around the world Agent Scully."

"Those are children. This is a grown man. This is Mulder. Since when would Mulder not have somehow gotten to a phone? Sent a message? In a bottle if he had to. Even escaped somehow?"

"We thought he was dead, Scully. Dead people don't send messages."

Scully remembered dreams. In one such dream - god so long ago now - she'd dreamed of Mulder whom everyone thought was dead, a Mulder telling her he was all right.

No such dreams had come to her this time.

Nightmares, yes.

Skinner was talking. "Well, until we can gather evidence to point us to how or who, I think there's only one question left: What now?"

Skinner was asking her, she realized, the question not a rhetorical one. In the case of Mulder's physical and mental health, Skinner was leaving her in command.

"I don't know. I mean..." Scully shook her head, looked at her hands, chapped from washing them again and again all that morning long in between cutting away tiny pieces of her old partner. "This, this is so much...it's enormous. Do I take him home? Do I stick him in a halfway house, pay the landlady and visit every Sunday? Do I let him walk away..." She bit her lip and choked back the pain, "...and hope for the best? I don't know. I just... _don't_ know."

Skinner heaved a weary sigh, afraid for the emotional health of one Dana Scully and not just the rediscovered Mulder who was, as far as he could see, fast slipping through the cracks of ever re-establishing a foothold anywhere back in his old life. Skinner felt sorry for both of them.

Scully clipped her forgotten seatbelt in place. "Let's just take him to Mercy...we'll figure something out."

It was 10:55 PM on a Sunday and although Skinner could think of a more appropriate type of institution for Mulder he didn't argue.

Maneuvering the car through sparse traffic and pointing its nose in the right direction, they rode in silence for a while.

"What's going on?" It was a slurred, sleepy voice. Mulder pushed himself to a sitting position behind them.

Scully stiffened. She readied herself for the verbal lashing she figured was coming her way for breaking her promise to him at the clinic.

"You put me out." Mulder spoke quietly, but his voice was a broken hinge. "How could you do that? - put me out - lie?"

"Mulder-" Scully started.

His tone was accusing and pained. "Now you'll tell me it was for my own good. Well, you had no goddamn right deciding for me what was for my own good."

"Mulder-" Skinner was about to explain, in Directors fashion, Scully's decision.

"This is none of your business!" Mulder spat. He was angry. Really angry but said nothing more, settling into the back seat, allowing the silence to return.

There was a momentary truce.

For several minutes they rode that way.

Until Mulder tried his window control and found it didn't work. "Roll down my window."

"There was an inversion today. It smells like hell out there." Skinner informed him.

"I don't care. Just do it please. I'd like open air. I don't want to be closed in."

Scully listened to Mulder's quickened breathing. Skinner disengaged the window locks and Mulder opened his window all the way. He seemed to breath easier after that.

Until Skinner auto-locked all the doors.

Mulder jumped when the little knobby on his door frame dipped down with a click. It was the kind that sat flush with the door-frame and there was no way to pinch it between finger and thumb in order to pop it back up. "Why are you locking the doors?"

"We're in Washington, Mulder." Skinner said, unable to keep a trace of sarcasm and irritation out of his voice. Yeah, they were in Washington, but Skinner also didn't like the idea of a skittish Mulder sitting in his car with his door unlocked. Bad enough he had his window open.

"Open it. Unlock my door." Mulder demanded. He didn't make requests anymore.

"We're almost there." Scully said, twisting in her seat and saw Mulder's chalk white face. He was really scared.

"Almost where? Just unlock it!" Mulder was trying the door handle now, jerking at it like if he did it enough times, the door would miraculously pop open for him.

"What difference does it make?" Skinner made a last effort.

"Do it! Unlock this door, goddamn-it! Open this fucking door or I'll break it!" Mulder was wide-eyed and reefing both rear door handles. He wanted out. Any second, Scully expected him to launch himself out the window and onto the freeway.

"Okay!" Skinner unlocked the doors then did two more things. He took an off-ramp into a deserted business suburb and then, slowed the vehicle right down to a crawl.

When the car slowed enough, Mulder wrenched his door open and jumped out, running like the hunted down a paved alley. The BMG's headlights shone eerily on his retreating form as he quickly disappeared into night shadow.

Skinner had expected it. As well as what occurred next.

Scully also jumped out. "M-U-U-L-D-E-R! Mulder, where are you _going_!?"

She was about to run after him, but Skinner stepped around to the passenger side of the car and took her arm. "Scully. Let him go. We have no right to detain him."

"What? Sir, the man is _sick_! He needs _help_!"

"But he still has the right to refuse that help." Skinner said what he'd wanted to say to her since this whole business started. "Maybe you should face the possibility that Mulder doesn't want our help."

"He doesn't know what he wants, Skinner, he's ill." She stared defiantly. "Mulder phoned _me_! I'm going after him." Scully pulled her arm free and ran down the alley.

"Jesus." Skinner sighed, slammed the passenger door, got into the drivers seat and followed her at what he hoped was, to Mulder, a non-threatening distance.

Skinner drove between buildings, searching with eyes straining into the inadequately lit alleyways until he saw them both. He parked and got out but didn't approach them.

Mulder was sitting on the lowest step of a back entrance to a warehouse and Scully was crouched before him, her hands holding both of his tightly. He was crying. Skinner could see the glisten on his cheeks and hear the murmur of their quietly exchanged words.

Scully clasped his hands for all she was worth. She wanted to hold him but knew he would not allow it. She wanted to fix him - his hurt - all of it, but she was unable. "Mulder. I'm sorry."

He was silently weeping. Scully had never seen him cry so much. In all the years she'd worked with him she'd watched him cry three times.

The first time was when he was convinced his mother was dying and, get himself killed though he almost did trying to save her, he could do nothing to stop it.

The second was when he had failed to unearth his long buried memories of his sister's abduction, even after the radical "treatment" he had undergone which was to allow a Quack shrink drill a hole in his skull. Doc "Tool-Time" would be undertaking no more such operations from the jail cell where Scully had helped put him.

The third and last was that late night Mulder came to her in the days of her cancer and wept at her hospital bedside. She'd awakened briefly to her hand wet with his tears and her mattress trembling from his shaking but had been too weak to comfort him in his display of grief or to even open her eyes and smile so he would see her gratitude and feel better for it.

"Mulder. I'm sorry. I know you're scared to death about what's happened to you. I'm scared too, I'm terrified. But I don't know what to do."

He gently pulled one hand from her grasp and wiped his eyes, trying to calm himself and pull together. He nodded.

"I'm forty-five years old, Scully." He sniffed.

She pulled a tissue from her jacket pocket and handed it to him. He took it and wiped his eyes and nose, not looking at her. "Forty-five years old."

He seemed to think that explained everything.

Scully understood.

He had come back to life only to find himself older. Without a home. Without family, job, purpose or reason for being. That's what he meant.

"That doesn't mean your life is over. You still have me."

That just seemed to make him sadder. "Not for long," he said and looked over to where Skinner was standing by the car. "The boss is waiting."

Scully would broach his cryptic comment later. For now, he needed peace and quiet. And more rest. Hospitals and doctors and more prodding and more tests later. Soon, but not right now.

"Are you going to let us help you or fight us? We'll do it your way, Mulder, if you want. If you want to walk away, you can. If you want our help, then you're going to have to trust us. You're going to have to trust me, as hard as that is, even though I've failed you, even though I went against your wishes."

Mulder nodded and stood up. He was shaky and he leaned on her. Scully was grateful for the physical contact. It felt good just to know he trusted her still, that much. "Let's get you home. Then in a few days, I'm taking you to a hospital."

Mulder nodded vaguely, sagging into a restless sleep almost the minute she got him again into the back seat of the car.

"Take us back home," she said.

Skinner frowned and silently did what she asked. After getting turned around and back onto the freeway, he broached the subject. "You know where we should be taking him, don't you? Right now?"

"Yes," she whispered back.

Skinner dropped his voice right down, following her lead and her worried expression. She did not want Mulder waking up. "He needs to be in a place where he can get the proper help."

"A mental hospital you mean? Absolutely not. If he needs that kind of treatment, he can get it through a regular ward or on an out-patient basis." She swallowed. "And he can stay with me-" Scully looked pointedly at Skinner, "- for as long as he needs to."

"You're biting off more than you can chew, here, Agent Scully. And if you had an ounce of sense where Mulder was concerned, you'd see that I was right. You can't handle this on your own."

"Mulder is going to be fine." She spoke the lie. Mulder had seemed to get it together somewhat back there and she was hanging onto that tiny glimmer of sanity for dear life.

"You ignore common sense when it comes to Mulder. You always have." Skinner offered. He had often admired her loyalty to the man. And on not a few occasions indulged in a bite of jealousy over the close relationship Mulder had built with the smart, pretty agent and doctor. He'd often, in fact, wanted to kick Mulder's ass half-way across Washington for not opening his eyes to what he had standing right before him instead of racing around half- cocked after aliens and monsters.

Now here she was still protecting Mulder. Still taking the risk for no reward other than his continence.

Or was there more between them? Had something more developed prior to Mulder's disappearance that would explain her obsession with the man?

As much as he hated to admit it, very probably there had been. Some kind of intimacy, if not physical, then something that would explain five years of sacrifices made for him. Sacrifices that went far beyond duty, loyalty or even friendship.

In her quiet, private way Scully had grown to love the man, that much was clear.

Mulder, on the other hand, had been transparent. He'd loved her from the beginning.

But that's where it had seemed to end. No other forward steps and none taken in reverse. Either of them.

In Skinner's opinion, Mulder could not be an easy man to love. Brilliant, yes. Loyal, if you suited his particular quest, if you proved yourself, if you opened your soul and displayed your trustworthiness to him on a squeaky-clean platter.

Skinner knew something of the Mulder family. Powerful and rich father. Socializing but prim, distant mother.

A sister.

For dozens of years a sister who existed only in Mulder's memory as a bright, happy girl child which image he kept wrapped in flowered tissue paper somewhere deep down where no-one else was allowed to peek.

Not, Skinner was certain, even Scully.

Skinner also knew of Mulder's upbringing. Knew there had been intellectual encouragement. Had to have been for Mulder to have done so well as to be accepted into Oxford, graduate with honors and be recruited into the F.B.I... quickly shooting to the top of his specialty by becoming the best analyst in the field of Violent Crimes at - how old had he been? - twenty-eight? In any field of law enforcement, that was still a kid.

All the necessary things for sucess had been inculcated into the young Fox but also present had been fists, belts and bruises.

Maybe part of Scully's love for the man had been for the broken soul she perceived beneath the hooded eyes and the arrogant middle finger Mulder'd thrust at the world and all who dwelled there. Maybe she had felt sorry for him.

Maybe underpinning her attraction and sparking feelings for the tall, handsome agent had been pity. And a doctor's desire to heal.

Mulder had become her project.

"He needs peace and quiet. I'm going to have to take some time off work...tomorrow, if he needs it, the hospital." Scully said.

"You're just delaying the inevitable."

She sighed heavily, knowing he was right. "Thank you for helping me with him."

"You're welcome."

"I'll probably need it again."

"You'll have it." Skinner drove in quiet worry.

*

It was 10:00 AM on a Tuesday.

"Get off me! Let go of me you son-of-a-bitches!"

Scully had found Mulder, a ragged, scruffy, thin but otherwise fairly calm and lucid Mulder, early Friday afternoon.

Turn your head away and back and the world changes.

Five days can blanket it in ice. The sun, in darkness.

"You bastards, fucking let go of me! LET ME The FUCK GO!"

Scully felt Earth turn under Sol as it always had for those days. That is, in between the Friday of Mulder's return and Tuesday, her perception of how life was now going to go stayed relatively the same.

But after his dash to freedom from her betrayal at the clinic and each hour thereafter Mulder had sunk deeper into a kind of upright unconsciousness. Even the animation behind his familiarly haunted eyes had slipped away. It had become more and more difficult to get him to speak. He refused food. Rest was the one thing at which he did not balk. Where ever it was he had been, he had certainly learned to appreciate sleep.

But there was no opening now into his hurt like she had found that first day or so. The gaping wound had closed over and his infected soul would surely kill him.

The sun seemed to stop in the sky when that good light in Mulder's eyes died.

Where she was now, in this admittance room, was ice. Death- like cold. They were not at Mercy Memorial. This was another place. A hard, unfeeling place she believed. One that would not treat him with tender compassion as he would be if under her care nor even if he were in a normal hospital room surrounded by normal sickness. Here they would look, frown, take notes, shake their heads. Doctors would ask questions. Terribly painful questions no one should have asked of them.

No one's friend, partner or lover should ever have to endure this place and their kind of questions. Their kind of healing.

Yet they were here. She and Skinner together had brought him here and here is where they would leave him. Scully had spoken to the doctors, signed the papers and the thing was done.

Her awful deed. Her final kiss.

But Mulder's banishment from life would also be her punishment. She would feel the mind chilling walls of his isolation room just as deeply as he would. Of that she was certain.

"Paranoid schizophrenia with delusional psychosis". The very fat admitting doctor with the bad comb-over had explained to her. Resident Director. Two hundred, thirty five patients and twenty-eight staff under him (including maintenance), did not make for a career rich in free time. He was attentive but to the point. Painfully so. A short interview with his newest and most anxious guest and following events had now resulted in that - a brass tacks diagnosis.

Mulder had remained calm and cooperative until it was suggested he stay voluntarily for observation.

Shooting venomous daggers at Scully for she had, after all, brought him to this place, he all but exploded from his seat at the words "convalescence" and "therapy". Then had come violent cursing, a run for the bolted, electronic locked double metal doors leading to outside.

It was her second betrayal if him and he hadn't been eager to volunteer.

Scully might have let him go.

If he hadn't begun pounding on the doors like a wild bull when they refused to open. If he hadn't started screaming and threaten- ing the orderly who tried to stop his assault on the institution's front exit. If Mulder hadn't wadded up a good fist and broken the orderlies's nose.

But another orderly had quickly appeared. And then another. And soon four were trying to hold down the wildcat under them who bit, punched, clawed and screamed.

She was explaining to Skinner the events of the past few hours and the few minutes she'd been allowed alone with Mulder before they came with more of their numbing drugs and white wool blankets to cocoon him in their sterile cloak, the one stenciled with invisible ink that said "sick".

"One minute he is calm, apparently rational,..."

She swallowed at the memory of Mulder being forced into hospital issue white cotton pajamas. Four men, beefy and perspiring had held him down while another jabbed a needle into his boney hip. All five then fighting to get restraints around his long limbs. Then, all the fight gone out of him, Mulder lay in a colorless room on a standard, single roll away.

Nylon straps, the smell of fevered skin and hospital cleaner stayed in her nostrils. It was a hated, familiar odor. Too often in her sojourn as Mulder's partner and friend had she had to wash out that stink of sanitized humanity from her hair and scrub it from her skin. Too many needles had she seen slid beneath his flesh. Too many IV needles snaked into veins and bandages wound to close pink gashes and immobilize shattered bones.

No iodined flesh here, though. Naked soul however. Aching soul. Something deeply poisoned by something else.

"...the next he's violent, terrified." She sighed and told him the last bit. "Now he's withdrawn into himself and won't even speak."

"Except to you."

"Yes, sir. Except to me. At least for a minute he did."

He had yelled and wept. Not spoken.

Skinner stood and found the nearest refuse bin, dumping his untouched coffee. He paced one way, then the other before her.

Skinner was ex-military, she knew. His was a soldier's movement. He was prowling for answers, for a formulation of action. Searching for the enemy. For someone to make pay maybe.

But there was no smoking man to blame, no conspiracy of lies, no funny lights in the sky to investigate. There was just a fallible man who could tell them nothing. Who might never do so.

Scully watched Skinner give up his pacing and sit heavily beside her as she nursed her own cup of boiling machine java. Watery. Almost tasteless.

Mulder had screamed and screamed to be released.

//"You don't know what you're doing to me Scully." Crying. "You have no idea, no idea. I can't believe this. You're killing me. I'll die in here. You can't do this.." Pleading. "Please, please don't leave me like this. Help me, Scully!.." Sobbing. "You don't know, you don't know..."//

//"Know what, Mulder?" At his side, speaking calm words into his ear when she didn't feel calm. Stroking his dry mussed-up hair when she felt like tearing out her own. "Tell me, Mulder. Talk to me. Help me to understand..." Attempting to soothe his pain while wanting to commit murder upon those who had reduced his human and beautiful life to this. "Please don't shut me out. Not now. Not when you need me." Not when I need you. Not when I can't live another day seeing you like this.//

//A keening from his lips only. A mourning of self; a spirit bemoaning fate and terror; helplessness. Hopelessness.//

"Can I drive you home?"

Scully heard Skinner's simple question and nodded. He felt powerless as well.

"He's going to be all right, sir." She looked at him. Would she see the same conviction there? "He will. He has to be."

It was not hopeless. Not for Mulder. She wouldn't let it be.

*

Residence of IAN MOSS AND GARY BELHULTZ:

Gary zipped up his black uniform pants, glancing at his partner seated on the couch. Ian was frowning, an uncommon expression for his usually good natured lover.

"What's eating you, Ian? You've been doing that all evening."

"What?" Ian asked absentmindedly, his face hidden behind a magazine.

"That", Gary's dark haired head nodded in Ian's direction, "that pensive "something's gotta be done" look. Something's up, I can tell."

Ian thrust the magazine aside and lit a cigarette. The smoke curled from his nose and haloed his blonde brush cut in a grey haze. "Just a new patient - well, not _new_ - he's been on my floor for about a month. But he's not under my care."

Gary fed his leather belt through the pant loops and tucked his shirt in. He preferred dressing his six-foot-two frame in the doorway between bedroom and livingroom because the bedroom was all but swallowed up by their massive king size bed and double dressers.

"And?" Gary knew Ian wanted to talk about it because he always lit a smoke when he was worried about something or someone. Never smoked otherwise.

"Poor bastard, that's the "and". Been through some serious shit from what I can tell."

"If he's not your patient, how do you know?"

"I snooped."

Gary smiled to himself. That was Ian all over. Gary took care of people in his way by being a cop. And as a care giver working in one of the saddest forms of institutions ever erected by mankind - Mental -, Ian cared for them in his.

"I mean," Ian went on, "he's all scarred up. Mind-fucked too, they say. Schizo, delusional, paranoid, violent,...all the usual. They just drug the shit out of him and let him sleep in his own drool all day. Heard he nearly killed an orderly up on Six."

"And now that he's on Four?..." Gary slipped on his tie and pin, hat, retrieved his badge off the nearest dresser and checked it for smudges. Clipped it in place above his left breast pocket. Raked fingers through his thinning crown.

"Well, he's so out of it, he's no threat anymore I guess."

"If he's on drugs, then he must be violent. Sounds to me like maybe it's a good thing."

"That's just it,.." Ian frowned again, thinking and smoking.

Here it is, Gary thought. This is the part that's bugging him. Funny thing was, Ian was usually right; about people.

"..I don't think he's violent. Not intentionally. I mean, I'm not saying he isn't screwed up. But it seems to me like he's been dumped there as someone's problem child and they can't be bothered dealing with him anymore. I think he just needs a friend."

"Well, if he's on your floor, he's just found one." Gary had never known anyone who could reach people like Ian. It was uncanny, that ability of his just to talk softly, look at folks in the eye and know what they were feeling. He could reach people and he seemed to do it with no effort what-so-ever. Including himself. It was spooky. "You should have been a psychiatrist."

"Too formal. I like to be on hand when the trouble is actually happening. I like good, vigorous communication. Even if it's yelling. Sometimes people need that. I think this guy needs to yell."

"Where'd this guy come from?"

"I don't know. Rumor is, though, he's ex-F.B.I.," smiling, "cute, too."

"Really?" Gary raised eyebrows at that one. "Hmph." He slipped his weapon into place. "I gotta go. Be home by ten." He meant A.M., not P.M., he had the night shift for two more weeks. His working partner hated them more than he did as it kept him away nights from his new wife. "Cliff hates these."

Ian nodded, eyeing Gary seductively. "Well, night shift or day, I just love to watch you snap on your shield and polish your _gun_."

Gary flushed. "Cut it out." He headed for the door.

"Hey. No kiss?"

Gary shrugged into his issue overcoat. "Are you kidding? If I get within three feet of you, I won't get to work for hours."

"Wait." Ian butted out his smoke. "Do you think you can...'

"I know. Dig up some info on your new guy. I'll see what I can do. Okay?"

"Okay. Thanks."

Gary stood waiting.

"What?"

"The guys name?"

Ian scribbled something on a scrap of paper, crumpled it and tossed it to him. "Sorry."

Gary read the name. "You're kidding."

Ian shook his head.

Gary stuffed the paper into his shirt pocket. "Now, I really gotta go. Later, Sweet."

Ian fell back into his frown as Gary left their apartment. He fixed himself a coffee, letting his mind wander back to the first few days of the new patient's life at Walburg.

It had been quite a stir.

*

WALBURG INSTITUTE, BOSTON, MINN.

"Jesus."

Ian heard Ramsey mutter. "Trouble?"

"Slightly." Ramsey replied. "Did you see the new guy? Crazy as a mother-fucker. Been here three days. Already redecorated the wallpaper in his ward with his dinner a few times. Goddamn mess. I hate the new ones."

"Batting around delicious Walburg food is nothing new here. Even for the staff." Ian quipped. It was true. Regular Hospital food was a fussy palette's paradise by comparison.

Ramsey responded with a grin. He didn't like Ian too much, the kid's _touchy-feely_ way with the patients not suiting his taste, but the fag had a sense of humor at least. "Yeah, but he's been doing it projectile-style today. He sprayed that entire fucking room, I swear to god. They're still moping up in there."

"He's throwing up? Well, maybe he's sick? Did anyone think to call Munroe?" Munroe was the morning resident practitioner. Five to one P.M..

"What do you think?" Ramsey said.

Ian knew it was best to exit the conversation and returned to his own duties. Ramsey was civil most of the time but quickly became irritated at persistence. Unfortunately, he was also the resident gossip. If there was fresh juice to be had, he was the squeeze.

Ian sought out a more promising if less verbal source in the name of Janice. She was a sympathetic, overworked nurse with a divorce in one hand and a sack of children in the other. As far as Ian was concerned, getting a divorce from that abusive prick of a husband had been the best decision of her life. She was a great nurse who treated her patients with all the tenderness she also reserved for her three children. And she heard things.

"What about this new patient?" Was all Ian had to say. Janice glanced up from her nurses station and smiled at him the tiniest bit. They understood one another, both genuinely liking their respective jobs. "The dark haired one?" She scribbled in her reports as she spoke. "Take a stab at the name."

Ian shrugged. "Come on."

"Fox"," she said, enjoying his reaction.

"Weird."

"Weird?" Her eyes widened a bit. "Oh, you haven't seen him yet. Well, if the name fits..."

"I was more interested in why he's been puking up his food. Has Munroe checked on him?"

"Yup. Must be stomach cramps or something. He got a Pepto and a needle and he's sleeping like a baby."

"No flu'?"

"Nope."

"Must have been the sawdust in the meatloaf."

Janice stacked her papers and sighed. She could go home now. "I feel sorry for him. You ought to take a peek in on him, Ian. Keep an eye on this one this aft' for me, okay? Let me know?"

"Sure."

He did, around four in the afternoon; look in on the unconscious patient that is.

"The new one" was by himself in the pink room. A color from bygone days that had claimed it knew everything there was to know about violent patients and how to soothe them. "Fox" was strapped down and didn't twitch a muscle when Ian entered.

The first thing Ian noticed was the metal wristband that denoted allergies to drugs.

No food allergies were indicated.

"Fox" - a weird name for parents to name a newborn because who knows how a kid is going to turn out. But it _did_ fit. He still smelled slightly of vomit though he'd been cleaned. Ian ignored it. He'd smelled worse things by far. All the putrid fluids the human body can produce and in quantities few had the opportunity to see.

He smelled shampoo also. At least someone had taken the time to wash and then comb his hair. But it was dull and dry. Walburg was sadly lacking in humidifiers.

Ian crouched down to take a look at the man's face. A face could tell a lot about a person, even a sleeping one. But here, Ian saw nothing unusual. Only tiredness. Circles under the eyes in a thin face the color of plaster. The guy must have been puking up most everything, he could use a few pounds.

Suddenly the eyes opened and looked into Ian's with perfect lucidity. Hazel irises with black cavern-pupils put there by drugs.

Ian inhaled sharply when the eyes blinked, closed and opened again. No lucidness now. Just holes so deep it made him stagger just to look at them. Filled as they were with old, long hurt that reached it's grasp so far into the past he lost sight of it.

Ian searched for a word to describe what he was seeing and came up empty. His own fingers reach out and touched that face.

It was unique. Angled jaw line joined cheekbone and brow together in one ancient mold that effortlessly swept away all modern examples of male beauty. A face borrowed from the Sistine Chapel ceiling itself. From Solomon's Temple. From the Carpenter. From something so beautiful and so innocent that it was painful to think it being imprisoned here. But it was his eyes that took his breath away. The old, old pain in them. Eyes accustomed to disappointment. Eyes that knew all the worst of life and had come to expect nothing else.

The pain itself belonged here. Here in this modern shrine of wounded people. But not the eyes that contained it. They were as out of place as a peacock in a slaughterhouse. As removed as heaven was from hell.

Misery.

That was the word that had eluded Ian. It described perfectly that first an only wordless communication.

Fox had shut his eyes and did not open them again.

Ian wasn't sure where the idea had come from or why it slipped out. All he did know was that the words were pure truth.

"You don't belong here."

*

No more.

It was enough. She'd loved Fox too. At one time, for him and Dana, she'd even hoped...

But that was history. Except history had a way of repeating itself by resurfacing to wreak all it's mistakes and anguish upon a new generation or just the same old, exhausted one.

"Goddam it!" Margarete Scully caught herself in the unusual act of swearing. It was not that she was so old-fashioned she thought it un-lady like, it was just not her. The words didn't roll off her tongue with the right pizzaz. But the word vocalized her own feelings pretty well.

Just when Dana was getting over it - him - just when she was finally almost herself again and focused on career, self and perhaps finding someone to share all that smarts and beauty with -

- he had come back.

Gone and Dead.

Back and alive.

Ta-Dah.

Margrette switched it in her head: Fox, a friend, not just "he".

Been back for days and, according to Dana with whom she'd just gotten off the phone, in terrible trouble. Fox was "sick". Dana had used the euphemism while speaking stark words with a voice so small it threatened to vanish.

Margrette had heard his name as Dana applied it, not to a missing, presumed dead partner, but a living, breathing real person who was back and ready to launch her daughter into untold new levels of grief and worry, however unintentional.

Margrette had held onto the receiver so tightly, her knuckles turned white, the blood pinched from her fingers.

Dana had said words and Margrette had heard them but she'd also felt an overwhelming urge to scream into the phone: "LEAVE HIM THERE!" when Dana mentioned the name and type of institution where Fox was. But she didn't. She made sympathetic mother noises, helpless against the Fate that twisted them all cruelly in it's steel wires. "Oh, mom. Poor Mulder." Her daughter had cried to her through AT&T.

Margrette didn't want to be supportive of this new horrible twist in their lives. Lives that had returned to blessed averageness. But she'd said all the right things and even offered to come up to be with Dana. Dana had refused though thanking her.

She let fly with every expletive she knew, tearing the phone from the wall and flinging it against her kitchen cupboards. A crash of unwashed plates from breakfast was it's last act as the phone broke them apart in the soapy water.

Cried bitter, angry tears for her daughter. And, despite her new found hatred that was not against Fox Mulder but his untimely reappearance, still some of those tears were shed for him.

Margarete Scully was not an ogre. She had never hated the man as her son Bill had, who'd blamed Fox for every misfortune that had befallen the Scully clan since little sis' head been partnered with him. Margarete knew Dana made her own choices and had always been willing to live with the consequences. Always.

Her feelings about Dana's unusual workmate had run quite the opposite of hatred actually, having grown to care about him. Especially, as it had become quite plain to her over the years that, other than Dana, no one else seemed to. Fox had saved her daughter's life and she had never heard Dana speak of him with anything other than respect even if they were in complete disagreement over a case.

But then Fox had been kidnaped - "abducted" Dana had often corrected.

That was years ago.

Mulder was dead. Eventually that's what they all had thought.

Margarete had feared for the depth of her daughter's grief, not for the tears Dana had shed but the lack of them. It was as though Dana refused to accept it. Denied his disappearance. Refused the possibility of his no longer being alive, hoping he might come back.

Teena Mulder with her expensive lace hanky had stood weeping silently by the memorial stone. A grim Walter Skinner, silent and respectful, had placed one hand on Dana's shoulder as the service ended and people in a fashion proper to the showing of grief slowly migrated to their various vehicles.

For some reason, everyone had looked ashamed. Guilty for not having sent Christmas cards or remembering to say hello when they had passed the deceased in the hallway for all those years.

Dana had shook Assistant Director Skinner's hand and walked quickly to her own car. She had shed not a single tear. Was a no-show at mom's home service of buffet dinner and appropriate dainties.

At her dad's funeral, Dana had cried.

Not at Fox's.

Margarete had cried at the memorial service. For lots of reasons. Mostly for Fox and for her daughter.

For a man who had brought something to her youngest's eyes Margarete hadn't seen before. A newness, a sense of purpose, a ethereal substance that somehow had made Dana seem so much more than she had been.

Fear, too, had come with that new partnership. Fear and danger and then grief like she herself had never experienced.

Yet, in the dawn of that pairing, a light had begun to shine in her daughter's eyes that she couldn't explain. That's what Margarete remembered. "He's intelligent, kind of obsessive. Very cute but a little weird." Had been Dana's summation of her new partner.

Especially in the time prior to Fox's disappearance, had that light increased. Something had happened to them that terrible Summer. The Summer she'd greeted Dana at her front door and saw the tiny, broken capillaries still visible on both cheekbones. Dana had looked tired and ill from her experiences in the Antarctic but underneath a strength had peered out of those blue, blue eyes that negated all the pain.

A woman who was content. A happy woman.

Love had come that Summer.

So Margarete's heart had cried too, when it was decided that Fox was dead.

And when Fox had vanished, so, too, did the light.

Margarete had cried for the atrocities and pain that had come to these two young people. Through no reason that had been made known to her, terrible deeds had been perpetrated against them by people Dana had yet to reveal.

For unrealized hopes and dreams she had cried. For a brief universal moment of peace ripped away one cool September night when the one was snatched and the other left to mourn him. For nothing good left behind for either.

For all of that, Margarete's heart had also wept.

It had not been Fox's fault despite what Bill had said.

Any of it.

Now both had to pay all over again as God watched and did nothing. Her own faith had been on shaky ground ever since that funeral and each day after as she watched her daughter sink into a melancholy that had only just begun to lift.

Fox. Dead. Her daughter. Left dying. It had not been his fault.

Fox was back. He was alive. It was not his fault.

It wasn't Dana's fault or her fault and that was the trouble. It was never anyone's fault.

She supposed she should go and try to visit Fox in the hospital, never mind that Dana had said not to. His mother was dead. No other family to speak of anymore.

Dana's his family, we're his family...

The phone in the living room rang. Joyce calling her about the Craft Fair or because her serving tray was still sitting on her kitchen counter from the last card game. Joyce's pecan tarts had been perfect as usual.

Simple, pleasant things that mocked Margarete's newest, unwelcome source of sorrow.

Margarete balled her fists. Why does it have to be this way?!

*

"I know something about False Memory Syndrome. This could very easily be that." Kurtzman flipped through his appointment book.

Scully wasn't sure what to think about Kurtzman. He had spent many years in his field. His office wall was crowded with degrees. His shelves lined with books, some which he himself had penned.

He would do all that was required of him as Chief of Psychiatry at Walburg Institute. But would he take Mulder under his wing? Would he look beyond the clinical and find the suffering man inside? That's what Scully wanted. It's what she'd hoped to find here. Wasn't sure if she had in Kurtzman.

"You haven't even discussed what happened with him, how can you be sure what it is yet?"

"From what _you've_ told me regarding his memories about his sister, it's in the report you provided. His history of mental and emotional disturbances is all right there. Not a year prior to his disappearance, he was admitted for psychiatric observation upon claiming the ability to see a monster that "hides in the light". You made your own statement in that report regarding his ordeal as a hostage. He was in a confined situation - beaten during the incident if I remember correctly. He claimed that only he and certain individuals already dead possessed the ability to see the monster. His direct superior added a statement that included what he himself witnessed of Fox Mulder's actions. Another Illinois field agent stated that his behavior had been erratic."

"I also submitted an addendum to that report stating my belief that Agent Mulder was in fact sound of mind and that I myself was later able to substantiate certain aspects of his claims."

Kurtzman stopped and looked at the woman sitting across from him. This lady was, also, a doctor, albeit a pathologist. She had seventeen years under her belt working in a variety of positions as an agent of the F.B.I.. This new patient was her former partner and close friend.

Kurtzman wanted to be clear with her.

"Medical aspects, yes, you did. Your report from the hospital room, however, was vague. You saw a "large, dark form"."

She stared back. Looked away.

"I will do my best with him, Doctor Scully. But I can make no predictions about how he will respond to treatment."

"I know." There was no choice anyway. It was Kurtzman or nobody.

Kurtzman adjusted his frameless glasses. "The report stated his memories about his sister's disappearance changed post hypno-regression therapy under Doctor Verber and that later he began to doubt his own recollections about what happened that night. He blamed himself for it, is that correct?" He looked at her.

Scully nodded. Kurtzman seemed to want to review the facts with her. Scully knew what that thick folder said. The picture it painted of a highly intelligent but disturbed man who believed in the paranormal and who blamed aliens for his sisters abduction (and now his own as well). Who was so ridden with guilt over his own perceived inability to act that he could only cope by finding some kind, any kind, of explanation. Even a supernatural one instead of the simplest one; that his sister had been taken by a pedophile and lay in an undiscovered shallow grave to this very day.

Scully knew that's what others saw in Mulder.

She had five more minutes with Kurtzman. Not enough time to explain how that report was wrong. Not enough time to convince him with reasonable words that she also had experienced things and seen things no one else on earth had. No time. No proof either.

Yet, if Mulder was to come back to her, she had to let Kurtzman try and help Mulder. She had to trust him.

"Over the years there were other periods of obsessions." Kurtzman was saying. "There's a whole cauldron of reasons to suspect he's imprinting or rather painting a picture of what happened to him instead of actually remembering the facts for reasons that should become clear, not least of which would be that it was a frightening, painful and a prolonged incarceration."

Kurtzman was trying to be sympathetic and show her he was not an unfeeling guy.

"And from what I've read of his psychological profile and periodic mandated therapy during his F.B.I. years, Mulder exhibits Chronic Victim tendencies. He's a lonely individual?"

Scully had to nod.

"And he made a lifetime work out of studying abduction victims, seeking out proof of the existence of Extraterrestrial's, trials and UFO's...well,..it's just an educated guess at this juncture, but I don't believe he's showing us anything new."

She couldn't help herself. "So you're conclusion is that he's faking all of this? Is that the basis upon which you'll treat him? The polygraph showed no evidence of deceit or intent to deception."

"I am not minimizing his symptoms or that he is in a disturbed state of mind. However, all a polygraph proves is that he believes what he's telling us."

"He has scars, Doctor Kurtzman, from non-self-inflicted wounds, some that might have been fatal had someone - I don't know who - not provided medical aid."

"I didn't say he wasn't held captive, I didn't say he hasn't gone through something horrific. But I think what he believes happened and what actually happened are two different things. With the amnesia he's suffering, a somewhat selective amnesia, that's not a big surprise."

Kurtzman was wrong. The reports were wrong. She had nothing to show him that Mulder was not lying or imprinting or selectively deleting aspects of his eight year absence because they didn't fit the abduction claim. IF he was, it was because they were too painful for him, not because they would expose his abduction claim as false.

Scully wanted to yell: We don't know ANYTHING!

If she were in Kurtzman's shoes, she'd be mouthing the same stuff he was. She'd be placating and polite but firm in her assertations that Mulder was mentally ill and that what he said should not be taken at face value. Her eyebrows would be twitching too at the friend of Mulder sitting across the desk attempting to convince the doc that the man brought in for treatment for mental disturbance was not actually crazy.

She wanted to laugh. She wanted to bend over and laugh at the top of her lungs. He might not have her committed if she did, but he would wonder. Kurtzman would certainly wonder.

"His sister was abducted at eight years of age. In the investigation, was the possibility ever explored that-"

"-Mulder killed her? Yes. And no evidence what-so-ever was found to substantiate it. He was, in fact, so traumatized he was catatonic for four days and suffered complete amnesia about the events of that night for over two decades."

"Catatonic? Amnesia? I see..."

Scully flushed. She'd said those things to support Mulder's complete innocence in the disappearance of his sister, Samantha. Now even she had to concede the possibility at least...-No! "Mulder didn't kill his sister." She knew him too well. Random, unprovoked, violent act? Not Mulder.

But Kurtzman had enough crap in that fucking file to write another book with Mulder as the main character.

"But he did live with the guilt for more than twenty years. Maybe he simply made up his abduction - I'm sorry - the _reasons_ behind his abduction to allay his guilt. Maybe he just couldn't live with it any longer. There's no doubt he was kidnaped and that he's suffered a great deal, but perhaps he feels some sort of atonement now. Perhaps in his mind justice has been satisfied. I'm not saying that is so however."

Reasonable. Logical. Made sense.

Wrong.

If Mulder had been walking the edge of some kind of emotional knife prior to his disappearance, he had showed no sign of it. Which meant nothing, really. She had seen no sign, but they'd both been swamped with caseloads and paperwork and she'd been on loan to Quantico in between. They'd seen little of each other since Antarctica. Could he have murdered Samantha? She refused to believe it. Did Mulder hate himself? Very possibly. Self esteem had never been his watch-word.

None of it, however, answered the question about where he'd been and with who.

Or what.

"How will you treat him?" Scully asked, leading away from the conversation that was disturbing her more than she liked to admit. She didn't know what happened to Mulder. No one did. But he was not insane (at least, he never used to be), and he was not lost.

She just knew.

She had the DNA evidence, whatever it really meant. Unidentified genetic string that had no business being there. //"Fifth and sixth Base Pair. That is, by definition, extraterrestrial."//

"Meds, and a group that meets four times each week. Each patient has been through similar traumas and I've found it has helped them to open up. It's not always easy. Most are long term. I also give private therapy but that's not covered under his insurance plan..."

Kurtzman left it open for her to decide which course for Mulder. She didn't have to choose. There was no money for private counseling. "The group will be fine. I've provided both Bryant and Munroe copies of Mulder's medical report and recent psychological work up." Carefully edited copies. What would any of these professionals think of her discovery of Mulder's out-of-this-world DNA? "If you have any questions or need anything from me or if he asks to see me,...please call me right away."

"Of course."

*

"I'm going back tomorrow afternoon. I have to see him once more before I head back to Washington."

Skinner set his jaw at the other end of the phone line. He was back in Washington and trying to be understanding about his former doctor/agent's misplaced self-blame.

"You had to do it, Scully. Mulder was on the proverbial edge. He might have done anything."

"Well, now he's over the edge if I understand Kurtzman's meaning. They've got him on Thorazine and two or three other drugs. They want to start him right away on group therapy with Bryant because they think the sooner, the better. I suppose I should be delighted with how much good I've done him." Biting sarcasm. "Everything's just peachy."

"What could you have done? Kept him warm and fed? Lock him in his room at night? Be afraid every minute you're away that you might come home and find his brains all over your kitchen floor?" Mulder was insane.

"Gee, don't hold back or anything, Skinner, tell me what you actually think."

Director Skinner strode around his bigger, more expensively decorated office. Leather chairs, marble floors, oak desks...the place was a monument to F.B.I. Old Horses. "I think you should go visit Mulder, see that he's being taken care of and then take the first flight back to Washington and your own life."

Mulder was now a ward of Walburg Mental Institute. He would be in Walburg for a long time. Walburg was in Boston.

It was the best thing for him. It was the best for all concerned. Skinner was certain it was best for Scully.

He heard Scully sigh at the other end of the too distant conversation.

She sounded defeated and angry. "Thank you for helping me get him there." At least she also sounded resigned to facts.

Skinner knew Scully had exhausted every last penny of the Mulder's personal family money to set Mulder up for a year of intense treatment and therapy at Walburg. He wondered if it would be enough. "Don't forget. I'm always here if you need anything." Scully would be returning to Quantico and their paths would again diverge.

"Thanks. That means a lot." Sounding like she meant it, she hung up.

Skinner replaced the receiver. Nothing had been accomplished by his call to her except antagonism. Pouring himself his eighth cup of coffee of the day, he tried to concentrate on work. After twenty minutes of turning pages of the report in front of him and retaining not one word of it he gave up and placed a call to Dulles, arranging a flight out for that afternoon.

It was always best to do these things in person.

*

"I'm here to see Fox Mulder. I was told Doctor Bryant would clear my visit." Scully announced to the Receiving Desk nurse who looked annoyed at the "not-visiting-hours" visitor. "Just a moment." Nurse pressed a button on her multi-functional phone. "A Ms. Scully to see Patient Mulder. You cleared this, she says."

After gathering a reply in the positive, Scully was soon stepping into a private visiting room where Mulder was already waiting. Bryant had him brought down as soon as he heard she was waiting.

A uniformed Orderly locked the door behind her.

Scully cautiously without being too obvious about it took stock of Mulder. He'd only been in the place four days. She'd last seen him two days previous.

He looked normal. Tired. Hair combed and face shaved though. Hospital issue boring whites rumpled. With the exception that he didn't look at her he seemed usual.

"Hi Mulder." Start simply. Don't ask how he is. Don't get excited. Don't judge. Don't find fault, don't place blame, don't try to figure it all out. That's what Bryant had advised. It was standard stuff. She'd read it all in a pamphlet he'd given her. She'd read through it before coming today. She wouldn't hurt him.

"Hey." He answered, looking at her. Not a smile but not tight- lipped either.

She sat opposite his slump. Stiff-backed, she folded her coat neat and square in her lap. "I guess,...I just wanted to see you before I left."

He nodded matter-of-factly. "Standard goodbye visit." He commented.

Scully flushed. Swallowed. Remained calm. It was so hard. "I didn't know what else to do, Mulder. You...were scary." Don't blame. Don't hurt. "This is hard for me too."

"Of course. I frightened you. Well, I'm pretty fucking scared too." He raked his hair with his left hand. His right wrist was encased in plaster of Paris and remained resting on his knee. "I guess you might say frightened, petrified, terrified, shaking in my Nut-House slippers. Do you sense a pattern emerging here, Doctor Scully?" He was being defensive. Combative. Bryant said he would be. It was expected. It was on page twenty-three.

//"_Mulder_ might be antagonistic, huh?" She'd asked Bryant ironically. "Well, I'll keep that in mind."//

"Mulder, look, I'm going to be flying here every second weekend because I want this to work. This isn't a punishment. We're trying to help you..."

"You can help me by getting me out of here right now. Today." He stared at her and for a second or two he looked just like Agent Fox Mulder of the F.B.I. and not a proclaimed abductee who had two days before tried to kill another man and then cripple his own arm by slamming it again and again into a locked, metal door.

"I can't. No matter how much you hate me for this, I can't. I won't let you destroy yourself." Fuck the Manual. "I won't let you hate yourself for something you couldn't prevent or change or...escape from."

Mulder didn't answer and, figuring the conversation was done, Scully rose. Slipping her arms through the coat sleeves, she gathered her good intentions and reached down to take her briefcase.

Mulder had his face buried in both hands, the right one awkwardly because of the cast. His shoulders shook. His whole body shook.

God, she wanted to run away from this; the whole responsibility of it. If she didn't love him, she would have.

But instead she squatted before his sharp knees, he was still so thin, taking his hands in hers. "I wish I could make this better. I wish I could make it all go away, everything, these last eight years, all of it." His face screwed up tight from the force of his spilling pain, it was always so hard to watch him cry. She had never gotten used to it.

"Please don't leave Scully."

Shit. That was the last thing she wanted to hear. It was the hardest request to refuse. "I have to Mulder. You know I have to. I have a job, I can't ignore it forever." And there are doctors bills to pay.

"Please don't leave me in here. Bars on the windows, fucking padding on the walls of my "room". I'm wearing white pajamas for Christ's sake. I sleep on a..a..m-mat!"

Humiliating. "That's only temporary, Mulder. When you stop being a danger to yourself and others they'll move you to a regular ward. You almost killed that man - you choked him."

"Because I knew I was being locked in."

"Would you have killed him?"

He stared at her. "To get out? Yes."

"That's why there are bars on your windows and padding on your walls. Look at your wrist, Mulder."

He sighed deeply. Bone-weary resignation. "I didn't ask for much, Scully. Just some time. That's all I wanted. It's what I need. I'm forty-five years old."

Forty-five and being fitted for a straight-jacket. Who wouldn't be terrified? "I wish it could be different-" Mulder needed a controlled environment, where he could feel safe.

"-Scully. Don't you get it?" The tears came slow and silent and without any secondary signs of distress. He was calm but not okay. "I'll die in here."

"No, you won't." It was her doctor's voice. Assured, rational. Controlled, calm and convincing. Her best trick whenever Mulder had appeared to be teetering on the edge of too far "over there".

He laughed but not because he thought it funny. It was a "You know dick-all" laugh. "Yes, I will."

Scully looked at the scuffed, linoleum floor, yellow from years of old wax, the grainy walls were in need of painting. She'd done the best she could. The last of his assets had been sold. His things which she had kept in storage all those years, his car, his bank accounts. The Mulder Summer house on Rode Island - enough to pay for one year's worth of intense psychological and medicinal therapy at Walburg. She prayed to God it was enough.

I'll come visit every day, she had wanted to say but it would have been a self-comforting lie. Every second weekend was about all she would be able to manage. As long as work didn't interfere.

"Some of these injuries could have been self-inflicted." Doctor Bryant had said after reading the edited information she'd provided, leaving out the blood work-up and what they suspected of his DNA.

Self-inflicted. That had occurred to her of course. It was one of a whole range of possibilities she'd thought of. One in particular she didn't like to think about was that Mulder had made no attempt to contact her or anyone for the very reason that he hadn't wanted to. That he'd been kidnaped - abducted, taken, whatever - was clear. But by who was not. And if it had been by your average human, earth- bound psycho, it was possible that somewhere along the way Mulder had escaped and then just not come home. He might really have gone crazy after that, some of the cuttings and the wounds done by his own hand. The lack of communication with hearth and home perhaps because of fear or shame. When one takes up a knife and separates one's own skin and watches as one's own blood flows - well, a difficult thing for anyone to own up to.

But people get lonely, hungry, cold and tired. So eventually, he'd come home and guess what? Abduction. Aliens did this to me, Scully, I was taken away. I've been held captive on another planet for eight years. They're the ones who cut me.

Of course these things had occurred to her. She'd rejected them. Some of the wounds had been deep and impossible for him to have done himself. Especially the right shoulder wound. Very deep. Arteries had been severed, a fatal wound that would have pumped blood out in quarts. Whoever had delivered that blow had wanted to see him die. Yet Mulder was here and still breathing so help must have gotten to him somehow.

Had he caused the other injuries though?

Believing Mulder had done all this to himself would mean eight years of her own life had been kidnaped as well. She'd hung on, thinking as they all had that he had been taken and kept away against his will. So she'd waited and hoped for most of those years. Tough but she'd done it.

Believe that he had been taken, escaped and then stayed away willingly would mean those years had been wasted on a falsehood. That was so much worse.

Scully had rejected Bryant's words. For many reasons. Some because she wanted to believe Mulder was telling the truth. Others, known only to her.

Mulder was home. Maybe he was fighting for life. Whatever the truth was they would find out or they wouldn't.

He had good doctors. Munroe, general practitioner. Bryant, therapist. Kurtzman, shrink.

The room was chilly. Walburg reminded her of herself and of Mulder. Worn out, tired but still functioning. She would hold onto that.

He was mute, beyond hearing. Trying to scare her?, she wondered. Manipulate her into removing him from this place and taking him home where he just might lose himself one day and air-condition his skull with a bullet.

She rose. "Mulder. Take your meds, go to your therapy, talk to Bryant and Kurtzman. I'll see you in two weeks. You are not going to die."

Scully knocked on the secured door. The orderly appeared and let her out, relocking the door by turning a key from his collection on a ring the size of a hula-hoop. Scully chanced a look back at Mulder through the wired-meshed window.

Mulder was sitting very still, crying. He looked skinny and white and sick but he was not shaking anymore.

*

Mulder was returned to his room and he went immediately to the tiny, thick-glass window, his only view of outside. The forbidden world.

He wanted to see her.

She was so tiny against the enormous trees that hadn't yet shed their leaves. A faint dusting of snow softened the late September landscape. The beauty of the grounds and the parking lot hid the ugliness of inside.

Her coat fell around her knees, touching her, tickling his senses. Her soft, pretty hair the color of autumn leaves moved under the fingers of the wind.

Someone was walking up to her. A man. She turned and walked over to meet him. Someone she knew.

Mulder squinted. They stood by her car. She spoke to him. They briefly embraced.

Mulder knew the man too. He stepped back from the window and curled himself up on the thin mattress, shaking in terror.

*

"How come you're here?"

Skinner answered unhesitatingly. "Because I need to speak to you. Away from work."

"Well, you can buy me some dinner if you like. I haven't eaten all day. I'm staying at the Four Seasons." Scully's face was unreadable.

Skinner knew the hotel. It was comfortable, had good food and good service. No Hotel 8's when she was using her own money.

Skinner wasn't surprised. She was a self-made woman who liked soft beds and room service and decent linen. Should have always had them. Deserved them. During the years she and Mulder had worked under his supervision, he knew Scully had done her best to keep expenses under control. Percentages for comfort had been kept low to cover her partner's unexpected, unauthorized, often illegal and expensive methods of investigation. Carefully typed expense reports worded to hide her partner's flagrant misuse of Bureau time and funds.

All those years chasing after his quests, sleeping in dumpy motels, eating greasy food...

..All for Mulder.

"Meet you in the lobby," he said, walking to his own car. He hadn't glanced up the high building with the bars on the windows.

Mulder was in there. Skinner's heart twinged for what the man must be going through. He felt sorry for Mulder, he'd been a good agent. But what the hell could he do for him? Mulder had good doctors and he would get better.

Probably.

*

Scully chewed her food without enthusiasm. Barely noticing what she was eating or even that she was having dinner with Walter Skinner, her mind kept turning to Mulder Back There.

"How is he?" Skinner asked since that seemed to be the topic of the decade.

"Bad," she said. She placed her fork, tines pointed down, on the plate. Skinner noticed she'd eaten about half of her scallops and only a few shrimp.

"He's getting the help he needs. There's nothing more you can do."

"I know."

Skinner had not expected her to agree. "When are you com...going back to work?"

"Tomorrow." Scully realized she was being unnecessarily short and sat back, stretching tense back muscles. When was the last time her thoughts hadn't been on someone besides herself? She looked at her former boss. Skinner seemed on edge. Because of me. Suddenly, she felt glad he was there. More than glad, grateful because she needed someone strong to look at. She needed direction and most of all a friend who understood. "Thank you."

Skinner looked up from where he'd been paying attention to his food. "For what?"

She took his hand and squeezed it briefly in her own. "For everything. For coming here, for being with me."

"You sounded like you could use a friend."

Sleep called. Scully found herself rising from the table and gathering up her coat. Skinner settled the dinner bill with a credit card.

He walked her to her room. Scully turned and faced him without opening her door. "About Mulder..." she started then paused. Took her electronic key and slid it in the little slot. "Come inside for a minute?"

Skinner nodded.

Skinner watched her, all the tiny movements as she hung up her coat, placed her briefcase on the dresser. Sitting on the bed. Removing her shoes by placing the toe of one foot on the heel of the other and pushing. Each dropped with a soft thud in time to his suddenly loudly beating heart. It was warm in the room and he shrugged off his own coat. "What is it Scully?" he asked to distract himself from his thoughts that had quickly turned down a dangerous road. One where existed only this moment in time, Scully and himself.

"I told you about the results from the tests we did," she said and continued when he nodded. "There was something else I didn't tell you. Something very strange."

"Stranger than the DNA "fingerprint"?" Strange was relative where Mulder was concerned, Skinner thought but didn't say. Scully nodded.

"Strange how?"

"When astronauts spend enough time in a zero gravity environment, they lose muscle and bone mass. The degree of loss depends upon the length of time spent on a space station what they ingest, the amount of exercise..."

"Mulder's lost muscle and bone mass? Is that what you're saying, that you think that's proof he's been in outer space? Doesn't the same happen to people who are in comas, patients who spend months or years immobile?"

Sighing, "Yes, but that's not what I'm saying."

Whoops. Shut-up, Walter, and let her finish.

"We ran the test twice to be certain. Mulder's muscle and bone mass, their density in other words has not diminished. It's increased."

He knew he sounded like a prick. "Increased? So he got lots of calcium and exercise wherever it was he was."

"Skinner. It has increased by a factor of fifty-two percent."

"I take it that's unusual. What caused it?"

"Unusual? It's unheard of. In fact, it's impossible."

"What exactly are you saying, Scully?"

"I checked my findings with a sympathetic friend whom I now owe about a hundred dinners for his work sans questions - God help me! - he specializes in unusual and rare diseases. We wanted to see if we could find one to account for this bizarre physical evidence and other than the unclassifiable genetic fingerprint, we came up empty. So unless this "fingerprint" has somehow altered Mulder's DNA and caused his muscle and bone mass to increase in density to an impossible degree, there is only one explanation."

"I'm almost afraid to ask-"

"Time spent in a high gravity environment would account for it. We're talking significant time. Years. And unless Mulder was kept in a Barnum and Baily's Gravitron, I can only think of one way that could happen."

"You really think it's plausible Mulder spent the last eight years - where? - on _Vulcan_? Scully..."

"Don't joke, Skinner. This friend is a respected astro-physicist as well as a medical doctor. He is an expert on rare disorders, skin and bone diseases. Unusual congenital and non-congenital mutations. There's no doubting the findings. As for their improbability, I don't know how to explain what we've found. I'm simply telling you this because I don't want Mulder just written off as crazy in everyone's mind or his claims dismissed out of hand."

"I haven't."

"I can see it in your eyes and by what you've been saying."

That pissed him off. "You think I like seeing Mulder where he is? Mulder was one of the best agents I've ever had the pleasure of working with. He was a colleague and friend."

"Then stop talking about him in the past tense."

Another whoops. "I'm not casting him off as a lost cause, Scully. But I'm not hiding behind findings; so-called proof which is almost always debatable. Mulder is in-..sick. Now I am sorry about that but at least I have the guts to face it. To say it."

"No, he's n-not...What he is saying, about his abduction, is just as plausible as any other explanation. His physical state is suppose to be impossible yet it exists. It's b-been vuh-verified."

Skinner kicked himself as Scully's face scrunched up and she dissolved into tears. He may as well have laughed in her face and told her to quit with all the nonsense.

He went to her and she didn't reject his hug. Buried her face in his chest and let all the stored away sorrow out for a few minutes. His shirt soon soaked through, while his arms stayed wrapped around her, feeling so right.

He liked how well Scully fit against him. She wasn't the only one who'd been denying things. "Scully, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, but it seems to me like you're not so interested in believing it as trying to convince me to."

She sniffed and whispered, too hoarse to speak properly. "You know the worst part? You're right."

He couldn't help himself. He hugged her closer. That Scully didn't stiffen or try and pull away thrilled him. How long had he been wanting to do just this? And here it was happening and she was not pulling back.

"What's happening?" Not a scared question, it was and Skinner fell into the embrace. There was no puzzlement or discomfort in her tone, just questioning. Where was this going to go? Scully wanted to know. So did he though he was pretty sure he knew. Hoped for it for a long time and since yesterday craved it like a man starved. Skinner thought of things to say but feared they might be the words that would cause them both come up for air, bringing this moment to an end.

"I guess," he finally spoke, "something I've wanted to do for a long time. If you prefer, I'll stop."

Though not stepping back she did raise her head to look up at him. He was so tall. "I don't know. I don't know what to think anymore. Or what to believe or even feel."

He moved his mouth down to hover above - "You question yourself too much." - and then touch hers.

*

Scully showered off the smell of Walter Skinner.

I almost slept with Walter Skinner, she repeated to herself while the spray beat on her face and neck. Skinner and I almost had sex.

It had been quite an eventful day.

Scully shampooed her hair and scrubbed herself clean. She hadn't disliked the smell of Skinner, or the look of the man or his feel. A decidedly attractive man in mind as well as physique.

It was the guilt sweating from her she wanted to be rid of. The shame of her own need.

It had been close.

The kiss had turned deep and long and soon there was tongue and caresses, a fumbling with buttons, zippers and clothing discarded. Soon bed and skin on skin and more kissing. Groping of hard flesh and soft folds. Moans and sighs of physical pleasures long denied for each.

Walter was very attractive and he was there, convenient and wanted it as much as she did. She was so lonely she thought she might vanish into mist if she had stayed that way one more moment.

So she'd removed her garments as swiftly as he had, sought his mouth as eagerly, imagined his engorged penetration with vivid mental images that made her slick in seconds.

And then another vision erupted in her mind, of Mulder drugged into a stupor, alone in a dark, padded room...

God's biggest finger was the thrusting middle one and it had spoken to her: Guilt!

"Fuck." Scully had said, stopping and rolling off that hard, masculine body. She'd managed only a fraction more gumption necessary to do it than to stay and ride that gorgeous cock until millennium.

Skinner had looked, to say the least, disappointed.

"What's wrong?" he asked, sitting up, his member not relaxing in the least at the sight of her bending over to retrieve her clothes where they'd been dumped not ten minutes ago. Full view of round, golden bottom and pink, ripe pussy was no way to put the cap on a date with a blue-balled man.

"What isn't?" she answered and slipped on her panties, slacks and blouse, not bothering with her bra.

At his puzzled and crestfallen face, she added. "Look, Walter. This has nothing to do with you."

"Like hell. I was here if memory serves."

"I mean, the fact that I can't do this isn't because of anything you did or didn't do. This is me. It's all me."

"You mean Mulder."

"If I do, it's my business. I can't do this to him, no matter how much I want to. No matter how much I need it and God knows I need it."

That made him feel only the slightest bit better. "Maybe you should occasionally think of yourself first. It's good for the ego."

"What I'm thinking of is that I just happen to love him. And before I do any more damage to that, I have to figure out if that's going to be enough, for either of us."

Skinner sat up, his cock growing flaccid but the ache was still there. His want for her undiminished.

Abruptly changing the subject, "I'm going to order room service. I think I'm going to need several glasses of wine to get to sleep tonight. Do you want anything?" she asked.

Okay. Discussion over. Case closed. "Yeah, a bucket of ice-water."

He stood and dressed himself. He'd be sleeping in his own room. At her sad face, he relented. "I'm sorry, that was a cheap shot."

"Yes it was. I've been a tease. I'm completely screwed up at this moment and you're having to pay."

He stepped toward her and she didn't move. Kissing her mouth once, chastely, "I'm still here if you need anything, even an ear. Just don't be too long making your decision, Scully. Waiting isn't easy for anyone."

He'd left at the same time room service brought in the bottle of extremely dry Red she'd ordered and after sucking back half the bottle, she showered. The wine almost made her change her mind and go seek out that listening ear and ready and waiting penis. It wasn't as if her desire for some serious sex had waned.

God's fucking finger, however, stopped her.

*

"Was anything found at the house?"

Skinner shook his head. "No. Nothing out of the ordinary. The clothes he must have walked into the city wearing we found dumped in an upstairs bedroom. I had them trace evidenced, nothing unusual, just all American dirt. Other than that, we found a house full of his mother's furniture and about twenty pounds of junk mail."

He'd also found a "SOLD" decal pasted over the "For Sale" sign on the front lawn. From the sale had come money needed for Mulder's therapy. Her former partner had granted Scully power of attorney years ago in the event of his death or incapacitation and now that he'd been diagnosed the latter, it was plain that Scully had taken complete charge of Project Mulder.

Scully stood just off to the side of the boarding line at Boston International. Skinner had arranged a later flight for himself. She understood. What would it look like? Boss and underling together in Boston, meeting together, dinner at a hotel, flying home together... Just enough to feed the Bureau rumor mill which had nothing to chew of late and was smacking to grind up a reputation or two.

"Spooky's-back-and-he's-crazy" had already dried up.

"Thank-you. It was a long shot."

Skinner stepped in and gave her a hug before she could protest or sidestep. She found his bulk comforting. "I'll see you in D.C., Scully. Don't forget what I said."

She couldn't raise her eyes to look directly at him, choosing to bend down and gather her luggage instead. She nodded.

Moving through the crowd across the walkway, her nerves returned to a somewhat even keel. She hadn't looked at Skinner's eyes or the question she knew that would have been present in them. Not because she would have had trouble making her mouth say no to his invitation.

It was because her eyes would have said yes.

She loved Mulder so Skinner and she were a No. She respected Skinner as a colleague. Liked him as a friend.

But she was tired too. And the thought of giving in, of saying to hell with all the if's, possibly's and hopefully's, was tempting. You did almost fuck the man, Doctor.

Somewhere inside something tired still wanted the Yes.

*

Scully saw him every two weeks but as far as she could see, there was no improvement. Too early to expect visible change, she told herself. But no change she would have welcomed over worse.

"Mulder?" She'd brought him a Hundred-Thousand-Dollar bar. He took it from her without acknowledgment.

They sat in the public ward T.V. room. Lots of space and comfortable chairs. The television hung on the wall behind protective wire screen, the controls and viewing choices under the thumb of the nurses.

Saturday morning cartoons. She'd flown in the night before, dreading this visit.

Kurtzman had informed her of Mulder's outbursts, his violent attempts to escape, his attacks on the orderlies. He never attacked other patients.

Scully saw Mulder's dilated pupils and knew they had him on something powerful now. No more escape attempts or violence. He didn't speak to her anymore either or to the doctors.

No more Mulder.

Scully sat beside him but not touching on a worn chesterfield and tried to think of something to talk about. Something where there would occur no awkward silences in those places where he was suppose to respond. Could think of nothing except, "My mom says hi." Pathetic.

Scully looked over the other room's occupants. Card playing on the table in the corner. Crafts on another. A few blankly watching a show about sentient robots.

And then there was Mulder who did nothing.

"I'm going to keep coming here, Mulder. I don't care if you hate me. I don't care if you won't talk to me. I don't care if it takes until we're old and grey. I don't care what I have to do to get you to speak to me. Or to Kurtzman. You can't give up, not now, not after surviving this long. You can't let the bastards who did this to you win."

Mulder finished the bar and balled the wrapper. He stretched out his hand and gave it to her. She took it, puzzled. "I donn wannndie 'ere." Soooooo quiet. Words condensed but syllables stretched until near unintelligibility.

Scully jerked and looked at him and he was looking back. Through all that haze of drugs and the mind-killers who'd caused this and held him in their loveless hands still, his eyes had sought for and found her and she recognized it was indeed him. "But I cannn.." He took a great, shuddering breath, "I cann'ssscape."

Scully was speechless for only an instant. She wanted to run and get Kurtzman or one of the other doctors but was afraid to sever this, whatever small connection, this was.

God. Mulder was wiggling a finger from that dead place and it was her he was trying to signal.

"We'll help you, the doctors - me! - I'll help you, Mulder. Don't let go. Please don't let go. I love you." Quickly said less she lose him to the dark.

He looked at her as if the words were foreign, the very concept itself just a visitor from another world. Did it never cross his mind that I might love him?, she wondered.

A thought seized her. She had never actually said such to him but for the meeting at the Greyhound station. That wonderful and horrible day. What of it did he even recall now?

She wanted to tell him more, explain to him how much he meant to her.

But the body seated on the couch with her was once again no longer occupied.

*

When the next shift rotations went into effect, Ian made sure his and Janice's start-time/quit-time overlapped. It meant he would see that much less of Gary for the next two months but he had the feeling it was important that he be there to keep an eye on Fox during the evenings.

Janice's concern over the troublesome patient had grown and she fed that concern to Ian through looks and the occasional crucial conversations they managed to grab whenever their coffee breaks coincided.

"He hardly eats and throws up most of it. Munroe just keeps feeding him antacids and gravol. I think he prefers ordering the gravol 'cause it slows Fox down."

"What's he been doing?"

"Fox? Nothing. I mean, no fights or anything, it's just the throwing up and hysterics when anyone touches him. Problem is, to clean him up, he has to be touched, y'know? To give a shot, even meds...but those meds keep him pretty out of it most of the time."

"Why the hell hasn't Munroe ordered some Upper GI's or something on him to figure out what the hell is wrong?"

"He did and you should have seen that battle. They had to pump the barium shit in through a tube. He had to be tied down in each position for the slides. It took forever."

Ian could picture it. Fox was sick and weak but he was a fighter. "Did they find out anything though?"

"Oh, yeah, he has a hiatus hernia. Nothing major, millions of people have them and it accounts for the vomiting I guess..."

"Fucking Munroe is a prick. Maybe Fox really can't stomach the food. Jesus, he might have allergies to preservatives or something."

"Hmm, anyway, our little Fox has tricks." Janice raised one eyebrow and waited.

"Tricks?"

"He has a stash."

"What?"

"A stash of goodies. Food. Someone's been sneaking him in sweets. Chocolate mostly. And nougat. Barb brought me a whole wad of wrappers he'd shoved in the bedsprings."

"Caffeine. Sugar. Stimulants. Unhealthy shit. Who'd be doing that? He only ever gets one visitor and she'd never,..she's a doctor or something so no way in hell. One of the staff?"

"I dunno." Janice shrugged. "And nobody knows where the hell he's hiding it. They keep tossing the wards."

"Is he at least eating his oatmeal?"

"Mnn-hum. That and soup. Whenever they make him eat anything else, either funnel or pump, he barfs!"

"Poor son of a bitch. No wonder he keeps trying to run." Every few days or so, one staff member or another would catch Fox trying to pick the lock of the ward doors or his room (if he was confined in solitary), or trying to smash through the wire- meshed bathroom windows. No one knew how he was managing to sneak around unnoticed. Ian knew. The staff didn't watch the patients nearly so closely as they claimed to. Many hated the work and put out the minimum. Besides Fox had been FBI, hadn't he? He'd probably learned to be sneaky. F.B.I.'d wrote the book on Sneaky.

"Well it's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live here." Janice quipped and rose from her seat in the small cafeteria.

"Wait. When are you off? Bring me up to date for today."

"Tell you on the way."

After he dutifully had consumed his stew (he did sometimes cooperate. The dead were experts on knowing when to give in), it was time for meds and he palmed them. This time it worked. He could spend the evening looking at and actually seeing the white layer of frost that had come that morning and stayed. It made the life outside look strangely alive while stilling it.

Unlike him, beautiful. Like him, dead. He, living or not, could still appreciate pretty things.

"Hey, Mulder." A voice dropped from above him and, along with it, something fell in his lap. He was cross-legged in the corner of the main hall. A sitting area where patients came to sit or watch T.V.. The window sill was just low enough to afford a view of outside if he craned his neck.

He fingered the Butterfinger as Ross, a frequent bearer of such gifts, walked quickly away.

Alms.

It was as much association with a corpse as anyone would want, he supposed. As before he didn't question the gift and tucked it under his shirt. Such secret repasts hurt less than the kitchen's offerings and tasted better besides.

Joseph, a fellow patient, resented the little favors Fox was receiving from the enemy and made it his business - not to snitch because snitching to the staff was like one chicken complaining about another chicken to the weasel - but to make Fox's life miserable at every opportunity.

Joseph choose his left-over grape juice this time and pitched the half-full plastic cup at Fox's head. It hurt, a little, but the mess was everywhere and soon Ross was back and escorting him to the showers to clean up while someone went to lecture Joseph about playing nice.

Eyes at his back, Fox washed up and was given clean pajamas, which was all he was ever allowed to wear. His repeated escape attempts had behooved the staff to forbid him anything resembling street wear. Pajamas were noticeable on the outside.

It didn't stop him from trying though.

That night he got as far as the back fence. He had managed to steal a small pair of sewing scissors from a new and not too bright nursing student, picking the locks on three sets of doors including the chains on the rarely used rear exit before the dozing night watchman noticed him on the monitors and punched the claxon.

*

"It's the norm for him." Ramsey was referring to the patient who'd been dragged away to the infirmary. Besides his cast, Fox had a new bandage on his hand and Ramsey had heard that an orderly, Ross, was sporting butterflies on his temple, though the injury was minor. Two staff now tagged courtesy of their most destructive patient.

"Oh. He always like that?" The student asked, a new nursing assistant. It was her first week. She was in the Cage with Ramsey, looking over the front desk.

"Mostly." Fox had tried to escape the night before and been caught, so rebelliously had refused his meds that morning. It was needle time. And tube time too because the recalcitrant patient had also refused his breakfast.

"I wish they'd just give him everything through a needle. His screaming just gets all the others going. What are you looking for?"

"My scissors. I heard he used to be F.B.I., maybe it got to be too tough. I wonder what happened."

"Who cares what happened to a suit. Rich dad - some government cheese. Old money. Just try working in a place like this for twenty years. _This_ is tough." To Ramsey, rich folks in expensive suits were the enemy. "As far as I'm concerned, he belongs right here in Club Fucked."

The little student nurse stole a peek into the infirmary. The dark haired patient was strapped down and though he was bucking like a bronco at his restraints, the drugs were already taking him down.

"Maybe he just doesn't like the rules."

Ian crouched down beside the table where Fox was, once again, drugged with a gallon of Thorazine. They'd shot him full of enough of the shit, Ian figured, to fell an elephant. It was only Fox's second month.

He studied the man and wondered. Fox was curled up his side, no need for straps when muscles were sludge and wouldn't obey. His eyes were open but didn't look at Ian at all. Looked passed him or through him, drugs blurring reality into something manageable.

Ian spoke softly. He didn't want to startle him or alert any curious staff who might be wandering passed Isolation's slightly ajar door.

"I don't know what all hell you've been through to bring you here, but we've got to get you better."

Ian touched the man's face. It was cool and pale. The drug.

"I see that lady who comes to visit, the one you refuse to speak to. I think she cares and I think she wants you to come home." Ian fingered the man's dry, wispy hair. It looked like someone had cut it with a weed-eater. The staff barber must have had an off day.

Whether his gesture of kindness made any impact, Ian couldn't tell. Fox's eyes remained empty. "If I wasn't so insanely crazy about Gary, I'd go for you myself, you seem about my type. They say you're here because you're insane. Violent too. I don't know why but I don't believe that. There's just something about you."

He withdrew his hand, grabbing a blanket bunched around Fox's feet. "I think you need to get better, Fox, and go home. She's been here every two weeks like clockwork. She must care about you a lot to keep coming."

Ian stood and checked him over, being careful of Fox's thin wrist where the cast used to be and where was now a loose square of gauze. The flesh of that hand was pebbled and flaky. Arranging the blanket around the staring mummy, he said "At least think about it."

*

Someone was talking. If it was to him, it wasn't loud enough for him to hear through the demons so it was ignored.

They'd bandaged his hand today (the scissors had turned traitor and jabbed back at him) and would force solids down his gullet later, but because he was dead to them, they could not know that it hurt to eat.

He looked alive.

Very well.

But upon his wakening, that day at the roadside where the moon had hung in the sky and the breeze blew, had come his second death.

Had he known that it had been a false moon, painted stars and cardboard trees...

He'd come to death and walked like a deadman; no where in particular but, where ever that was, yet un-alive.

Presently: bars, drugs, straps.

The lake of fire had burned in her eyes at his pronounced state.

He was made of sand, his insides molten, is heart stretched as tight and thin as a fiber of glass.

She was scared of him. She had every right. He'd seen his reflection in her fear that morning. The bath water had rinsed his skin but a man was more on the inside than the outside and if soap and a scrub brush were instruments of faith or healing, they had failed him. He had not been cleansed.

The taint was simply easier to see now.

Her mirror had exposed him; unreceptive.

She tried to save him the next day again, with food and soft cushions. She'd even laundered his clothing. He knew it had been a hopeless attempt but he wanted to please her at least and had eaten the food and answered the questions.

And the next ones and the next. Salvation through saliva.

Finally gotten angry and tired. Sick of all of it when they decided that doctors could help him, change what happened, cure the rot, flight him with wings to a resurrection.

Virgins could not know what it was like to have a demon eat your soul in teeny bits.

They would never know what it is to be released only to find that you ought to have stayed in Hell because at least there you fit in.

He'd walked on home soil, smelled the air, saw her beauty and unmarred heart. Unobtainable things now. Things to be admired but never reached for. Perfections with which he had no connection. To understand that had freed him.

With that truth his soul had shrunk to the size of a molecule, exited his flesh and taken up residence elsewhere.

If still they wanted to believe he was undead and was not decomposing before them...

...So be it.

But speak? Even to fool himself or them into believing that he was alive and clean enough to touch? That was out of the question.

A person could make a study of crazy and not be destroyed as long as you were on the right side of the mirror. But step out and look back and you might see what they saw...

Talk about being driven insane.

Liberating in a way, being dead. At least expectations were minimal.

Hands touched him. Gently. A tease. It was torture to be reminded of nice things and feelings but he was too weak to slap it away or even get mad.

It hurt to be tempted to swing that way and allow the maybe in again. He'd given up on maybe.

Dead people don't hope for anything.

The hand kept it's touching and the voice kept up it's noises to drive him mad. If both became tainted with him, he couldn't help it.

Don't they know I can drain life?

"You're wasting your time." He wanted to tell Nice Voice. His lips moved but he wasn't sure if any words escaped.

Nice Voice spoke through the years of other deafening screams: "What? What, Fox?"

But Fox wanted to sleep and forget there was such as thing as a world where worthy words could be found or any truth other than what the Thorazine daily preached.

The next day, Fox was up and walking around the ward with some of the other patients.

This was where he, they all, came to pass the time in between meals (where it was announced over the loudspeaker for those enough in the here and now to comprehend and obey. Those who were not were escorted), meds (where one waited in line at the dispensing window), washroom privileges (at specific times and only three patients allowed at a time with two escorts), and to just wait out the day until bedtime and glorious unconsciousness.

Fox didn't mind the waiting times so much. None of the patients bothered him and he didn't bother them.

"Cards?" Joseph (suicidal schizophrenic) was asking him, the grape-juice toss from two days previous forgotten. Joseph loved card playing. Thin, gray haired, he'd been in one institution after another since he was thirty. He also hated everyone but was a crackerjack card player as long as you didn't point out that he was cheating. Fox didn't mind and it helped pass the day as well as anything else.

Bradley (delusional psychotic "with violent acting out"), on the other hand, like to disrupt the peace and harmony as often as possible. He took great pleasure in producing shock effect by masturbating in the corridors, especially when there were visiting doctors or, better yet, new nurses.

Martin (manic depressive), a motor mouth who bitched and moaned like a politician when he was on a "high", about his hemorrhoids in particular, and who sat in the corner and sulked a lot when he was on a "low".

Not everyone moved about with free will. Thomas had been in a terrible MVA, and had left a respectable portion of his brain on the shoulder of Highway 23. How he had survived was anyone's guess and now he had a plate in his head, was blind in one eye and tended to ignore everything that went on to his left. He talked but only in gibberish and needed help with everything, from defecating to eating. He spent the majority of his days wandering around the ward, making right turns.

Fox (whom few of the staff liked and who didn't like them, who spent much of his day sleeping or sitting and staring through the bars of the huge ward windows, who fought and screamed at meal and med times, whom the staff liked nothing on him better than restraints, needles and feeding tubes) sat and played cards with Joseph while Martin complained in a normal voice - not yelling yet, it was too soon after his morning pills - about his unique physical state.

"Goddamn cold floors are bad for my health. Don't you know this floor is poison.?!" He snarled to a passing nurse who sped up his pace, the sooner to get out of earshot. "The linoleum. I know, I've been in lotsa places before this, there's deadly chemicals in the wax. Makes my hemorrhoids bleed. They're like sausages now, god dammit." He shook his fist after the retreating representation of good health.

The place suffered from things common to public institutions, it was overcrowded, understaffed and the heating went out on a regular basis. In the enclosed environment, germs happily multiplied and mutated.

Nearing the end of the week two orderlies, three nurses and four patients were all down with influenza.

"They moved Mulder to the infirmary." Janice informed Ian as soon as he arrived for his Thursday afternoon shift.

"Flu'?" Ian asked. Fox had been unusually docile. Nothing like an illness to sap the fight from a person.

"Yeah. He's got it really bad though. Woke up this morning, took a couple of steps and puked up all that Ensure they'd pumped into him the night before."

Nothing unusual. "That makes five sick."

"Sick-ER," she said, teasing. Ian smiled for her because she was his best source of information on what happened in the place and especially things regarding Fox, but it wasn't funny really.

He looked in on Fox later when all but one nurse went for lunch.

Fox looked like absolute shit. Ian touched his forehead, he was as hot as a stove element, flushed from fever and the oxygen mask on his face told the rest of the tale.

"Pneumonia huh? How did you manage that so fast?"

Later, Ian heard that his doctor friend, Scully, had phoned for for her tri-weekly update on Fox's therapy and general state of health. When she heard he was down with pneumonia and flu, she'd told Munroe she was flying out though it was not yet Saturday. Ian had smiled at the grumpy face Munroe wore after that phone conversation. The Doc' didn't like questions, especially interfering questions from another doctor and even less when that other doctor was a woman.

"Bitch." Janice had heard the Doctor's expletive and like a good little snitch told Ian all she knew about it.

Ian was liking this doctor Scully more and more. Anyone who managed to get under Munroe's thick skin was someone he wanted to meet and made a point of finding out when this Scully would arrive.

*

The place was as crowded and dingy as she remembered.

The fellas weren't. Langley had chopped his hair to a brush cut and wore clothing that was actually passable. Byers was married, had a five year old son and had cut his dinner with the family short to come and meet with them. Frohike had suffered a massive coronary three years previously and was attending the meeting via his comfy retirement condo across town.

"Could something like this have been manufactured?" Scully corrected herself. "That sounds crazy." "Assembled? I understand they've completed the genetic code for a salamander and certain species of fish." She'd come seeking their input on the impossible condition of Mulder's genetic invader.

By habit, Byers answered first. "My work with the Justice Department allows me discreet access to all current medical advancements. But _we_ know there has been and still is work being done that is kept from the common people. The salamander is common knowledge. They've also had limited success with warm blooded creatures, mice, bats..."

Langley shook his head. "But what they've accomplished is nothing but fitting Flange A into Slot A, square peg in the square hole. Genetic cross-word puzzling."

"Scully's TALKING ABOUT The Building of DNA. MANU- FACTURING IT. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT A PROCESS of CREATION. IF IT's BEING DONE, NO One I KNOW KNOWS ABOUT IT." Frohike's voice over the computer voice line.

"Nobody but the CIA." Langly corrected.

"The creation of DNA," Byers added, "would elevate humans to gods."

"I'm not sure humanity's ready for that, look what they've done with television." Scully said. "If they've done it, if that's what this is, I can only think of one reason for "Them", she underlined the word, "to have done this to Mulder."

"THEM"?" Frohike asked.

"The same," she said.

"Control. That's why they've done this. That's always why." Byers said. There was no need to remind the group that Scully still carried her own physical evidence of "Them" and their control. The chip was still nestled in place. The knowledge of how her own DNA having been invaded, her immune system ravaged and then her body left to compost the "garbage" had not been forgotten by the room's occupants.

"IF they've done it and, anyway, it doesn't explain the scars." Langley reminded them.

Scully cleared her throat. "The problem is I can see no reason why they would feel the need to control Mulder or harm him the way he's been harmed. I was hoping you might have heard something that would explain the spurious code we're seeing."

Langley looked at Byers who looked back at her. Both shook their heads. Frohike muttered a far away "sorry" and was silent.

"How is Mulder?" Byers asked.

Scully gathered up her coat. "I haven't seen him for two weeks. The last time, he was...there was no visible change. I'm flying out tomorrow and staying until the weekend."

"IF THERE's ANYTHING MORE WE CAN DO..." Frohike said, "CALL US ANYTIME, Day OR NIGHT."

Scully smiled. "Thanks, Frohike. Thanks guys. I'll say hello from you."

For all the good it'll do, she thought.

*

Dana Scully had finished arguing with the admitting nurse and was now having a polite if strained conversation with Munroe. Bryant was at a conference and not available to "discuss Mulder with her". Kurtzman was not a ward doctor and though was responsible for prescribing medication to Mulder and had access to Bryant's notes on Mulder, he had no direct authority in the Infirmary.

"How are you treating the pneumonia?"

Munroe stiffly laded out for her the standard treatments being administered and now she was in the infirmary, seeing for herself.

Mulder looked horrible. As far as she was concerned as bad as that first day. Worse, even. No thinner (thank god!), but still flesh less and pasty and he couldn't or wouldn't look at her over his oxygen mask. There were other patients almost as bad off but they didn't have masks or I.V. drips.

Scully wanted to touch Mulder but had no idea how he would react to it. Sitting on her hands, she simply watched him. Occasionally, watery, droopy eyes would open but not look her way.

Munroe told her what he knew about Mulder's therapy, emphasizing he was not the attending psychiatrist. But as for progress, there was none. Mulder had attended four of Bryant's group sessions during his lucid hours when he would actually emerge from himself and speak. Those times being arbitrary and rare, he usually just turned violent.

The first two sessions he had refused to speak. The third time, when he did, he made his opinion clear about what the hospital and doctors could do with their Group Discussions:

~~"Do you have something to say, Mister Mulder?"

"Yeah, can we stop all this genuflecting please. I have a weak stomach."

"If you have something to add, we'd like to hear it."

"We"? I didn't hear anyone else say Aye."

"This group which includes you collectively agreed to hear each other out and then discuss things. Nothing is hidden here."

"You believe that?"

"Say what you want to say, Mister Mulder, we always encourage each other to get in touch-"

"Yes, I've heard: Get In Touch With My Feelings." I get "in touch" with myself every night for five minutes before I go to sleep. You're right, Doc', it helps."

"Communication is encouraged but we'd appreciate it if you would refrain from the profanity-."

"Jesus! "Communicate" this!"

"-and crude gesturing as well. If you have nothing to add to our group discussion, you can leave."

"I HAVE something to add - this is a crock! - half of these slobs are so stoned on cocktail they don't know if its their tongue or their dick hanging out. The only reason they're here at all is because you wanted the job and their families wanted hope and the fucking pathetic thing is, they're not going to get even that! Jesus Christ, you ask me to share my feelings and you think you're exploring something profound?? Have you even looked at these people?? They're drugged until they're zombies, kept under lock and key, spoon-fed pablum, look at them! - they're sitting here in the middle of a working day in fucking pajamas! - And then they send YOU in, to try and infuse them with "human dignity" and "self-worth"! Holy shit, don't you see how fucking ridiculous this is!!??"~~

The last time he had "participated", he'd smashed the window with a chair and tried to push, first himself and the then orderly called to subdue him, through it, bars and all.

"Hey." Scully said, expecting no response and getting none. But he looked right at her, however, and even that tiny acknowledgment made her heart sing. "You will get better, you know."

Wanting so badly to touch him, she hoped her words might. "I know that's hard to believe, Mulder, but I think there's still some fight left in you, and I think you want to get well. I just wish you would talk to me."

No answer. He continued staring at her though. Was there recognition there? Gladness, even?

Her cell phone rang. "Scully."

"Scully?" It was Skinner.

"Sir?" She hadn't told him she was coming to Boston. He wasn't her direct superior after all and there was no need to keep him informed of her movements. Except for that she knew he cared and would want to know.

"How's Mulder?" Skinner asked from D.C..

She stood and moved to the window. Heard Mulder's nasally breathing in the background, slow and steady. "Okay I guess. Sick though. Flu'. Pneumonia complications." She heard Skinner sigh.

"Anything I can do?"

Scully smiled. A tiny one. "No, not really. He's getting all the anti- biotics he needs. I recommended a few new ones." They both knew why. The

"fingerprint." They still didn't know what it was and they could hardly just arbitrarily announce that the man had "somehow" been exposed to "unidentifiable genetic matter" without there being everything from scoffing to outright alarm in the halls of medicine. "But thanks, Walter..." She still wasn't used to calling him that despite their almost physical rendezvous..."Thank you for calling."

"I'm concerned about you both."

She knew he was still waiting for a decision. But, in truth she hadn't allowed herself to think about a relationship with Walter Skinner. She hadn't even explored her own feelings for Mulder lately, being too tired from work and worrying about him and dodging her mothers inquiries. She just didn't feel like justifying herself to mom or anyone. No time or room enough.

"Listen, I've got a flight out in a few hours. Do you want to meet and discuss the latest?" She was referring to the continuing research the Lone Gunmen had been doing for her about Mulder's second seemingly dormant genetic string. Scully was convinced it was a lurking monster that sooner or later would rear it's grotesque head to devour them.

"Good idea. When?"

Scully checked her watch. "Umm, nine P.M.? Usual place?"

"See you then." Skinner hung up. Scully turned back to Mulder. He had his eyes closed. Sleeping.

She had to go. Took a risk and kissed his forehead very softly before quietly leaving the room.

Ian intercepted her as she was waiting for the down elevator. "Doctor Scully?"

Over a quick coffee in the windowless cafeteria, Scully was feeling a little better about her visit. Her sudden impulse to fly out had been right and not just because of Mulder's illness. She'd been feeling anxious over him without cause. At least cause beyond that he was in a mental institution. Now she was less anxious.

"I'm glad to know he has someone here who's watching him, looking out for him." This Ian seemed to like his work with mental patients and he'd brought her up to date on Fox. Not the medical side, but the human one.

"Sometimes he has lucid moments. Yesterday he was playing cards with Joseph. He's fine unless he's touched. And he can't eat certain things without throwing them back up." Ian was explaining.

"I know. Munroe told me."

"You know, if there's anything I can do, all you have to do is ask. I'm only here four days per week, afternoons and evenings, but I kind of took to Fox right away. I know it sounds crazy but, I have a sense about people. It's not psychic or anything, but I get vibes..." he laughed at himself. .."sentience maybe. Fox is sane, somewhere in there, but I think just afraid to come out."

Mulder's unofficial nurse was a believer in the paranormal or one who had experienced it. Scully was amused and pleased too. Mulder attracted strange things and people. Ian wasn't strange but he wasn't normal, in the psychological sense, either. He "sensed" things, whatever that meant and truly cared about the sick, whether directly under his charge or not. And he seemed to possess infinite patience so, as a care giver for Mulder, Ian was perfect.

"Thank you." She had a thought. "Listen. Here's my number." Handed him a card. "It's my personal cellular number and," scribbling on the back of it, "my home phone number as well." Ian accepted it. "If anything happens that you think I should know about, would you call me? They don't always keep me up to date unless I get Bryant or Munroe on the phone and argue like hell. The "I'm F.B.I. and I can ruin your life" threat's wearing a bit thin."

He smiled. "Sure. I'd be glad to."

They parted.

*

"Where's Mulder?" Ian asked the next day at the ward station.

"Isolation."

He found out why later from Ramsey. Wished he could have talked to Janice but it was her day off.

"Ten minutes out of the Infirmary he got a hold of a lighter somehow and burnt himself." Ramsey said.

"Accident?"

With his usual charm, "Fuck no. He set that thing to its highest flame and held it to his forearm 'till he screamed. Fuck, man, until the flesh was black and smoking and bubbling. Snap, crackle, pop."

Ian swallowed. What had happened between yesterday and today? Jesus.

"He'll lose the feeling in a couple fingers, they figure and have one hell of a scar for the rest of his life." Ramsey sounded pleased.

A call for help. A protest. Ian had read about stunts like that. That's what they meant. A mute's plea.

Hadn't anyone noticed if Fox had been acting unusual? Ian immediately shook his head at the dumb question. Nobody looked at or heard a patient unless they had to.

That night, though it was late, he called Dana Scully. No, the doctors hadn't called her about it. She was understandably upset but couldn't fly out again until the next weekend. She asked Ian again to keep a close eye on her friend and if anymore happened, to please call her immediately. She thanked him and Ian pressed the "end" button on the phone.

"Who was that?" Gary asked, slouched on the sofa. He was finally back on days and enjoying his late evening television again.

"Doctor Scully."

"Fox?" Gary asked, by now familiar with the goings-on of Ian's newest human concern.

"Yeah."

"Listen, I found out some stuff on him. But I don't know if it'll do any good. What has this Scully told you anyway?"

"Nothing personal. I think she wants to protect his privacy. I don't blame her, I mean he's her friend. Probably more."

"Well. Little Luddy dug up some stuff for me and broke some laws doing it."

Ian returned from the kitchen with the cordless in his hand. "What did he find out?"

"This Mulder _was_ F.B.I., but what we didn't know was the kind of work he did. Weird shit. Everything from serial killer hunting to ghost tracking to chasing UFO's. He was a hell raiser, this guy. Maybe the work drove him bananas."

Ian tried to mold the destroyed soul he saw on an almost daily basis with the crusader Gary was describing. It wasn't easy. "What else?" He scooted close beside his lover.

"We dug up his file. His case. He went missing for eight years. Just showed up again two and a half months ago. The medical report would make you want to hide. No wonder he's where he is." When Gary gave Ian some details, the room went cold or he did.

"Christ."

"You might be biting off more than you can chew with this guy, Ian. He might really be crazy. I know how good you are but all I'm saying is be careful."

*

Bryant's sessions seemed to be doing little good in Kurtzman's opinion. As much was reported to Doctor Scully who in turn managed to come up with the extra money to cover the costs of Kurtzman's fee's so he could take Mulder as client on a limited basis as well.

Personal attention was the key.

"Why don't you tell me what lead you to burning your arm like that?"

Mulder heard the doctor's words. Bothersome.

Doc wanted another book for his shelf.

Nothing had made him do it. He'd chosen to. It was all about free choice. Bryant had said it. "If you just want to, you can get well."

He had _wanted_ to do the burning. A thoughtful visitor had provided the Bic lighter unawares and he'd done it. That was all. No hidden agendas.

Nothing to tell Kurtzman about reasons except that it had been important, necessary and afterward, he was better.

Played cards all afternoon with Joseph with the burn hidden beneath the sleeve of his PJ's. Shit, though burned up, he'd kept Martin from wackin' his weenie in front of the female visitors who'd passed them on their way to which crazy belonged to who.

He'd performed a vital service to them. The hole was a monument. He looked at it a lot. Hadn't hardly felt the flame.

Kurtzman sighed.

Mulder smiled only to himself. Kurtzman wanted a play by play from center court. -Fuck you!-

Mulder, from a discreet distance, watched as Kurtzman dropped his mouth open to speak. It was often the way it happened when patients refused to cooperate with the learned methods of psychiatry; answer for the patient. It was not in the Manuals but doctors did it all the time anyway. Fox had had a PhD. Once.

"I think you did it to get back at me..."

Oh, yes. Switching places at center court, that was also done. It was necessary to keep things in their proper order. Doctor here and patient there. Just in case the patient forgot who really was the important one.

"..or to punish someone,.."

Wrong.

"..the hospital maybe, to gain a bit of control,.."

Wrong. Wrong.

"..any kind of control over your life."

Wrongwrongwrong!

Brilliant. Patient in rags eating through a tube is upset at having lost control over life. Burns his arm to get it back.

God, if that was true, he was the Fire-king of his own kingdom - his flesh. His death. It had felt marvelous.

Kurtzman sighed. Time was up. Wrote out a prescription for an increase in the TriptoZac he had Mulder on.

Mulder wandered out into the Day room.

Martin was there along with a few others. He moved towards Mulder without looking like he was doing it on purpose. Mulder's reputation was powerful. He hit Orderlies, Doctors. Anyone.

That was to be respected and feared.

"Kurtzman?" Martin said.

Mulder nodded but said nothing in reply. Enough to show that he wasn't going to speak and Martin understood, obliging by moving off in the other direction before their accidental meeting collided.

Mulder wanted to sleep but the wards and the beds in them were off limits between lunch and dinner unless by special request from a nurse or doctor who determined you were ill enough to lie down.

Designated "Activity Time", the afternoons were nothing other than mental doldrums. Made to keep patients from too much physical lounging, they made up for it in mental sleep. Lethargy in all its forms was abundant and many of the patients were fat from it.

Except him.

It was called the Puke Diet.

Trouble was, there was nothing to do but slouch around and be crazy. No exercise program to speak of at Walburg. No "activities" provided either. No one on his ward even colored with crayons, the stylus's ending up in patient's stomachs.

Paper, another material coveted by the bored inmates, was forbidden because of him. He played with flame. Paper burned.

*

"Dana?" Mom Scully was being extra careful with her words. She did not want her daughter leaving. Dana needed this time. Bill and Tara and the kids, Dana needed to see these things. Family. Maybe some peace for just one evening.

"Yeah, Mom?" Dana rose from the couch and her novel.

At least she was reading something besides progress reports on Fox.

"Would you make some coffee, my hands are floured?" Cherry pie crust. Canned cherries. Cool Whip. Ready-Make-Do because she did not want to be in the kitchen too much for Christmas and Dana on the couch alone.

"Sure."

Margaret Scully watched her daughter. She did not want Dana to stop thinking of Fox, she just wanted her to think of other things too. Every day, normal things. Happy things. Anything besides Fox in That Place. She cared, too.

"He's not getting any better, mom." Dana offered the unsolicited information just as the coffee began to drip through the filter with maddening slowness.

Margaret felt a pang. He'd been a good man. Fox deserved better than this. "I'm sorry, sweetheart." She refrained from hugging her, Dana didn't seem to want it lately. She'd lost weight.

"It's been almost four months, is there no improvement at all?" Margaret asked and rolled dough.

"None that I can see. Four months isn't long, though..."

Margaret bit her lip.

"..Not after eight years."

Had to say it. It was eating her up. "I don't want to see you alone forever, Dana."

Dana stirred her coffee idly, watching the tiny oily patterns shine under the ceiling light. "How long would have been too long?" She turned to face her mom. "For you? When Dad went away? When it was war and you had no idea how long it would last? No idea if he would even come home? If he'd gone missing in action? How long would have been too long for you?"

The dough was rolled thin and lifted to be flipped to it's other side. Roughly slapping the table. "This isn't the same and you know it." Staring back at her daughter with all the stubbornness she'd passed down to her. She folded the dough. "Maybe you should prepare yourself-"

"Don't. Mom, don't even." Dana poured them both coffee's and took hers away onto the couch again. Picked up her book and buried all thought in the author's world.

Margarete leaned against the counter, fighting the need to scream. Yes!, she'd cared for Fox. But goddamn it, he had no right to hold this power over her daughter! Margarete wanted to scream and beat at him and send him back to oblivion. She wanted to scream: Get well or die!

Fox's illness had spread to Dana, and mother and daughter'd had more than just today's discussion over him.

Dana loved him. Yes, she understood that. But that was the _old_ Fox Mulder. The new and decidedly not improved version was a canker in her life.

Margrette was not unfeeling. Pity, sorrow, sympathy, heartache for that man stirred around in her. Empathy for her daughter who loved him bitterly. Who could not let go.

Even Bill knew better than to raise the subject of his chosen nemesis with his sister at any time lest he be shot down faster than Enemy Aircraft. Even Bill knew when to leave well enough alone.

It was going to be an unhappy Christmas.

*

"Come on, hurry up."

Mulder was showering. He'd had to obtain special permission because at this time of night the showers were supposed to be closed and locked. But he'd woken up covered in his own vomit. Normally, he would have simply shed his garments and curled up on the linoleum. But the night orderly who made his rounds of the wards had taken to kicking him in the back if he found a bed dripping in mess and the occupant curled up on the floor underneath.

So, after wiping off as much of the sour smelling liquid as he could with a square of the clean part of the sheet, he'd walked to the "Cage", where the guards and night staff hung out, drinking coffee, chatting or reading. One whiff of him and they'd sent him off with two of the staff to guard him as he sluiced himself down in one of the rusted stalls.

Fox saw who one of them was and felt better; Ross, the source of his candy supply. It was the only solid food that stayed down and sometimes even filled the echoing hollowness within.

"Aren't you done yet?" They didn't usually call patients by name. Usually didn't call them anything but "Hey".

Mulder switched the water off and felt strangely exposed as he had to walk the length of the shower room to find a towel. In typical institution fashion, the towels were all the way across thirty feet of freezing tile.

He dried himself, shivering. Water vapor condensed and dripped off the walls and him. He wondered if he would be made to change his own bed sheets.

Hands grabbed him from behind and slammed him against the wall, driving the breath from his body. Words were whispered in his ear that at first he didn't understand.

When a hand grabbed his hair, it yanked his head back, stretching his throat until darkness threatened. Another paw clamped over his mouth, stifling his startled cry.

Wicked words polluted his ear and he understood.

"After all I've done for you, you stab me? I've got a scar on my face because of you." His hair was pulled harder and he felt some separate from his scalp. "You been enjoying those candy bars, haven't you Crazy Fox? Do they taste good?" He was pulled away from the wall and slammed back again. "Well, I'll bet you taste good. I'll bet you taste just as sweet. Sweet and hot and wet."

He was forced to the floor while hands stilled his arms and a heavy body sat on his thighs. Demon noises and gorilla breath assaulted his ears and nose.

He tried screaming through the cloth that was shoved into his mouth. Gagged.

It hadn't occurred to him that Ross might be angry about what happened. That stabbing this two-legged creature who brought him food and cleaned up his messes might not have been appreciated; that it might have, in fact, hurt and angered it. But he'd stopped thinking in the terms of living creatures. Being dead himself, he tended to view those around him the same way and his own actions unrelated to potential consequences because he was no longer alive and didn't matter. Nothing did.

Ross getting mad hadn't even crossed his mind.

Fingers groped him, spread his butt cheeks, found the tightly clenched hole and an agony invaded.

A baton, in and out that left gifts of stinging slivers. A hundred reminders that he was a convenience and nothing else. The candy? - tokens free of life or even pity. A price paid to gain his trust. He'd come cheap as usual.

Fox screamed but the sound was impossibly muffled. If anybody heard it, it would be dismissed. The crazy always screamed.

He heard a zipper and sounds of yanked clothing. Something tore. "Fuck." Candy-Man cursed, whispered into his ear, "I know you like candy, that's why I brought it for you. Now it's time for you to give me yours, Crazy. I'm gonna take what's owed, darlin'. I've been thinking about it for a while now. How sweet you look. I've been getting ready for a long time." The Candy-man spoke harshly to his assistant-rapist. "Hold him still!"

Mulder bucked and fought for the leftover crumbs of his sanity.

"Santa's got something special for you." The baton was jerked in and out once, twice and again. Then another weapon made of demon-turned-human-flesh was there. Smooth but it would hurt worse in the deeper parts of him, where it still counted.

Not-again-notagainnotagainnotagain!

His silent pleas were replaced by screams through the washcloth as Candy-Man penetrated him dry, forcing the instrument of death passed his sphincter without a care in the world and certainly none for the corpse he was violating.

"Oh, yeah, yeah, baby. Fight. Fight! Makes it sweeter, makes it tighter!"

"Hurry up." Other voice said. "I haven't had a turn yet and it's almost A.M. Counts."

Fox twisted and gagged. A baton pummeled his rib cage and he surrendered his small cups of air in screams. The cloth was shoved in deeper until whole breaths came only every second or third try.

Grunts and groans from above and behind. Jerking and stabbing knives from inside. Fox felt like he would split apart, his mind screaming and screaming, his lips sealed with dirty rags as senses reeled from the feel of blood dribbling down the crack of his cold ass to bath his scrotum in heat.

Real death must come now, he knew. It was as inevitable as his shame at the pleasure/pain he felt as the demon-shoot licked at his gland and caused his own member to harden.

Fox screamed for pain and the for mind-destroying pleasure that came with a sodomizing rape.

Mostly pain. But he couldn't be glad over that. It was not enough to balance the scales. He was still left wanting. He would die.

Candy-Man shuddered and sighed. Fox felt filth spray into his body to remain for all time.

Poison to kill him.

The thing inside him lost its power and was withdrawn.

One presence changed places with another and the nightmare of pain and disbelief started all over again. But this time escape was possible.

Fox felt himself die.

"Hey." Ian, on morning/afternoon rotation stopped by the ward of his favorite charge. Fox was curled up on his side on Martin's bed.

"Hey." Ian shook his shoulder just a little, aware of how much Fox hated being touched.

Fox didn't stir.

Ian pulled back the blanket Fox had wrapped himself up in. He wasn't wearing any pajamas. "Hey, Mulder. Come on, buddy, you're in the wrong bed. Do you want Martin's hemorrhoids to get worse? Where the hell are your clothes?"

Ian shook him harder, eliciting a groan from the slumbering patient. Fox felt hot.

"You sick again, Muld-" Ian noticed a stain on the sheets beneath Fox and looked closer.

Blood.

Ian went for help. Mulder was moved to the infirmary, his privates and anus examined, blood and fluid samples were taken, the slides checked. Confirmation made. Antibiotics injected. He was cleaned up.

Ian put a call through to Doctor Scully. There was no answer either on her cellular or at her home. He took a chance and called another name on Fox's emergency contact list.

Walter Skinner sounded sickened by the news and assured him, though it was the holidays, he had a good idea where she might be and would relay the information to Doctor Scully immediately.

Ian felt a bit better after hanging up the phone. Fox had people who cared at least. Maybe they cared enough to get him out of Walburg.

*

"Two types of semen. Anal trauma..." Scully felt sick to her stomach. It was all she could muster to keep the contents of last nights dinner to herself. " Bryant's monotone went on. "...He has a cracked rib. They worked him over pretty good."

Scully heard the unspoken. "Not only on the surface." She underlined. "Who did it?"

"We don't know."

*

Martin came out of his "down" and shuffled the corridors until he found him. The one they all liked. Never throw food at this one. It was an accepted rule of the patients, one learned without actually being taught.

"I saw who done that to him." Martin announced in his "down" quiet way.

Ian looked up from his duty with Thomas who was having trouble finding his bed among the dozen in his section of the ward. Ian was gently guiding him.

"What was that, Martin?" Ian looked around surprised to find Martin speaking during a downer, but didn't stop his movement down the hall with Thomas. Once one got Thomas accelerated into motion, it was always prudent to keep it that way, lest he decide that sleeping or going to the bathroom right on the spot was the grander notion.

"I saw who hurt him. Who stuck that thing up 'im."

Ian called over his shoulder to Ramsey who took over the guidance of Thomas after a bit of moaning.

Ian took Martin aside and spoke quietly. "How do you know that, Martin?"

"I saw. I wanted to sit in the water..."

Ian understood. Martin sometimes slipped out of his bed at night. One of the night Orderlies would be convinced to unlock the bathroom so he could flip up a lid and sit his cheeks in the cold water. Thank god for Martin's piles, Ian thought.

"And I was in there when they come in to shower him. Then they started..."Martin swallowed. "They stuck one of their sticks up him and then did...other things. He bled a lot. I was too scared..."

Ian went pale. Where the hell was Ross today?

He had not showed up for work it was soon discovered. Neither he nor his joined-at-the-hip pal. Ian added his voice to Martin's in the way of character witness. Yes, Fox often threw up at night. And, no, Martin was not a fibber, he often sat in the toilet.

Serving their time through "Community Service"; Ross and his fellow rapist.

"That's why they've been working at Walburg." Bryant later explained to Scully, adding, "nothing like this has ever happened before."

She knew he meant "at Walburg". Because it certainly _had_ happened before. It was an old scenario replayed over and over through-out the social structure. In long term institutions of all variety. In the education system as well. Who hadn't heard of an all boys school coming forward with it's awful tales of abuse and molestations twenty years after the fact? Who hadn't heard of that or something like it?

So why the hell not a mental hospital? The visitors would be less abundant and less frequent - Scully felt an especially guilty pang - the environment even more isolated and controlled. And, under the very circumstances that made a mental hospital _mental_, claims of victims would hardly be believed.

Scully had comprehended these things. As an F.B.I. Agent, she'd encountered similar inhumanities. Now she empathized. Understood all too well those relatives and parents who had said: "I can't understand. I trusted them! How could they _DO_ this? Why would they hurt my child/husband/wife/parent?"

"When will he be well enough to travel?" Scully asked.

Bryant took one look at her and knew he had nothing to say in protest to her obvious decision to move the patient out of there. Charges would be laid against the perpetrators when they were apprehended. An investigation of the facilities by, he didn't doubt for a second, the F.B.I. itself would soon commence.

"Two or three days."

Scully made a quick visit to Mulder's recovery bed. He was heavily sedated. She was glad for it. Mulder had been experiencing significant pain before Nurse had come with her injections.

Mulder was still the color of milk. The other small physical signs of trauma were there as well in the aftermath of the attack-

-rape.

She wanted to die.

*

Skinner opened the investigation on Walburg himself. Being Director certainly had its uses. There were few times in his life he'd indulged in revenge. He didn't know what this one would taste like.

*

"How can you afford it?" He watched Scully tossing her clothes into suitcases from the hotel dresser. Flight out of Boston in two hours.

They'd been in Boston for four days and Mulder was ready to be transferred back to D.C.. Scully had found a place. It was private, expensive and Mulder would be a fifty minute drive tops.

"I'll find the money. Walburg will have to reimburse me in part."

"That won't come anywhere near to covering what this other place costs."

She stopped. "What the hell does money have to do with anything? I said I'll get it."

He watched her fold blouses, slacks, underwear. "I don't like seeing you throw your life away." Regretted it the second it escaped. He knew what it had sounded like but it was not what he'd meant.

Bras were furiously jammed into one corner of the Airliner carry-on. Her voice matched her determined hands. "The last time money was a concern, it got Mulder beaten and hurt." Didn't have the courage to say the other word aloud. Tone lower, more steady. "I'm not throwing anything away."

Skinner had been sitting on the bed, bouncing up a down a bit by her rhythmic stuffing of her suitcase. Now he went to stare out the window and listened as she laid it out for him as he knew she would. Scully carried arguments to their conclusion.

"I'll cash in my own securities. My retirement funds, sell everything if I have to, borrow, beg..."

"And leave yourself what if it doesn't work?" He came back to the bed and stood in front of her, blocking her assault on the travel case. "What if Mulder doesn't get well? What if he's in there or somewhere else for the rest of his life-?"

"-I put him there!" Her words mowed his down like an AK 47. "So I lose my money. I don't care. Don't you get it? Mulder's lost everything! Even his choices. He has no options now except what I can give him." Where did Skinner get off thinking because they'd seen each others privates, he suddenly had the right to question and argue? she wondered.

Skinner grabbed her arms, firmly. Gentled. Rubbed them. "Scully..."

She collapsed into him and sobbed like a child. Sex wasn't the on-ramp to a solution but she wanted him. His steadiness. His good, comforting, ready to take charge saneness.

Mulder. Mulder, what have you done to me?! Her mind screamed then felt guilty for thinking it.

"If - IF - he is your responsibility, then just remember that it's not your fault. Recognize the difference," he said the useless words knowing she wouldn't believe them.

*

GREENLAWN RECOVERY CENTER. Washington, D.C. Office of Doctor Carl Petrillo.

Doctor Petrillo had an hour before his next appointment. A rare period to unwind - to hell with the paperwork sitting neglected beside his In Box- and soothe his headache with a mug full of Masala Chai and the walnut muffins and aspirin his wife always packed for him. Yeah, doctors felt shitty sometimes too.

He put his feet up and leaned back, relishing in that useful but rare thing: free time.

It niggled at him though, that thick yellow folder sitting center desk. He had to admit he was curious. It wasn't often a private case came his way.

Petrillo sat forward and opened it, muffin crumbs sprinkling the printed and hand-written notes under his eyes. Doctors reports, medical conditions, past and present. Recent history, as much as was known:

Mulder. Fox William,

Petrillo read for many minutes, flipping pages and going back to re-read, checking physicians notes, initial diagnoses, drugs administered, reactions to medication, alternative treatment.

"Treatment-s"." Petrillo muttered aloud. He frowned. Re-read aloud a few things that refused to sink in. "

"eight years,... suspected violent...beating-s",..." Petrillo gulped his tea. "..."mental and physical abus-es"..." Plenty of plurals in this file.

Read the childhood history (dysfunctional), educational background (Oxford PhD). Some of the family history. "Sister disappeared age eight when boy was twelve. No clear memory...catatonic state for four days post-event...child abuse thought factor...".

Psychological Profile: Photographic memory. Genius I.Q. but long running stress/sleep disorders interlaced with self- destructive behaviors. Few friends. Obsessive. "There have been episodes of cognitive disassociation"."

An obsessive, self-destructive genius with few friends.

Less extraordinary than people knew. Genius - a high functioning brain - by its very nature was obsessive. Self- destructive because patience lacked in a mind that left most others in its dust. Few friends because people didn't like being left behind and shown up as mediocre.

Petrillo skimmed his new clients work history. "

"Dedicated but insubordinate, brilliant, arrogant,"..." Yet his "closure rate" (he recognized the law enforcement terminology) had been high.

Partner in Bureau: Agent Dana K. Scully, MD. Pathologist.

Now he understood why the file was so complete. Partner, and doctor. She wanted this guy to get well and had handed Petrillo all the ammunition she thought he might need. Friend to the genius. No dummy herself or she wouldn't have gone the distance.

He read some of the later details regarding the events at Walburg. Petrillo shook his head. "Whew..."

Wondered if he could refuse the case after all. It was a lot to bite off.

At the back of the file he found a note paper-clipped to the inside. It was a hand-written missive from Doctor Scully:

//"Doctor Petrillo,

I have given you all the information available regarding F. Mulder's case. I would appreciate it if you and I can maintain a running dialogue on his treatment and progress..."//

She thinks there'll be progress. It's always good news that clients and their families had confidence in one at least. It was more than he felt about his ability to treat this new client thus far. The case was not to be believed.

//"...If you'll forgive me, I have researched your work history.."//

Ah. She would naturally. F.B.I..

//"...and you come highly recommended by certain individuals. Please understand that my friend - Mulder - will be a difficult client. He has had good reason to mistrust authority and the medical profession in general..."//

Oh, that must have been quite a high wire working relationship.

//"...and will probably not cooperate with you. After what happened at Walburg, I am sure you can comprehend his reluctance. As well, there are things about him, that is, his medical condition, that are known only to select people including myself. At this time, we feel this cannot be shared until we have more concrete confirmation. But the condition to which I refer is not contagious in any way. I have included a medical report on his general physical health to support my statement, however if you intend a second, independent examination, I would only ask you inform me. We want him to get well. If you feel this case would entail too much of your time which I know is limited, please tell me now. I would also appreciate this letter be kept between you and I alone. Thank you, Dana Scully."//

Petrillo's eyebrows climbed his forehead.

He would take the case.

It sounded too interesting not to.

*

The first thing Petrillo noticed about his new patient was not the anger or yelling or biting sarcasm that usually belied hidden hurt.

It was the total silence.

And the slackness of expression.

This was one of the few patients he'd ever accepted just on the word of another. A care giver but also a doctor who had insisted to him that her tired friend was not crazy.

Carl Petrillo was a staff psychiatrist but working with the frankly demented had never been his strong suit. He didn't like to medicate if it could be helped and he didn't like word association or hypno-therapy or anything that might water down the honest sickness or pain the patient was feeling.

Numbing a person with drugs might control some symptoms short- term, unless they were suffering chemically induced mental illness; unless their brain chemistry was pumping the wrong stuff, too much of this and not enough of that, but the problems still had to be addressed and those he had found were usually rooted in nothing more mysterious than simple feelings. Emotions in an upheaval. Overflowing or so stopped up the result was what he was seeing before him now: a mute human who saw no use in acknowledging anything let alone himself.

He had Doctor Scully's assurance that this was the case with Fox Mulder. He was not crazy.

Well, he would find out soon enough.

Petrillo checked Fox's chart. Valium - Petrillo saw the lethargy in the rounded shoulders and hunched back - //tell me something I don't know.// He'd read Fox's recent history including the medical data, the list of old injuries and new, the general physical state and the events (some that shook even Petrillo, who'd seen much, to the core of his compassion) that had lead this individual with the tired eyes to this place and moment in time.

Petrillo had read this information at an earlier date, but did so again while the patient was seated before him so the words on paper could be tied to a real, living creature and the "facts" be made personal. In the end, diagnoses were only partially accurate he had found.

Petrillo thrust the chart under his wooden seat and looked for a few minutes at Fox Mulder, the paranoid, delusional, schizophrenic who had tried to kill an orderly. Who'd burned his arm with fire until achieving an oozing, black hole.

Fox had been an F.B.I. agent in another life. A good one or so he had been told. Doctor Scully had told him a great deal about this man for whom she cared. He'd listened and nodded, acknowledging her desire to let Petrillo in on the secret that Mulder had not always been this way, that he really was _not_ this way at all.

But a badge didn't exclude one from the human race.

Even kings went crazy.

"Is there nothing you want to tell me?" Petrillo decided to start simply.

No answer and he hadn't expected one. Some patients never shut up at first. Some never spoke.

"I guess you're pretty pissed off about being in another hospital. Locks and bars and lousy food and patronizing doctors." Doctors really could be patronizing ass holes, may as well clear the air right off. "Well, I'm here to help you if that's what you want. I tell you the truth right now, I'm not sure how. But as long as we're working together, you'll have your own private room. Only two people have keys to it, myself and Eugena."

Eugena was the petite little ward night Head Nurse whom everyone liked. Even the sickest patients trusted her. Petrillo decided to voice the key business for two reasons. He wanted Fox to feel safe at Greenlawn, so he was letting Fox know that no-one had access to his room or him except his therapist and the trusted Eugena. But Petrillo also wanted his patient to understand that the safety continued only if they continued working together. Otherwise Fox might end up with another doctor altogether and who knows which nurse on which shift would get the spare key to his room.

It was kind of a dick-headed thing to do but if it worked (and it had once or twice in the past), he was sure he would be forgiven.

His patient sighed, a very long, slow breath of stale room air. Up to that moment Petrillo had wondered if the guy was breathing at all.

"Well. We'll still meet each day if that's all right with you. I imagine they've given you no choice and since I work here I have to fulfill my part and come here every day,.."

Had his new charge really been through all the stuff he'd read on the chart? Wouldn't that be enough to make anyone prefer death? Fox had burnt his own flesh. But Petrillo wondered if that had been more a call to life than death. Maybe the guy just wanted to feel something again, even excruciating pain.

"...so we'll meet and just be quiet together. There's nothing wrong with quiet. But if you do feel like talking, I'm hell at listening."

*

It went that way each day. Petrillo talking and his patient ignoring the talk.

It went that way for weeks.

Until one day Petrillo tried something that had worked before. Once in a nine year old boy who had suffered the most horrible abuses by his mother. A highly intelligent boy who had learned to cope with his pain by reading and learning and shutting down his mind to all else.

He'd come to Greenlawn, cooperative and mute. Petrillo had tried everything that was suppose to work to get the kid talking. Nothing had. Until one day...

He may as well try it here.

Fox entered his therapists office and sat in his usual spot. Immediately he noticed the thing painted on the wall. It was a two digit number printed in large, black letters. It had not been there before. It was out of place, a picture in fact had been moved to accommodate it.

I meant nothing to him.

It meant nothing for days and days.

Petrillo could see the curiosity swelling in his client. Obsessive mind. Fox had a need to know. Always to know. The reasons, the whys, the how-comes. Mute's see far more than they want people to think they do. Silence isn't so much crazy as stubbornness. It was an unspoken

"fuck-you" to the world.

"Why?" Fox asked one day, looking at Petrillo and gesturing to the mystery number, jabbing a pissed off finger at the wall.

"Your age." Petrillo answered.

Fox stared. "Which of us here is insane?"

"Are you?"

"Insane. Delusional. Paranoid. A great ass-fuck, take your pick."

Petrillo didn't nod, but he didn't fail to notice the flippant, off-the-cuff way Fox had related that last bit of information. Lumping the brutal rape in with things that were said to be wrong with _him_. And he didn't get too excited over this sudden dialogue with a man who had made a decision never to speak again. Petrillo kept speaking calmly as if they were buddies who'd been chatting for weeks. Soon enough, Fox would realize his error for allowing curiosity get the upper hand and retreat back into his womb. He would try to reaffirm his visible insanity for Petrillo by becoming a statue. Death by mind.

"This isn't multiple choice." Petrillo tapped his pad with his pencil, neither speaking for a moment. "Is there anything you want to tell me?"

Fox sighed. "Why are trying to dig me up?"

"Because your feelings have buried you alive."

Mulder's heart betrayed his belief in being extinct by beating hard and fast. Petrillo words were dangerous, they had a power.

"Leave me out of your psycho-babble, Petrillo, you're out of your depth."

"Can't do that, I'm afraid. I'm no genius but I know pain when I see it, even when it's hidden under insults."

"What the hell do you want from me?!" Fox stood and paced but came no closer to the doctor with the lightening tongue.

"I think you have a sickness, call it insanity if you want or just plain old feeling "bad" but that's why you're here, Fox. I'm here to help you. You have to want that help. If you do, I'll do my best. Let me start by saying I won't lie to you or betray the trust we build together. Think about it for a while if you want."

Fox stopped his pacing and crossed his arms. He didn't look at Petrillo but at the earth at his feet that was in danger of splitting asunder.

Petrillo saw the fear settle in his patient's eyes before Fox re-entered his silence, leaving him behind.

*

"Anything you want to tell me today?"

Petrillo and Mulder were in their Umpth session and thus far but for very few, Mulder had spent those hours staring at the walls.

"You're not an idiot, Mulder. Your scores from grade school tell me that much. But we can sit and stare at each other and think vile things or we can start working to get you out of here. I get paid either way, so, is there anything you want to say?" Petrillo waited.

Smoldering pupils but no voice.

"Tell you what, tomorrow, I'll bring in my Super-Play Station and-"

"FUCKED-UP!!!"

The walls shook from the sound waves. Petrillo jumped, barely. Waited.

Mulder had leaped up and was pacing the room and every second or so he'd scream another imperfection at the doctor, the dam thus bursting.

"UNSTABLE! VIOLENT! DESTRUCTIVE! SUICIDAL! And while we're at it: DEMENTED-CRAZY-INSANE-SPOOKY-FUCKING-Mulder!"

Angry Mulder. Lots of things untouched down in there. Lots of hurt that had to be found and looked at so Mulder could see it for what it really was - the basic feeling of abandonment and helplessness. Guilt, too, Petrillo thought. And fear. Human things that were not so terrifying once they were exposed for what they were: emotions.

Things they would examine together. Only Mulder did not yet understand that he would no longer be punished for feeling them. He would also have to unlearn the punishment of self.

"That's what _they_ say you are. I want to hear what _you_ think you are. Do you think you're all these things? Really?"

Mulder sat back down, slouched like an adolescent, arms crossed over his chest to erect a barrier between himself and the doctor who asked scary questions no one else had, never looking at the doctors eyes that could still disapprove at any moment with a "tsk-tsk".

But he didn't answer.

"We have some hard work to do, Fox. We've spent most of this session and others sitting across the room like two strangers in a bar. Too bad we didn't have any beer. But, next session, I'm going to ask you where it is you want to start, okay?"

That surprised his patient and it showed on his face for a fleeting instant. Walburg must have had little success with this one.

Kurtzman! Petrillo had never been a supporter of the Sweet Talk Method. Any "You're a fine fellow" stuff used on Mulder would have failed miserably. And so many hospitals replete with so many textbook procedures that had the patients doing little each day to help themselves other than wiping their own asses.

How disappointing to find that so many trained professionals still tiptoed around the sicknesses as if they _knew_ their patients were crazy and unable to make a decision on their own when that was one of the first things to being human and sane: the freedom of choice.

*

When Scully came for her after work visit, Mulder screamed obscenities at her through clenched teeth and stony eyes. She was not his friend. She was his murderer. A betrayer and liar to boot. He screamed until she left in shock.

He'd done it to complete the death. Not only was he dead in body and mind, but now in heart as well and it was only fitting. The living had no dialogue with him. He'd told that doctor off good and proper too.

Leave me to burn up out of the sight of pitying eyes! he screamed at them from his rift and ripped the scab from his healing burn.

Even dying could be a shameful experience and was best done alone.

*

Petrillo knew he was being punished for causing Fox to speak. But he didn't bring it up when he visited his patient in the Infirmary.

He sat beside the bed. Fox was in restraints but wide awake. He hadn't been violent except to himself.

"Well. Well I left yesterday, It was with the hope you had opened up, I didn't expect it to be the hole."

Fox kept his head turned away. He felt shame and it angered him. For some reason he'd disappointed this doctor, not because he'd shown by his self-mutilation that the doctor's methods were futile, but because for some inexplicable reason, this doctor had looked into him and not shrunk back in nausea. Petrillo wasn't even showing disgust at his newly bandaged hole. He was sad instead.

"I was kind of hoping we could talk a bit right now, if you'd like. You know you are in some trouble, Fox? It's not impossible that you'll be able to feel, equally, love for yourself as you do hate at this moment. We have our work cut out for us. I'll see you tomorrow."

*

He was next in line for access to Fox Mulder.

In an emergency.

Which this wasn't.

Mulder was kept isolated but he'd still have to settle for access under watching eyes, Greenlawn believed in closed-circuit television. But he was still Director of the F.B.I. and if anyone had an argument to make he would remind them of that.

Soon he was being escorted to Mulder's "room". which was "nice-nice" for a cell with rubber walls and a lovely sleeping mat.

Yesterday afternoon, Mulder had tried to take the ward apart. Scully had gone to see him that afternoon. Afterward, Mulder had had a session with Carl Petrillo. He'd screamed a lot at Petrillo. A lot.

Somehow yesterday's mix of events had then lead to Mulder's beating on the furniture.

Today, Skinner had talked to Petrillo after Scully had come into work that morning looking like she'd had about ten minutes sleep. She looked spent. Depressed.

Skinner managed to corner her later in the stairwell and had solicited yesterday from her in addition to some brimming eyes and a voice so sad it made his heart ill.

Mulder didn't want to see her anymore. He'd told her to go away and never come back. He'd yelled at her and screamed abuse at her and told her she was a liar and a cheat and not to be trusted.

Skinner wanted to kill him.

The door shut behind him and was locked, he stared at Fox Mulder for the first time in many weeks.

Fox Mulder stared back. Defiant. Stood in place, looking at Skinner, thin and rumpled and arrogantly waiting. Not caring either.

"What the fuck is the matter with you?" Skinner had not come to mince words, play by the rules in the Book of Loon or rack up good guy points.

Mulder actually changed position at that. Fidgeted. Skinner still had the ability to exert some authority over Agent Du' Spooky. Good.

"I am sorry you're here, Mulder, but you're blaming the wrong person by attacking Dana..."

Dana? Visions of a sweating Skinner all over Scully's naked body, obtaining orgasm and pumping her secret place full of himself, swam before Fox's eyes in red.

"It's none of your business," He spoke. One of few times since the false dawn began. She's none of your business! "so keep your goddamn hands off her!"

Skinner flew at Mulder as if from a catapult. He grabbed shoulders and twisted his fists into the cloth, slamming Mulder back against the wall.

"You fuck! What are you going to do? Destroy her along with yourself you selfish son-of-a-bitch?" Slammed him again. "You've been cut and raped and beaten so you've been through all there is, huh? You've seen it all?"

"I have." Strangely calm. "I have seen it all."

"Well, get passed it! Switch it around in your head, Mulder. Pretend if you have to. Where the fuck this happened, who did it, get passed it; it was a bad weekend with a biker gang, it was too much booze, indigestion, I don't care. Just fucking deal with it and leave this place because I won't have you hurting that woman." Skinner ground the threat into Mulder's face, one inch away. "Understand? Am I being clear? Do you get it, Mulder?"

Her scent was on him. "Yeah. I get it. But you don't want me to leave here."

Skinner let the fabric go. The impressions from his fists stayed. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You fucked her, didn't you?"

Skinner thought he'd come to set Mulder straight, to spur him into getting himself better and getting out, if only to bring some peace to Dana Scully. But at this moment he didn't give a squat if Mulder died here. Whether or not he and Scully had been intimate was immaterial, but how dare Mulder assume the worst of her!

Skinner punched the wall beside Mulder's ear, hoping it burst an eardrum. "You arrogant, self-assuming ass hole! Scully and I are friends - that's because she has none. All because of you, Mulder, she's fucking alone in the world all because of you, you stupid dick! And she's been waiting on your sorry ass for too long in my opinion. Fucking grow up!"

Skinner stepped back a pace, standing that close was risky because he wanted to ram a fist into Mulder's face. He kept the urge at bay but he wanted to. Oh, yes, he wanted to.

At the door, he turned back. "Pick up your life, Mulder. Or stay here and weep, slice your wrists," He waved a hand towards the bandage on Mulder's left forearm and the burn scar, "burn yourself up, I don't give a shit. But do something. Just get it done."

*

"Fox, I want Doctor Scully to attend some of your sessions."

Petrillo was not surprised to see Mulder shake his head no.

"You're afraid of her? Is that why? I heard about your little explosion."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does if it means you won't get well. There's a reason why you're trying to push her away. If you don't want to tell me, that's fine, but it does mean it will be that much harder for our work together. It means you'll be here that much longer, trying to fix all that hurt inside you that you still won't share."

"I told you I don't remember very much!"

"Then tell me what you do remember. Something. One thing, even."

"I don't want.."

Petrillo waited as Fox's eyes flickered and closed. He was remembering something. But his shame was stronger than his want to speak and he was motionless as the battle waged, invisible.

"I won't tell Dana anything you don't want me to, Fox. For now, we can keep the sessions closed. But I know she wants to share in your recovery. She needs to understand too. She has some healing of her own to do."

Something in what he said made Fox slump over. He breathed heavily. Trembled as if in fever. "I don't want...I don't want... to...hurt her anymore..."

But he was also terrified of being hurt and so he had tried to destroy her. Name calling to keep her away because Petrillo didn't doubt for a second that Mulder would never have, could never have, struck Dana Scully.

Words had been his only weapon to deflect the offer of opening up to her. Her and her love for him was a risk he was too terrified to take and had used his continental tongue to annihilate it.

It must have hurt her or she never would have cut her visit so short. But Dana Scully was no fool and knew what lay behind the fury in his words. She'd called Petrillo the next afternoon and discussed it with him. He agreed with her. Told her his idea. Petrillo wanted her in on the sessions.

She had agreed but not wholeheartedly. Not because of lack of interest in Mulder's getting well, but worry that she would make things worse. Petrillo had assured her she would not. Coddling Fox would just be playing by his rules and that would accomplish nothing except perhaps keeping him an inmate of Greenlawn for a very long time.

"Do you think she hates you?"

"No." Liar! Believing she hated him was weak even though it was true. But he had to at least pretend to have self-worth or the questions would never stop.

"Then let her come. One session. I'm not certain why, Fox, but I think it's important. Unless you want to tell me why she shouldn't?"

The doctor was showing his own weakness. Sharing a part of himself that was flawed. He didn't know the reasons for everything. Therefore he would share one of his own. One of those that counted the most.

Shaking at the possibility that the doctor might confirm his disgust for the corpse in his visitors chair, "I can't..c-can't, "get one" ..unless I h-hu-urt myself."

Petrillo watched Fox hang his head in shame at his revelation. Shaking like he would fly apart at the joints, Fox said nothing more and Petrillo knew he was waiting to see if this confession would damn him in his eyes. Substantiate the ugliness that was Fox Mulder.

Petrillo felt his heart go out to this man who looked upon himself as not a victim of terrible crimes but as the criminal who somehow had perpetrated his own destruction. Because he hadn't been able to save himself from the slaughter, he was guilty.

I _have_ to uproot that! Petrillo declared silently. The confession of attempts at masturbation came as no surprise, the confession itself did. It explained the purple bruises on the thighs, the teeny spiders of broken capillaries on his stomach flesh.

Pinching. To accomplish pain. To bring forth pleasure of a sort. The only kind allotted to him during his incarceration in God-knew-what under the mis-guidance of God-knew-who. Pain and punishment.

The confession, the first time for both, was also an extraordinary sign of the healing light in Fox's mind. And of trust between patient and doctor. How often do people even have the courage to reveal such things to their priest?

"Before, after or during?"

Fox sucked in a huge breath. "It changes. U-usually ah-after."

Petrillo made a few notes. So, punishment for feeling horny? No. Because the abuse got to be so intertwined with the sex that, though the orgasm came, the high wouldn't until the pain did.

That's what sex-torture was all about. It brought a high - to both parties - an endorphin rush and for a few seconds, Fox would have felt better. Felt, even, a sense of power. Felt something.

Then the self-hatred would come and bring shame and humiliation. Things are learned through experience, good and bad.

They can be un-learned. So if by chance the memory is triggered, the physical reaction is not.

Physically, emotionally and mentally abused children learn to believe they deserve it. Belief is a powerful force. It can sway nations. Petrillo knew. He was a psychologist. He had traveled.

Abused children learn to escape into fantasy, learn to comfort themselves often by performing the same abuses on themselves as the abusers used on them. Familiarity can be comforting. Getting there first is power and control.

Or they learn to hate self and the destruction of their own flesh (the wounds often do not scab over) is a kind of agreement with the perpetrator of the mental bashing or emotional terrorizing. Agreement is peace-bringing. There is relaxation and an end to conflict by conceding to a defeat.

Petrillo's mind went back to one girl he'd counseled who had grown up in a family of six, experiencing tiny separate abuses that together formed a poisoning whole of conflict and loneliness. One she wallowed in for ten years before coming to him at the age of seventeen accompanied by the frightened gaze of her tired looking mother.

A few months into therapy, he recalled the girl saying: "I wish I had a robot hand. A six fingered, black robot hand." When he asked why, she'd answered: "Because then I could see my malformation and even if it was creepy, some people would envy it."

That girl's family ran out of money for her treatment. A year later, she swallowed a whole bottle of her mother's sleeping pills and never woke up again.

Failures like that didn't come around often. Thank god because he couldn't have stayed in the work if they had. Even doctors need a pat on the back now and then, with a success.

Fox was not so far gone as she had been, he didn't think. For one thing, the man had survived abuses before, as a child, and gotten through it to succeed in life to a certain extent. Good at his job. Had a share of love affairs and friendships.

But Fox was deeply ashamed of his own weaknesses during his captivity and the result was very nearly the same; terrible self-loathing. Hatred of self was dangerous. It could make a person sad to _death_.

"I won't mention that, Fox. You know I don't lie to you. But I still want Dana to join the sessions." It would cause upset, he knew but there was a time for gentleness and a time for firmness and the time had come for the latter.

Mulder was confrontational. So they would be as well. It was honest at least. Fox had to learn to feel again. Something good with no punishment.

"I'm scared. I'm afraid of whu-what I might do."

Petrillo was very grave. Fox had shown he was capable of violence. Yet that violence had been directed, focused on authority. Never the weak. No patients had seen the bad side of Fox's fist of fury.

"Why? Can you give me reasons why you should feel that way? I'm not sure I understand."

Fox shuddered like he was in fever. Something in him was crawling out. "I think I...k-killed someone,...something..."

Leaving the semantics aside for the moment, "What was the reason? Do you remember that?"

Shook his head no. He was trembling like a leaf, spasming in an intermittent wind, hunched over to protect what was left of himself from his own terrifying recollections.

"No. But I remember doing it..."

Petrillo wondered how "it" was "done".

"...it was," - something connected - "alien! Not human." He looked at Petrillo with his, to him, enormous eureka.

Petrillo did not argue that part of it. Only asked:

"Nothing else?" This was a biggie. If it was true, if Fox had killed someone, might there be evidence of it somewhere? A nameless corpse in a grave not so old? A frozen cadaver in someone's morgue waiting to be identified? Or, if such luck still existed, a body with a name that could explain a whole lot about Mulder's past eight years in limbo. Something to bring to bear a light on the dark matter of Fox's mind.

Petrillo's patient struggled for many minutes. If he could bring it forth, an extra fact that they could confront...

Silence in which was heard Mulder's tired lungs. Then:

"It felt good."

*

Scully did not want to be there. She did not want to see this man, her old partner, sitting in silence not agknowledging her presence. Rarely even looking her way.

Mulder was quietly furious, that much was obvious, and directing that fury inwards. Thus far he had not again screamed at his doctor, a state Petrillo had disclosed to her just prior to the session, that he wanted altered. Mulder had yelled at Petrillo on a previous occassion, the therapist had said, but had rarely spoken since. A few words, here and there.

Petrillo hoped to change that today.

//He wants to provoke Mulder using me.// Scully thought.

Despite Petrillo's reassurances, she still felt that it was a mistake, that her being here would just make things worse. Mulder did not want to see her.

Never again, he had said.

He had not 'said', he had yelled. After weeks of punishing silence, Mulder had come at her with a verbal attack designed to cut her to the quick.

"Skeptic!" That was the first and mildest of insults he had used. He'd spat it out as some would spit out "Moron!", not a hint of tease at all.

"Liar", "betrayer", "user", "traitor",...the list in her mind rolled on.

"First Lady Benedict". That had been creative, she'd thought.

"Iscariot whore", though, had topped it.

A few standard bar-room names questioning her virtue had arrived next.

Crying, too. Whether used as a weapon or an apology she didn't know, but he'd brought out the heavy artillery there.

The next day, Walter had solicited the wonderful story of her meeting with Mulder including a few tears of her own.

When had she turned from Icey-Control Queen to blubbering weakling?

She'd succumbed a great deal, lately, to the whims of the men surrounding her, in a respectable way. She was here, as an example, in Petrillo's counseling office, ready to cooperate upon his request.

It was to help Mulder come out of his shell, Petrillo had explained. She had told Petrillo about the outburst and Petrillo had nodded, asking for details and then advising her not to take it personally.

Yeah. Right.

How could this set-up make Mulder trust his doctor? It certainly wouldn't improve her chances in regaining his trust. The ultimate betrayal, that's what she had committed, his face said it whenever his look brushed passed her.

Two lies, actually, his eyes said. Broken promises and banging the enemy.

Oh, yes. "Dick Skinner." Mulder'd said that too. In response to her teary-eyed "Why are you so angry?", Mulder had answered: "Go ask Dick Skinner."

Scully had no idea how Mulder had come to the conclusion that she and Skinner were sexually involved. They weren't. Almost but not.

But perhaps even a sane person would have a hard time forgiving that.

Petrillo led her into the room already occupied by the patient in question.

Mulder was leaning against the cross-barred window, light at his back, arms crossed. He said nothing as they entered and took their seats.

"Are you going to stand there and block my light, Mulder, or are you going to join us?" Petrillo queried. Scully thought that he may as well have been asking the plant-stand, for all the response he got.

Mulder remained a mute mannequin.

Petrillo stared for a few seconds, then opened his notepad, preparing to write with a click of his Bic.

"Well," He said directly to Scully. "let's start with you."

//Me?//

"How would you describe Mulder's behavior?"

//Is he kidding? I'm suppose to talk about him while he's standing right in the room??//

Petrillo had warned her that some of his methods were unorthodox, but she wasn't prepared for questions directed at her. Especially questions about Mulder.

"Uh,..um, I would say he's...angry."

"Yes, clearly he is. I mean, with what or who is he angry?"

Scully stared at the doctor in shock. How could he ask her that? How could he expect her to answer? Is she suppose to lie, pretend she doesn't know? Play dead? That's what she wanted to do.

She could hear Mulder's breath catch at the question, his respirations tight and fast. If she opened her mouth, would he fly at her and slap her face?

Never had he hurt her in any way physically. Not even a real harsh breath in her direction. But she was scared now. Jesus, this was some unorthodox way to get a patient talking! - goad him into a confrontation.

//Petrillo, you prick.//

"Um,...I..I guess, he's angry with me." It was hard to say it because it was true. "I think he thinks I hurt him. I guess I did,...I just didn't realize it at the time. I,...I...needed..."

Scully cautioned a small glance in Mulder's direction, shocked to see him looking back.

But there was no anger on his face, just a terrible, tired sadness.

"...I needed some,...um...comforting and Walter offered. But nothing happened. I couldn't,..I couldn't go through.." She stared to cry just a little.

Mulder and she had never, ever "done it" and here she was feeling guilty for cheating on him except that she hadn't. Not really. A couple of tears brimmed her bottom lids but did not fall.

She was angry too, she realized, with Mulder. With his presumptuous moral indignity and putting her through this. Her anger was unjustified she knew but, for all that, couldn't help but feel it anyway.

He deserved better than to be in here and she deserved better than having been the one forced to sign the papers committing him.

They both should have been spared this.

Life was unfair. It was aloof and self-serving and completely, fucking, totally unfair!

"Haven't you ever been so lonely, Mulder, that you'd-" She gasped as she realized what she was saying and to whom she was saying it.

"Oh I,..I didn't mean that. I'm sorry... sorry." Scully told the blanching face.

Petrillo decided to intercede. "You've done nothing wrong, Doctor Scully. Mulder knows that too."

"I thought that I had destroyed him..." she whispered.

Petrillo, suddenly, was no more a part of the human circumstances in that room as was the paint on the wall. Scully was talking to Mulder and, for the first time in five months, he was listening.

"...I thought I'd put him in another cage,..and," she cried openly. No point in trying to keep tears back. They were coming whether she willed them or not.

Turned to him without warning, "You have every right to hate me, Mulder. But I didn't know what else to do. I swear it. I just wanted you back, and happy and normal. And,...and,...no scars." Her voice choked and she quit, biting down on her tongue to stop the words that came out too fast and too truthful.

"Why don't you go fuck yourself, Petrillo?"

Mulder words and they came straight from him.

"Ah, glad you could join us, Fox. It is nice when my patients see fit to actually _participate_ in their therapy." Petrillo declared in mock surprise. "Now, how about joining us for the rest?"

Mulder uncrossed his arms and circled the room, suddenly looking as if he needed to leap out of his skin.

"You bastard." Mulder thrust a finger in Scully's direction and spit at his therapist, "What the fuck do you think you're doing asking her shit like that? You have no right to treat her that way!"

"You're correct, I don't." Petrillo turned to Scully, "I'm sorry, my question was uncalled for."

Scully wondered if Petrillo was quite sane. "That's okay. I'm fine." Made an effort to stop the tears and they cooperated.

"Why are you angry Fox? Or with who? We still need the question answered. I'm going to ask it until the Second Coming so why not get it over with?"

"You're a real piece of fucked-up work, Petrillo. Where the hell did you get your degree? Off of a cereal box?"

"Well, it wasn't Oxford. Calcutta, actually, and your evading."

"Fuck you." Fox said politely with a tight-lipped smile.

"No, the fuck's on you. You're stuck in this damn place until you decide to deal with your rage and to do that you have to deal with me. So fuck _you_."

In answer, Mulder kicked the plastic garbage can across the room, making Scully jump. It had been empty and so caused no mess he could feel better in.

Petrillo sighed audibly and heavily. "We could play soccer." He suggested.

Scully's eyes followed as Mulder began pacing the small office. Small circles, just like at the bus depot.

She sensed this must have been how he had spent hours and days of those eight years of incarceration, pacing in his cell or his room or the basement or the dungeon or where ever in God's name he'd been kept.

A dusty road, a few last hours of freedom spent on a hillside, then - poof - whole life blown away.

He was still trying to get it back.

Mulder's arms were folded but not entwined, as if in a private hug in order to keep human and feel somewhat alive and reasoning. To prevent thinking about anything other than that he was no longer free and never would be again. Or that he was someone's property to be used, mistreated and then discarded into oblivion.

That, too, was how he must have existed for those years.

Now here he was in a doctor's office with people who cared but there were bars on the windows.

The door was locked.

So he paced.

This is what she had done to him.

Her stomach rolled and rolled with the thought of it. Scully wondered if Mulder's treatment had been as bad as Lucy's experience; six years locked away in a damp, black basement. A living collector's piece. A nothing. Or worse.

_She_, Scully, would have cut her throat. Absolutely with no debate.

Mulder stared speaking suddenly but quietly, as if to himself.

"You want to know what those morons at Walburg wanted to know? You won't believe me just like they didn't."

"Maybe not," Petrillo answered evenly, "but don't you feel like screaming about it? I won't drop my chin in shock, I promise you. Besides, maybe Dana will believe and even if she doesn't, so what?"

"So what." Mulder repeated, not as a question. So what? he said in his mind. So what about what happened. Abduction, starvation, abuse, beatings, rapings, caged, nearly dead. Squeezed dry of every shred of human will and desire until nothing was left but a dried out skin. So fucking what?

There were hundreds of abductions every year, thousands of people gone missing. How many were never returned? At least his captors had done that.

Right considerate of them.

"I agree. So what. But you want to know all my dirty secrets, so I'll tell you. Bryant and his Group Therapy! And Kurtzman asking me how come I didn't try to escape. "

"Why Didn't you try to leave, Fox?"

" Where does he think I was, Tahiti?? You PhD's! You keep fucking asking me the same stupid questions. I don't KNOW where I was! I don't KNOW!"

Petrillo made quick notes while his patient paced back and forth, speaking in a succession of sentences that seemed hardly related to one another, muttering to himself.

"Bet Kurtzman was never nearly been eaten alive by worm-lice. Bet he's never stood in front of a window and knew that if he stepped outside, he'd be turned inside-out."

Mulder shot the question at Petrillo. "Doesn't he think I would have left if I could have? Cock sucker!"

Then spoke out the window. "Doesn't he think if I'd known, I would have run for my life?"

Petrillo followed Mulder movements as they became more hurried, as he circled tighter and tighter, and as his narrative left the rhetorical for the direct.

Suddenly he yelled at the doctor. "I HAD to stay with her! - that alien bitch! - no matter what she did. Fucking rapist! Murdering cunt!-"

"-Mulder, try to take it easy." Petrillo soothed.

"Fuck easy! You asked. You've been hacking away at me for weeks, Petrillo, and now you're gonna hear it all."

He looked at Scully. "And I know _you're_ curious Scully." Dilated pupils accused. "

"Why is Mulder so fucked in the head?" You've asked yourself. You're _dying_ to know."

Scully did not look at him. Kept her eyes on the floor as his venom found its mark. Of course, he was screaming at her and only her. Not even at his old captors anymore, or his new ones.

Just at her.

Because she had welcomed him home with love and then locked him away, forcing him to live it all over again.

Betrayed him with a kiss.

"You want to know why I can't stand to be touched anymore? You want to know why I can't sleep without being drugged until I pass out? Why I wake up screaming and blind?" He pounded the wall as he confessed each atrocity. "Why the food in here makes me puke?! Why getting strapped down terrifies me so bad I piss myself?! Why I can't get a hard-on unless I twist my skin until it bruises?!" He faced her down.

"Is that the shit you want to hear about? You want to know why? I'll tell you! Because that demon-whore stole eight years of my life, that's why! Eight goddamn years, beating me and fucking me too! I almost died there, Scully!..."

Scully nodded her head in acknowledgment of his accusations that no one had saved him. No one had come looking. No one had sent helicopters and trucks and infiltration teams armed with hand-cannons ready to blow them all away - his kidnappers - mow them full of holes, break his chains and take him home.

//But we tried, Mulder. God, how we tried to find you. I tried.//

"..I almost died but I was already dead - inside. I was dead _inside_ the whole time, every minute. The _whole FUCKING time_."

He was crying now, face twisted in rage and pain. Tears staining his face. Coursing down his neck, falling to the floor, raining over all of them. Over all those who hadn't saved him from his living hell. And who weren't saving him now.

"I fucking hate her for what she did to me. Fuck her, that stinking a-alien b-bitch! And fuck you, t-too, Scully, fuck you for asking me! FUCK YOU!"

//Don't forget the rapes at Walburg, Mulder.//

- Scully was accusing herself. Accepted it because it was the truth -

//I put you there too, don't forget that.//

"And you don't believe me! Well, who the fuck would!?" Mulder stood in the corner by the window and curled his arms over his head to block out the burning sun and it's light-truth.

"Why the fuck didn't I leave? Why did I stop fighting when they stuck me full of holes?" His voice was growing smaller but still spurt from between clenched teeth and lips pressed together to keep the confessions from spilling out for all to scorn. Filthy words like dung strained through from the slop bucket of his soul. They forced their way from him like a hole in a dam, to assault him and the two unblemished onlookers with all manner of dirty violations. Of willing and unwilling obscenities that would stick to him until he faded from the universe.

"W-why,...why did I let them hurt me? Why didn't I leave? That's what you want to know! Why didn't I just leave or kill myself?"

Scully was crying softly, face bowed so she saw only her white, clasping knuckles.

"Bec-a-a-a-u-u-u-s-e," long drawn out defeat, "Because anything - anything - was better. Okay? Anything was better than being empty. I fucking let them do it all, take every fucking thing I was, cut it all out of me - every last piece. There was nothing else...nothing...just empty. I wanted to die. I wanted to die so bad but..."

"But what, Mulder?" Petrillo asked. This was important. Mulder's next words, he felt, would tell him Mulder's thinking, not only at the time of these terrible thing's occurrence, but now. Right now.

"Because I was afraid to die. I didn't want to,..to.. leave things...I wanted to come home. I hoped for it. Jesus, I even prayed for it. I wanted to explain..." His quiet sobs cut off his voice.

"Please, Fox, it's okay for you to say it." Petrillo encouraged gently.

"I wanted to explain to Scully, to everyone. I wanted to apologize. I needed...I wanted her to understand, even if I'm ruined and garbage. But I don't know how, I don't know how..."

Mulder'd ceased shouting. Just cried sick tears, bent like a question mark, hugging his sides as if he were about to fly apart. His guts twisted with the emptying of truths here-to-fore unspoken. Let them think what they will. Let her do as she pleases now.

Mulder had given her what she'd earned, taken his due revenge for her deceit and exercising his right to accuse his newest jailer. She had accepted the charges.

But then he'd said he was sorry for it. All of it. Everything that had happened to them both for the last eight years.

Scully sat in shock from the unexpected forgiveness. She'd been absolved of her crimes against him.

Mulder stayed that way, sobbing and trying not to, back up against the warm pastel wall, holding his arms over his abdomen as if every organ wanted to spill out before them in proof of his deadness.

Scully kept as still as the chair she sat on, breathing hard. Crying and accepting all he said for gospel. She couldn't even go to him. Could not touch him in a comforting embrace because it would be rejected and because he didn't want her to see him like this. He must have cried hundreds of times in his missing years. Must have yearned for the comfort then.

Mulder had been abducted by aliens, (the physical evidence gave some credence to it). He'd been taken by white slavers to Asia. He'd been taken to Hell by Satan himself. Whatever. Whatever he said was the truth.

Because it didn't matter.

Whether it had been Reticulans or Hell's Angels, Mulder'd been stolen and vandalized, rifled through like a carton of hand-me-downs. Taking what they'd wanted, a pile of worn, bloody rags is all she'd gotten back.

Petrillo ended the session.

"He's pissed."

Scully stared at Petrillo, she couldn't believe the man's penchant for stating the obvious. They spoke privately in his business office.

"I'd say." she answered back.

"But now he's finally admitting it. Today is the first time he has ever spoken about those missing eight years, even if some aspects of it seem a little fanciful.

"You don't believe him?"

"It doesn't matter - whoever or whatever took him - the point is he's _feeling_ something. Believe it or not, that raging outburst we just witnessed is the healthiest behavior I've seen out of him since he arrived here."

"So what's next?"

"I need you to participate in as many sessions as you can manage and that he will allow. To be honest, I'm not really certain why your presence today helped him open up, I just thought it might and I'm glad we tried it."

"What do you think, I mean really think, about Mulder's claims of abduction?" Scully wanted to know this. She wanted to know a professional man's opinion but she also wanted to know how it felt to ask. How did it feel to be the one questioning a disbeliever? To be in the spooky shoes as it were?

"I think Fox is mixing his memories of cases he's investigated. I think by the physical evidence you've shown me, the things he endured for those eight years have scarred him so deeply that he'll do anything to avoid facing them. I am hopeful that your being here will help us cut through those defenses."

"So you think he's lying?"

Petrillo started slightly at that. A bit puzzled at the bluntness of her question, "N-no. No I wouldn't say _lying_. He's glossing, painting a mental picture for himself of what happened, one that he can handle; "Aliens did this." Admitting that people did it...well, that's bottom line. Bottom line might be unmanageable for him right now. But in the end, as long as we get him through and he comes out on the other side able to cope in a healthy way with the challenges he's going to face when he gets out of here, I don't care if he was abducted by aliens or the tooth fairy. That he deals with it, and more importantly, that he accepts he was not to blame."

Scully nodded. Mulder and self-blame...

...Petrillo had his work cut out for him.

"So you think he'll get better? Get out of here?"

"Yes. Fox is not crazy, Doctor Scully, he's in pain. He's hurting so badly, that he can't function. He is suffering from nothing more exotic than a nervous breakdown and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Very serious, yes, but not impossible."

Scully swallowed back the lump that had formed in her throat. It was as much for the grief of Mulder enduring the anguish of his present condition as for that Petrillo had just handed her a hope that the anguish might end.

She debated what she was about to say. Decided that Petrillo could think what he liked. There was every possibility she was as right as he was.

"That's the first good news I've heard, Doctor Petrillo, thank you. But you're wrong about the reason behind it all. Mulder isn't mixing up anything. He isn't glossing or even imagining it. He's telling the truth."

"The truth as far as he sees it you mean?"

"No. I mean the truth. As it occurred."

Petrillo reserved opinion but asked - "Why?"

"I may not be a psychologist but I know my partner. Even in these extenuating circumstances, after all he's been through, Mulder wouldn't make up things. Even to deceive himself." Scully shook her head at the irony in her next words. "And as hard as it is to believe, he neither subscribes nor is prone to fancies. If he said he was abducted by aliens and kept on another world for the last eight years....."

Her words dropped to a whisper yet her profound belief in them was shouted across Washington to reach the ears of scoffers who for so many years had mocked her partner and, by association, herself. Scully stared at Petrillo, remembering the black oil infestation of newly dead human beings, the faceless men, the burnings, the crisped bodies, Mulder's insistence on the things he had seen in the Antarctic and what they meant.

And then her words fell back to earth and found her again.

"...then I believe him."

*

"I'd like to see him."

Scully made it passed all the doors and locks and meaty men with keys to Mulder's private room. She was glad. There was a camera but no one listening in and no other patients to curiously stare.

Mulder was seated against the wall on his sleeping mat, elbows resting on bent knees.

Scully recognized a patchwork quilt. It was her mothers hand. Mom had sent it to him without telling her. Mulder probably didn't know who it had come from but Scully was glad it was there. It brought color to the drab pastels. A reminder, too, that he was in the thoughts of others. People who cared. Scully smiled. For all her protestations of: "Dear, suppose Fox doesn't get well?" her mom was a sucker for Fox and always had been. She was also quite an actress.

"Hi." she greeted him and sat down on the other end of the mattress.

"Hi." his voice was soft. Hoarse from all the shouting of yesterday.

"I have to go back to work tomorrow. I'm behind so I won't be seeing you for a few days."

He nodded.

"I wish you were coming with me."

He sucked breath, quickly. Bit his lip. Nodded.

Scully reached out her left hand. One finger, she dared touch him with one finger lightly on his forearm.

He didn't flinch.

But crumpled. Crumpled forward and over to her and she brought his head to her lap and held him there. "Me, too," he whispered.

*

"I want to re-emphasize the reason for the hypnosis. We're trying to reach information that we know _is_ there, but things you're blocking out."

"I thought you disagreed with hypno-regression therapy?"

Scully asked the question because Doctor Petrillo had previously indicated that he did not trust hypnosis at the best of times, any kind of hypnosis. He and Mulder had argued about it frequently during their sessions together. But in this case, things had changed.

"I don't agree with trying to reached so-called "repressed memories", the facts of False Memory Syndrome...well, Mulder knows what I think about it...but in Mulder's case, we're trying to access more details of what he _does_ remember. Things he has consciously told me of the night he disappeared."

Scully looked to her left where Mulder sat slouched forward on the doctor's worn couch. "You've been remembering things?"

Mulder nodded once. "Sketchy, though, just images I can't make much sense of."

"That's why I wanted you here today, Doctor Scully, I want you, if you're willing, to join in on this part your partners therapy as well. >From here on in, in all his therapy, in fact, as long as Mulder is agreeable to that. I believe your presence may be a calming influence. You will be figuring in his long term recovery at any rate. If that's acceptable to you, we can begin."

Scully had flushed a bit, warming at Doctor Petrillo's misuse of the word "partner". They weren't, she and Mulder, partners anymore. But was that hope inside her? Her heart was beating a trifle faster. She had agreed to coming here today and future sessions because she wanted that hope. Needed it. After so long, maybe, just maybe, they could be joined again somehow.

Scully said:

"What made you agree to having me here?" To Mulder.

His face drained of it's color. "I...need to learn to trust..." Looked at Petrillo who nodded encouragingly. "I have a problem with trust, a big problem I guess. For lots of reasons. And...someone reminded me that this isn't only my problem...it's been yours," he whispered so softly Scully had to strain to hear him. "But I guess mostly trust."

She nodded. Smiled just enough to show she accepted, understood and that she was here as requested willingly. Wanted to wrap her arms around him. Stayed where she was.

Petrillo opened his notepad, reading his scribbles from a few sessions back. "To start, Mulder, would you please tell Dana what you have remembered so far, I mean about the dark place."

Scully felt ice form in her stomach. //"That cold, dark place."//. Where

Mulder would never end up. Another picture of Mulder unconscious on an emergency room table, blood pouring from his shattered femur.... Scully forced her attention away from the stark images. They were still there in living colour, whenever fear triggered them.

Mulder was speaking. "...but all I can remember is light and pain. Being cold. I start throwing up if I try to go farther than that."

Mulder was talking to her. She zoned back into present events, nodding as if she had heard everything he had just said.

"That's when you're awake. I'm hoping, through hypnosis, we'll discover a few more details. Maybe it'll help with the investigation on your disappearance. In any case, it is the area of your subconscious memories that we've been unable to breach, I think it resists because of the distress it causes. Okay? Everyone ready? Let's see what we can find out." Petrillo said.

Scully, her attention fully focused now, "Excuse me, but you indicated Mulder's had other sessions. May I ask what happened during those attempts, I mean, at digging out these memories?"

Mulder answered, a little reluctantly at disclosing his continuing difficulties. "Petrillo put me under once or twice before..."

Scully glanced at Petrillo, who held up four fingers.

"...then he'd ask me about the bright light, and, I guess, I,..I always just start screaming and screaming."

"And other things." Petrillo added.

Mulder looked uncomfortable and was sweating a bit. The thought of going under again making him anxious. "And he said I claw at the air, and...lash out."

Scully shuddered, thankful she'd missed that particular sight. Yet Petrillo had requested her here to lend Mulder strength. Even Petrillo didn't know what might occur this time.

"Well, this time it may be no different but we could get lucky. I had to bring Fox out of it during the previous attempts because it became impossible for him to distance himself from it, even in the hypnotic state."

"Do you remember any more of it now, though?" Scully asked.

"No, except for bits and pieces, images of monsters, feelings. Stuff which no one believes." Mulder looked knowingly at Petrillo, "Not sure now if I want to actually."

"Today we'll record it again. It may stimulate memories later, when you're awake." Petrillo said.

"Bring on the crystal ball, doc." Mulder was getting restless.

Petrillo scooted his chair closer to Mulder and had his patient relax back against the cushions. After a few moments of soothing words, Mulder appeared to be under.

"Mulder, can you hear me?"

"Umm huh."

"I want you to remember the night you were on your way to your mother's house. I want you to remain calm but tell me everything that happened, in as much detail as you can. But I want you to remember that you are an observer. An outside observer. You'll be quite safe. All right? Do you understand me?"

"Uh huh." Scully watched Mulder's eyebrows scrunch together as memories surfaced. "It's late, I'm driving. I feel stiff, I need to stretch."

The doctor frowned at the first person pronouns in Mulder's narrative.

"What are you doing, what's happening right now?" Petrillo asked him, then scribbling a quick note to Scully and handing it to her.

She took it and read:

I HAVE NOT YET BEEN ABLE TO KEEP HIM DISTANT FROM The EVENTS. LIKE PREVIOUS SESSIONS, HE HAS ALREADY REVERTED TO FIRST PERSON.

"My back's sore. I'm gonna park off the road for a few minutes,...I'm really tired..."

Petrillo and Scully waited but Mulder didn't continue.

"What are you doing Mulder?"

"Sitting on the grass."

"Please keep telling me everything that's happening, it's okay, you're safe. Nothing is going to harm you."

"It's nice here," Scully assumed he was talking about the grass and not Petrillo's office. "I like the breeze. I don't...don't get to do much relaxing on the job. Always on the go. Really tired,..." Mulder's right hand fumbled a bit at his side. "Scully,.."

Surprised, she stared. An impulse to go and sit beside him and hold his hand struck her. But wherever it was he was, his hand relaxed.

"..Scully put a sandwich in my coat pocket." He sounded surprised. "That was nice of her...I wonder...she does things sometimes, takes care of me. I didn't think to bring anything. She's...she's...I'm such an idiot."

Scully closed her eyes, remembering a small gesture long forgotten. He'd been in a hurry to leave work that evening and hadn't thought of eating, as usual. It was nearly an six hour drive to Chilmark and he hadn't, she'd guessed, planned on stopping on the way either. So she'd ducked out, bought something at a nearby Cafeteria and slipped it into his coat pocket before he left. A cellophane wrapped roast beef sandwich, heavy on the mayo.

Such a small thing. But it had surprised and pleased him and had turned his thoughts to her while he sat at peace on a grassy September slope. Looking up at the stars maybe.

In the horror of his disappearance, that small gesture of concern and affection had been lost. In the hundreds of phone calls, police tape, evidence bags and the call to his mother, that small gift had been wiped out of existence. She hadn't even been present for the initial discovery of his abandoned car, the door wide open, keys still in the ignition. Wallet, phone, gun, I.D. still tucked in the glove compartment...

Mulder. Wiped out of existence.

She'd been at her godson's, the visit there being more to spend time with her longtime friend than the kid who, since he'd turned sixteen, decided that visits from his godmother were seriously uncool.

She bit back a moan of things lost. Willed her eyes to stay dry because what was happening in Petrillo's office was in the here and now and important.

Suddenly Mulder tilted his head back all the way and screamed bloody murder. Everything alive in the room jumped as his tenor strained to make them understand what his shut eyes were seeing. It was a horrible, terrifying sound. What he knew and saw was funneling through his voice box and pounding their brains but giving no understanding. The scream of a angry horse would have offered equal insight.

Oh, Christ. Scully's heart fluttered in her chest.

Seeing her wide eyed shock and fear for Mulder, Petrillo held up a palm to her.

"Mulder, can you hear me?"

Mulder shook his head back and forth. His whole body shook. Strangled wheezes from trembling lips and a whimper.

"I want you, to relax, Fox. I want you to relax and remember that what's happening cannot hurt you. Do you understand?"

"Y-y-e-e-s...but it can hurt. It _does_."

Petrillo frowned, shook his head. "Tell me what you see."

Mulder's eyes flew open. "LIGHT. HURTS! ITHURTS! ITFUCKINGHURTS. STOP IT, STOP IT....." He moaned. Weakly, "..fuck...!" Tears soaked his lashes.

"Where is this light?"

"Everywhere. Oh fuck - HELP ME!" The chords in his neck looked strained to the point of snapping. "...hurts so bad..." He groaned, swallowed, calmed. Yet he shook, wide-eyed, not seeing the room or them. Present and not present, experiencing things to which they had no access.

"Where are you now?" Petrillo wanted to take advantage of this unexpected turn. He had never gotten this far with his client before.

"I don't know. God - oh God, I'm blind."

Petrillo scribbled another note to Scully:

ANY PHYSICAL EVIDENCE HE WAS IN SOME KIND of EXPLOSION OR SIMILAR TRAUMA?

She shook her head in the negative.

Petrillo continued. "Try to stay calm, Fox. You're safe, you're still with us. Everything's going to be just fine. Nothing's going to hurt you-"

"-Like FUCK! Where am I, What the hell is going on?? I can't _SEE_!"

Petrillo shook his head in awe at Scully. "Do you hear anything?" he asked Mulder.

"Yeah. Weird...weird noises, I don't know...breathing? Grunts. Like,... like...I..I don't know." His nose wrinkled up. "Smells bad." His chest rose and fell more quickly. "Really bad. Hard to breath..."

"Take it easy now. You're safe, you can breath just fine. The air is fresh, you're very safe. What else can you tell me?"

"Humming."

"Humming? Is it a voice or something else?"

"No, no voice...machine, far away." Mulder started moaning. He appeared to be in pain, jerking his head left to right and back again. His respirations deep and fast. Too fast.

"Get me the fuck out of here! I'm,...I'm..." He started wiping at his shirt and pants. Jerky clutching movements, groaning and crying, his face twisting up with some private disgust.

"What? Mulder, what is it? Tell me." Petrillo encouraged but kept his voice gentle.

"I'm...c-c-covered in slime. It smells - I'm, I'm drowning. God - I'm going to -" Mulder spit up a few tablespoons of Petrillo's decafe', soaking his shirt in a mix of coffee, skim milk, sugar and bile.

"Oh, my god." Scully commented aloud. She scooped up the tissue box and dabbed at Mulder's shirt and mouth with a handful of Scotties.

Petrillo quietly went and cranked open his office window a few inches to dispel the odor.

Mulder had not awakened.

"Was it the smell, Mulder? Is that why you had to vomit?" Petrillo gently asked.

"Jesus...I'm covered in it. Things...my own,...my own...we're all covered. I want out of here...I want out of here....please,...please..."

Petrillo pushed a little, not wanting to waste this little bit of progress. "Covered in what? Do you hear anything else? Can you tell me any more?" He also wanted to distract Mulder from the panic he could see building in his patients posture and gestures.

"Shit. Bile, like Tooms. All over...everything...my...piss...puke...I can't help it..." A trickle of sour fluid dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Scully dabbed and settled back again on the other side of the couch, trying to get away from the images in her mind formed from his words. Cruel, nightmare pictures that would not fade as she willed.

Mulder screamed again, this time a sharp, high yelp. He began clawing the air. Scully watched, horrified, as his hands raked at nothing. Dug at nothing.

"Let me OUUUUUUUUUUUT!" He flailed and tried to get up. Unable to balance, Mulder fell back.

Petrillo was there in a half second, ready to hold him down if necessary. He was speaking calmly but firmly. "Mulder. You're okay. Everything's fine." Loudly so Mulder would hear it over his own cries. "I want you to calm down. I want you to relax."

Some of it must have gotten through. Mulder's motions slowed and then stopped.

Petrillo puffed out his cheeks in relief, exchanging glances with Scully.

Scully was braced with elbow on a knee and a hand covering her mouth, eyes shut to what she'd just witnessed.

Jesus.

She felt like heaving.

Jesus Christ.

Petrillo was speaking soothing, calming words to Mulder, readying to bring him out of it.

"Okay, Fox. You're perfectly relaxed and calm. You're safe and feel fine. When I count to three, I want you to wake up. Okay? I want you to open your eyes on the count of three...One. Two. Three."

Mulder opened his eyes and squinted. Blinked. Leaned forward and rubbed them.

"Wow. I'm really beat." He commented. Looked at Scully. She returned it with a soft smile. Mulder pointedly addressed Petrillo. "So? Did we get anywhere?"

Petrillo kept his voice level, giving no hint that Mulder had just scared both of them shit less. "Farther than before. Quite a bit farther, but it's hard to know if it'll help us discover what happened."

"What's that mean?"

"I have it on tape. We'll all listen to it, including you, at our next session and see if it'll trigger any waking memories. Maybe we can pick it apart and find out what it means."

Mulder spread his hands and nodded. To Scully, "I'm dying for some food."

She nodded, thinking more along the lines of a vacation.

Petrillo walked them the few feet to his office door. "I think you're being here, Doctor Scully, was a great help."

"I'm glad." Was all she could think of to say to the fright session she'd just been party to.

"Petrillo thinks you'll be ready to come home in a few weeks."

Mulder gulped his coffee back, forcing it passed the gag. "He said that?"

He seemed more shocked by her good news than glad. "Well, weekends at first. Didn't he tell you?" Scully sipped her decaffeinated coffee. After his one sip, Mulder had pushed his aside and opted for something more stomach-settling second beverage ginger-ale.

"Must have slipped his mind." Mulder was, in fact, thrilled by the notion of getting out of Greenlawn and back to some sort of actual "life". But the reality also terrified him. At first, he'd hated the walls and the locks and the doctors with their note-pads on clipboards that they carried like badges of sanity and authority. Then he had grown used to them and soon began counting on them for the only stability he could turn to in life while his mind played footsie with nuts.

"I don't know how ready I am or _will_ be." He offered her. Shared the fear like Petrillo counseled.

Scully made her own offering. "You won't be alone. You'll be with me." She sipped her coffee. Made it a joke. "I mean, living with me might be just as bad as here but - hey - better food, movie disks,..."

Mulder smiled. It felt good to do it and mean it. "I'm glad to be coming home, Scully. I'm glad I have one to come to." His plastic cup was empty. "But there's no way I can ever repay you for what you've done..."

Scully cut it short before the conversation ended up a comparison of deeds. "Come home and we'll call it even."

Mulder nodded. But the fear was there at the idea of survival on the outside. He'd have to stand up and prove himself to the laughing world and the thought made him shiver.

*

Petrillo waited. It was best to let the man cry. Lots of crying was okay. More than okay, it was overdue. His patient had a lot to cry about.

And the doctor had waited, too, for the anger. That had come, along with the first tears, a few weeks ago. Finally.

Petrillo was certain that neither would have surfaced had Dana Scully not agreed to participate in those first crucial sessions of Mulder's therapy. Now she came or stayed away whenever Mulder requested, some things he didn't want her to see or hear. When Scully made purely social visits, she and Mulder would sit in the Atrium or in the Cafeteria and talk, about what Petrillo didn't know. The therapy maybe. Her work...but he knew for those times, Mulder was together and controlled and could even pretend at cheerfulness. He could fake her out.

But in here, in this room, Mulder was vulnerable, naked, exposed. Frightened. Out of control. In here, he was a victim again.

"Do you still question who or what did these things to you?"

Mulder was distraught. He was sobbing. Rubbing his eyes and temples, trying to figure it all out. He suffered under almost- memories that refused him rest. Nothing had been concluded, exactly, but at least he was trying.

"I don't know anymore. I just fucking don't know." Tried to get full breaths. "I'm so tired of all this goddamn shit. Son of a bitch, I hate this."

"Hate what? The therapy?"

"Yeah. No. The control crap. Genuflecting bull shit. Analysis and talking, talking and all the fucking crying. I'm so goddamn tired I can't think straight anymore. How am I suppose to know what did it? Or who? I can't even be sure I'm real."

"It won't be that way for much longer, you know. Mulder? You're getting very much better even if it seems like the things you've come to trust...your memories, the truth of what happened as you see it... seem to be crumbling around you. You are closer to being well that you realize, to getting out of here, and I don't want you to give up yet."

"Why?"

Petrillo knew that was coming. Mulder wanted, always he wanted, more than just loose assurances based on opinion. "Because I'm writing a paper on you and I'd like a good closure."

Mulder laughed, a little. "You're more fucked up than me, Petrillo. I always knew that."

"Don't let it get around."

"I asked you why."

"Because you're fighting the darkness. You're trying to discover the truth, you want all the answers. Pretty good, that desire for light and understanding. All the skills of your profession are still there. You have a strong survival instinct, Mulder, despite yourself."

"That's not very scientific. Don't your colleagues sometimes wonder at your methods?"

"They don't wonder when my patients walk out of here as sane as they are. My methods work. So? Back to the wheel?"

Mulder nodded.

"Quite a while back, you mention someone. You said "Bitch." Do you want to tell me more about her? I'm assuming a "her" here."

Petrillo was treading new and very tender ground. Gaping pits with this. But it was time to move on from the generalities he'd allowed Mulder to get cosy in and shoot for the specifics now.

First times. Lots of those these last few weeks and more to come. Lots more.

Mulder looked like he was about to get sick. Petrillo had learned to keep his wastepaper basket within easy reach. (He'd exchanged his wicker one for a heavy duty plastic one soon after their first chat together).

Mulder didn't get sick, but his hands shook in his lap as he linked fingers together. "U-u-m-m. Yeah. The female. The subject, um, yeah, it was a...she b-broke my arm once."

Whew. Petrillo knew how hard just saying that much had been. "She must have been extremely strong."

"In-human." Mulder corrected.

Petrillo let it pass. "Other injuries, other things she did?"

Mulder nodded, white as a sheet, trembling.

"Do you want to talk about this more tomorrow? A little at a time?"

Shaking his head 'no', Mulder took a deep breath. "I don't know why I can't get passed what she did to me. I don't know why it's taking so long."

Petrillo poured them both a coffee from his pot. Decaffeinated. Placed Mulder's on the coffee table and sat back down. "It's only been eight months, Fox. you know it doesn't happen that fast."

"But I'm a psychologist. I know the steps, I know the route. It should be different for me." He was crying again, a little, at his failure to excel at getting well.

Petrillo sighed. He'd encountered this before. Always, those in the profession believed somehow that they should be exempt from the processes they themselves knew were necessary. "Even a dentist, no matter how good he is, can't perform his own root canal." Lousy analogy, Petrillo.

"I'm 46 years old."

Back to that. "And you'll be forty-seven by next year. Age will not hinder you from getting well and it plays no part in the healing process. Only time does. And hard work"

"My life's half over. More than half, I don't know what I'm going to do with-" He doubled over, holding his breath, trying not to cry. Needing to so badly as always.

"Mulder. You're angry that eight years of your life were taken from you. And make no mistake, they were taken. You can't get them back. But the rest of your good life does not have to be spent in here. If we work together, you will leave here and begin again. Now before you make 'beginning again' into something hopeless, let me tell you that it's no shame." Sighed again. "Even though I know you don't believe that." Not yet anyway. "And the only ones who should be feeling shame are those who did this to you. You didn't choose this. But you don't have to live with it _like_ this."

"It seems impossible. Muh-my soul is gone. I don't f-feel.. ..hu-u-m-man eh-eh-anymore."

"But you are. You are. Soon, you'll believe it."

"She raped me."

Petrillo went motionless. Careful not to get excited. "Yes." The medical reports indicated that. Rape and a whole lot more.

"I let her."

Oh boy. "We've discussed this, Fox. You could not have prevented what she did."

Mulder's face crumpled to a point of pain like Petrillo had hit the com-fucking-pletely wrong button. "Later..." Mulder could only get one word out with each lung-full.

The guy was really trying. He really wanted to get this one out.

.."later".. *suck* .."I".. *gasp* .."l-let..her-r." ..*inhale*.. "fuck me.." *wheeze*..."I"..*snort*.."asked"..*sob*.."f-f-for.. it." Mulder was squeezing his guts and sucking air like a beached tuna. He was punishing himself for not being super-human.

Whew.

Rape survivor guilt. Misplaced, cockeyed, fucked-up guilt.

Let a human get beaten to within an inch of their life and there are no guilty feelings. No self-blaming cry of "my fault, my fault!"

But let that same human get punched and slapped around by a parent who says "I love you" first or a rapist who makes you get off and the shame begins. Sometimes flourishing into self-hatred. Sometimes into self-murder. So difficult to convince a survivor that the bodies natural physical response to manipulation is as out of their control as their beating heart is.

Perhaps, later on in his captive years, Mulder had chosen the path of least resistance. Maybe to survive the loneliness or the hopelessness. Maybe because it was the only form of tenderness open to him. But not in the beginning. He hadn't asked for the violent invasions of his body and certainly not the rapes at Walburg.

Mulder blamed himself. But a human being can't control or defeat all circumstance, even though most still learn from youth on that one "should" be able to resist or conquer almost anything. Technology and cell phones and success ruled the world, but people were still just simple, breakable creatures. Fallible. There was an innocence in that little truth we have forgotten, Petrillo thought.

"I think this is going to kill me. I'm afraid I'm insane. She sees it."

Double whew. If he was afraid of going insane, it's a good chance he wasn't or, at worst, not _too_ crazy to get well.

Mulder thought he should have died. Deserved death. "I wish I could say some words to make you believe you were an innocent in what happened to you, and that you are merely human with only so much power at your disposal, but I don't have those words. It's something you'll just have to learn. For now accept it at face value: You were not to blame. You will get well. We'll take the rest from there."

"But it's a mistake."

Petrillo wasn't sure he understood. "What is?"

"All of this. I shouldn't be here."

"You deserve to get well. You _are_ worthy. Scully believes it, why can't you?" It was the wrong time for this conversation, nothing Petrillo said could scale those self-incriminating walls. Mulder didn't believe it.

"No. It doesn't matter, don't you see. Nothing matters."

Petrillo watched his patient quietly weep. Something had changed in the tears. They weren't the 'I'm-so-fucked-up- and-useless-and-worthless, I-can't-stand-myself-tears' anymore. Mulder was grieving over something fresh. This was new, raw sadness. Doctor Scully had been mentioned. That might be it. Okay.

"I think I hear an "I'm not worth it" in there someplace. Is that what you think?"

When Mulder didn't answer, he remembered something. Doctor Scully's, on a recent visit, had been accompanied by a man. A stern, balding individual. Petrillo had not met him, only seen him, but his impression had been that this fellow would feel at home giving orders to the president. What was the name he had heard? Skinner.

Skinner? As in director Skinner of the F.B.I.? If this was a love triangle, he suddenly understood Mulder's feelings of not measuring up.

"Do you think she thinks that?"

Silence except for sniffles.

"What do you think of Mister Skinner?"

Mulder's countenance slumped into resignation, defeat having occurred without a battle even being waged.

In a small voice. "He's a good man." Microscopic whisper. "He'll treat her right, the way she deserves."

Thus the nerdy genius hath been cast aside. Petrillo knew Mulder hadn't even spoken to her about his fear that she was lost to him.

Petrillo was sure Doctor Scully had no idea Mulder still felt this way.

"And yet, she has done everything in her power to get you the care you need. She visits almost daily-"

"She feels sorry for me."

So do you! It was a good sign. Some self-pity there. Some ego. Nothing hopeless about Mulder at all.

"Have you asked her?" Knowing Fox would not have the courage to take such a step at this stage. Fear of rejection had a strong hold on him. Rejection meant worthlessness. Still... "You think she's abandoned you, so what harm is there in asking to see if that really is the case?" Was he afraid his fears would be confirmed? Or that they be disproved? Love was a big responsibility. It meant answering to another. Proving oneself. Being unselfish, forgiving. It meant laughing and planning for a future. It was a lot of hard work, sometimes with rewards at first unseen. It could be scary as hell.

Mulder stared at the floor. Petrillo could almost see the thoughts in his head battling for position.

After a moment, Petrillo suggested, "Would you like her to sit in again next session? Maybe your fear of rejection is something we need to discuss together? Would that be all right?"

Mulder actually asking this woman: Do you love me? was, Petrillo knew, beyond Mulder's strength. He was too vulnerable. He was cracked in a hundred places, the wrong pressure here, a tap there and pieces could begin falling away...

Frightened beyond speech, Fox nodded..

"I don't...don't know where I am."

Petrillo had Mulder under his guiding voice once more and Scully wondered for the second time whether her being there was of any use. But one thing was certain, she wanted to be in on Mulder's treatment; as often as possible; what-ever it was; whoever it was; how ever it went.

Leaving him under the care of strangers (though she had to admit, Petrillo was good), without her there to regularly observe at least was no longer an option.

"It's okay, Fox. You're okay, you're all right. You're very safe and nothing is going to harm you..." Petrillo droned.

He'd gotten Mulder to remember farther back this time. That is, if the hypnosis could be trusted, Scully thought. Whether or not it could, Mulder was trying to share his nightmare.

"I'm so cold." Mulder shivered. "I can't see anything."

Petrillo was making quick notes and watching his client carefully. "What about the noises? Last time, you told us about noises. Can you describe them?"

"Uh...yeah...breathing,...I think. Someone's breathing,.. and...and strange grunts. Something's near me...something big!" He arms twitched. "I can't see it. Some kind of animal. I can smell it!" Mulder shook his head back and forth as if to rid his nostrils of something rank.

Scully sat on the couch next to but not touching Mulder. She held coffee in her hand. There were daisies in a vase on the coffee table.

"I want you to relax, Fox. I want you to tell us about the noises but I want you to remember that you're quite safe and that nothing can harm you." Petrillo soothed.

"O-oh-k-kay." His eyes were closed but moved back and forth as if experiencing REM sleep. "It's moving away." Mulder stiffened, alert. "I smell something else. Strange. Sweet. Really strong this time but I can't see where it comes from...dark. Oh."

Petrillo and Scully exchanged looks. This was new. "Describe the smell." Petrillo encouraged.

"Same, sweet,..gross. Can't get away from it. Surrounded by it. I hate that smell, hate it...sickening...makes me throw up."

Before the action suited the words as at the previous session, Petrillo fired another question, "Have you smelled it before?"

"Few times. It's happened before. _Phuhg!_.." He snorted out his nose as if it were clogging with the dream stink.

Petrillo frowned, lost. "Where does it happen?"

"Here. All the time...so tired."

"Stay with me, Fox. Okay? Does the smell remind you of anything?"

"Ummm,.."

They were losing him.

"...uh,..yeah, I guess so. Kind of like sugar, um..syrup. Sorta like th-th-aaaaa..." Mulder let his head droop to one side and he didn't respond to Petrillo's attempts to re-awaken him.

Petrillo raised his eyebrows to Scully and gestured for them to move to his tiny adjacent business office. It was safe to leave the patient where he was for the time being.

"Well." Petrillo could think of nothing else to say right off.

Scully sat in the padded chair opposite his desk. "That was ...strange."

He puzzled a bit. "Hmm. I hope he doesn't go to sleep every time we come to that corner or we'll never get anywhere. But as for making sense of what we're hearing? - I don't know at this point _what_ we're hearing."

"So you think the hypnosis is going nowhere?"

"Well, no, I wouldn't say that. I'm just not sure it's going to the truth. What happened to him is always going to be somewhat a matter of conjecture because he remembers so little in the waking state. We're getting information but how accurate is it?, I guess is my point."

"I don't know what to suggest, I'm a pathologist. I can offer you this: I know Mulder. He doesn't make things up. He has a genius mind and the ability to make I suppose you could say incredible connections - leaps of logic if you will - but he has no imagination what-so-ever."

Petrillo thought for a moment. "If I had to guess, I'd say he was kept confined in a very dark, dirty basement somewhere with animals yet had connections with people." At Scully's amused look, "With some very, very disturbed people. But he insists he lived on another world. He seems to hold to that from his recollections, while awake anyway."

"Well. We know what he said. And we know he thinks we think he's crazy for saying it never mind believing it."

"Scars." Petrillo recited aloud. "Broken bones. Torture. Rape. Assorted assaults. Yet given medical aid, food, water. Conversation. Does any of it make sense?" Petrillo shrugged his shoulders. "Slave trade? Kept for work, sex, boredom, abuse..?"

Scully shuddered at the list as it always made her and wondered too. Some criteria fit, some didn't. Like, if he'd been anywhere with the technology to keep him alive after the damage those wounds must have caused...Mulder would have found a way to contact them. If he could have, he _would _ have. But had he wanted to?

Scully sighed. The little circle of questions had been spinning in her mind for months. And they were no closer to any real answer than when the ride began. "Have you been playing the sessions back to him?"

Petrillo nodded. "But he tends to blank out. He gets...stony. Wooden. And he doesn't talk for a whole day. It scares him pretty badly."

Scully stood. "Um, will he wake up...?"

Petrillo nodded and followed her through the door to the "client" office. Mulder was asleep but woke when Scully touched his shoulder. He blinked a few times. "Whoops. Did I go ape-shit Doc?"

Petrillo smiled. "No. You just fell asleep."

Mulder nervously rubbed his palms on his knees. "So, we listen back to it?" Obviously not wanting to.

Petrillo looked at his clients face. Fox's eyes were on Scully though he was trying to pretend they were on the far wall. "No. Tomorrow if that's okay. I'm really backed up in paperwork."

Mulder jumped up, pleased with his reprieve and the bit of freedom time Petrillo was granting. Scully took Mulder's hand and lead him down to the cafeteria. They had a precious hour before she had to go.

They took their drinks to the small atrium on the top floor and sat looking up at the sky. This was a place for patients advanced in their therapy and teetering on the brink of re-entry into civilization. Scully held onto that like a life preserver.

Mulder pointed out star systems to her, his knowledge extensive. Clearly he'd been reading up. They lay reclined on lawn chairs that had seen better days. Scully let her head loll a bit to her right so she could watch him. Availed herself of that joy as often as possible.

He had managed to stay gorgeous. Then, men usually got better looking as they aged. She used to think Mulder was cute. Now he made her breathless. But it was a reaction to something deeper than what was skin-deep. Crush on the new partner syndrome was a decade gone.

A stronger disease had replaced it.

*

She must have straightened the magazines on the coffee table a dozen times. She must have wiped the counter a hundred.

But he was coming home for his first weekend and she wanted everything perfect. No, not perfect. Comfortable and homey. Relaxed. She wanted him to feel welcome and relaxed.

She was still nervous and had bitten her nails off. A quick file and paint job and they looked passable.

The door buzzer sounded and her heart sped up. He was here.

She pressed the 'Talk': "Who is it?"

"E.T.."

The shit. Scully smiled just like that rainy night fifteen years ago and let him in.

Mulder carried an overnight bag, setting it down just inside the door. He wore the black knit sweater and blue jeans she'd bought him for his first Christmas back (one year, two months and four days ago). His first non-institute issued clothes which they had refused to let him wear. The nurse who had taken the package had said "we'll deliver it", placed it on the counter and gone back to her novel. Scully wondered if Mulder had actually seen the clothes until this year.

Scully wanted the hesitation she saw in him dealt with immediately and hugged him close and long with an extra squeeze just before releasing him.

"Hi," he said and bent down to kiss her cheek.

They ate in, watched a half hour comedy series called Don't Mind Me about, ironically enough, the goofy goings on in a mental institute. The Moral Majority's sensitivity meter must have dropped, Mulder thought. He'd noticed that, in 2008, almost nothing was off-limits on Satellite.

Later, he seemed quiet and though assuring her he was fine, she wondered about the downcast eyes.

It took him all evening to broach a subject he must have been wanting to talk about but until now was either unwilling or fearful of.

"Scully,...tell me...about my mother." He looked at her now.

Oh.

She had expected the subject: She and Him and Here Together.

This other one could be a plank-walk.

"What do you want to know?" There was quite a bit.

"Well, anything you can tell me, I mean after I was gone. Did she ever talk about me?"

Scully settled into the couch, legs tucked up. Mulder sat leaning against the back of it, legs stretched out and crossed. He didn't seem to mind hard surfaces for hours at a time at all.

"Sometimes. I went to see her a few times, especially after.. you were gone. I kept in contact with her sister as well. Because Teena, well, she was alone all the time."

"Aunt Julia?"

"Yes."

"Mom shouldn't have had to be alone like that. She shouldn't have had to go through that," he said.

"She was never angry with you. She knew, Mulder, that if you could have contacted her, you would have."

He nodded but it was an unconvinced nod. "Sam never came back."

Scully couldn't decide if that was a question or a statement and decided not to go there. "She, your mom, told me a few stories about you, you little hellion."

"Did she ever tell you about the time I broke her Royal Albert china?"

Glad he was following her lead onto lighter things, "No, but I'd like to hear what kind of Mulder-proofing I ought to be doing around here."

Mulder craned his neck and looked back and up at her. She got excellent view of gorgeous throat. "Scully, I was _six_."

"How did you break them?"

"Eight dinner plates. Four cups, two saucers..."

Scully rolled her eyes. Naturally the guy remembered exactly how many and what. Couldn't remember what happened for the last eight years but remembered _this_.

CTMDS. Chronic Traumatic Memory Dysfunction Syndrome is what Petrillo had called it, then had added with his usual humor:

//"It means when really bad shit happens, he blocks it out almost totally. Photographic memory isn't always an asset and I think that high functioning brain can't handle it. Usually when bad things happen, we tend to remember them more vividly than good things because they impact so many more cognitive areas and he does as well, of course. But when it's bad to the degree of driving one crazy, he has a defense that steps in to prevent that. It's not the first time for him and good thing too I would say." A self-depreciating quirk twisted his lip. "We took this brand new theory last year at the Johannesburg Conference. It sounds good."//

"..the pattern was Buttercup. I was climbing on a chair to get at the china cabinet. I wasn't interested in the dishes, I just wanted to see what she'd hidden in that red, dragon- painted wooden box she had tucked in behind. I dislodged one of the shelves and crash! I tried to glue them all back together but she must have known. I did a terrible job with the glue. Got it all over myself and the plates and the rug."

"What kind of glue?"

"Super-Glue hadn't been invented yet - Elmer's."

Scully laughed at that, throwing back her head. "Oh, I'm pretty sure she knew."

"She was a good mother to me. Most of the time. I was a troublemaker back then."

Back _then_??

He hadn't talked about his father at all. But then perhaps Mulder had laid those demons to rest.

"What was in the box?"

"Huh?"

"What was in the wooden box?"

"I never found out. I was so scared I just grabbed the glue and started piecing them and stacking them back together. They all stuck to one another so I ended up with one, big, thick, heavy, really sticky Buttercup Royal Albert plate."

Scully laughed. "You brat."

"I was just a kid. She never said anything anyway but after that I was too scared to go in the china cabinet again. Never did learn what she kept in that damn box."

A lock of your hair and love from her heart, Scully mused. It was easy to love one's child. Teena may have been prim and distant during Fox's adulthood but, so Scully had learned from repeated visits with Teena Mulder where the woman would unashamedly pour out all the things she'd remembered and loved about him and all the grief over losing him a mother can hold, she had dearly loved her dark haired, hazel eyed little boy.

Mulder suddenly asked very quietly. "How did she die?"

Scully took a breath. Kept it basically informative but left out the most distressing aspects. It was difficult to read the back of his head, what to tell and what no to tell him. "She had another stroke. That's not unusual." she quickly added when she saw his sideways glance and the pain in it. "They often go that way. One and then a second and sometimes a third. This one affected the autonomic functions; breathing; heart. They had her on full support for a few weeks. But your aunt decided to disconnect life support..." She laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "It only took a few minutes. She didn't suffer."

Saw him nod. He rubbed fingers over his eyes, they came away wet.

She leaned down and kissed his cheek, meaning to only give a little peck to let him know it was fine. It was perfectly okay to cry here. In front of her. About anything he had to.

But Mulder's hand moved up to hold her head there, very gently, in place against his cheek. Then he turned and found her mouth and kissed it. He shifted around, kissed her once more. His lips rested briefly on cheek, ear, hair, neck. Back to cheek. All the time he was thanking her. He was whispering "thank-you, thank-you, Scully. Thank-you, thank-you.." in her ear.

He didn't specify what it was he was thankful for but pulled himself up to the couch and lay on top of her, molding to her and touching her unreservedly, kissing her with a kind of desperate intensity.

As she did him.

*

"I don't think it really matters so much the way Fox remembers things as long as he is facing _this_ life, now. Here and now it is vital how he perceives things, how he feels and reacts. He lost his ability to cope. Prolonged, brutal incarceration has had that effect on others before now."

Scully spoke to Petrillo via her cell while she drove the fifty minutes home. It was routine now that, even as she fired her engine and exited Greenlawn Recovery Center's parking lot, her fingers would be dialing Petrillo's pre-programmed private number and they would discuss Mulder: the session, what he said, what he did, what it meant.

"When can he come home for good?"

She heard Petrillo sigh at the other end. "Yes, I know. I ask the same question every damn week."

"Not yet. I don't recommend it. But it's close, Doctor Scully. He's come so far but there's a way to go still. I know you are aware of it as well as I but we can't forget what it is that brought him here. Mulder was abused, brutally for eight years. Locked away although it's still unclear where and who and even why,...treated in all the worst ways it is possible for one human to treat another, and springing back from that just isn't so simple as one years therapy and then - TA-DAH! - well again. This will be with him for the rest of his life."

Panic attacks. Post Traumatic Stress disorder. Incurable, both of them. But treatable. Hernia. Pills. Ulcer. Pills. Coping skills. "He's trying so hard."

"I know and partly because he wants to please you. He is starting to live again. A good, strong life for him is just ahead with all its liberties , restrictions and complications. We want to be certain he is armored to deal with all that it encompasses. It'll be a daily fight, even to make decisions, never mind find some kind of focus, goals, career..."

Scully recognized these things. "Do you think Mulder will try to go after those who did this to him? I mean, has he mentioned anything like that to you?"

Petrillo sounded concerned. "No. No, he hasn't. Is that the impression he is giving you?"

"No. But Mulder is..._Mulder_. He might."

"Unless he knows where to look, it would be futile."

Scully almost laughed. Like Samantha was futile. Like all the rest of the quest was futile, as it had appeared to everyone but Mulder.

The Quest, the Quest! You make request, that I should rest my questing quest? I think you jest! I shall go East. I shall go West. Before I rest my questing Quest!

Scully had never been much of a poet, (that had been Melissa's talent), but the silly rhyme had popped into her mind and she couldn't get rid of it.

"Anyway," Petrillo said, "I would discourage that, I think. He has enough to do just getting back on track now. We may never discover who did this to him or why and he may never experience complete memory recovery.

But the power to make or break his own life is in his hands once more. Do you know what he said to me when I mentioned that?"

"What?"

"He said "I hate it when shrinks make sense." When I asked him why, he answered: "Because it means now I have to try. I have no excuses not to."

*

A few weeks later, Mulder had a birthday and for a present Petrillo had repainted the number on the wall to read "47". He told Mulder it was a reminder that he had reached that age without being nuts.

Scully bought him his own color television for his room, satellite included.

*

He looked peaceful.

It was the brink of paradise, having him there, in her bed.

Home.

To touch him now all she had to do was move her arm across six inches of sheet. His warmth was the last best thing at the close of each day and the first of each sunrise.

Even if it was only weekends.

Watching him sleep - she did a lot of that lately - his movements and breathing, was a reward. Or a miracle. A wonderful gift to her from God; one to be thankful for. However the bestowal of him she would treasure and protect the gift as long as Destiny allowed.

Scrumptious looking gift. Scully lightly ran her hand over the long line of his back and side, memorizing each muscle, each dip and rise from shoulder to the slight curve between rib-cage and hip. His bones were fleshed over again.

Mulder stirred and turned to face her. "Hi." he mumbled still in half sleep.

"Morning."

"Been awake long?"

"No. I'm used to waking up early." It was a half lie. The other reason for her early awakening that day was a seriously erotic dream in which a certain former F.B.I. man figured prominently.

Day dreams too, all centering on a big, big bed and a naked, willing Mulder. He was of course willing now but just not able. It was not a subject they spoke much about. Petrillo had explained it to her behind Mulder's back. She was worried about touching him in that way. Was he all right now? Would he allow her to touch him? Petrillo had assured her it was not the touching, but it was his fear of that brand of intimacy. He wasn't ready, it was still messed up in his head. He still had terrors.

But some nights she talked him into bed and as much as she wanted to hold him down and ride him like a spring bunny, she settled for kissing and hugging, or tangling herself up in those long legs of his and offering certain portions of the local man-life a specific caress or two. Those times would stave off the cavewoman cravings for another week. But no rise from "Basement Mulder" yet and Upstairs Mulder was horribly self conscious about it. She tread very, very carefully around the subject.

Scully draped one shapely leg over his warmth, planting little kisses on his chest. She liked his back too, it was long and lean and muscled. She was a back woman. Today it was his chest though. She didn't even notice the scars anymore.

"It's Sunday, Scully, go back to sleep." His eyes remained closed.

She wanted to see them. "I'd rather go out for breakfast."

"Can't we have it here?"

"We always eat here."

"Yeah but I was hoping..to spend the day with you...alone."

"Sounds promising. Are you sure? We could try out that new pancake place....all you can eat..."

"Crowds. Kids. Old people with dentures..." He grimaced.

"Alone with me aaaaalll day...huh?" Scully liked the possibilities of it.

That made him smile and he cracked an eye. "Behave."

"I am woman, Mulder, hear me roar."

His eyes closed again. "Sleep, then food, then talk."

Scully snuggled and kissed him some more, pleased at his response. "And then?"

"T.V."

Covering his head with a pillow, she beat her palm on it then jumped out of bed before he could snatch her back.

Her long T-Shirt twisted around her and rumpled, he caught sight of nude fanny before she threw on a housecoat and headed to the kitchen. "I'm making breakfast then. Now. So if you're inclined to eat this morning, get that attractive ass out here." Her voice was lilting and happy.

It made him deliriously content. "Should have known taking up with an Irish woman would cause a war." He called after.

In front of a movie neither payed much attention to, he settled in, comfortable leaning against the couch, his legs stretched out as usual. The comfortable silence settled in as well and he was enjoying it. He'd done entirely too much talking these past few months. His tongue was tired. His brain was tired. Sitting in front of a television that wasn't controlled by someone in a white, starched uniform was heaven. They only allowed him access to his own T.V. at Greenlawn between certain hours.

It wasn't a recent film they were watching. "Y2K." A movie about millennium destruction and world anarchy. Well, 2000 had come and gone (while _he'd_ been gone) and nothing had ended. Some things had definitely gotten worse. Economics of course, when did they ever improve? Nation still rose against nation and kingdom against kingdom...no alien invasions to speak of.

But then he was behind in his current events.

Saddam still undefeated in first place for Prize Ass hole award.

Ireland finally had enough arguing with the Crown and signed a tenuous peace treaty that thus far was holding. The New Freedom IRA was still a problem but, then, when weren't they?

Economic strength was up in some countries and down in others.

People were still having babies and paying mortgages.

A woman was in the White House and he'd slid a few good jokes Scully's way about that.

But no alien colonists.

Yet.

He may be older, the X-Files may be closed but that didn't mean all that he'd seen and learned "back then" had been false.

Scully had left the work behind. _That_ work.

He'd been thinking about it and, since being granted weekend leaves, been thinking about it more and more. The problem was he was no longer an Agent of the F.B.I. In fact, he had nowhere to lay his briefcase. And he still had a month or two of sessions with Petrillo to get through...

But things were still unanswered. Antarctic. How had "Their" work progressed? Would he ever be able to pick up the threads and unravel the tapestry of the concealed lies...

Mulder shook his head a bit. His feet were becoming impatient. First things first.

"What's wrong?" Scully asked. She was seated behind him, her knees on either side of his shoulders. He loved it when she did that.

"Hmm?" She'd caught him staring at the coffee table instead of the Television. "Oh, nothing, I guess I was just thinking..."

Scully shifted closer and put her arms around his neck, resting her chin on his shoulder. He was thinking more and more, she knew. And about what, she could make an educated guess: his future.

Not just their future but his. Job, career, purpose, life. All those big questions he would soon have to explore and decide on. Asked anyway. "What about?"

Same old Mulder. He tried to minimize his obvious pensiveness. "Just, you know, when these sessions are over....things. "What next?"

" ...job..."

Scully ran fingers over chest hair. "What about applying to the Bureau again,...your past record..."

Mulder turned sideways to look at her. He did that when he was serious, looked her in the eye when he wanted her to listen and understand that what he said was crucial. Also when he suspected she wouldn't like what he had to say. "No one's going to hire me here, Scully."

Gently - oh! - so gently said. He did not want those words to hurt.

"In two months or so," He explained still gently, still with that pillow voice that wanted to keep her safe and happy, "Petrillo figures I'll be upgraded to outpatient status."

"That's excellent." *No one will hire me here, Scully*. No. One. Will. Hire. Me. _Here._

"It means I'll need a place to stay for a while. Full time..." He had no money of his own at all. Well, his mother's house was still sitting there, paid for. It was his now but it was getting older and the taxes on it had to be payed. He had less than no money. Scully'd been paying all the bills for a long time and _that_ was unacceptable to him. _That_ was going to change.

"With me, I hope," she said quickly. Even now, he asked permission, she thought. Even yet, he harbored doubts.

"Are you sure? Twenty-four and seven?"

Doubts about her feelings for him. Doubts about his worth.

"Don't you want to?"

"Yeah, I do. I just don't want to be a burden or put you out more than I already have."

She sighed. This was an old battle and she was tired of it. "Put me out? I love having you here, Mulder. I look forward to coming home every day, knowing you'll be here."

She saw him gulp. For some reason, it had been the wrong answer.

"I'll be putting out resume's as soon as possible. Don't want to be a bum forever."

She felt a tightness in her chest. He hadn't acknowledged her last comment. "You're not a bum. You've just had bad luck. A lot of it." She smiled at herself. Yeah. A Supertanker of oily-shit- bad-luck. "If not the Bureau, what Agencies?"

"No one in D.C. would take me on, Scully," he said-almost-whispered.

The tight ache in her chest grew and was joined by a lump in her throat that no amount of swallowing would dislodge. But she listened as a good friend does.

"All they'd have to do is check where I've been for the last fourteen months, the years prior to that, the work I - we - did before that. Mulder the UFO chaser who claims abduction by said aliens and ends up institutionalized...Spooky really is crazy. If you didn't know me, Scully, wouldn't you think the same?"

She didn't answer because she didn't want to speak the truth:

Very probably, yes she would.

No one would hire a man with a record like that. He would find no position of trust or responsibility no matter how sane now. I.Q., experience, eagerness, none of those would matter to an employer with a reputation to protect. Find a new career outside law enforcement? Mulder was pushing fifty. "So you're not going to try here?'

"I've applied. I'm not...holding my breath."

She let one finger idly touch his left nipple. She felt it's response to her gentle manipulations and let her hand explore lower with tiny soft circles. Heard his breath catch. "Scully..."

She realized how hot and bothered she'd become. It was the thought of him going away. That a day was coming where he would have to leave. She would go with him, she decided. Chief Forensic Pathologist? Her position and status? Let the dead dissect their dead. "I'll be going with you."

He turned all the way around at that and took her hands. "No." And before she had a chance to ask, he explained his reasons.

"Scully, I want this - us - to work. I have no right to ask you this but I need some time to prove to myself that I can make it on my own, out there, again." He pulled her off the couch and into an embrace, wrapped himself around her and touched her, letting his hands and arms land where they may. "I _want_ this, Scully..."

She relished the feel of his hands on her.

"...but not yet. I...can't. I'm sorry but it has to be _right_..."

Scully thought: How ironic. The old pervert I know and love wants sex to be something right and pure. Beautiful and truthful even.

Mulder was speaking softly into her ear. It was such a sexy turn-on, she was afraid she might lose the control he was advocating and try mounting him right there on the living room rug.

"...because of what happened to me. For a long time, sex was a substitute for everything, like a replacement for feeling and even thinking." He pulled away and looked her in the eye. "I don't want you to be a substitute."

Boy Scout all the way.

She wanted him so badly. Not just the sex, but the mind, the emotions, the soul, everything labeled Fox Mulder that she could get her hands and heart around. The whole damn thing!

And he was going to be leaving without her. She could feel the redness appear in her eyes and knew it broke his heart to see it. "Scully. I'm sorry. But I'm not even out of the hospital yet. I don't have a job. I need those things....to establish a future of some kind, one where I want you to be. Us, together."

He was so earnest. He just didn't clue that all she wanted out of the future was him in the present. Right now. But she understood his need for a certain amount of independance. Some things didn't change, Fox Mulder still had trouble relying on anyone. "I don't want that future if it won't include you."

Scully choked back the tears, kept them from falling by pure will. God, he was such a gift. "Mulder, that's what I want too. You never know though, something might turn up here." Please God.

He smiled indulgently, kissed her on the hand. Moved to her lips.

Scully felt a rush of desire from head to toe. A look, a laugh, a touch did it. Amazing man. He'd wrapped up his heart in tissue paper and handed it to her with trembling hands...

She would carry it with her because that gesture had proved once and for all that he was no longer afraid of her.

He trusted her to love him no matter what.

One day Mulder came home from his forays into the job market and after turning the key in the lock and locating her in the bedroom, Scully found herself on the receiving end of a long, very intimate hug. He seemed to want to enclose her in himself so they would become a single being.

It set off warning signals and she braced herself.

"I found a job, Scully." He announced.

A rush went through her. Excitment and worry. "What job? Where?"

"In Washington. Kind of a psychologist/crime-victim/counselling/ consultant."

Her heart soared. "That's terrific." Big hope,"The Bureau?" Tiny hope, "VCU?" Any hope would do.

"Scully,.." Mulder spoke softly and hope dived to dash itself on the rocks. "Washington State. _Seattle_, Washington."

Scully wanted to say something supportive and meaningful but words failed her. Her heart was spinning and wobbling on a pin- point.

"Two weeks Monday." He finished. He had not ended the embrace. He was rooted like an ancient tree to support her in whatever way she choose to react.

Mulder was a steady strength she pulled herself into, wrapping her arms around his waist, holding on for dear life. He was being so strong for her. For so long he'd wanted to, he still thought he had a debt to repay.

"I'm proud of you," she whispered. (I don't want you to go!)

"I tried to find something here, Scully."

"I know." The other side of the continent?

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay." All the way across five thousand lonely miles. Nine hours by jet. Six days by train. Seconds by phone but phone calls? Not acceptable. Not enough -not nearly enough!

"Are you okay?"

Two weeks and he would be gone. She cried then. Oh, those gentle words. Always those three damn gentle words of his did their magic and most especially when she was trying her hardest not break down.

"No, I'm not. I'm not." Her mascara would stain this shirt too. Another dry-cleaning bill.

*

"How was your weekend?" Petrillo asked.

"Real nice." Fox said, remembering. "It was really nice."

Petrillo nodded, took a gulp his wife's spicy, milky tea she'd packed in a thermos for him that morning. It was pungent and sweet and hit the spot better than coffee.

"Well, shall we begin?"

Mulder nodded.

"Any dreams?"

"No. But I was a good boy and took all my pills."

"Yes. I told Doctor Scully to watch and make sure of that."

"Figured as much."

"What about your emotional state over the weekend. How did that go? Any anxiety?"

"Always but not so bad this time. We talked a lot."

"About what?"

"What I'm going to do when I finally get out of here."

"What do you want to do?"

He had a job but didn't want to mention it to Petrillo. He had an irrational fear that Petrillo would not approve. Petrillo still had some clout over his patient status and could veto any move out of state if he thought it a risk to his recovery. But this job was his ticket back, he felt, and no one was going to screw it up.

"To stop being a financial burden on Scully. To get a job somewhere where I can use what I know, make some kind of difference."

"You mentioned thinking about going into private practice as a psychologist for UFO abductees. Private counseling, hypnosis and related therapies. Are you still considering it?"

Fox pursed his lips. "I've put out feelers for that and other things. I'm not in a position to be choosey."

Petrillo thought Fox looked uncomfortable "I know you still don't believe me. No one ever did."

"You'll have to forgive a skeptical society. But just because there's no tangible proof doesn't mean abductions don't happen. Regarding your own claim, you have nothing to prove to me as a member of that society. But you do have to work with me a little longer so you can get well."

"You keep contradicting yourself, Doc'."

"How's that?"

"That I can believe what I want to about what happened to me - which is that I was abducted by aliens and held against my will for eight years, that I have nothing to prove to you or anyone. But, getting well, doesn't that mean giving up that belief? Don't you think I'm delusional for believing it?"

Petrillo leaned back in his chair. It creaked. "I'll tell you what I think: I think something terrible happened to you. I think you're trying to recover. You're getting well means working hard as hell with me - which you have been doing - to handle these panic attacks and violent, diassociative episodes..."

"Could you drop the shrink-speak for a second and tell me what you really think? Am I delusional to believe I was abducted?"

"No. You're not delusional. I think your mind has coped the best way it can with the trauma of those years."

"Doc! A straight answer. Do you think I was abducted?"

"Personally, no I don't think that. But it doesn't matter."

"It doesn't? You're going to let me walk out of this place believing absolutely in something that people think is nuts?"

"Hindu's believe in Destiny and reincarnation. Are all those millions of people crazy? Is it crazy to chant to Buddha? Believe in the good will of one's ancestors? Is it nuts to worship and dedicate one's life to an invisible Yahweh? Is it insane to worship Mother Earth and consider even the rocks living, feeling creatures? Is the whole world demented, Fox?"

Mulder smiled ironically. "Point made."

"I'm a doctor - trained in the sciences - and the silliest assertion science continues to make is that miraculous things are impossible because they are miraculous! I have every belief in the possibility of things beyond this realm, things outside the physical, because as a physical creature tied to this realm there is no way in hell I can ever prove otherwise."

"A philosopher too, huh?"

"It's not so much philosophy as common sense. You see. What's important is how you see _this_ life. That you're grounded in reality and have the power to take or reject what it has to offer. To make rational choices as a free moral agent. Your choices will never be just one or the other. You can walk out of here if you wish believing you were on an alien space craft or sipping holy wine with the Queen of Heaven. As long as it's a choice from a healthy man, a mentally sound one. I'm just here to help you re-acquire the skills to survive - to live. In the end, the decision what to accept is still yours to make."

"What if the panic attacks still happen?"

"They might. PTSD is not a curable condition, but it is a treatable one. You will learn to live with it and live with it out there with your fine lady and not in here with an ugly, old man."

"You're methods are not very conventional, Doc'."

"But they work."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"After getting my degree I left India when I was twenty-seven. My father, by the way was Italian and worked in Calcutta, where he met and married my mother, hence the Italian name. I'm sixty- one years old now. I transferred from place to place in Europe and then here until I found a niche where I could be the most help. I think I found it."

"Lucky for me."

"Maybe Destiny." Petrillo smiled.

*

Petrillo's encouraging words helped ease Scully's heartache somewhat.

"Twelve months of treatment here - believe me - it's miraculous how far he's come in that time. He has a resilience I've not often seen in my years. He's a healer and a fighter."

"I'm very proud of him. So you think he's...okay? He's not going back to work too soon?"

"Uh,.." Over the phone, Petrillo's voice seemed a trifle confused. "That's really impossible to say for sure. I can say that if I thought he was not at all ready, that it was shaky, then I would tell him. But the decision is ultimately up to him now that he's on his own cognisance. Uh, he's got a job then?"

"Yes."

"I'll have to speak to him about some out-patient follow-up if he's willing, that was fast." He wasn't surprised, really, that Mulder hadn't told him.

Tell me about it. Scully hung up the phone. She would not cry or be selfish about this. Would not hurt him.

*

Two people traveled to Ian Moss's residence in Boston, Minnesota.

One got there an hour before the other (around 9 P.M.) in a 1984 Ford Tempo in need of a tune-up. He parked around the corner because of the engine's rumble and because he didn't want the car noticed in particular though the street out front was lined on both sides with vehicles. Visitor number 1 walked down the back alley to the row of stacked condos, his destination. But instead of going in, he waited and watched the presently darkened windows.

He would do this same routine, parking his car in different spots each time and varying where he stood to watch, as long as it took until he knew the comings and goings of dwelling number 3 on the fifth floor. Who was at home and when and the times they arrived and left until he learned them. Even if it took days.

But as luck would have it, only forty-five minutes after standing in the chilly night air, the lights went on in what he figured was the bedroom. Soon, the lights behind the blinds on the balcony doors went on.

The cars and trucks belonging to the residents of the middle class housing were all parked out back with numbers painted on concrete blocks for each.

Another half hour went by and a big man emerged from the back door accompanied by the little man whom he himself had traveled a long way to keep company with.

Smaller man kissed bigger man and bigger man, in the uniform of Boston's finest, walked to his unmarked police car, got in and started it, back out of his stall and drove away down the alley.

Visitor number 1 watched as Ian Moss retreated into the building, letting the door swing shut behind him.

He quickly sprinted to the door before it could swing to and caught it, then crept up the flight of carpeted stairs after his intended.

Ian placed the key in the deadbolt and turned the lock.

Before he heard the telltale click of the bolt sliding back, he heard another click.

A switchblade at his throat and a voice in his ear muffled the bolt's sound.

"Hi, Ian. Long time no see."

Ian felt panic surge through him at Ross's angry baritone. "What do you want?"

"Shut the fuck up and get your ass inside is what I want, you snitching homo."

Ian had no doubts Ross meant to kill him but he had no recourse in an argument with a knife. A teeny tingle at his throat and the feel of wet underneath it proved Ross meant business.

Ross shoved him inside and kicked the door shut. He couldn't take his hands off Ian to turn the bolt but it didn't matter, what he had to do wouldn't take long.

Ian wondered how many minutes had gone by - it seemed an eternity - and glanced at the clock hanging in the hallway.

The door of number 3 shut just as a traveler number 2 pulled up in a cab out front.

"I'm expecting someone." Ian said, surprised at the steadiness of his voice.

"You're a lying faggot."

"No, I'm not. I swear, I'm expecting him any second now."

"Oh, yeah? Who?"

"Fox Mulder."

Ross paused. "Who is that, your little queer for the night? Does the cop know you're two-timing his ass? Hmmm?"

Ian swallowed. Jesus, Ross didn't even know who he was talking about. But how often does a rapist even really look at the face of his victim or take the time to learn their name?

Ross dragged Ian into the living room. "I got a network, faggot. Eyes on the back of my head. You think I wouldn't find out who turned me in?"

Ian struggled to remain calm or to at least appear to. Ross (and his type) loved to terrorize before cutting or raping or whatever it was he'd previously been convicted of. Volumes had been written on the subject. Lot's of time to read on night shift.

How the prick Ross had ever landed in Community Sentence work, he didn't know. Yes he did. Understaffed justice system. Overcrowded jails.

"You scared, homo'? Why? I thought all you little boys liked it up the ass? You spent enough time with Candy man, you and he must have got it on now and then..."

Ian felt Ross's arm go tighter around his throat with each sentence spoken, the knife pressed almost home. Ross was atoms from cutting him a second mouth.

"...well, I'm not here to teach you a lesson like that pathetic loon I fucked the balls off of, I'm here to tag me a fag. How'd ya' like to be famous for a day, Ian? How'd you like to make the morning papers? You and your homo-cop-bum-buddy?"

Ian saw the shadow before Ross did and as soon as he felt that first violent jerk and heard the fleshy thud and Ross's hand go limp, he twisted free. But the dive for freedom wasn't as crucial as it might have been.

Because he turned and watched as Fox Mulder proceeded to take things in hand and beat Ross to within a half inch of his life.

Stunned, Ian observed the floor show as the Fox he remembered and a Fox he had never seen plant his foot into Ross's gut, and then his crotch, again and again.

Fox questioned the perpetrator with each swing of his polished David Collier size 12's.

"Dump your maggot slime into me, will you? You piece of shit! You fuck!" Fox switched from crotch to face. "You goddamn raping scum-shit! How would you like to eat your own nose, you son-of-a-bitch!!?"

Suddenly Fox stopped, breathing hard as Ross snorted red and green all over the carpet.

Ian was fascinated at the transformation from murderous hate to calm exterior as Fox took out his cellular and dialed 911, speaking into it for a few moments. Then he actually took the time to bend down and see if Ross was still breathing and getting enough oxygen to keep alive until the EMT's arrived. Ian suspected that, if Ross were to then die en-route to Emergency, Fox would care less.

Then Fox was at his side with a hanky, pressing it over the small cut on his throat. Ian took the opportunity to look at his former patient.

Hair shiny and combed. Black suit, expensive and hung on his healthy - _very healthy_ - looking body like silk on marble. This was not the Fox he remembered. Not even close.

This man was tall, sane, powerful and in total control of the situation.

He was gorgeous.

"Are you all right?"

It was the first time he had ever heard Fox's voice and possibly the sexiest sound he had ever laid ears on. He supposed it had some- thing to do with the fact that Fox had just saved his life.

"I could kiss you." Ian rattled, his throat hurting from Ross's unremitting tight hold on it.

Fox smiled, showing a row of white if slightly uneven teeth. Still sexy. "Well, we'll just skip that part, 'kay?"

Ian nodded and got to his feet. Sirens could be heard getting closer.

"Is there someone you want me to call?" Fox asked as Ian sat on the sofa, a bit shocky. "Yeah. Precinct 22. Ask For Sargent Gary Bihlhaltz -Jesus."

"What?"

"This is gonna be hard on him. Worse than for me."

"Why?"

"Because he's in the closet."

Fox nodded, understood. Greater men had been ruined for less. "If you need me for anything, character witness, whatever. Call my number or Scully's - you still have hers?"

Ian nodded. Fox gave him one of his new cards. "I'm staying in this hotel tonight," he took the card back and wrote the hotel name on the back, "hopefully, the initial red tape for this won't keep me in Boston beyond tomorrow. I'm returning to D.C. and then moving to Seattle. I don't know for how long."

Ian wondered what might have happened between him and his lady/doctor/friend that he was leaving the East coast.

Fox put his hands on his hips. Ian tried not to stare up at his rescuer. "Listen, I requested to come and see you because I wanted... I mean you saved my life."

Ian flushed. He couldn't help it.

"You saved me. At Walburg..." it was still hard to even say the name of the place. "If it hadn't been for you, I might still be in there along with this pile of manure." Fox nodded once in the direction of the bloody pulp on the floor. There would be an investigation of this incident, statements, court, he'd have to fly back and testify on Ian's behalf and his own.

"You saved mine tonight." Ian reminded him. "I'd call it even, wouldn't you?" He glanced at the human bruise called Ross. "I didn't see you kick a man who was already down. Ross came at you with the knife, too, didn't he?"

Fox nodded, smiling just once.

He remembered almost nothing except instant reaction. It came back to him though, as they waited for the officials.

Fox had just walked in the building as another resident was walking out, no need to buzz the door. And when he'd heard the distinct waver of Ross's monster voice, he'd just acted without thinking. Suddenly he was F.B.I. again and all the old skills and training fell into place.

Ross went down almost without any effort on his part. But then another part of himself surfaced.

He saw his shoe bury itself in various parts of Ross, especially the hated face. He'd wanted that fat, mushy pig face to cave in and come out the back of his head. Along the way, the face turned into a creature nightmares are made of and instead of pink skin, a boney headed, sharp-toothed demon ready to tear him in half emerged and his foot had struck harder.

Then he had stopped. Just like that. He wanted it to end this time. In justice. Witnesses. Proof! No more time behind bars and locks and spectacled doctors looking at him wondering why.

The authorities would deal with Ross. Less satisfying on a personal level but better for his own health in the long run.

It had taken enormous self-control not to kill that man.

*

"Gotta a joke for you." Mulder said as they sat and ate sandwiches and drank coffee.

"Okay."

"This guy gets a flat tire and pulls over to the side of the highway right next to a mental institute-"

"Mulder-"

"-Just wait, Scully, I said it was a joke, now you've ruined the build-up."

"Sorry."

"-he pulls up next to the nut house. He removes the hub cap and the bolts from the rim and puts them in the hub cap. But as he gets up to stretch, he accidently flips the hub cap into the air with his foot. The bolts land in the ditch water. So, he's standing there, wondering what the hell to do. Then along comes a mental patient and asks him what's wrong. The guy says: " I lost all the bolts to my tire and now I'm stuck here." So the kook thinks for a second and makes a suggestion: "Well, why don't you remove one bolt from each of the other three tires and use them to put your spare on?" The guy says: "Wow, that's brilliant. How in hell did you ever think of that?!" And the nut says: "Well, I may be crazy but I'm not stupid."

Scully smiled.

"A smile? That's it?"

"Well, it was cute but not hilarious."

"That's because it's build up was ruined."

Now she laughed, a happy chuckle.

She loved him. Mulder was here, sitting beside her in a park on a Friday, sane and free and hers and not a fucking white-coat in sight.

Back from his quick trip to Boston where he'd, somehow on God's green earth, stumbled into trouble. Thankfully, it had turned out all right.

Ross, rot his stinking hide, was sitting on his ass in a cell waiting for an his arraignment while his public defender bit his greenhorn nails. Mulder would have to return there for the actual trial which could be who knew when.

Mulder had wanted to take the flight to Boston alone. Tough on her, acting unselfish and hugging him as he left in a cab for the airport. But it was his first time, out and away, without a net. Without anyone to drop the bread- crumbs and in his anxiety to depart he hadn't even kissed her goodbye.

But he'd come home again and - God - she loved him.

Scully saw Mulder in that context and no other.

Because she had learned something about it over the span of a decade.

Love encompassed so much and excluded so little.

Mulder had aged. A sprinkling of grey hair now. Crows feet and laugh lines. The man would soon be starting on the road to jowl-dom.

Scully noticed, now, sitting next to him in the bright sunlight, an age spot or two on the backs of his scarred hands. She shud- dered at the image of him trying to claw his way through a wall, screaming in the dark.

He drew on a Winston, smoke curling out his nostrils. He was up to a half pack a day but with all he'd been through, she certainly wasn't going to begrudge him a regular nicotine fix.

//No one is ever going to harm you again, Mulder. I will not let them.//

He swallowed, throat tight with nervousness. He'd wanted to talk he said.

She was letting him take his time. He always wanted to say it just right.

So she let him smoke and think about it while she studied his scars and clear eyes and teeny, sweet, clutchable love-handles.

And what of them anyway?

Forty-seven years and too, too many bumps on the long, hard road will do that to anyone.

But - God in his elusive heaven - the man was beautiful. Inside and out.

Still.

To Scully.

And - merciful angels looking down - he was _hers_!

Those few extra marks and fat cells accumulated since his prime just made him more interesting, more vulnerable and human. And - yes - sexier.

Her eyes came back to rest on his face just as they always did when the two of them made these little midday forays to the park. The September sun called people out of their cubby holes and they'd pour out en-mass when Twelve o'clock beeped on thousands of little timepieces throughout the office buildings of the Capital.

She loved his face, one that was ready to forgive almost anything.

Gentle, lovable man.

Is that what she had seen that first time in the basement all those years and years ago? She tried to remember.

First impressions.

Handsome?

Definitely.

Sexy?

Impossible to ignore.

Genius?

Rumored to be.

Impossible to work with? (That's what "they" - the gossip mill - had told her).

Not if you were Irish.

Frivolous? A waste of the Bureau's time and resources?

No goddamn way.

Had he gotten on a few people's nerves during the years the X-Files were active?

Frequently, including his boss's. Had Skinner a full head of hair before Mulder showed up?

But through all of it, Mulder'd remained an honest, hard working successful, case-closing agent. A pain in the ass, yes, and Skinner'd gone over the line for him more than once, protecting him from his own impulsiveness. So had she.

First impressions had also included Mulder's passion for truth and his fierce devotion when it came to friendship, a quality of his she had tasted very soon, in the first months of their partnership.

Then she learned of his protectiveness. Yet he had never compromised her dignity as an investigator or equal. Frequently relying on her, in fact, first for her medical knowledge, then for her insights - even if he knew they would probably go against his own, still he had asked.

And then before she realized it, he'd begun to depend upon her, confide in her, seek her out during troubled hours professionally and in his personal life. Among the gabbers of Spooky lore and his former partners sent packing, the latter was unheard of.

Until that day, when she strolled confidently into his cluttered basement office and found a GQ four-eyed Freud, she had never in her life met such a complicated individual.

He was handsome and smart and should have been on the highroad to the FBI Hall of Fame. But instead he'd locked himself away in a forgotten corner, pouring over cases bearing the names of places and people no-one else cared about.

No one except Mulder, she soon found out.

Where other agents spent their time trying to climb the ladder, he spent his trying to solve the previously unsolvable, forsaking bureaucratic ass-kissing and that great striving for high station most were trying to achieve before the day of reckoning.

When one grows up in a family of status with a high brow father, sometimes fame can become a non-priority. No more looked-for than meatloaf at six or mediocre football. Rarely, but sometimes.

Mulder, after his new partner had questioned him about it one day, asking him what in the FBI he expected to be doing in ten years, had first stared at her like she'd spoken Swahili; as if no one had ever asked him anything personal about himself let alone about his future. She wondered if he'd ever given it serious thought. Finally, with a shrug of his shoulders, he'd answered - "Working."

She soon found out that for him it was the work and the fallible, frail human beings inside the cases that was important, not the ladder of success.

She'd heard that he'd run for his life from Violent Crimes, where he certainly would have achieved all there was to attain in the hallowed halls of the Bureau. But only at the cost of his sanity.

Scully had come to understand that people came first with him, in particular the innocent, and not the monsters that stalked them.

And she'd learned a few other things. Like how his sister had disappeared and his family had fallen apart. How he had blamed himself, his father punishing him and his mother shutting him out. And how he'd coped with the terrible anguish of all of it for decades yet still found room to joke with his new skeptical partner.

All that was a long time ago and nothing would hurt him now. Not today. Not ever again.

Not as long as she occupied the same earth he did. Not as long as her shadow fell across his.

Even Mulder's old nemesis left him in peace. She hadn't caught the whiff of Morley's for years.

Someday, though, she really wanted to know who the hell that corrupt old prune had been, especially his connection to Mulder. Scully really wanted to know that part.

"They" left him alone and in peace. It was a well earned rest.

So much history packed into the man with the heartbreaking eyes and the hottest ass in Washington.

Imperfections?

Those just added to the whole and made it better. It wasn't a thing one could explain to the inexperienced in love. To those who admired the buffed, oiled-skinned heavyweights posing for the world at the checkout stand.

Masculine ideal, their pasted grins said.

Hardly.

Perfection was a crashing bore.

Uniqueness and genuine originality, for those qualities one had to work and work hard.

Body beautiful was an older, looser Mulder whose lifetime collection of wounds and wear made her hunger all the more to touch him. Such battle trophies should be treasured and their carrier protected.

That would be her honor someday. And her reward.

Thus far, each had not shared of the others body. It was still her one regret and, she hoped, his as well.

But he was correct when he stated they should wait.

So hope.

Hope to be with him and soothe the memory of the battle scars. Erase their occurrence in loving him though their very existence made him more lovely. Endowed him with the beauty of strength and passion because he'd taken them on and won.

Mulder lived, despite everything.

The ideal sat beside her, in the new suit she'd bought for him, picking at nervously bitten nails.

Every-so-often the edge of that Styrofoam cup of coffee (he could drink caffeinated now without throwing it up), would disappear between those lips and remind her that he was the best kiss on the planet and he belonged to her.

Her temporarily, unemployed, middle-aged man with the over bite.

Suddenly, piled on top of the waves of sadness that were passing through the center of her heart, joy was there too and she chuckled.

"What?" he asked. They'd been sitting in silence for several minutes.

"Nothing. Really,.." shaking her head and taking his fidgity hand, "..nothing." Smiled a brave soldiers smile.

She watched his lips part. These days when he spoke, he thought a lot about his words before he said them, not liking the waste of breath or precious time. He hated small talk with all the absolutism that most people reserved for lima-bean salad.

"Scully. Are you sure you're okay with this?"

She nodded, squeezed his hand tighter. Hands fleshed with color, warmth and life. Nothing death-like about them at all.

He searched her eyes, making certain. He did not want to hurt her and could not live if she were damaged because of him. There was too much healing behind him and all because of her. She was too wonderful a thing to risk unless he was sure she would still be there.

Scully read all that in his eyes and in the space of time during his next breath.

"Because, if you're not, we can find another way. Maybe I could-"

"-Mulder." She quieted him. He paused, mouth open, waiting for her to speak their course one way or another.

She leaned over and kissed him, letting him understand that she was neither holding him there nor leaving him. But letting him know she loved him and nothing else in the world.

When she set his mouth free, "I have to do this." He explained again for the hundreth time, appologetically, a bit sadly, a trifle anxiously.

"I know."

"It's been so long since I've been able to make a decision on my own. What to wear, where to go, whether or not to get drunk if I feel like it. I just need this time. Some time. A few months. Six months. I just need to prove to myself that I can make it alone. Even if it's only for a while. But..."

Again, the anxious eyes. "...I don't want to lose you."

Again, for the thousandth time. "I don't want to hurt you."

It was killing her, seeing him go. He was still, in a way, seeking for her permission. Can I go? he was asking and if she requested it, he would stay and do his best to make her happy. But she wondered if he would learn to hate her for it, for the invisible cage that that would erect around him.

God, she couldn't do that to him. Or to herself.

Snap on the chains? Never, never.

She told the truth. "You won't. You aren't." She lied. "I'll be okay, honestly." The naked soul. "But I want phone calls, okay? I'll need them. _I_ will, Mulder." The broken heart. "I love you so much..." Bit her lip, not wanting to go too far, say too much or make a guilt trip out of saying goodbye.

But love. It was so easy to say now. And such a simple thing that she wondered why in the world she had ever had trouble speaking it.

"...so if you think this is a see-ya-around-have-a-great-life goodbye, you are soooo wrong." she smiled at her own tease. Humor was better. It put them both at ease.

Mulder looked down at her hand over his and at her. "I do too." Glad to be able to say it and mean it and not hang for it. And not be chained to it quite yet either.

He kissed her cheek and stood to go but she caught his arm.

"Wait." She gathered up her own briefcase. "Let me."

Let me walk away because if I see you doing it I'll fall apart.

Scully picked up her jacket, layed a hand on his shoulder and walked away without looking back.

To work. Calls to make, deadlines to meet, classes to teach, reports to write.

It was the hand of God or the pull of Destiny or some nameless guardian who layed a hand on her shoulder and made her slow and turn back around.

Her name, she'd heard it.

No.

Mulder was just getting up.

He must have stayed sitting there watching her walk away. Maybe testing himself. Maybe his ability to take it; to not run after; to not have the need.

That he'd been watching after her filled her spirit and cracked it at the same time.

Oh, God, what am I doing? Am I insane? Why am I letting him go?

She was only two hundred feet distant and already she missed his nearness to the degree of crazy. Her throat ached from holding back the sobs.

Six months.

Was a lifetime.

"Mulder!" she called.

He had not seen her looking back and was walking away - so much farther away - from her but on hearing his name, looked around, waiting.

"Call me!"

He wouldn't be able to see her tears or know of her glass-walled and breaking heart. She kept the tremor out of her voice with a terrific effort. Practise.

"YOU BETTER!" Two last gestures shared with him, a wave of her trembling hand, a smile to hide the pain.

Under her breath, "You just better because I love you, you amazing son-of-a-bitch."

He smiled, a promising and grateful grin, a truthful one accompanied by a nodding of his head. Mulder turned to face the other direction and where it might take him, walking away into the afternoon.

Eventually she lost the definition of him as he merged into the crowds of lunchtime humanity.

*

November 21, 2006
10:13 A.M.
( Two months post- F.M.'s return).

It was not quiet, this place.

The Old Man thought it was. Quiet and dark and a place where he was not known.

He, the Helper heard and saw every creature that crawled through the branches and skittered along the damp soil beneath his feet.

To him, it was a disorganized, noisey world.

He trudged through the wet leaves to the small veranda of the cabin. A small house, really, with all the amenities.

The place was unevenly heated due to the fire in the hearth that the Old Man seemed to like. As usual he gave little thought to it or to his own comfort. Old Man was his assignment and commander both and complaining had no place in the Work.

The Old Man _was_ old now. And no longer breathed unless he had his tinny oxygen tank to pull around like a child with his toy. Old Man was sick and stayed in his cabin day and night in the forests of Agusta.

Even the Others did not visit. They were all getting old and weak but younger ones would replace them and things would progress as they should.

He entered, standing inside the door until Old Man invited him to sit which he did stiffly, the upright hard chairs not to his approval. The message he had to deliver this time was a simple one. "He is back."

Old Man narrowed his wrinkled eyes and that was all. As always, nearly expressionless. No emotion to tell him if Old Man received the news as good or bad.

"We must inform the Others." Old Man said.

He nodded, his own stone-carved face betraying nothing of his personal feelings. Or thoughts even. "He is in a place." Told Old Man the name of it. "He is ill."

Old Man took a long breath and the air flowing through the line from the tank to his nose bubbled. "Resiliance has always been his strength. We will of course need Watchers."

"Why?.." It was rare he asked why or the reason for anything. It was not encouraged among the Helpers. "..If he is broken?"

"I have explained why. The reasons have not altered."

"Yes, but-"

"-Do we know who took him?"

He shook his granit cranium in the negative.

"That gives cause for some alarm." Little puffs from his nose ventilator replaced smoke that used to rise. "Never-the-less, if indeed he's back..."

Old Man chuckled softly, not in the manner of some evil incarnate of his Devil-god, but of an aged human who had seen much bordom of late and despised it.

Breath in...

"Well,.." The sick human finished, "nothing changes, really does it?"

Breath out...

"It just gets simpler."

*

~~Turning to go, thought I heard you call out my name Like a bird in a cage, spreading its wings to fly. "The old ways are lost" you sang as you flew. And I wondered why...~~

"The Old Ways" by Loreena McKinnet

*

End (watch for sequel FOLDBACK, coming Feb/March '99)

Author's Notes: I wanted, in FOCUS, to present Mulder in a different light; that of an older, more worn out version. I myself am only thirty four years old, but already I see the lines increasing and the grey hairs popping up. Yet I wouldn't trade being this age for twenty again. Well maybe for a few million. But, as I watch my husbands body age, I find it a powerfully moving thing. Each year, a slight change, a new vulnerability that makes him, to me, sexier as the years pass. I wanted to mark that passage of time in Mulder and, to a lesser extent, in Scully. So many stories, excellent in themselves, portray Mulder as some eternal athletic stud who'll never see a liver spot. (In this I'm as guilty as hell!). With FOCUS, among other things, I wanted to underline the beauty of middle age and the longevity of the spirit. I hope I achieved this. I hope you enjoyed FOCUS.

*~FOCUS was written to soothe my nerves following "PhaHks" (a very emotional and occassionally difficult piece to write). Now that I'm all soothed ;) I'm going to dive into FOLDBACK. With each new sequel, I'm hoping to achieve something a little different. With FOLDBACK, we return to more angsty and heart- wrenching themes and well, things I won't tell you at this point except that they're BOMBSHELLS! With DIVINITIES, it'll be more of the same but with a paranormal flavor. Oh, and a crossover thrown in. :) DIVINITIES will probably be my last novel-length piece. WATCH For "FOLDBACK" (Focus sequel) COMING End February '99!!

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