TITLE: The Genesis Project VI AUTHOR: aRcaDIaNFall$ FEEDBACK: STILL welcomed, cherished and framed at arcadianfalls@yahoo.com.au! RATING: PG-13 SPOILERS: One Breath, Pusher, Redux 2 CLASSIFICATION: SRA, M&S married, kidfic DISTRIBUTION: Gossamer, Ephemeral, Xemplary,et al - knock yourselves out, guys! SUMMARY: Number six in the Genesis Project series. Work is as relentless as ever, the kids are growing up (too fast?), Jacqueline's life is a mess, and Mulder and Scully are trying to find the time to maintain their relationship. It takes the dramatic intrusion of a new case into their lives to bring about some revelations. DISCLAIMER: AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic swaps character POVs every part. But oh, why on earth do I keep coming up with medically-oriented x-files? Please be gentle - any so-seeming knowledge has been found in encyclopedias and ER websites! There are reasons why this is called fiction. You can find this entire fic and the rest of the series at http://www.geocities.com/arcadianfalls/ - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - "Scully!! Scully, you've gotta come see this - The Yankees are -" "Mommy, Erin just sicked up on the couch..." "Hey Scully, Josh needs help with a homework question..." "Mommy, Josh needs to know what the symptoms of Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease are.." I stretched out a hand for the volume dial, determined to ignore the existence of the world beyond the bathroom for just ten minutes. I'd locked the door for once and they were reduced to yelling through it; it wasn't the lack of privacy I minded so much as the exodus of warm air every time the door was opened. That, and the impossiblity of finding a peaceful moment. I found the knob and twisted it to maximum. One of Mozart's piano concertos filled the air and I settled back down into the bubbles, lazily running a sponge across my submerged stomach and along my wet limbs, blowing at a small mountain of bubbles that had formed on my elbow, letting out a childish giggle as they floated up and then drifted down again. "Scully?" The doorknob was rattled. "Hey, Scully... Hurry up, you'll miss the end of the -" "Go away," I yelled over the CD, smiling as I pictured the mock indignant hurt that would surely be showing on Mulder's face. The hot bath water was soaking through to my bones and I wallowed in it, stretching my tired muscles, flexing my bubble covered toes. Although I kept fairly fit - it was a job requisite, of sorts - I hadn't been prepared for the muscle straining events of the afternoon and had been in a state of near-agony with every movement since we'd gotten home. We'd been planning on going househunting in the afternoon; lately that was how most of our Saturday afternoons were spent. The kids usually came with us, but Astrid's latest hobby, indoor rockclicmbing at the local gym, had kept them otherwise occupied from midday to early afternoon every Saturday. We'd dropped Erin at Mom's - house inspections were tedious enough without her whinging the whole time, as if in protest - and were on our way to the gym when the real estate agent we'd organised to meet at an open house rang to inform us that the inspection had been postponed. Astrid had grinned, eyes lighting up, when she heard the news, and immediately insisted that we stay and climb, tying my hair back with one of her many hair bands - "Otherwise it'll get in your eyes, and you won't have any hands free to brush it away" - before I could say either way. It hadn't been so long since I'd climbed - the last FBI teamwork seminar we'd been forced to attend had featured a variety of such skills and trust exercises - but at the end of the hour-long session every muscle I could name - and it wasn't so long since med school - was aching. The hot water was soothing. We hadn't found our house with yard and basketball hoop in the driveway yet, but we'd had fun one-upping each other and now I was starting to feel less stretched and more human. "Scully, you might want to -" Giggles. Low play-cursing from Mulder. "Mommy, Erin just crawled over a banana and it's all mushed into the carpet..." I sighed, letting myself enjoy one last moment of exquisite relaxation, then I reached out to stop the music, rising from the bathtub and letting the water drain off my body, wrapping a towel around myself as I stepped out onto the bathmat. So long, solitude. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - The banana in the carpet was hardly a new trick and I wondered why the kids persisted in giving them to Erin. She'd first suck on the end, sometimes gum the sides a little, until it was a goopy, soggy mess only barely holding together - defying the laws of physics, almost. Her grip around it would be wet and sticky and that part of the banana would inevitably dissolve or be squished into oblivion, causing the entire thing to fall from her hand, usually on carpet or furniture or case files or homework, often, as was the case now, in front of her zealous path. She seemed unaware of it in her way and yet with almost rehearsed precision managed to get not only one hand splat in the middle, but then both knees as she crawled, dragging her feet through for good measure. I couldn't decide between amusement at the sight and horror at the thought of cleaning up the mess. "Hey, sludgemonkey!" I grinned as I picked her up, hands firmly around her middle, probably the only part of her coveralls still clean. Cleanliness being relative, that was. "And *who* gave her the banana?" The kids, both sitting at the table doing homework, both looked up at my mock-accusation. "Joshie did," Astrid ratted, giving him a playful shove before quickly turning her attention back to her work. I held Erin up even higher and she squealed in delight. She loved to play airplane. "You've got a choice, kiddo," I told Josh. "Kid or carpet, what's it going to be?" He didn't even answer - he didn't need to. He reached up for Erin and I lowered her so he could take her, holding her as gingerly as I had. Fortunately the coveralls reached from neck to toe and she wouldn't need a bath, just a change and her hands and face wiped clean. An easier task than the carpet. Scully appeared from the bathroom as I was dustbustering the last of the carpet cleaner. She approached me and I stood to greet her. She seemed refreshed, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth in that enigmatic, relaxed way. "Crisis averted?" she queried, smile growing. "What crisis?" I asked innocently. A full grin, now. She reached up to run her fingers through my hair. "Mulder, you need a haircut." I chuckled. It was beyond the usual point of needing a cut and the length was further emphasized by Erin's ever tugging grip which left it standing up at all angles. "Astrid offered to cut it for me," I told her, amused. "For free?" "For ten dollars. She wants to buy some more shares." She grinned again, shaking her head. "I'm going to kill Jacqueline for introducing the kids to the stockmarket." I grabbed her hand and gave her a tug. "C'mon, CBS is running a documentary on zombies." "Zombies?" I got the patented skeptically amused look. I released her hand and dropped down onto the couch, flipping through the channels til I found the right one. "Fact or fiction?" The narrator challenged. "The zombi has long been a mythical creature -" "We're not watching zombies on a Saturday night, Mulder." I gave her a pouty look and she seemed to relent, dropping down beside me on the couch. "I knew you'd cave," I teased, but she grabbed the remote from me and flipped the channel. "Ghostbusters!" I crowed delightedly, recognising the film's opening credits in a second, and she immediately flipped over the channel again, nudging me in the ribs with a small giggle. She flipped and flipped and flipped and then finally returned to Ghostbusters, tossing the remote down lightly on the coffee table. "Ah, now *this* is a real movie," I declared, grinning, just for the sake of obnoxiousness. I loved to tease her. She gave me a playful shove. "Go pop us some popcorn." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - JACQUELINE POV - Not a single freckle. Grae's broad, tanned back was covered in them, and even Ebony was starting to go brown, a few freckles across her nose, but I had neither tan nor freckle. Not that I hadn't been in the sun - the few days we'd spent on Grae's brother's boat had been my first real introduction - and Ebony's, too - to beach life; surf, sand, and the itching, peeling agony of sunburn. Ebony hadn't been as badly burnt as I had; Grae had given her a UV-blocking surf shirt, passdown from one of his brother's kids, and wearing it she had become simply another child on the beach, sunscreen smeared on her face, Grae's own faded floppy brimmed hat tugged down firmly on her head. But he hadn't suggested any of those measures to me. Justly so, I had to admit - he would be assuming that I, unlike Ebony, had grown up with parents telling me to wear a helmet when riding a bike on main roads and to wear sunscreen and to turn the faucet off when brushing teeth to save water. I couldn't tell him that I didn't know these things, not without making confessions about my past I was nowhere near ready to make, and so I could only fill in the gaps as I went along, listening as he taught Ebony, covertly absorbing the knowledge. I watched Grae as he chased Ebony around on the grass, through the sprinkler which sprayed water in every which direction. Milo was bouncing around, barking excitedly more like a puppy than the seven year old hound he was. Ebony was giggling a little, squealing a little. She seemed happy, almost relaxed, but she never turned her back on Grae, and never let him get close enough to tickle her. And still not speaking, though that wasn't something we really noticed any more. She seemed content enough. Still on her guard, but she seemed to have finally understood that we weren't going to harm her or abandon her. Well, maybe not so sure about the abandonment. It was only a week ago that I'd chased Grae down the street as he drove off - he'd left his celphone on the kitchen table. I'd left Ebony sitting on the back porch, left her by herself for only a minute, but I'd returned to find her crying and shaking and she hadn't let me touch her, hadn't gotten up for half an hour and hadn't gone near me til several hours later. Maybe I should have told her I was coming back, that I would only be a minute, I'd thought, but I wasn't certain if that would have made the difference. I couldn't understand her. It was early February, and stinking hot, but I kept on the loose fitting long-sleeved shirt I wore, not willing to risk more sunburn when my skin had only really just started to heal. I wore shorts and sunglasses in the glaring midday sun, and the New York Knicks baseball cap Fox had sent me for Christmas felt as if it were slowly roasting my brains. Grae, in comparison, couldn't have looked any more Australian, wearing only faded boardshorts and an Akubra. He belonged here, barefoot on the just still green, crackling grass, dodging the spurting water. Even Ebony seemed to belong. She and Milo had been inseparable ever since Grae and his sister Suzie had managed to cajole their father into the car and driven him to the nursing home. She had a frisbee she was tossing for the dog - she couldn't throw very far, and Grae was trying to teach her, and she was jumping away from the sprinkler whenever the spinning hose sprayed cold water in her direction, as if afraid of it, but then moving closer again, as if drawn, feeling courageous enough to let it touch her. She'd let out a giggle and run through it but then back away from it when it came back around, as if it were an unpredictable creature. Her bare feet weren't as assured or agile as Grae's, but there was still somehow something in her movements, a knowledge, however shy, that she belonged, was invited. Watching how the dog frolicked with her, how it jumped up with muddy paws on the front of her swimsuit and then got mud and grass clippings all over Grae, I felt more than ever like a foreigner, a stranger watching a family scene from the road, as if I'd stepped off the plane just a matter of hours ago, not over a month ago, and this wasn't just as much my home for the time being as it was theirs. And it had been a long month. Grae approached me, wet and muddy but grinning. He dropped to his knees on the concrete path beside me, nuzzling against me, kissing me. Water was dripping down his body and I pushed him away as I felt it soaking through my own clothes, laughing as a trickle of water dripped from his fingertip down the back of my neck. I think he did that deliberately. "You're all wet," I scolded, giving him another push. He grinned at me as he returned to Ebony, and although my mind was in post encounter analysis panic -had I pushed him away? Was that just natural, kidding around? Too short on affection? - I did appreciate how relaxed he looked. It had been a long month for him, too, though his suffering had been of a different sort to my own. A very different sort. We'd arrived in Sydney airport late the night before the funeral, and that was when the nightmare had truly begun. Not that the plane trip had been anything but disasterous in itself, hour upon endless hour of Grae silently grieving and completely unreachable had almost sent me mad with frustration and bottomless guilt, albeit in luxurious first class. But things had only gotten worse when we'd arrived. His brother, David, picked us up at the airport, wife and two kids in tow. It was a three and a half hour drive to the town where Grae had grown up. The first half hour or so was spent in get-to-know-you small talk with David's wife, Maggie, and then the rest of the journey I spent steadfastly ignoring the obnoxious behaviour of David and Maggie's ten year old twin boys while Ebony slept beside me, feeling on the verge of screaming. I got no reprieve from the sensation over the next forty-eight hours. Meeting more relatives, sisters and brother-in-laws and cousins and uncles and aunts and grandparents and children - there were children everywhere constantly, it seemed, and they ran freely around as 'the kids', Grae and his brother and sisters and their spouses, were closeted away with funeral directors and estate lawyers and arguing endlessly over what to do about their father, who simply wandered around, looking lost, making cups of tea and then forgetting them. I had tried to introduce myself to him but his eyes had lit up with recognition and he'd smiled, calling me Jenny. Jenny, Grae had told me later, was his younger sister who had died twenty years ago. I felt left out if I attended those meetings - I hadn't known the woman who had died, I didn't know the man whose future, what little was left, they were deciding, but I felt just as left out if I didn't attend. Whatever I chose to do, though, Ebony had followed me like a shadow. She must have felt how I did, that Grae belonged with those who knew him better than we did, that they were the only ones who could empathise and understand his situation, because she was at my side throughout the strange and terribly human experience of Grae's mother's funeral, the grieving. She stood beside me as we watched the kids - her cousins, now - run riot through the rose gardens at the crematorium and watched as Grae was offered deepest sympathies and caramel slice by the women of the local church in the community memorial service, and then back at his parents house where Suzie and Beth and Maggie were pouring tea for the adult relatives and fruit juice for the kids and offering sandwiches. That day had gone on and on, but still they all kept moving, as if to stop serving refreshments would mean giving way to emotion. Not that there hadn't been emotion. I'd heard tremors in Grae's voice when he gave the eulogy, seen his sisters wipe at teary eyes, and felt almost guilty at my own dry eyes. Had I cried when my parents had died? I'd cried later, but out of remorse, not grief. I hadn't ever lost anybody in the way Grae had. David and Beth's husband had started up a game of cricket on the back lawn with the kids and Ebony and I watched from the whitewashed verandah, away from the curious, critical eyes of great aunts and second cousins who stared at me and muttered disapprovingly under their breath "Well, *she's* not a day over twenty-one". The kids didn't seem affected by their grandmother's death in the way their parents were, little more than I was affected it seemed, and yet they seemed more carefree than I could feel. I didn't have grief holding me back from enjoying myself, I had feelings of displacement and unwantedness instead. Things had been rocky with getting Grae's dad into the nursing home, too. Grae and his siblings decided on a place only twenty minutes away. David took his family back to Sydney and Beth took hers back to Newcastle, leaving Grae and Suzie to organise packing up all their dad's things and taking him away. Grae had been in a foul mood when he'd gotten home that night but I hadn't questioned it, only given him some time to cool off, venturing closer when I judged it was safe enough and drawing him against me in a hug. Even then, he'd pushed me away after only a minute and left for the local pub. But it had gotten better. He was back on home turf and away from work, for the time being, and that made an enormous difference in Grae. He was more laidback than ever, slower to criticism and anger, more tolerant of me, amused by my naivete which paralleled Ebony's when it came to the few farm animals his parents had still kept and other elements of country life mysterious to city girls. There was a pen of hens backing onto the vegetable patch and two fat, complacent cows kept in a small paddock at the other end of the short street. It was a semi-rural town built alongside a highway, streets of suburbia-like density giving way to unsealed dirt roads separating paddock from paddock. "Welcome to Australia's greatest hole," Grae had announced ironically when we'd first arrived. But there had been definate affection in the way he'd stared at the whitewashed weatherboard house on the corner of the highway and the half-tarred street that stretched to nowhere, a reason why even though his father was now esconsed in a nursing home and all legal affairs tidied up, we still stayed. It had character, from the trellis of sweet peas to the collection of mismatching folding chairs that sat on the porch under the cracked corrugated green plastic porch roof to the individual rose bushes that followed the low fenceline along the two sides of the property. The house had been built by his father, he said, before his father had even married. "Like me," Grae had quipped: "He didn't get married til he was nearly forty. Mum was sixteen years younger than him." "Pretty big gap," had been my response, and I'd hoped he wouldn't take it any further. The age gap between the two of us was seventeen years, though he didn't know it. He'd shrugged. "Things have changed since then, I guess." He'd grabbed my hand with sudden youthful enthusiasm. "C'mon, you've gotta see all of Dad's mowers. He's got a whole collection..." Ebony had had enough of the sprinkler. Stepping out of its path, she shook herself in a doglike way and came over to where I sat on the path. I tossed her her towel, knowing that she wouldn't let either Grae or I dry her, that at eight she was perfectly capable anyway. She shook herself again, her wet hair flying out in all directions, then wrapped the towel around herself and moved to stand in the sun against the side of the garage, eyes closed as she soaked it up. She was becoming accustomed to the lifestyle far quicker than I was, though with far more wariness. She loved running under the sprinkler or hose on hot days but refused to swim in any body of water - not the creek or the local public pool or even the bath tub, for that matter. We didn't know why, but we didn't push her. "Jacqui, get over here." Grae had stopped the sprinkler from rotating and stood still in its path as if in a shower. He grinned at me. "C'mon." I shook my head. I wasn't even wearing a swimming costume. But I should have known better than to say no to Grae. He grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet and over to the sprinkler. I squealed as he pulled me into the spray of cold water, but after sitting in the sun for forty five minutes it was refreshing, even if the water was making my now transparent shirt cling to me. I slung my arms around his neck, feeling his hands on my waist, and I kissed him. He smiled, kissing me back. Then he readjusted his grip on my waist and picked me up, carrying me across to the path. Obviously he was in one his spoil-Jacqui moods, and I had no objection. It was rare that he was so utterly and affectionately focused on me and I relished it. He picked up his own towel and wrapped it around the two of us. I snuggled against him in the cocoon, enjoying the closeness, but after a minute or so I pulled away, easing myself out of his grip. I could never stay in his arms for long, no matter how deliciously comfortable it felt. I got too restless, felt suffocated by the closeness and needed some personal space. That was hard for him to understand, I knew, even though he had just as much need for personal space as I did, he just expressed it differently. "Lunch?" He nodded, beginning to rub himself dry with the towel. I headed into the house, pulling off my shirt and wringing the water out into the laundry tub, then doing the same for my shorts. I pulled a short sundress on over still wet underwear. I was starting to adjust to the country, to the heat, to the rhythmic whirring of fans cooling rooms on hot days instead of the sterile hum of air conditioning, I thought as I put together some ham and cheese sandwiches. And, sitting next to Grae on the porch steps as we ate our lunch, watching Ebony riding her bike in a loop around the yard and through the garden with a sandwich in one hand under the brilliantly blue, cloudless sky, I thought maybe I was even starting to like it. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - "Mommy?" Astrid stood, rolling the crucifix on the chain around her neck between thumb and forefinger impatiently. "We're going to be late..." Sitting at the breakfast table spooning Erin soggy cornflakes, both of us still in pajamas, I watched as Scully appeared, buttoning up her jacket. It was a plain black jacket that she often wore to work, but for church she matched it with a long black skirt and blue knit top, which created a completely different image. Authoritive but feminine in a gentler way. "See you later, Scruffy," she murmured, bending to kiss me goodbye. She kissed Erin goodbye then straightened up. "Josh! We're leaving. Hurry up!" Josh came hurrying out, mumbling a quick goodbye before following Scully and Astrid out. I was left alone with Erin. I dressed her and left her in the playpen while I showered. When I returned I found her sucking on the ear of a plush toy rabbit. She grinned, drool escaping the corner of her mouth and dribbling down her overalls. I lifted her out of the playpen and took her over to the couch with me, flipping on the TV. She grabbed at the remote, her small hand depressing half a dozen buttons at once as she gripped it. I wrestled it off her, a loose one-handed grip around her as she bounced on my knee, searching for something to watch. Cooking show, athletics, something in Spanish, a televised church revival. "...a particularly bloody murder..." A snatch of a news broadcast drew the immediate attention of my ever-morbid mind and I quickly flipped back to it, tossing down the remote so I could put buth hands around Erin, who was trying her damndest, it seemed, to slide off my lap in the way most likely to cause serious injury. She let out a bleat of complaint at the restraint and I slid her to the ground to let her crawl freely, upping the volume of the TV. They were talking about Sabrina Woodhouse. "It is well known that Sabrina's feuding with her cellmate had risen to what has been termed 'riotious' behaviour by the prison guards. In fact, Tallerty only two weeks ago served eight hours in solitary confinement for stabbing Sabrina's hand with a fork in the prison cafeteria, both women threatened with a move to a higher level security facility. It is believed that Rhonda Tallerty's murder by Sabrina's elder sister Helena Quaker was a response to this attack, although this motivation has been negated by close friends of the family, who claim that Ms Quaker would never have committed such an act, even in revenge. Helena Quaker, who continues to deny knowledge of the events despite several witnesses having placed her at the scene, is being held without bail in a psychiatric center." The program returned to the news anchor, and then to the weather forecast. I zoned out, absently zapping the TV off and staring at the empty screen. Sabrina Woodhouse. Sabrina Woodhouse... Known in the press as "Ms. Executioner", the woman had masterminded three major bank holdups during a time period of only two months, getting away with over six million dollars. A Yale graduate, a brilliant woman who killed coolly and remorselessly anybody who got in her way, liked a thrill, to live dangerously, had abandoned her young family and job as a highly-paid financial adviser for the world of grand larceny. I'd drawn up a profile for the BSU that had led to her arrest six months ago, but not before she'd caused the death of no less than eight security guards and bank staff, and three hostages. Like most cases, I'd heard bits and pieces since - they'd tracked the identity of their suspect, they were after her, she'd gotten away, they'd lost her, they put out an APB on her, they managed to track her down again and finally caught up with her in some obscure part of Texas. Her trial had attracted a lot of attention, her presence in appeals court two weeks ago would have gotten enough attention as it was even without the added drama of the police car she was driven back to the state pen being almost completely crushed by a 3 tonne truck. Last I'd heard, she was in critical condition and comotose. One of the police officers was dead at the scene, the other fatally injured, DOA at St Vincents hospital. Unlike most cases, this sounded even more interesting now than it had before. Now it sounded like an x-file. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - My celphone rang right in the middle of a prayer. Reddening in embarrassment and muttering apologies, I squeezed my way out of the pew and hurried out of the building, pressing the answer button to stop the ringing but not bringing the phone to my ear until I was safely out on the sunny steps. As a matter of common courtesy I hated keeping it on during church, but Mulder had pleaded with me, insisted it was necessary in case of an emergency at home or with a case. "Yeah?" I answered shortly. "Hey Scully, it's me. I didn't interrupt anything, did I?" No point in answering that. "What's up, Mulder?" "I need you to come into work, Scully. We've got a new case." "Skinner assigned us a new case? Mulder, we're right in the middle of -" "Skinner doesn't know about it yet. This is something I just dug up." I sighed, distinctly annoyed. Why couldn't he just wait until Monday morning? Why couldn't he just take the weekend off like the rest of the world. "You're at work? Where's Erin?" "Right here with me. Say hi to Mom, Monkey." He chuckled. So he wasn't totally abandoning family on the weekend, I had to admit. Actually, he seemed to love taking the kids into the office. I don't know what other agents made of him, a man once the loner of all loners, now sometimes turning up to work with two kids and a baby in tow, grinning shamelessly. I glanced at my watch and told him we'd be there in twenty minutes. Thirty-five minutes later we stepped out of the elevator, Josh and Astrid racing ahead of me into the office. By the time I stood in the doorway Josh was already spinning Astrid around in the chair at my desk, both of them giggling. "Sorry, we're late." I tossed my carkeys down on the edge of the desk and slid out of my jacket, hanging it on the back of a spare chair. "We were caught in traffic." He was sitting at his desk with Erin on his lap, staring at the computer monitor, clearly enthralled. "Mulder?" He jolted. "Huh?" He glanced over at me. "Oh. I hadn't realised." I drew up a chair on the other side of the desk, smiling a hello at Erin but making no offer to take her from him. She was contentedly chewing, doglike, on her toy of the week, a patchwork fabric ball with bells inside it. "Okay, so what's this urgent new case?" I shifted in the chair, sitting back comfortably, hands folded in my lap. He had stacks of paperwork cluttering up his desk and pushed it all aside to slap down a pile of papers, holding up what I recognised as a profile he'd done for the BSU. "Sabrina Woodhouse," he announced. "Sabrina Woodhouse," I echoed, stomach sinking a little. Mulder had spent three days straight working on that profile. I hated whenever we got a call from the BSU, hated how getting into the mind of a criminal always meant him somehow losing part of himself, putting distance between him and the rest of us. 'I just need some time, Scully', he'd tell me tightly, and I'd understand, but I'd hate it, afraid that he'd get so deep into somebody's mind that he wouldn't be able to get back out again. I'd seen him close enough to that before to know the danger. He spread out all the other pages, all photocopies of newspaper clippings on Sabrina's crimes. Her arrest had made the front page of all the newspapers, as had the car accident which had left her comotose. I skimmed over the articles, but there was nothing I hadn't heard before. "Okay, so what about Sabrina?" I asked finally. He raised his eyebrows implicitly and I knew he was enjoying this, excited about the case. I refused to be excited. "Not about Sabrina," he said ambigiously, tossing down more pages, printoffs of an online news article. "About her sister." Helena Quaker, sister of the infamous Sabrina Woodhouse ... murder of Rhonda Tallerty in exercise yard of the low level security prison with a letter opener early Saturday - yesterday... I looked up from the printed page. "Mulder, this is a simple enough case of revenge. You've got motive, witnesses..." "Ah, but not a confession!" He grinned at me and I stared at him, puzzled. He gestured. "Read on." He was like a kid on Christmas day. I returned my attention to the article. Ms Quaker had no recollection of the time period in which the crime was committed, was found unconscious at sister's bedside at the hospital... I put it down. "Okay, where are you going with this?" I sounded a little more impatient than I'd intended to, I think, but I couldn't muster up enough enthusiasm to match Mulder's - not on a Sunday when I could be at home with my family, giving my brain a break. "Ms Quaker claims to have absolutely no recollection of anything after visiting her sister at the hospital." "A seizure of some sort," I suggested. "Drug abuse, even. Was she physically examined?" "Aside from the bruises, absoutely nothing. Perfectly sane and sober. Under the circumstances, anyhow." "Could still have been temporary insanity," I argued. "That wouldn't account for the loss of so many hours, though," he objected. I moved restlessly, not really interested enough to debate the point. "Okay, so she had missing time. An alien abduction, whatever. I'm assuming you've got more than that to call this an x-file?" He grinned at me despite my obvious impatience. "Let's speak hypothetically. Who, aside from Helena had motive for killing Tallerty?" I opened my mouth to protest. "Mulder, people saw -" "Humour me, Scully." "Fine," I agreed, sinking back down. "Who wanted Rhonda Tallerty dead?" I repeated rhetorically. "Sabrina Woodhouse most obviously, but she's in a coma. Past cell-mates, people on the outside,..." "Back up a minute." Mulder grinned at me again. "Sabrina Woodhouse?" I stared at him, my voice laden with skepticism. "Exactly." "Mulder, people in comas don't go around killing other people. They can't." "Who says they can't?" he challenged. "Science." He smiled at my pragmatic answer. "You haven't changed, Agent Scully," he said affectionately. I felt a little annoyed at the generalised statement, though. Sure, I had always given him science as a steadfast answer, given him rational scientific explanations for everything - or, at least, tried. But it was with far less confidence that I gave the answer now; still an assumption, but now one I questioned, doubted. "We don't really understand comas, you have to admit that." He had Erin's tiny hands in his own and was playing with them as he considered it, clapping and waving them, much to her delight. But I couldn't smile. "As a doctor," Mulder continued, and, after a long pause, as if he wasn't sure he should say it, "As somebody who's been there." I felt chills run through me and it took a surpreme effort not to shake them away. Not that it had been a frightening experience - it hadn't. It was just... maybe the thought of near death, in retrospect, of what I'd almost lost. I'd been so close to slipping away and I would have missed out on so much. It was unbelieveably scary. Mulder reached across the desk to give my hand a quick, apologetic squeeze, then pushed back his chair abruptly and stood, one arm firmly around Erin as he moved over to the filing cabinets, rifling through one handedly. "Maybe it's astral projection of some sort." I had a sudden desire - or maybe need would be a better word - to deal with this case in a more grounded way. "Mulder, is there no possiblity that Helena Quaker simply committed this crime of her own will? People saw her all but kill Tallerty. " "You saw me point my gun at you once, too, Scully." "That's different," I argued, although I wasn't quite sure how. It just wasn't something I was prepared to argue about. I was annoyed that he'd gotten so excited over so thin a case, and annoyed that he was still absorbed in the work, pulling out case files seemingly at random, tossing them down on the desk. "We can discuss this tomorrow, 'kay?" I picked up my keys and reached to shut down his computer for him, straightening the case folders into a stack and picking up all the case notes. He was still sorting through the file cabinets. "C'mon, Mulder, let's go home, huh?" He glanced at his watch. "It's only just past one." I stared at him, uncompromising. "It's Sunday." I indicated the kids, who were now sitting side by side on the edge of my desk, kicking their legs and looking bored. "Lunch time." Five years ago, I wouldn't have minded spending all Saturday or Sunday in the office - it wasn't as if I had anything better to do with my time. But things had changed in that department. "Josh, Astrid, let's go." I headed toward the door, but turned back when I reached there to discover Mulder picking up the phone and requesting St Dominic's Psychiatric Hospital. Erin was starting to whinge and he passed her to Astrid. "Mulder," I called impatiently. "What are you doing?" He covered the receiever. "I want to see if we can go see Helena Quaker this afternoon, just quickly, to get her story." "Mulder, no." I tried to keep rational, keep my frustration and anger at bay. He held up a finger - one minute. Obviously he'd just been let off hold. "Yeah, this is Agent Mulder with the FBI. I'm enquiring about Helena Quaker; I was wondering if I could just drop in and talk to her just for a few minutes... No visitors? She's sedated? Right." He hung up, turning to face the rest of us. He knew he was in trouble, but didn't give it away. He grinned. "Who's up for some lunch?" - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - Scully was pissed off. Not majorly, just annoyed enough to be snippy with me. Sure, I'd dragged her to work on a Sunday, but it wasn't as if we'd had anything planned for the afternoon. It was hardly worth getting upset over, was it? Nevertheless, I deliberately avoided all mention of the case once we left the office. I even talked nonsense to Erin on the drive home, Josh and Astrid going in Scully's car. We beat them home by five minutes and I dumped the case files in the bottom of the second wardrobe in our bedroom, putting Erin in the playpen. Scully had stopped off for a fresh loaf of bread and there was an organised yet chaotic quality to the place as the kids put together their favourite sandwich fillings, which usually meant anything remotely edible they could find in the kitchen. Crushed, uncooked 2 minute noodles were the ingredient of the week. After lunch was devoured and cleaned up the kids settled down at the kitchen table with homework. Scully was helping Josh with some quadratics and I took the opportunity to sneak into our bedroom, pulling out the case files and spreading them over the carpeted floor. They were all old cases or collections of past newspaper and magazine articles with varying aspects in common with the current case. I settled down on the carpet with my back to the wall and legs stretched ahead and started to read. "You'd better not be doing what I think you're doing." I jumped, wondering how long I'd been engrossed, then sheepishly closing the case file I held. "Mulder, can't we just go out and do something normal, for once?" Standing in the doorway, she looked at me with a resigned sort of pleading. "Instead of sitting at home with you buried in work, while the kids work on math I did in my high school years??" "What, go out and play?" I could hear the cynicism in my own voice. She held out her hands helplessly. "Is that such a strange idea? Mulder, what were you doing when you were six and eight years old? Were you cooped up inside on weekends doing polynomial inequations and velocity graphs?"" "Were you?" "God, Mulder!" She was getting frustrated and I felt sudden guilt at being so unhelpful. I put the case file down and slowly got to my feet. Mulder in trouble, I thought primitively. "Sorry," I muttered. I moved forward and put my hands on her upper arms. "Really, I'm sorry, Scully. Work just..." Matters. Sucks me in and holds me there. Gets in my head and stays there. Matters, but not as much as Scully and family. Why the hell was I being so overfocused? Why did we seem to bounce back and forth, need work and then the home life, want security and closeness but then cherish brief moments of solitude and privacy? I sighed and bent to kiss her forehead, wanting to kiss away the frown. "What do you want to do?" "There's a carnival at Edgecombe Park. I think Josh wants to go, but Astrid hasn't said anything so he's keeping quiet." "The merry-go-round-cotton-candy kind?" She smiled, frown lifting a little but not entirely. It was that "I'm tired" frown that always appeared when she had had enough of work, that "I wanna go grab life by the balls, have some fun, live a little" sort of frown. "Yeah, that kind." I lifted her chin, kissing my fingertip and then tapping her gently on the nose. "Than fun we shall have," I promised. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - "Twinkle twinkle little star..." Josh sang quietly. He had Erin on his lap and was holding her hand in his, trying to get her to play the toy xylophone. She was watching as he helped her hit the different notes as he sang, and she grinned up at him as he explained to her how the different lengths of the pieces created the different notes. Her eyes on him were alert, eager, as if somehow she was taking in and processing all that he said. Astrid was back to math study - she had a test on Tuesday. Josh had finished his homework off when we got home from the carnival, pen in one hand, enormous lollypop in the other. He'd sucked steadfastly away at it for an hour and his mouth and tongue were now a brilliant shade of blue. Mulder had disappeared into our bedroom to return to his case files, but I hadn't objected. He'd been the dutiful father, lugging Josh around on his shoulders or Erin around in the baby rucksack on his back. And, when the kids took Erin and pushed us toward the Ferris Wheel, he'd grinned and kissed me when we reached the top with all the delighted chastity of a shy teenager. I was still watching Josh with Erin when the phone rang. As a belated - and extravagant, I thought - Christmas present, Jacqueline had sent us a videophone, the small note attached telling us to "keep in contact!" The note had been casual enough, but I'd detected a little anxiety when we'd first spoken. To be honest, I was surprised she hadn't called more often than she had - we got a phonecall maybe once every week, and they were usually brief; updates on Ebony, subtle deflection of any questions regarding herself and Graham. "Dana, it's me." Jacqui's image appeared on the screen as I settled down in front of the tiny camera. "Is this an okay time to ring?" "It's fine," I reassured. "How are you doing, Jacqui?" She shrugged sheepishly. "I'm alright, I guess." She shifted, running hands through her hair. Over the past few years I'd gotten so used to Jacqueline powerdressing - was she trying to copy me? I wondered suddenly - that it always surprised me to see her so dressed down, especially in the t-shirt and cargo shorts she wore, her hair brushed back but only just. What was the time there, I wondered? "We were just down milking the cows," she explained. "Grae and Ebony are still down there." She yawned. "Too early for me." "What's the time there?" Another yawn. She glanced away, then back into the camera. "Six twelve, and that's am. I haven't had breakfast yet and I'm starving. I just wanted to ring and see how you were all doing." I couldn't stop the wistful empathy that crossed my face. "You sound lonely." She shrugged. "I'll live." "You look pale," I noted. She was rubbing at her eyes as if tired, but it wasn't lack of sleep I was suspecting. I was remembering, several years ago now, when I'd last seen Jacqueline unwell, the result of toxin buildups in her bloodstream. "Are you still taking the insulin?" I wondered. She needed weekly injections, and if she'd only taken enough insulin across for the two or three weeks we'd assumed she'd be there for, then surely she would have run out by now. "Nope." She drew a deep breath and smiled victoriously. "Weaned myself off the injections six months ago." I hadn't known that. And I'd helped her remove the tracking chip too, only a couple of weeks before she left, just before she and Graham had gotten married. "No more ties," I murmured, realising. She was no longer a prisoner in her own body, but now had the individual freedom we all took for granted. "Yeah," she agreed, smiling, a little wanly, I thought, as if she was frightened by the freedom such a thing meant. I heard more voices and she turned away. "Come say hi to Dana," I heard, and she was beckoning somebody closer. For a moment I thought it was Graham, but then Ebony appeared shyly, keeping her distance from Jacqueline's outstretched hand. She was wearing a plain but pretty white sleeveless sundress with colourful embroidered flowers, and, in complete contrast, little brown workboots caked in mud and who knew what else. The dress was wet around the hem and dotted with grass cuttings. "Hey, Ebony," I said softly. The little girl gazed at me sombrely - almost a Josh look, but without the wisdom, I felt. Then I heard Graham's voice distinctly call "Ebs! Boots off at the door!" and she fled out of the camera's view. "That dress was sixty bucks and she wears it in the cowshed," Jacqui observed. "It'll wear out in a month, the way I have to scrub at all the dirt stains. Grae has no idea how to buy for kids. Anything Ebony wants, she gets." "Do I detect a hint of jealousy?" I teased gently, but watched her face with real apprehension. Was it my mistake, somehow, in letting her go to a strange country with a man I didn't trust? A man she only barely trusted, it seemed? A shadow of conflicting emotions crossed her face and she shrugged. "I guess you do," she agreed wistfully. She glanced in the direction Ebony had entered before and the wistful smile seemed to tighten a little. Still staring in that direction, she sighed. "I'd better go, Dana. Tell the kids I said hi, huh?" "Will do," I promised. She moved forward, looking a little hurried, and then her image faded from the screen. I stared at the empty screen for a few seconds, trying not to feel that there was something so wrong with the situation. I made my way slowly into our bedroom, where I found Mulder now stretched out on our bed. He glanced up at me. "Hey." "Hey," I responded. I slid onto the bed beside him, sliding an arm across his chest and snuggling up against him. I think he must have been surprised by the sudden affection but he put his arm around my shoulders, kissing the top of my head. "Sometimes the world is a tiring place," I mused, feeling oddly depressed by my brief conversation with Jacqui. "I can understand that," Mulder agreed softly. He looked concerned and I roused myself a little. "Okay, tell me all you've been so eagerly neglecting your family for." I summoned a grin to reassure him that I was only kidding and he chuckled. "It can wait til tomorrow," he declared. He stretched himself a little, rearranging his arm around me. "Oh yeah?" I grinned, playing along. Although it was only still late afternoon, I felt comfortable enough that I could have easily fallen asleep then and there. We hadn't been at the carnival long but it had been tiring nonetheless, tiring but enjoyable. I wished more often we did such things - any things, that we didn't just treat our weekends as a recovery period after the week or an extension of the week itself, but instead went places, did things - *lived*. Mulder, always so eager to chase up his current obsession, was oddly contented with a quieter life; reading some old bound volume about psychology or werewolves or North American rituals and chants - books that had always piled upon desks and chairs and coffee tables - with Erin crawling at his feet, yelling out answers to Astrid's homework questions, trying to cajole Josh into going to the park to play catch, when Josh would much rather stay inside and watch the repeats of 'Walking With Dinosaurs'. "How do you feel about pizza for dinner?" he murmured, fingers brushing along my bare forearms. "Pizza?" I echoed, a little disappointed. Pizza was a food primarily eaten when we were busy working on a case, an easy and cheap alternative to cooking if we'd had a long day at work. "Homemade pizza," he corrected, nuzzling against me. "And some wine." I snuggled contentedly in his grip. I was warming to the idea. "Red or white wine?" "White." "What if I felt like a red?" "Red, then." He chuckled at my playfulness, kissing along my neck in a teasing, sensual way. "And hot bread, smothered with real garlic butter..." I grinned, dipping my head to kiss him. I could think of better things to do with the butter. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - "Helena visited Sabrina in the hospital," Scully read, fingering the official police report. "Rung up beforehand, about 9.40, saying she was coming in. Got there about ten fifteen am, checked in at the nurse's station. Says she drew a chair up to the bed and sat down, taking her sister's hand. Next thing she knows she's waking up in a police cell, cuffed and bruised all over." She flipped over the page, skimming through the statements. "Witnesses say she calmly signed in at a side gate entry and they let her into the exercise yard with Tallerty and three other inmates. There were two guards out there. She'd brought Tallerty some cigarettes and apparently the pair of them walked around the corner to smoke. Two minutes later the others hear a scream and run around the corner to find Helena has slit Tallerty's throat from ear to ear, with a letter opener they later recovered at the scene, and taken off faster than Houdini. 'Cut real deep, blood gushing everywhere', the guards said. Helena's hands and clothing were soaked with it. The surveillance camera which would have shown the crime was out of action, but another one clearly recorded Quaker scaling the fence." "And particular reason why the security camera was out of action?" I wondered. I discovered I was chewing on my lower lip and stopped myself. She shrugged. "Doesn't say. We can check." I nodded and she continued. "Police were notified but it was the security guards at the hospital who caught her. She managed to knock one of them out cold. Another chased and tackled her when she reached Sabrina's room, and she somehow managed to drag the ex-quarterback across the room, throwing him off when she reached the bed. He says she collapsed over her unconscious sister and let out a terrible cry. One of the nurses likened it to a pig being slaughtered. The security guard lunged for Helena again but ended up catching her as she fainted." "And that's the end of the story," I murmured whimsically. "Or not." I spun childishly in my chair so I was facing the desk and picked up the phone, dialing the number I'd called yesterday. Her doctor at St Dominic's admitted that Helena Quaker was awake and already police had been in to interview her several times, but we'd have to check in with the head of the hospital before we were allowed to see her ourselves. I just agreed and thanked her. We knew the procedure. The reports had said Helena Quaker was stunned by the news of her crime, but stunned didn't quite seem the right word to describe the woman who sat tearing a tissue into shreds, rambling tearfully. "Ms Quaker," I managed to interrupt the seemingly endless flow of entreats and bewildered denials. "I can understand that this must be a very confusing situation for you, but Agent Scully and I are here to help you figure out what happened." "Oh, Agent Mulder -" I interrupted again. "Tell us about Sabrina." She shook her head violently. "I won't talk about Sabrina. All those other police have tried to get me to confess to killing that girl out of revenge after how terribly she and Sabrina hated each other, but it isn't true. I knew she and Sabrina didn't get along, but I would never - *never* have done anything as crazy as taking it into my own hands. That was something Sabrina would have done, maybe, but not me. I *couldn't* do that. I just -" I reached out to put a hand on hers. "Let's just put Saturday's events aside for a moment, can we do that, Ms Quaker? "Mrs," she corrected me. "Or Helena. Just not 'Ms'. I hate that." She pulled her hand away from under mine to wipe away more tears. Scully leaned forward to speak but I laid my other hand on her knee, under the table. She glanced at me and I held her gaze. I'm going somewhere with this, Scully. She nodded, drawing back. "Helena, your sister's accident was over two weeks ago, but you only visited her for the first time on Saturday. Why was that?" "I was afraid," she admitted. Her hand shook as she grabbed another tissue from the box. "What were you afraid of?" I asked gently. "Sabrina." "Why were you afraid of Sabrina?" "Because she was..." she faltered, then shrugged. "Who wouldn't be afraid of the monster she became?" I didn't push her, for the time being. "If you were afraid of Sabrina, why did you go at all?" She was rocking a little in her chair now, tearing the tissue she held. "I had hope, I guess." "Hope of what?" Scully spoke up, curious. "Hope that maybe it would put everything right again." Helena Quaker gave us a wistful shrug. "Everything went so wrong after the first car accident, I thought - so stupid, I know, but I thought that maybe this accident would mean everything would be back to normal. I thought it had to mean something. Two car accidents in such a short time - the probability of that was astronomical." "When did this first accident take place?" I asked. My tone was still measured and gentle, not quite hiding the faint urgency I felt. My mind was revved up. "March last year. She was badly hurt - the doctors said she was clinically dead for six minutes. And then it took her months to recover, as much as she did." "What do you mean, 'as much as she did'?" Helena stared at the table, swallowing. "She recovered on the outside okay. Even started doing fitness classes again, picked up self defense. But she was different." "How was she different?" "She walked out on Charlie one morning, two weeks after she got home from the hospital. Just left him and the kids. He just couldn't understand it. He said she'd been acting kinda strangely since she got home, but he thought it was just the trauma of the accident." "But you don't think it was?" Scully broke in. Helena shook her head definately. "No. It was more than that. Before the accident Sabrina was her local hero - she ran bake sales and managed her son's soccer team and ran the quilting circle. She loved it. You could tell every time you saw her that she was a cat with the cream. She even loved her job. Most people don't, you know. But after the accident she threw it all in. Told Charlie he had to cook the dinner and keep the house clean and the kids in line, and it wasn't as if they didn't share those jobs anyway. Then she left him anyway. And the way she treated people - anybody; me, Charlie, the kids, her friends, even Mom and Dad - was just so different. She was almost contemptuous of us all, and she didn't seem to care about tact or courtesy any more. I'd never seen anybody act so recklessly - she was dangerous, sometimes. It was as if she'd detached herself from her world." "Like she became a different person," I suggested. "Exactly." Helena grasped at the word, but then she seemed to struggle with it. "Well, maybe not quite. She'd always had a bit of a dangerous streak. Everybody does, right? The rebellious side." She gave me a twisted attempt at a smile. "She was pretty wild as a teenager, but then she grew up. Both of us did. But that's a pretty normal thing - I mean, everybody goes through that phase." "Yeah, they do." I glanced over at Scully and she raised an eyebrow at me. I turned back to face Helena. "So it was as if somehow she was changed, as if her dangerous side became more dominant?" She seemed to think it over, then shuddered. "It was as if only that half of her came back." I nodded. "Thanks for talking to us, Helena. I know it must have been difficult for you." She shook her head, standing and reaching to grab my hand as Scully and I stood. "No, thank *you*, Agent Mulder. Nobody has been listening to me like you did. They ask me why I did it and try to tell me why I did it but they don't listen." "We'll find out what happened to you." I noticed a frown furrowing Scully's brow at my promise but I knew that this woman wasn't guilty, and that there was nobody else out there who could or would pull rabbits out of a hat that would prove her innocence. Helena Quaker deserved an explanation of how she had committed such a crime, if nothing less. She caught at my hand again as we were leaving. "Agent Mulder?" She dropped my hand and clasped hers together. "Can you find out for me why Sabrina became what she's become? Please? I need to understand, to know. If it's a physical thing - genetic or hereditary..." She looked at us, pitiful, pleading. "I don't want to become what she became." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - "She could be right, you know," I offered. "It could be some genetic predisposition. There are quite a few that cause dramatic personality changes, mental disorders. She could be bipolar, schitzophrenia, Huntington's disease... Or it could simply be the result of her earlier accident, an unbalance of hormones and adrenalin, or even substance abuse, pain killer addiction..." "That doesn't give us an explanation of how she did it." Mulder tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel thoughtfully. He was frowning. I spoke up with sudden certainty. "You're holding something back. Something that makes you absolutely certain that this is an x-file." I stared at him, curious. Was it obvious, or was it that I was just so tuned to his different moods that I could feel something like this as if it were a temperature change? "There's been other cases like this, hasn't there?" I realised slowly, watching his face for a reaction. I don't even know how I knew that. He glanced across at me, then looked at the road ahead. "In 1972," he began, "a school teacher named Betsy Grubb was in a horse-riding accident and ended up in a coma. She was in the coma for seven months, and during those months over a dozen people associated with her died. Fellow teaching staff, ex-students, her ex-husband, people she had long ago attended high school with. The murders were all different - most had suspects, many had eyewitness accounts that led to convictions. But you know what, Scully? The so-called killers all have something in common." "None of them remember committing the crime," I guessed. "But how did somebody link all those deaths to Betsy?" "When it was assumed that Betsy wouldn't be coming home from the hospital, her sister cleared out her apartment. She found that her obsessively pleasant sister had, in fact, been keeping diaries detailing the actions of every person who had wronged her. It read like a hit list. Her sister, realising that a surprising percent of the people on the list with whom she was personally acquainted had passed away recently, researched and discovered that the list read like a row of plots in a cemetary." I thought with sudden relish how much I loved the way he could recall these facts, that he had such an extraordinary amount of knowledge in his mind. I felt suddenly just as bewitched by the case as Mulder was. "What happened?" "The sister turned the diaries over to local police, but none were any too eager to investigate. They had convictions for most of the murders and had no desire to upset the applecart, especially when there was no explanation for how exactly Betsy linked in, other than purely by association." "And there still is no explanation?" "Exactly." "That would also mean," I said slowly, "that Sabrina is just beginning. How do we stop her?" Mulder shrugged. "I don't know," he said simply. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - It was bothering me enormously. Though it was more of a Scully-thing to need physical proof, I myself felt awkward with how little we had holding the case together. At least, I mused with an attempt at optimism, if we - *when* we solved this case, we'd have an answer for the Betsy Grubb case as well. We visited Sabrina Woodhouse in the hospital, checking in on the comotose woman only briefly before she was whisked away for a catscan and various other neurological tests. I'd stared at the inert body with something approaching horror. I would be seeing Scully lying there every time I looked at a coma patient forever, I knew. Scully herself viewed the woman with what was more like compassionate professionalism. But, of course, Scully always would. Scully studied the chart as we sat waiting and eventually closed it with a shrug. "Mulder, if nothing else I can guarantee that this woman hasn't left her bed. She's been unconscious ever since the accident." I was hardly surprised by that news but at least it cleared up the board. "Do you know where she was on Saturday morning?" "She was in her bed," Scully reminded me, clearly not understanding where I was going with my questions. "Her sister was there to visit, remember?" "What about after Helena left? Are you sure that absolutely nothing happened?" Skepticism still written all over her face, Scully flipped the chart open again. "Her vitals fluctuated a little, but that's normal enough." She shifted a little in her chair, frowning as she read on. "A nurse took a blood sample only ten minutes before Helena arrived, though. They thought somehow the results had gotten muddled." "Why, what happened?" "She had an unusually high adrenalin level. They took another sample to verify the results, at a quarter past twelve, and it came back normal." She frowned. "Adrenalin?" I had no opportunity to offer a suggestion because at that moment Sabrina was brought back in. It didn't shake me as much to look at her now and I took the opportunity to study her. She and her sister had inherited from opposite sides of the family, obviously. Where Helena was blonde, going prematurely grey, Sabrina had dark hair, almost black, and her lips, usually a blood red, were now pale and almost bloodless. Her eyes were taped closed but I could remember seeing in photographs that they'd been brown. "Mulder?" Scully nudged me, holding up a large envelope. "Results." I reluctantly left the bedside and joined her at the wall, where she was putting the various scans and neural electrical outputs up on the lightbox. I waited for her comment and when I didn't get one, I glanced across at her. "Scully?" She was staring at them with utter fascination. "What?" I prompted. "Mulder... This is extremely abnormal brain activity." She gestured to parts of the images. "See here; we don't *use* that part of our brains." I stared at her curiously. "But she does?" "Mulder, I... I don't understand." She picked up the EEG output and ran it through her fingers. The oscillations weren't regular but rather constantly changing, growing shorter and shorter and then stretching out in long, shallow waves. For a long time they seemed almost flat. "What's this here?" I asked curiously. "A flatline?" Scully frowned, then shook her head. "Must have been a problem with the equipment," she said dismissively. She indicated the smaller, faster oscillations. "Look at these beta waves. By all neurological standards, this woman is awake and thinking." I glanced across at the inert figure. "They say that you should talk to people in comas, that they can hear you. That's not just the case here?" She shook her head, looking back at the neural scans. "It's more than that. The areas where the brain is demonstrating the most activity are parts we never use." I moved closer to the bed. "Sabrina?" I asked quietly. "Can you hear me, Sabrina?" I glanced back at Scully, noting that now the case had shifted within the realms of science she was just as absorbed in it as I was. I turned back to the bed. "Sabrina, we know that you're the one who -" "Mulder," Scully interrupted me crisply. She was warning me of the nurse who appeared with small tub of soapy water. "Annie Fredricks," her nametag read. The nurse looked at me pointedly. "I have to bathe Miss Woodhouse now." I muttered an apology and followed Scully out. The next hour or two were spent in consultation with Sabrina's doctor and then with several other staff neurologists, all of whom were fascinated but without explanation of the brain activity. We called it quits for the day and went home. The kids' annual school presentation night was set to begin at 7pm and we ate dinner around the notes and scans we were working with. The presentation evening was always an event to dread; despite (or maybe because of) the decisions to use the older students as MCs and have the school's orchestra play something, it seemed, between every prize that was awarded, the evening was a long and tedious one. Even Josh, recipient of five awards, including topping his grade, was squirming. Astrid, who had received an equal number of awards, incredibly impressive given she had been skipped ahead a grade and was now in a class of students four to six years her senior, was giggling quietly with other girls from her class. Did Josh have *any* friends, I wondered, glancing around. He was almost certainly the youngest child we'd seen on up stage all evening. Coffee and juice were served afterward but Scully and I escaped outside with Erin and Josh, childishly sitting on the swings in the school playground as we waited for Astrid to say goodbye to her friends. To be honest, we were surprised that Astrid had managed to do so well as she had; ever since she'd been skipped ahead she'd been, for the first time in her life, struggling with the work she was given. Tantrums when she studied, for math in particular, were growing increasingly common. She learnt at such speed that she skipped steps in problems that were needed later on, that she did many things out of habit without really understanding how or why she did them. She was having to study more than she ever did - many nights she'd fall asleep listening to her walkman. She taped herself reading her notes aloud and then played them back to memorise them - Astrid who had never had any difficulty memorising anything in her life. She had a photographic memory, like I did. But, just like me, she was only human. There was only so much she could absorb, and as her workload grew and the work became harder, the harder she had to work to keep up. Nevertheless, it had been her choice to move up - her teacher had suggested it, the counsellor had given it the go-ahead, and Scully and I had let her make the choice herself. Josh, who was only one or two years behind most of his class, had also been offered the choice of skipping ahead. Despite homework difficulties, he managed to still come first in most of his subjects, always in art, often scoring near if not 100% in exams. He had been asked if he wanted to skip ahead as Astrid was doing, and he had said no. Secretly, I thought there was far more wisdom in his decision to stay than there was in the recommendations of the staff to move. Often I wondered if Josh deliberately made stupid mistakes in exams simply to avoid drawing so much attention to himself with another perfect score. Slowly swinging back and forth, my feet dragging along the astroturf below, I watched Josh, tiny in his school uniform and enormous blazer. He was sitting on a long aluminum bench with Erin on his lap, hugging her closely. His pile of books, his prizes for achievements, sat close beside him. If Erin hadn't been on his lap, those books would have been. Books were important to Josh. Not just novels and plays and other written works, fact or fiction, but writing as well. He had dozens of notebooks, all kept stacked at the end of his bed. What was in them neither Scully or I knew, and if Astrid knew she wasn't volunteering the information. But we let Josh have his privacy just as we let him have his books. Beside me, Scully yawned. I looked across at her and grinned. "You look like you need some coffee." I indicated the open auditorium doors. "Go get yourself some." She shook her head. "I just want to get home and go to bed." The caffein always prevented her from getting to sleep and she didn't like decaf. I could see in her eyes the comfort of home that she was imagining, those soft pajamas and the terrycloth robe that always made me feel like I was hugging a teddy bear. Scully the teddy bear. I felt like yawning myself, tired in a weary sort of a way. Bored. But was that only because the evening itself had been so tedious? I couldn't be certain. "Hey, get over here, beautiful." I gestured for Scully to join me and she chuckled, looking at me skeptically. That chuckle alone made me feel far more alive. "You're going to tickle me," she said, giving me that smile I love so much. "I know you are." How did she know that, I wondered. I put on an innocent expression regardless and tugged her down onto my lap the moment she stood up, wrapping my arms around her stomach. We were at a complete stop but she grabbed the reigns of the swing with one hand anyway, putting the other hand over mine. I could remember when such an action would have caused my heart to miss a beat, but now it was just comfortable. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I took her hand in mine and brought her fingers to my lips, kissing the very fingertips gently. She giggled a little, leaning back against me with a sigh. "Mom? Daddy!" Astrid's voice rang out, mock-scolding. "Not *here*." Scully chuckled, sliding down and pulling me to my feet. "Must be difficult for a child, having parents who still love each other," I observed playfully. Scully rolled her eyes, sliding an arm around my waist. It was strange, I thought, how I still had difficulty saying the word 'love' in such a flippant context, how much difficulty I still had in saying "I love you." "Must be," she agreed, giggling. I put my arm around her warm form, pulling her close. "C'mon guys, we're out of here!" I called back. Scully and I were only walking at a wanderer's pace, but she stopped us, pulling away. "Hate to break the mood," she murmured, "but Josh can't push the stroller *and* carry his books." I sighed, watching as she helped Josh buckle Erin into the stroller, taking the pile of books - two from Josh and two from Astrid, so they wouldn't have to carry such a heavy load - that Scully handed to me. I didn't mind the mood being broken - I understood. I just sometimes wished it didn't happen quite so often. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - "You have one new message," the answering machine intoned. I tossed down my keys and shrugged my jacket off, moving to pour myself a drink of cold juice as I listened to the message. "Hey, Dana, it's me. I was hoping you'd be in." As usual, Jacqui had that carefree tone down pat - *almost*. I took a big gulp of juice, then another. "Listen, I'm doing a little research down my end and I was wondering if Fox could fax over any documents he has relating to my parents. I'm just doing some investigating. I thought I'd take Josh's advice and see what I could find out about Cate, see what connections I can find to Ebony. Call me when you can, 'kay? Bye." I finished off the juice and rinsed the glass, then plonked myself on the couch and obediently dialed Jacqueline's number. "'Morning," Graham greeted me crisply. I could see from the clock on the wall behind him that it was just past ten there. "How are you, Dana?" "Fine," I said quickly. I always felt awkward exchanging pleasantries with him. "Jacqui left a message for me to call her. Is she around?" "I'm here." Jacqueline slid onto the couch next to her husband. Dressed in the same cargo shorts as the last time I'd seen her, she wore a crocheted white tanktop and her wet hair was combed back. She looked fresh from the shower or a swim, I didn't know which. In each hand she held a rectangular block of what looked like chocolate or chocolate coated cookies. Her fingertips were covered with melted chocolate. "Morning tea!" she announced, holding them closer to the camera for me to see. "It's so hot here you can't eat a chocolate biscuit without it melting all over your fingers." She took a bite and spoke as she chewed it, "You've gotta try these, Dana. They're called Tim Tams, God knows why. They're fantastic." "They're just chocolate," Graham said mildly. "Nothing to get excited about." Still, when she offered the rest of the biscuit to Graham he accepted it with his mouth, grinning, then, taking her hands, he licked the chocolate off her fingertips. She rolled her eyes, pushing him away. "Go play with Ebony," she scolded, shooing him away. I could tell the moment he left the room because she seemed to gain about ten years in age, the gaiety and youthful flippancy falling away like an outer shell had been stripped away. She quickly downed the second biscuit and licked her chocolatey fingers clean, but more as a matter of fact than with any real relish. "You don't like it when he gets so close?" I observed. "He only answered the phone because he knew it was you," she said shortly, running hands through her wet hair. "Why would he do that?" "Because he doesn't like me talking to you." Wondering how much of that was true and how much simply paranoia, I ventured, "He didn't seem to mind." "He's just annoyed that I still want to keep in touch with you. I think that's one reason why he wanted me over here - to get me away from you and Fox and the kids." "Because he thinks you rely on us too much?" "Because I spent too much time with you," she admitted. "He resents that I don't have the adoration for him that Ebony has, that I haven't put him first in my life." "Who is first in your life?" I asked, very curious. This was the most Jacqueline had admitted to me about Graham in a long time. She shrugged, frowning. "I don't think there is anybody." How utterly sad, I thought. Were would I be without Mulder? It had been such a long, long time since I hadn't had him in my life. Who had I had in my life before him? My dad? "I know what you're thinking." She gave me a tight smile, full of self contempt. "I'm pathetic." I frowned. "You're not pathetic, Jacqui. You know that as well as I do." She shrugged. "If you're not happy there," I said with sudden compassion, almost pleading with her, "Just come home. Bring Ebony and just come home." She shook her head. "I can't do that. And I don't want to, not really. I like it here, Dana, I honestly do." "Do you know how much longer you'll stay there?" She shook her head. "Every time I bring it up Grae dismisses it with a 'You're happy enough here for the time being, right?', quote-unquote." "Stand up for yourself. I know you have the guts, Jacqui." "I do stand up for myself," she protested. "I do, when it matters to me. But he's telling the truth - I am happy enough here. I thought I'd miss work, and at the beginning I did, I missed the familiar faces and familiar tasks. But ... for the first time in my life I'm not running on a schedule." "They don't need you at the clinic?" I queried. I knew that Jacqueline pretty much ran the place. She shook her head. "I left Aaron Harrison in charge. God knows he's more competent than I am, both as a doctor and when it comes to management. I keep in touch with him, of course, but it wouldn't make any difference if I never went back. They only need my 'secret recipes', not me. They've got a temp in covering all my patients; she'd jump at a full-time offer." I was amazed, almost angered that Jacqueline was so blase about throwing the whole thing away, all the hours spent learning and correcting and reaping results - until I realised that I had come to that same decision myself when I gave up medicine for the FBI. Still, how could she talk that way? She was too brilliant a woman to just sit back and leave the rest of the world alone. "You can't seriously mean that?" Jacqui shrugged. "I don't know what I mean anymore, Dana. I don't know what I think or what I say. I'm still picking up pieces and sometimes it seems I drop more than I find when I'm looking." Admittedly, things had been a mess for Jacqui before she'd left, and it seemed that things were only getting worse. "Just don't let others -" and by that, I meant Graham - "convince you that you've got less pieces than you really do," I warned. I had seen the pair of them together and his propensity for negativity was overwhelming. "You made some mistakes, Jacqui, but they were forgiveable. Just remember that, okay? Don't give up and let yourself be bullied." She smiled wryly. "You're the pep-talking coach I never had." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - JACQUELINE POV - I'd been working up the courage to tell Dana more about the difficulties I was having with Grae but just as I was about to bring the subject up, Grae himself returned. He settled down into the one of the armchairs and began to slowly swivel on the rotating base. He was sipping at a glass of water but his eyes were on me. Doing my damndest to ignore him, I outlined my plans to Dana for researching Ebony's past and seeing what links I could find to whom. I only had limited resources of my own, particularly while stuck in Nowhere, Australia, so I would have to rely on Dana, Fox, and the guys. "Well, you're in luck there, anyway." Dana raised an eyebrow. "Frohike's always there to help a little lady." I rolled my eyes and she grinned. I'd had enough encounters with Melvin Frohike to know his leer, although innocent and keeping people from seeing a kind heart, was constant. "So what happens if you find whoever it was who raised Ebony?" Dana asked on a more sobering note. "Beat the living daylights out of them," Grae spoke up, his voice deceptively calm and casual. "She wasn't treated as badly her entire life," I objected, speaking more to Dana than Grae. "Her growth would have been far more stunted, both physically and emotionally. Somebody took care of her, once." "Somebody like you?" Dana wondered. "Maybe," I agreed. I honestly didn't know, I was only hypothesizing. But I knew that at some point in her life Ebony must have been cared for. She would never have become as comfortable as she was around Grae and I if she'd been abused and mistreated by adults her entire life. "Something must have happened - maybe she was given to somebody, a couple maybe, to raise until she was old enough to be of use to them. Then they took her back, or if the parents were innocent maybe they abducted her or even killed the parents, or -" "Bullshit," Grae muttered. I turned and shot him an angry glare. "I know what these people are capable of," I warned him with sudden fury. "I know what I'm talking about." I hated how he thought he knew everything when really he knew so little, especially when it came to my past suffering. I drew a deep breath as I turned back to Dana, trying to calm down. "There's nothing to say that she wasn't snatched from an adoptive home only a month or two before you guys found her, right?" "I guess," Dana agreed reluctantly. "Then she might still have parents somewhere who are wondering where their little girl is. I think it's our responsibility to see if we can find them for, Ebony's sake." It was a faultless argument, but I wondered how much of my passion for this cause was because I was beginning to love the child and wanted to give her what she deserved, or whether, subconsciously, I viewed her as a pest to get rid of. I couldn't deny enormous feelings of jealousy when I saw the attention Grae bestowed her on. "Hang up," Graham said quietly. He was standing beside the phone and had his hand over the speaker microphone. His voice was hard and cold as steel. "I'm not finished talking to Dana." I kept my voice measured and held his gaze evenly. I knew Dana thought he bullied me, but he didn't. He threatened, but I refused to be frightened by his anger and his threats. "Yes, you are," he said quietly. His eyes were cold. "Now." He then uncovered the microphone before I could answer. I glared at him again, in defiance. "I've got to go, Dana," I said grimly. I was angry, not scared. "Grae and I have a few things to discuss." Her concern was clear as day. "Jacqui..." She stared at me helplessly, as if she wanted to be here to draw a sword and fight by my side. She sighed. "Call me back soon, okay?" I caught the urgency in her voice. "I will," I promised. I didn't get a chance to say goodbye before Grae depressed the button and cut the call, an action which in itself annoyed the hell out of me. "Don't -" I stood, but he pushed me back down again. "You're not taking her away from me," he warned, his voice grating, like nails on a chalkboard, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. "There's no way in hell I'm letting you take her away from me!" "She's not yours, Graham." I struggled to keep my voice cold and controlled. I'd had plenty of practice, living in the compound, and it wasn't as if these were an entirely new set of emotions I was having to suppress. "She's not yours and she's not mine, either. She deserves her own life back if she can get it." "This *is* her life!" he shouted at me. "You don't give a dog back to a man who kicked it, Jacqui. That kid had nothing and -" "We don't know what she did or didn't have," I broke in, but he continued as if I hadn't even spoken. "- and we can give her everything. She's got parents now. She's got me and I'd never do anything to hurt her, Christ knows!" "What does everything have to be about *you*?" I demanded. "You feel all high and mighty, king of the castle because you're helping this poor little kid, but if you were really the saint you want people to think you are, you wouldn't be treating me like shit!" "I only treat you like shit because you treat *me* like shit," he shouted back. His retort sounded so childish, but there was nothing innocent about the anger in his eyes. "You don't need me, Jacqui. You never did." "That's a lie," I shouted, but I wondered as I said the words if I really knew what I was doing, whether even if he was right I would be humble enough to admit it. "It's not a bloody lie! You might have wanted me, Jacqui, but you've never needed me." "Go to hell," I said shortly, not wanting to admit the truth of the statement. But I wasn't prepared for the slap that made every tooth in my mouth rattle. I reeled back and tripped, falling back onto the couch. I scrambled to my feet, slapping his cheek with twice as much force as he'd slapped me. He lost his balance and tripped as he fell backward, hitting the floor with a curse. I stumbled out and locked myself in the bedroom, jamming an old carved chair under the knob. What I hadn't realised was that Ebony had been playing outside, on the verandah just outside the lounge room window, and had heard every word. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - "Jacqueline?" I knew it was her even before she acknowledged it. Scully had been stressing ever since Jacqueline had hung up on her five minutes earlier. Now, as she soothed Erin, who had just collided with a wall and was wailing her little heart out, she glanced across at me, eyes grave. She'd been afraid that Graham would physically harm Jacqueline - a fear both of us had carried in the back of our minds ever since we'd first gotten hints from Jacqueline that the rose garden had thorns. "Did he hit you?" I asked sharply. I felt as though I were a parent about to say to a scared, errant teenager, 'Just tell me where you are and I'll come pick you up.' I almost wished I could just say that, that I could see her safe and then go beat the daylights out of the guy. She was crying a little, I thought, but she didn't answer. "Did he hit you?" I repeated, demanding. "I hit him back," she muttered, drawing a hiccuping breath. She sounded like a scared teenager, too. "He's not going to try that again." I remembered what Scully had passed onto me, a scene that had taken place between Jacqueline and Graham only an hour before their wedding. "You warned him once never to hit you," I reminded her. "No, that's different, she said quietly. "I actually hit him this time. He's not going to forget that." I glanced at Scully, her hand on Erin's back, her other hand on the still whimpering baby's cheek. "Dana's here, too, Jacqui. Do you want to talk to her?" Something about the situation compelled me to use those names I rarely used. "Yeah." I heard her sniffing back more tears. "Thanks Fox." I passed the phone to Scully, taking Erin, who whimpered about the changeover. "Hush, monkey," I murmured. I still wanted to follow Scully's end of the conversation. Not, so I soon discovered, that there was much to be gleaned from only Scully's end. Jacqueline was doing most of the talking, it seemed, with only Scully occasionally offering reassurance, suggestions, and, most often, reminders that Jacqueline was free to leave the country whenever she pleased, and that meant with or without her husband. Finally, Scully hung up. I passed Erin back to her. "Time for her bedtime feed," I reminded. Scully glanced at the bedside clock. "God, it's half past ten. I completely lost track of time." "Not hard when it's still morning for Jacqueline. Lucky girl's still got the day ahead of her." Scully frowned as she settled down on the pillows to nurse Erin. "I can't believe we let her go through with it all. He's psychotic." "She threatened to take his child away," I demurred, playing the devil's advocate. "I think he was within his rights to be angry. Just not," I added, "*that* angry." Scully shook her head. "I want her to come home. Bring Ebony back with her, leave him behind. Get a divorce." I climbed onto the bed behind her and reached to gently rub her shoulders. "You've suggested that to her. It's her choice whether she takes your advice or not." She sighed wistfully, leaning back against me. My hands continued their massaging but the tension in her muscles was beyond my abilities, I knew. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - JACQUELINE POV - The whirring of the fans was getting on my nerves but I didn't switch them off - it was too hot and stuffy in the bedroom without them. I shifted again, readjusting my grip on the book. My fingers were sweaty and the moisture was warping the corners of the pages. After one more attempt I put the book down on the bed beside me, burying my face in the pillow, exhaling heavily. Only just past midday and already such a rotten, stinking hot day. There was a breeze whipping up outside - I could hear it, but I didn't dare open a window or the door that led out to the verandah to let the breeze in. I rolled over so I was on my side, then again so that I was flat on my back, staring up at the ancient lampshade on the light and the cracks in the moulded ceiling. Had I been too harsh with Graham or had he been too harsh with me? I knew Dana was worried about me, but I had felt oddly confident - more so when I managed to stop my senseless tears - that he wouldn't try to hit me again. He didn't have the physical advantage of me any more and he knew it. I didn't feel frightened of him any more, and even my anger was fading. Had I overreacted? I shouldn't have hit him so hard. I shouldn't have been so argumentative. I knew what I had told Fox was true - Grae would never forget me having hit him. But would that make things better or would he just double the psychological games? He was battering away at my self esteem, Dana had said. She was right. Why was I letting him doubt myself like this? Why was I so afraid of his judgement and opinions? I rolled over again, then dragged myself up off the bed and stood. I didn't want to be trapped in my bedroom any more. Why had I run here? Why hadn't I run outside. I could have run and run until I was miles away from him and every other human being. I could have run all the way to the creek and swum in my underwear, or even to the park where Ebony liked to play and climbed up a tree to hide and bawl my eyes out. Why hadn't I? And why was I still in there? I didn't feel angry any more. I felt uncertain, but at a standstill, as if I were waiting for something? Waiting for what? And then I realised what I was waiting for - an apology from Graham. Because in the past every time he'd yelled at me or tried to strike at me, he'd always felt guilty, repentant of his anger. I wanted - even needed - that, before I could feel that I could forgive him and let the matter close. But was I going to get an apology in this situation? I didn't think so. If anything, he probably thought I owed him an apology. Well, hell, he wasn't getting one. "Ebony!!!" I heard footsteps pounding along the verandah floorboards. The verandah had once stretched almost all around the house, from front door to back door, Grae said. But when he was born his parents had closed it in along one side up to the back door, forming a long rectangular bedroom where he and his brother slept. "Ebony?!" he called again. More pounding, except now it was on the veranda side door to our bedroom. "Jacqui!" he yelled. "What?!" I yelled back, not wanting to open the door even a fraction. It would mean having to see him and I wasn't sure if that was something I wanted to do right then. "Get out here!!" To hell with him, if he was going to talk to me like that. "Jacqui, you've got to help me. I've lost Ebony. We've gotta go find Ebony..." Oh, sweet - Had she heard our fighting? I hadn't really acknowledged it, but we'd been shouting, probably loud enough for the neighbours and the rest of the street to hear. She couldn't have not heard it. I glanced in the bureau mirror, lathering some moisturiser on my face in an attempt to combat my puffy eyes. My hair, only half-dry, was an utter mess, and I pulled a brush through it quickly, wincing at the knots, and pulled it back with an elastic. All the china in the house rattled as a truck went by on the freeway and I felt a sudden panic - Ebony wouldn't have tried to cross the road, would she? Even though it was only a few feet from the front fence, we'd warned Ebony away from it dozens of times, and the only time she ever crossed it was holding Grae's or my hand when we needed to go to the minimart over the other side. It wasn't a busy road, and hardly deserved to be called 'freeway', but a lot of vehicles, especially trucks, passed along it, and all at frightening speed. I tossed down my brush and struggled with the lock on the door to the verandah. The door often stuck and I had to put some shoulder into it. When I finally got it open and stepped out onto the porch I realised why Grae was so desperate to get Ebony back inside, and fast. It wasn't just the thought of the traffic on the freeway; it was the black stormclouds that were pressing down on us from all angles, and the gale that was whipping all the trees in the backyard into a frenzy. "What is it, a tornado?" I yelled to Grae. He was fifteen feet ahead of me and I didn't know whether or not he'd hear me above the wind. "We don't get tornados here," he yelled back, but I couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. "It's an electrical storm. Can't you feel it in the air?" And I could. After such a hot, muggy day, the tiny water drops that hit my face were beautifully refreshing. And he was right - the air was electric, I could feel it. I could hear thunder rolling in the distance, too. "The rain will be pelting down in five minutes!" he yelled to me. "We've got to get Ebony inside. She'll get scared." He was right, too - I didn't know if Ebony had ever experienced a thunderstorm, but if her reaction to simply hearing and seeing the lawn mower were anything to go by, we needed to find her in a real hurry. Milo, usually a lazy old dog, was already racing around the yard, yapping like a puppy. "I'll check the sheds!" I yelled to him. "You go down to the lower paddock, see if she's hiding in the cowshed!" She couldn't have gone far, I knew. She had to be hiding somewhere on the property, somewhere she felt safe. I checked the garage, in and under Grae's Pajero, then in and under the hatchback Grae had brought me secondhand that sat beside the driveway, under a huge morton bay fig tree. Grae's dad had been a mechanic, and he had three sheds full of machinery, mostly mowers and farm equipment not needed on a hobby farm like this, and a covered trailer. I checked them all, peering under, over, lifting every sheet, even opening the two abandoned freezers I found in one shed, recalling horror stories of children suffocating in refridgerators. I found nothing. I zigzagged through the overgrown zucchini plants in the vegie garden, sloshed in bare feet through the already muddy chook pens, frightening birds out of my way. Still no Ebony. I met up with Grae at the woodpile. The rain was, as he'd predicted, pelting down, and I felt utterly sodden, my feet muddy and scraped from an encounter with an old embedded fence marker. "Are you *sure* she's not just hiding in the house?" I demanded. "I checked twice before I even went outside!" He was yelling, but it wasn't just so he could be heard over the rain. "She wasn't there!!" I don't think I'd ever heard him so anxious before. "Then where the hell is she?!" I had a terrible thought as I glanced around. "Get a flashlight!" I yelled as I took off in the direction of the house, Grae following behind. The house had been build about two feet off the ground, and on most sides there was boading blocking off access to under the house. But the boards ended short, for some reason, leaving a two foot-wide gap just beside the front steps. Just wide enough for a child to crawl through. I knelt down in the muddy flowerbeds and peered into the darkness. "Ebony?" I called. "Ebony, sweetie, it's Jacqui. Graham and I had a little fight, but we're very sorry, sweetie." I felt something nudge my side and discovered it was a flashlight that Grae had found. I took it, shining it into the dark recess. Call it gut instinct, ESP, process of elimination, whatever; I knew she was in there. A kid who lived in the dark, despite being afraid of it. "Ebony, I know it can't be very nice in there. Why don't you come out and we'll go inside and watch some TV, huh?" "Let me have a go." I scooted aside to let Grae have a try. He reached in, shining the flashlight around. "Ebs? Ah.. Hey, Ebs, I can see you there." "You can see her?" I demanded, trying to peer past him. "Is she okay?" "She's fine, aren't you, Ebs? Come out of there, c'mon." I moved back to give him some space as he withdrew the upper half of his body. "She's over near that pylon." He indicated with the flashlight, but it was too brief for me to see anything. "She's about a foot away from the hot water pipes. Just watch her and make sure she doesn't move, 'kay?" "'Kay," I agreed, taking the flashlight as he disappeared inside. Holding it in the fixed spot I could see Ebony under there. The light reflected in her eyes and I jumped. It was like seeing a cat at night - her pupils were enormous. Suddenly I heard a hiss, then a shudder. Grae had turned on the hot water, I realised. He was trying to scare her out of there. And it worked, too. Ebony jumped and scuttled away is if she'd been burnt, sprint crawling toward me. I backed up to let her through the opening, but what I hadn't counted on was that she didn't stop once she was out. She scrambled to her feet once she was up and then took off running through the backyard, toward the bottom paddock. "Ebony!!" I yelled after her. "Shit!" I took off after her. "Ebony, get back here!" I was no longer feeling the rain through my clothes, only on my face as it glued my hair down before my eyes, watching the lightning that flooded the scene before me with such incredible light. "Ebony!!" That was Graham, coming up behind me. I could outrun him, I knew. We were on the neighbour's turf now, I knew - the block of land connecting back yard and bottom paddock had once belonged to Grae's father, who had sold it because he didn't use it. It was still the way Grae and Ebony, and sometimes I, too, went to the bottom paddock to milk the cows every morning. There were usually three horses grazing, but right then they were out of the storm's reach. Everybody in the world, it seemed, was out of the storm's reach. Everybody but us. "Ebony, stop right there!" I roared, desperate to be heard over the thunder. And, oddly enough, she stopped. She was coming to the boundary of the two properties and it was only an easy climb over the fence into our bottom paddock, but she stopped instead and stared at me, hands out ahead as if warning us not to come any closer. "Ebony," I said clearly, "Come here, please. We're going back into the house." She just stood there. Her clothes, which had been dirty and torn but at least dry, were now sticking to her skin like a wetsuit. Her hair, like mine, was glued to her face. She looked like a feral child. And she just stood there. I took a step closer. She hesitated, as if she was going to take a step back, but instead she did not move. I took another step closer. "Sweetie, let's go home, huh? You can watch some videos. You don't even have to be around Graham and me if you don't want to; you can watch the TV in your room. How's that sound?" I took another step closer, then another. I could hear Grae curse quietly as he, taking a step when I did, trod in a cowpat. I held out my hand, but Ebony didn't move. Grae took another few steps so that he was closer to her than I was, and she still didn't move. Then he picked her up, swinging her up into his arms. I expected her to scream at that, but she was silent, just as she was silent as we trudged back to the house, oblivious to the rain. He carried her into the bathroom and I pushed him aside, sending him to get her some dry clothes. The day was still warm and the sun would be out again soon enough, I knew. There was no fear of her catching cold, but she was badly scratched from crawling under the house and I wanted to clean up the wounds. I stripped off her wet clothes, grabbing her towel to dry her, dressing her in the t-shirt and shorts Grae brought - her favourite outfit, I noticed - and sitting her down to put antiseptic cream on the scratches. It was the first time I'd ever dressed Ebony myself, except to put her in pajamas once she'd fallen asleep. She always dressed herself, and she had never let me touch her as I was now, tending her wounds. But she stood, silent, as if the life had gone out of her, staring at me dully. I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach as I wondered how much progress we'd just blown in a stupid argument. We weren't giving this child any sort of security, were we? Sure, she had material security - a bed to sleep in and plenty of food on the table, whatever clothes or toys caught her fancy. But she also had parents who physically and psychologically abused each other. What the hell sort of an impact were we going to have on her? We could only be messing her up more. Maybe that was why Grae and I left her in peace in her bedroom, watching one of her Disney videos. We both felt guilty about what this had done to Ebony, ashamed of how little self control we'd proven to have. Even when the rain clouds rolled away and the sun came out again for another punishingly hot afternoon, we simply ignored each other. It was only when I was getting ready for bed that night that he even spoke to me. I was in the bedroom, changing into the camisole and boxers I wore as summer pajamas. I was pulling the camisole on over my head when he came in - without knocking, as always. I couldn't think of anything to say so said nothing, moving over to the bureau to brush my hair back for bed. "I'm sorry." Well, it was the apology I had, in a way, been waiting for, but it did nothing for me. Neither did his next quiet statement, "I love you, Jacqui." I turned to face him, swallowing. I had made up my mind and would follow through with the decision, I told myself. "I don't want to sleep in the same bed as you tonight," I said briefly. "I don't care if you move or if I move; I just don't want to have to share the bed." He shook his head, pleading with me. "Jacqui..." "Don't try to talk me out of it," I said shortly. He came closer, reaching to touch my cheek. "I have an anger problem, I know that. I don't know what I can do about it. I tried therapy, years ago, and it did nothing. I just..." He pressed his cheek against mine, nuzzling against me. "Please, Jacqui, I need you to forgive me..." But I didn't budge despite his pleas, or even soften at the small posy of sweet peas I found on the empty pillow beside mine when I woke the next morning in the spare room. If I forgave him too easily, Dana had told me, he'd never learn. And I knew that she was right. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - Both of us slept badly, haunted by Jacqueline's situation. I wanted to call her that morning before work but was too wary of calling and getting Graham. "She's a smart girl," Mulder assured me, though he was frowning himself. "If she's in real danger, she'll get out. She's got good instincts." That rung a bell. "Mulder, you said the same thing about her dating him, and look how that's turned out!" I stared at him incredulously. He shrugged. "Okay, so I'm not 'Dear Abby'. Scully, we're not Jacqueline's parents, okay? We're not reponsible for her." "Somebody has to be. We're the closest she has to parents." There'd been a couple of times in the past when we'd had this argument, and I knew Mulder had just as little desire as I did to reawaken it. We came to a silent agreement to drop it and went about getting ready for work. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - Only the machines were keeping her alive. Sabrina Woodhouse's latest EEG revealed that the long theta and delta waves of deep sleep had grown even slower and flatlined during the night. Unlike before, there was no putting this down to equipment malfunction. "Electrocerebral inactivity," the chart read. "She's braindead," I muttered, wondering where this put us. How could she just have slipped away like that? I'd been so certain that she was still alive in there, somehow. Still coolly planning and committing murders. Somehow. We went in search of Sabrina's doctor to check the details but were accosted by the duty nurse, a middle-aged mother-figure with weariness etched into every feature. You knew without even talking to her that she was over her job, thoroughly over it. "If you see Nurse Fredricks tell her I'm looking for her," she told us brusquely. "Her shift started an hour ago." Then she rushed off again. "Understaffed," Scully shrugged in response to my puzzlement. "It's bad enough even without nurses going AWOL." We found Sabrina's doctor and doublechecked all the details; or, should I say, Scully and the doctor went through everything that had happened, trying to find if something had contributed toward Sabrina's decline or whether it was simply natural causes. I stood and fingered the EEG output, chewing on my lower lip, trying to line all the facts up, forge links and motives. I waited outside, eyeing up the nurses with a detatched sort of curiosity and appreciation, while Scully ducked back into Sabrina's room to return her chart. She called out to me and, entering the room, I found her kneeling beside a collapsed figure on the floor. Moving closer, I could see that it was a young woman, the wayward Nurse Fredricks. "Is she dead?" Scully shook her head, trying to bring the woman around. "No, just unconscious." I stared at her as Scully attempted to revive her, then transferred my attention to Sabrina Woodhouse as she also lay unconscious. There was a healthy, regular beep coming from the various machines surrounding her. I moved closer, picking up the EEG output and examining the steady beta waves that had sprung from the flatline. I tapped Scully's shoulder, indicating the EEG. Later we would discover that Sabrina had again been producing elevated levels of adrenalin immediately before and after the dramatic changes in the EEG, though we would be at a loss to explain it. I raised an eyebrow ambigiously. "I don't think it's just the nurses who are going AWOL." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - The staff tea room was an oddly depressive room, with orange walls and an electric blue rug unsuccessful in entirely obscuring faded green linoleum. Twenty-three year old Annie Fredricks sat on one of the sofas, shaking so badly she could hardly get the glass of water to her mouth. The duty nurse was sitting beside her, one arm around her in an attempt at comfort, while Mulder and I sat on a sofa on the other side of the coffee table. It was strange, I thought, how differently Mulder and I interacted at work than at home; more than that, how unconsciously we did so. At home we were usually close - we'd keep our distance if we were mad at each other, but otherwise we'd sit side by side so that I could snuggle against him and he could slide his arm around me, or at least have his hand on mine or on my knee or cheek or anywhere between, depending on his mood. At work we always sat as if there were another human being between us. Mulder would put his hand on my back to guide me as we walked but it was a pat more than a caress, a world away from the lover's touches he lavished upon me at home. We never thought about those things, and yet we never slipped up. "Can you tell us how you ended up unconscious on the floor in Sabrina Woodhouse's room?" Mulder was asking gently. She was practically still a girl, I thought as I listened to Annie Fredricks stumble through a defensively teary answer. "I don't... I don't re- Please, I don't want to talk abo - or think... I just... I can't.." "What's the last thing you remember doing?" Mulder pressed. "Where were you? Think for me, Annie." He spoke calmly, gently urging. "I was doing rounds," she admitted. She readjusted the cold compress that she held against her head and sniffed. She had hit her head in the fall and she'd have a lump there tomorrow. Poor girl. I knew well enough how that felt. And I could see that she was trying hard to act adult about it all. "Then Sabrina's vitals dropped and all monitors went haywire. I raced over to her and I was about to call somebody but then everything just stopped and went back to normal. But then ... I didn't understand it - I reached out to check her but -" Mulder leaned closer - he was going in for the kill. I knew all of his moves by now. "She was awake," he finished. I could see absolute certainty in his eyes. But to his surprise - and mine, too; I was unaccustomed to Mulder being wrong - she shook her head. "No, not awake. She was just as unconscious as ever. But when I reached out to touch her hand, she was ice cold..." "Then what happened?" "I... well, she..." The nurse furrowed her brow, then looked at us with an embarrassed, uncertain sort of panic. "I don't remember." Mulder turned to the older nurse. "What time did you last see Annie here?" "Afternoon shift, yesterday," the duty nurse answered promptly. "Finished at six. I was at the front desk when she signed out." "Do you remember that?" Mulder asked Annie gently. The girl shook her head, wide eyed with bewilderment and fear. Mulder turned back to the duty nurse. "Did Nurse Fredricks act unusually in any way?" The duty nurse seemed to think for a moment, then shrugged apologetically. "I wasn't paying much attention. I'm afraid I can't really help you." Somebody behind us cleared their throat. "Annelize Fredricks?" We all turned and stared at the police officers who stood in the doorway. "Which one of you is Annelize Fredricks?" Mulder stood so that he was deliberately between the police officers and the nurses. I stood beside him. "What's going on?" I demanded. "Who are you?" It was the same officer who had spoken before, a youngish sandy-haired man. I flipped out my badge. Mulder did the same. "Mulder, FBI," he answered. "This is my partner, Dana Scully. Why are you here?" "We need to speak with Annelize Fredricks," the officer said stoically. "Regarding what?" I spoke up. "At approximately ten-oh-five last night an elderly man was shot dead in his home. His housekeeper heard the gunshot and witnessed a young woman in a white uniform running from the house. The weapon was left at the scene and the fingerprints lifted matched Ms Fredricks'." He turned to the nurse. "Where were you at ten o'clock last night?" "I don't remember," Annie admitted shakily. He stared at her and her eyes widened. "You think - you think I *killed* somebody?" "We'll need you to accompany us to the station," the second officer spoke up impatiently. "But I didn't -" Annie protested tearily. She looked to us pleadingly, then to her superior. "Gemma, I don't know what's going on..." She let out a short cry as the first officer gently took her wrists and snapped on handcuffs. "Annelize Fredricks, you are under arrest..." he intoned. "Agent Mulder and I will meet you at the precinct," I promised the girl as she was led past us, struggling in a bewildered sort of way, like a fish out of water. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - We followed the police car to the precinct and read the statement Annie had made, though it was just reiteration - and even more jumbled than it had been - of her answers earlier. It took some persistence but we managed to get the officer in charge of the case to talk to us. "This is just the case of a messed-up kid," he said, clearly unimpressed with our presence. "Open and shut. We've got her prints everywhere, including the weapon. The old guy must have walked in when she was looting the place, pulled out his gun - an antique, really - and she wrestled it off him and he got shot. As I said - open and shut. The only difficulty the jury will have is deciding if it's murder or manslaughter." "What about her blackout?" I challenged, unimpressed. "The girl has no recollection of anything since late yesterday afternoon." The officer shrugged. "So she was stoned. Haven't you seen her records? She started using cocaine when she was fourteen." "I was there when she regained consciousness," Scully spoke up. "I didn't note any indications of drug abuse, or alcohol." I caught the look that the officer gave her - it was a look of barely masked disdain. "Well, ma'am-" "Doctor," Scully corrected him shortly. His arrogance was getting to her, I could see, but I loved to see how she handled the situation. I wasn't going to interfere. She didn't need saving. "Special Agent *Doctor* Dana Scully." He caught himself and gave her a sickening smile. "Ma'am, I'm sure we'll keep you updated. If you'll excuse me, I have work to do. I'm sure you can understand that." "Certainly we can," I agreed easily. "So if you'll just point us in the direction of your suspect, we'll be out of your hair." "I'm afraid I can't allow that, sir. This case is under local jurisdiction -" I leaned forward, still with the same air of casual comradeship. "Son, when was the last time you heard from the IRS?" The officer stared at me with undisguised loathing, then yelled to a colleage. "Barker, let these two talk to the Fredricks girl for ten minutes." He turned back and stared at us. "Ten minutes, *only*." I smiled at him charmingly. "You have my word." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - "The dead man was a 'Peter Vanderhout'," Mulder said, laying a photo down in front of Annie Fredricks. "Did you know him?" I watched for a reaction on the nurse's face but there was none. She just sniffled a little, wiped at her eyes, and shook her head. "I've never seen him before." She looked up at us entreatingly. "I swear, I don't know him. I wouldn't know where he lived, or -" "But you did know where he lived," Mulder pointed out gently. "You were seen there. The housekeeper definately identified you as being there last night. And your prints were on doorhandles and stairway rails." She shook her head, half-shrugging, and bit back a sob. "I can't explain it, I really can't. I swear, if I knew anything I'd tell you, but I just don't remember any of it and ... Somebody's made a mistake, I know they have. That's the only explanation - that somebody made a mistake.." "Do you do drugs?" I asked quietly, again watching for a reaction. This time I got one. She shook her head violently. "No! No, I don't, not anymore. I gave that up. I swear, I did. Ask Gemma - ask anybody. I've been clean for five years. And I was never so bad that I lost time like that. I didn't..." She was a crying, pleading mess. "I want to go home." "We've got to find out what Peter Vanderhout's link to Sabrina was," was the first thing Mulder said as we left the precinct. "And then what? Mulder, assuming that you do prove some link, you still can't explain how Sabrina is causing all this. How? Psychokinesis? Bi-location? What is it?" He was striding ahead of me and didn't even slow down as he spoke. "You don't want to hear what I think, Scully." Same old answer. I quickened my own stride and caught his arm, drawing us both to a stop. "Cut the crap," I said, feeling a little nettled. "I want to know what you're thinking. Tell me." He stood figeting for a moment, then sighed. "Robert Modell," he said quietly. "Pusher." I could see the pain in his eyes and understood why he had been so reluctant to tell me. But I wasn't stunned by the association, not really. Pusher was behind us, a threat long passed. What's more, it was a case that I'd been vaguely thinking of ever since Mulder had first suggested Sabrina was capable of the crimes. But it didn't in any way explain how she had killed vicariously. Not that we'd ever really understood how Modell had committed his crimes. We'd experienced it, but had no answers. I tried to steer away from those thoughts and think pragmatically. "Mulder, this woman is comotose; she hasn't been whispering anything into their ears." Mulder shook his head. "Maybe that was only Modell, maybe she can push her will another way. A simple touch, even. A physical connection." "You think that in a single touch a woman can transmit motive, means and knowledge to commit a murder? Where's the science behind that?" "Sabrina Woodhouse was brain damaged in the accident - that's a scientific fact. She's also been using unused regions of the brain - that's another scientific fact." "But when..." I winced a little at the memory, then tried to frown it away. "When Modell was controlling you, Mulder, you were still you. You had enough will of your own to know what you were doing was wrong. What's more, you remember it all, I know you do." "Yeah," he agreed tightly. I knew he was wishing he hadn't brought Modell up. "This is different here, Mulder," I finished. I reached out to gently squeeze his upper arm. He needed a hug, I knew, but that would have to wait until we got home, and really depended on how close he'd let me get to him. Pain was always a barrier when it came to Mulder and me. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - "Scully!" I yelled. "E-mail from Jacqueline!" I announced, shamelessly opening the message. A little of the tension between us from work had faded and I felt it was safe enough to venture this close. She came up behind me, jiggling Erin, cranky in her arms. "Dana and Fox:" I read aloud, my tone maybe a little cynical, "I'm sorry I dragged you guys into the whole argument. I know how terrible it must have seemed but it wasn't really that bad. We were just getting a little emotional. Graham's becoming pretty protective of Ebony and everything, dot-dot-dot. He's gone to Sydney for a couple of days to give us some time apart so we'll see how things go. I'll call you soon. Love from Jacqui." I turned to Scully. "What do you think?" She shrugged. Erin was squirming, trying to get out of her arms, and Scully readjusted her grip on the struggling infant. "Honestly, Mulder, I've done enough thinking for the day. Let's just take it at face value - as you said, she knows what she's doing. Besides, he's out of the picture for a couple of days." Finally she was agreeing with me and I wished she wouldn't. I felt we shouldn't just be resigned to letting what happened with Jacqueline and her guy happen. We had more responsibility than that. I reached to take Erin from her grip and lowered her to the playpen. She fell back on her diapered backside and grinned up at me, picking up one of her many toys and chewing on it. "Destructive kid," I remarked, watching her affectionately. "Gets it from her father," was Scully's immediate, humourless response. I felt vague indignation and hurt flare. Hell, yeah, I probably had caused an inordinate amount of pain and destruction in the world around me, but it wasn't as if that had been my intention, in nine cases out of ten, at least. "Sorry," she muttered, sounding a little confused. Maybe, I thought, she'd only meant it as a joke. For a few seconds we were a little awkward around each other. "I didn't mean that." I let it slide. "Ah, of course you did," I grinned, putting my arm around her waist in an overly obnoxious way to compensate for the awkwardness. "And you'd be right, too. Let's not forget that I hold record for highest number of destroyed celphones." She chuckled, burrowing against my side, clasping her hands over mine. She let out a sigh, then pulled away from me a little. "I'm going to start dinner. Give me some space, huh?" "Sure," I agreed. It was always about balance, closeness and breathing room, affection and time for self. Sometimes we were more aware of it, more cautious of each step as we weighed up the wisdom of it. Other times we existed so in tune with each other that, detecting a subtle change in the other, we changed accordingly, subconsciously. And other times we just fumbled along, inadvertantly smothering each other, then pulling away with an apology, hesitant about coming close again. She gave me a brief smile, as if she were waiting for something. And then I realised I still held her hand, gripping the very fingertips as if I were hardly holding on at all. "I'll let you go," I said quietly, doing just that, feeling irrationally that there was some enormous symbolism in what I'd just said. Maybe I was thinking back to a meeting with another woman in a diner, years ago. I didn't know. In many ways I was still messed up, so messed up that I didn't address it simply because it was too big a problem to deal with, and because things were okay anyway. Things were good. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But why, I wondered, did it seem that Scully and I still lived in fear of the other walking away? - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - Astrid was studying and refused flat out to come to dinner - she was in one of her moods. Mulder took it into her instead and she ate where she worked at Josh's desk. Josh himself had snuck out of the bedroom as I made dinner - and with the noise Astrid was making, I was surprised only that he hadn't come out a lot sooner. "She needs her space," he explained quietly as he snuggled down in the armchair with a book and proceeded to mind his own business. Josh was always very good at keeping out of things. It was about half an hour after we'd finished dinner that I ventured into Astrid's room, Erin's warm sleeping weight cradled in my arms in a rare moment of peace. "Astrid?" She was sitting at the desk, dinner plate pushed aside, chicken kiev only half eaten. Hunched over the desk, I could see the tension in her tiny body, her grip on her pen so tight that the blood had left her knuckles. "Astrid?" I asked again. It was an English essay she was studying for, I knew, but she never got this stressed over English. "Don't talk to me," she called at me, not looking back. I could hear the tears in her voice. In a movement that made me jump she picked up an open novel and, turning in the chair, hurled it in my direction, missing me only by a foot or so. Erin was slipping in my arms - she was getting too heavy to hold for so long - and I rearranged my grip on her, gazing at Astrid as I did so. "Please don't do that," I said quietly, referring to the book, secretly glad Josh wasn't seeing the abuse to the text. I knew she hadn't intended to hit me - not in a million years would she have wanted to harm me, especially when I held Erin. I moved a little closer. "What's wrong, Astrid?" That was when her chin quivered, her fists clenched and she burst into tears. I beckoned her closer, shifting Erin to my left side so Astrid could hug me on my right. I put my arm around her, trying to soothe her, stroke her hair, her back. "What's wrong?" I repeated, gentler. She was sobbing, her voice breaking and hitching. "I don't know the play well enough," she sobbed. "I don't know it at all and I have to do an in-class exam essay on it tomorrow and I won't have anything to write because I don't *know* it and I don't have time to learn it for tomorrow even if I did have *any* idea what I could learn about it and -" "Hey, sweetie," I soothed, a little bemused, a little empathetic. Astrid had never yet failed to do brilliantly in any sort of essay, especially when it came to English literature. "It can't be that bad, can it?" She pulled away, looking at me accusingly. "You're laughing at me. You think this is funny! This isn't funny, Mommy! Don't laugh at me!" "I'm not laughing at you, Astrid," I promised. She looked at me, half-crying, half-angry. "It *is* that bad. It is. I can't go into an in-class essay without knowing anything, Mommy. And it's harder now..." "Why is it harder now?" I asked patiently, feeling concern for the first time. We were still in the trial period of Astrid's latest skip-ahead. It was more, I thought, the psychology of being so young in her class, than difficulty in the actual subject herself, and that wasn't just overestimation of Astrid's brilliance. She could have done her SATs and gotten into a college six months ago, as utterly inconceiveable as the idea was, had she chosen to do so. But she hadn't chosen to do so, and Mulder I occasionally wondered why. She drew a shaky, hitching breath. "Because I had to study all weekend for the stupid math test today and I wanted to study Sunday night but then you made us go out and I didn't have enough time to do both. And everybody else in the class has been writing essays longer than I have. The second youngest person in the class is Ross and he's *twelve*, Mommy! That's four whole years old than me." "I can count, sweetie," I teased gently. I sat down in the desk chair she'd vacated, knowing I couldn't stand with Erin's weight much longer, and beckoned Astrid closer. Wiping tears and runny nose with the back of her sleeve, she climbed onto my lap, sliding an arm around me and pressing her face against my breast, so that she was nose to nose with sleeping Erin. She swallowed hard several times - I could feel it - as if trying to hold the tears back. Despite her most valiant efforts, though, sniffs kept slipping out. There had been times in the past when I'd envied Astrid's intellect, but now was not one of these times. I could see how easily so many child prodigies had lost their way, even the strongest-willed, most-loved of them. I had been young in my grade myself, though by no means by such a vast margin. I knew what it was like to be the smallest in the class, the hard working little girl who tried her damndest and succeeded but had to push herself every inch of the way. But what I didn't know was how it felt to have a mind like Astrid's - a mind like Mulder's, in a way; a mind working at such speed, in such strange and wonderful ways... Things will get easier, I wanted to say to Astrid, but I wasn't so certain that it would be a promise I could keep. There would always be upsets, torturous thoughts on a plane nobody else could even imagine, an understanding of the suffering and reality of the world beyond what the rest of us saw. No happy ignorance for her, nor Josh. I heaved a sigh. "Tell me what you know." And she did. For almost an hour I must have sat there listening to her quote at length and argue against herself, watched her pacing. I reached to tidy a pile of papers as I listened to her and one slid off the edge of the desk. I reached carefully to pick it up, glancing at the page before I returned it to the desk. Astrid's writing still the childish scrawls of an eight year old. "A urges D to confront C about L." Then, underlined several times, she'd written in capital letters "MANIPULATION." Had I even known the meaning of that word when I was eight, I wondered. She knew all the different study methods - that was plain enough to see just glancing over her pages. Colourful pages, highlighting in several different colours, one for each theme or character. Pages and pages of notes. I tuned back into what she was saying, shifting Erin against me. She let out a little whimper but didn't wake. "Astrid?" I interrupted, and she paused mid explanation of the play's many paradoxes. "You know enough to get you through tomorrow's essay, sweetie. How about you put it aside and get an early night, huh? Josh will want to go to bed soon." She looked at me unhappily; I clearly hadn't given her the response she'd wanted. "Just another half hour?" she pleaded. "I just need to go over my character studies..." "Twenty minutes," I said firmly, pulling myself to my feet. I gave her a quick squeeze of a hug as I passed her on the way out. "It's only school, sweetie," I reminded her. "There's far more to life than school." "Not now," she sniffed. "Why not now?" I asked patiently. "'Cos people have expectations." "Who has expectations? Daddy and I -" She shook her head. "Not you and Daddy. You're good about it. But everybody else thinks that 'cos I'm smart I know everything. They make it a big deal if I make a mistake." There was tears in her voice again and I quickly hugged her back against me. She'd always been a physically affectionate and needy child, and now more than ever she needed the reassurance of hugs. "Astrid, everybody mistakes. Daddy and I make mistakes a lot of the time." "I know you do," she said unhappily, almost dismissively. "But you're different to me." "Yeah, you're right," I agreed softly. I released her and she pulled away, moving over to her desk. "Not too much longer, 'kay?" I pleaded. "Twenty-five minutes," she promised, her back to me as she rifled through the disordered papers. Sometimes, I thought, she had the stubborn mind of a teenager. Mulder was putting laundry away when I entered our bedroom and I paused to watch him. There was something delightfully amusing and sweet about seeing him so domesticated. He moved as if to the rhythm of music heard only in his head, his body still as lean and toned as when I'd first met him, though he hadn't needed to watch what he ate and work out quite so often as he did now to retain it. But still young at heart, if not entirely in body. "Hey, Mr Mom," I greeted him, moving forward to hand Erin over. His face lit up as he took her, grinning at her affectionately. I moved over to tidy up her crib and changetable, shoving the pile of neatly folded cotton nappies - how Kathy found the time I really didn't know - as much out of the way as I could, putting the day's unworn knitted sweater back away in the drawer of my bureau we'd allocated to Erin's clothes. Not that it was anywhere near enough room; there were still stacks of clothes and disposable diapers and blankets and God knows what else stashed around the room, under the crib, in the closets, stacked on and under chairs. "I know we do," Mulder spoke up. "What?" He grinned wistfully. "Need to move to a bigger place. That's what you're thinking, right? Put Erin in a room of her own. Before she reaches her teens, preferably." "Astrid and Josh are cramped together, too," I said, absently rearranging Erin's various stuffed animals and toys in the crib. I picked up a new aquisition, a stuffed furry 'baby monkey' toy, and tossed it to Mulder. He caught it, squeezing its belly to make it squeak. "Yeah, Monkey loves Monkey, huh?" he grinned ironically. Erin giggled at him, grabbing the toy and holding it against her. It had an undersized plastic pacifier in its mouth, tied by a ribbon around its neck, and she pulled it from the monkey's mouth and put it in her own - all of it, only the thin ribbon protruding between her wet red lips. "Hey, nah, nah, you don't want that," Mulder said, trying to ease her mouth open to retrieve it. "C'mon, baby monkey's gonna cry if you do that..." He kept trying but it was the other 'baby monkey' who ended up in tears, Erin, when he managed to pull it away from her, passing the stuffed toy to me so I could untie the ribbon from around his neck and put the pacifier out of reach. You never knew what Erin would try to swallow next. "Aw, ma, you med de bebbe cry!" he announced in his best slack-jawed yokel voice. He looked at me and grinned unashamedly. I shook my head, amused by his sometimes immature sense of humour, and left him soothing Erin as I went to change into pajamas. When I returned I took Erin from his arms and gave him a little shove toward the door. "See how Astrid's doing, huh? Tell her it's time for bed. Josh too." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - Astrid was still working but Josh was already in bed, under the covers in his pajamas, when I peeked in. "Hey buddy," I greeted him, ducking my head under the heavy blankets. He was sitting propped up against the pillows, knees up. He was writing something. "Doing homework?" He shook his head. I glanced around the small space, lit by the bedhead lamp he and I had hooked up together. We still hadn't been able to break him of the habit of keeping books under there, and there were dozens in piles along the end of the bed, some along the wall near the end. Novels, I thought, some reference books, and then a pile made up entirely of notebooks. Not the sort he and Astrid used for school, spiralbound or looseleaf, but hardcover diaries. "Have you written in all of these?" I asked curiously, indicating the pile. He nodded, but didn't elaborate. With Josh you had to keep fishing. "What do you write? Stories, maybe? Plays?" He nodded. "Is that what you're writing now?" "No," he said quietly. "Poetry." Josh the writer, playwright, and now the poet. It didn't really surprise me. Although Josh wasn't very articulate verbally - he never had been - he was extremely proficient at writing. It was almost as if he saved all his words for paper, not wasting them in speech. "Can I read one, sometime, maybe?" I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. For the first time in our conversation he actually looked up at me over his knees, panic flaring briefly in his eyes. I wondered what that was - shyness? Fear? Of what? He shook his head, very slowly. "Not yet, huh?" I tried to reassure him with a grin. "That's fine by me, buddy. When you're ready." He sighed in what I thought was relief, closing his book and clinging to me as I hugged him. Some day I would read his poetry, I knew. But when he let me, no sooner. He trusted me to do that, and that I wouldn't let him down. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - JACQUELINE POV - The icecubes dropped in my juice with a splash, sinking to the bottom of the glass before bouncing up and bobbing at the surface. "Thanks," I murmured, gulping half the glass down, the cool liquid soothing my dry throat. It was another scorching day and we'd been talking for almost an hour. "So, Jacqueline." Suzie put her own glass down and stared at me. "We've talked about kids, schools, clothes, shopping, cooking and the weather. How much longer are you going to put off bringing up my brother?" I felt a little apprehensive at her confronting question. "That's not why I came to see you," I protested uneasily. And that was true; I'd come to see her because Grae had gone to Sydney - called away for work, so he said, but it was damn convenient timing - and I was still pretty shaken by our fight. I hadn't wanted to be left alone with Ebony. I'd needed people. "But you want to talk about him," Suzie said calmly. "Every girl he's ever been out with has wanted to talk about him." I swallowed, feeling squeamish, and glanced across at Ebony, who sat in front of the TV several feet away from Suzie's youngest, Thomas, a quiet four year old boy. The rest of her kids were at school. "He's a complicated man," I admitted guardedly, not sure whether I wanted this interference or not. "He's handsome, wealthy, so, so smart..." Suzie mused, "but I'm not surprised it took him so long to get hitched." "Who do you say that?" I had to ask. It felt strange that I wasn't the only one who knew his faults so intimately. For so long that had been the case, me in my restricted world. "To be honest, he scared all the girls he went out with." She looked at me analytically. "They were all strong women, but he managed to break them all down, somehow." I didn't like what she was implying, because I could see the truth in it. He'd been trying to break me down ever since the beginning. "Why?" "His temper, maybe. I love him but he's got such a temper, and he drinks too much." "I know. I'm working on that." She looked at me curiously, then dropped her gaze to the table. "Does he hit you?" she asked, her voice muffled. She sounded embarrassed. "He doesn't dare." She looked back up at me sharply. "Really?" She shook her head as if amazed, giving me an unhappy, twisted smile. "He's met his match, huh?" "Yeah, he has," I agreed. How, I wondered suddenly, had I ended up here, in this country, discussing with an almost total stranger the abusive habits of my husband? I felt the strangest sensation, as if I'd awoken from a coma to and was unable to remember an enormous portion of my life. Suzie was nodding, slowly. "All the same," she said, quieter, "If he ever does, I'm only ten minutes away. If nothing else just get out of the house til he's calmed down." I thought back to Grae's remorse, the expression of utter disbelief on his face as I slapped him back. "He won't try anything again," I said. "You're certain of that?" If he does I'll break his bones, I thought to myself, making myself shiver a little. But aloud I assured her, "Very." I took another sip of juice and shifted in my chair. Suzie was still staring at me with that same curiosity. "You're a doctor, aren't you? Why do you think he is like he is?" I thought about him, about the way he pushed me away in his weakness but would hold me close in mine. Why did he push me away but not Ebony? Why could he accept her faults and not mine, that I bore the brunt of his anger and she none? I remembered the accusations he'd thrown at me, his shouting at me because I pushed him away, because I didn't need him. "He needs," I said slowly, "to be needed." It was the first time I'd ever summarised my thoughts aloud and it shocked me. "He needs to be the strong, dominating husband and own people like possessions, because that's the only way he feels that they're really his. But I won't be a possession... He doesn't know how to deal with that. And," I added, "most of all, he needs to be loved ...unconditionally." "He's just an insecure little boy at heart," Suzie murmured, wistful. "You know a lot of about him, Jacqueline. More than any of us could ever figure out, except maybe Mum. We all loved him anyway, but we never understood him. You do." "But I don't love him unconditionally," I realised, feeling panic at the discovery. I couldn't give him what he needed most of all. I looked at my sister-in-law, wide-eyed. "He told me once -" She was frowning, tapping her nails on the table. "I probably shouldn't be telling you this - Grae was pretty drunk when he told me, months ago, just after you two got engaged..." "But?" I prompted, apprehensive. She looked at me uneasily. "He was head over heels for you - still is. But he was worried; he didn't understand why you had said yes." "He doesn't believe that I love him?" "He was suspicious of why you were with him." She shook her head. "In many ways he's a very stupid man - he always went for younger women, beautiful, intelligent women. But he never trusted them, could never really accept that they were genuinely interested in him, or that they were loyal to him. I know of at least three girls he accused of cheating on him. He got jealous with so little cause." So that was why he loved Ebony so absolutely. He knew that she depending on him, that he and I were all she had. But he didn't trust me, couldn't trust me, although I was nothing but loyal. The fool. A brilliant man, a tumultuously complex mind, sheer ingenuity personified... but emotionally, he was in worse shape than a six car pileup. My poor fool. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - For a long time it had been a wait-until issue - wait until we move into a bigger apartment, wait til she's a little older. But talking with Mulder earlier I'd reached a decision, and I didn't hesitate in acting on it. "Scully?" Mulder stood in the doorway, watching as I dragged the armchair away from the wall, moved the coffee table, fixed the rug that had been caught under the table's legs. Our living room didn't seem enormous to begin with, but I'd had a niggling feeling for a while that there was actually more room than there seemed to be. By collapsing the playpen and moving the furniture a little further away I'd created a sizeable space in the corner of the room, and due to the shape of the room and how I'd positioned the couches, it sat there almost like an empty room with invisible walls. I turned to meet his curious expression. "What are you doing?" he asked, cocking his head to the side. "My mom has a Chinese screen we can borrow." I gestured, trying to draw what I was seeing in my mind. "We can put it up here and move the crib and changetable in, at least." His expression turned from curious to skeptical but I refused to be deterred. "It's only temporary, til we get a bigger place, but I think we need to do it. It's time we got our territory back." It had been too long since we'd had real privacy in our bedroom. "And you want to do it... tonight?" "Tonight." He shrugged, staring at me with a curious glint in his eye. "Okay, sure." I patted him on the back. "Good. Because I need a big strong male to help me move the crib out." We carried the crib out together, almost jamming Mulder between it and the wall as he backed up with it. Our room looked strangely empty without it, even more so when we moved the changetable out as well. There was no natural light in the room, only ceiling lights and lamps, which I wasn't very happy about, but, as I consoled myself, it wouldn't be a long term situation. As soon as we found a bigger place we could get Erin into a real bedroom. I could see that Mulder, despite his droll jokes, was concerned about moving Erin so far away from us, though he wasn't going to admit it. "We're still only a few feet away," I reminded him gently, touched more than annoyed by his concern. "She can't sleep in our bedroom forever." "Yeah, I know." He chuckled softly, but I recognised the wistful expression on his face. It was the one I always saw when we went away on cases, leaving the kids with Mom or Kathy, and we had to say goodbye to the kids. I think Mulder felt a possessive affection of Erin that he didn't feel for Josh and Astrid - the knowledge that she was vulnerable and he and I were there to guard her, to keep her safe. Josh and Astrid didn't need to be kept safe - they could look after themselves. But Erin's safety was entirely in the hands of Mulder and I - though I think sometimes he forgot that I was there too and took the responsibility personally. I let him. I was aware of the echoes of Samantha, but I trusted Mulder, trusted him to care for her and to handle it psychologically. "Jacqueline rang before," I told him, readjusting the nightlamp that clamped onto the edge of the crib. "When you were saying goodnight to Josh." "What did she say?" "She said, very poetically, that 'The poor fool is in worse shape than a six-car pile-up'," I quoted. "Apparently she talked to Graham's sister about him and they made some pretty significant breakthroughs." "Uh huh." His expression was guarded, as it often was when we discussed Jacqueline. He shrugged, as if dismissing the subject. "Speaking of poetry, has Josh ever let you read anything he writes?" I was surprised. "Josh writes poetry?" It was logical, I guess, in retrospect - he was the writer of the family. "How long has he been doing that?" Mulder shrugged again. "I didn't ask." "And he wouldn't let you read any?" "Nope." I was surprised by that - often stories or the occasional short play were presented to us shyly, neatly typed up and printed off at school, sometimes even bound. Missy had always been the poetic one in our family, but I imagined that Josh's poetry was a long way from Missy's rhymes about ponies and roses and sunsets and spring. "I'd like to read them," I mused, trying to think how Josh would write poetry. He seemed to have so many different writing styles, different influences. "When he lets us." Mulder touched my back lightly and I glanced over to see Josh standing in the doorway with Erin in his arms, her arms and legs kicking like an octopus waving its tentacles. She gave a little cry and reached out when she saw me. I moved forward to take her from Josh. "Back to bed, kiddo," I told Josh, giving him a gentle shove. "You've got school tomorrow." I grabbed a baby blanket from the crib, flipping the TV on, and sank down on the couch. "Okay, sweetie. Milkbar's open." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - We'd both been nervous as hell our first time together. We'd never had a honeymoon, and on our wedding night sex had been the last thing on the minds of either of us, with Josh and Astrid sleeping on the floor in our bedroom, crawling into the bed between us with every nightmare. It had been over a week before we'd been able to shift them out, and even after that we were just busy, trying to sort out work and childcare for two emotionally-scarred, intellectually-superior children, too exhausted when we finally got to bed at night to think any further than sleep. Skinner had been good back then, letting us leave work at two in the afternoon to pick the kids up from the daycare centre after Astrid threw a wooden puzzle at another child and Josh wouldn't stop crying, but he'd insisted on us taking the out-of-town case the following week. The kids had spent their first full night sleeping on Scully's lounge room floor since Jacqueline had been taken, but that was hardly so much progress that Scully and I felt safe leaving them. Her mom had been reluctant to take them, too, knowing so little of their past or their present suffering. The case itself, however, which turned out to be nothing but a runaway trying to attract her parents attention, had nevertheless given us the much-needed opportunity to move our relationship ahead. Not sure how we should handle our expenses - the finance department checked up on everything when it came to us - we'd gotten two rooms at a decent-but-within-budget hotel in the area. We'd had no intention of using both rooms, of course; we'd been sharing a bed for the past two weeks and I knew neither of us had any desire to sleep alone again, but we'd decided to keep up appearances, for the time being. Scully had been reading in bed, the light reflecting off her glasses, wearing a pair of pajamas I recognised easily by then - 'sensible' Pjs, though she was just as sexy in them as that red chemise I'd later given her in an awkward - now amusingly so - attempt at romanticism. Watching her I had an almost overwhelming desire to make love to her. It wasn't, by any means, the first time I'd felt that, but never before had I also had the opportunity. Oddly, it was the first moment when I realised that being married to Scully meant more than just being able to tell her that I loved her, but everything else I'd long wanted. It was an unexpected bonus, of sorts. I'd climbed onto the bed beside her and kissed her shoulder - three slow, deliberate kisses. She'd looked at me, bemused, a little apprehensive, but smiling. In a teasing way she'd taken off her glasses and closed the book carefully laying then both aside, before returning her gaze to meet mine demurely. She was trembling, I'd realised as I reached to take her hands in mine, but I understood. There'd been a hell of a lot leading up to that moment. "Mulder?" I'd put Erin down for the night and she'd gone to check on Astrid. Now, twenty minutes later, I'd been waiting for her to return, standing staring at our bed as if I'd never seen it before. I shook myself. "Yeah?" She looked at me curiously, frowning. "What are you doing?" I shrugged. "Nothing much," I said honestly. "Just thinking... remembering." She nodded, looking a little preoccupied, and sighed, folding her arms. Her hair was falling down before her eyes and I stepped closer to tuck it back behind her ear. "What's wrong?" I asked gently. "You're worried about Astrid, aren't you?" Another sigh. "She's stressing out about her study," she admitted. She shook herself a little. "Actually, I'm worrying more about Jacqueline." I had a sudden desire to banish Jacqueline not only from her mind but from our lives, if only for the moment. "Don't," I said, rubbing her back lightly, feeling the bumpy outline of her bra under the thin, tight-fitting sweater. "Tonight is ours." Tonight is ours and you are mine. Her frown lifted a little and she smiled, looking at me critically, a little amused, maybe. She glanced around the room. "It's been a long time since we've had our bedroom to ourselves," she allowed, the smile playing at the corners of her mouth, the light touching her eyes. I moved over to pull the bedroom door firmly closed and then returned to her, taking her face in my hands, running my thumbs over her face, over the tiny scars and her beautiful freckles and the patches of dry, uneven skin. Leaning closer, I kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, trailing the tip of my tongue along her cheek, gently nipping her ear. She let out a contented sigh, almost a moan, a purr caught in her throat, arching her neck as I ran my lips along it, gently pinching the skin between my teeth. "Mmm... God... Mulder, you're spoiling me," she protested huskily, reaching to cup my cheeks and bring my lips to meet her own. There was always something unhurried and infintely sensual about our lovemaking, and I never ceased to wonder how I could have ever seen love and sex as two entirely different things. I undressed her slowly, taking in every detail, as I always did, as if this were our very first time. The slowly fading stains of stretchmarks on her skin, old bulletwound scars, a day or two's dark stubble under her arms, traces of cellulite on her milk-white thighs. I could see her heart fluttering against her ribs as she ran her fingertips over my bare chest, as her roaming hands helped divest me of my jeans, her touch the assured one of a physician, the sensuous one of a lover. "You're so beautiful," I murmured feverishly, kissing her, and then again and again, as if to take time even to breathe would lose me her forever. "I'm so afraid of losing you," I whispered, not realising what I said til it was out. Brief consternation crossed Scully's face and she caressed my cheek lightly. I know you are, her eyes said. She gave me a small smile, grazing her lips across mine. Her forehead pressed against mine, I felt the breath of her promise on my face. "I'm not going anywhere." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - "That's Mr Vanderhout. He lived next door to us when we were kids, til we moved. He hated us." "He hated you?" I echoed, trying inconspicuously to roll the cricks out of my neck. It had only been an hour or so after Mulder and I fell asleep that Erin woke us, crying, and despite our best intentions she ended up spending the night sleeping between the two of us, which left me short of room and sleeping uncomfortably. "Yes, he hated us," Helena said with conviction. "Sabrina and I." She seemed less agitated than she had the other day, though she sat scratching at the interview table, trying to peel off flakes of paint. I thought maybe that she was still wearing off a sedative, given to her to keep her calm during transfer from the psychiatric hospital to the jail where she was being held without bail. Annie Fredricks was being kept down the hall. "And did you hate him?" I asked. "Of course we did. He told Mom and Dad that Sabrina and I broke curfew and snuck out of the house at n-" She broke off, realisation flooding her face. "Oh Lord, he's dead, isn't he?" "He was killed last night," Mulder said briefly. She let out a babylike whimper. "Oh God... Sabrina did that?" "They've arrested a young nurse for the crime." Mulder looked at her, contemplating. "Why do you say Sabrina did it?" "Because... because..." she faltered, looking confused. "I don't know." "You have to have some reason why you think that, why you knew he was dead," Mulder pushed. "You came in here asking about him," she protested. "I figured he had to be dead. Maybe you thought I'd killed him too or something ..." I watched, fascinated, as Mulder shook his head. "No, you know that Sabrina is responsible for the crime. How do you know that?" "Sabrina was talking about him the last time I saw her, just after her first accident, when she was still living with Charlie. She was talking about neighbours and how awful Mr Vanderhout had been... she sounded so vicious, like she wanted to kill him." "And now she has," Mulder observed. I wanted to object to that, to remind him that we had no proof, but I couldn't do it in front of Helena, so I kept silent. "Helena, you can tell Agent Scully and I everything, you know that?" She sniffed self-derisively. "My lawyer doesn't think so," she said ironically. "Your lawyer isn't going to find out what's going on here, why all this is happening to you. We are." "Helena, is any of the missing time coming back to you?" I asked, leaning forward. I don't really know what spurred me to act, but I could see from the way her hands tightened into fists that I was right. She drew a shaky breath. "I had... a dream," she admitted, starting to figet. "What about?" Mulder prompted. He drew his chair closer to the table. "I was there, in the prison," Helena said. She was trembling so much I wondered how she could still speak. "And I was fighting with somebody, struggling..." "With Rhonda Tallerty?" She shook her head. "No." "Sabrina?" Mulder suggested softly. She nodded slowly. "Yeah, it was," she admitted. I wonder whether she would have said her sister's name had Mulder not suggested it. "I couldn't see her face or anything, but I knew it was her. You just ... know these things." She smiled wistfully. "They're always trying to strangle you and borrowing your clothes and... well, you know these things." She looked up at us, and my heart sank as I thought that she might ask if either of us had a sibling, if we knew what she meant. "Go on," I prompted quickly, wanting to prevent any such occurence. She glanced at me, a little puzzled, I think, and then across at Mulder before returning her eyes to the table and continuing. "I was struggling with Sabrina, and... it was only glimpses, like... It was like somebody was holding me under water, like I was drowning or something, and I fought to break the surface and get a glimpse of daylight. But then I was sucked back down into the darkness. It was... God, it was scary. I was so scared I was lost, that nobody would ever find me." She swallowed, brushing at tears. "It was so dark. Not just black but dark, real dark. I've never been in so much dark..." I set my teeth, not letting myself shiver at her story, at the thought of such a world. I glanced at Mulder, who sat staring grimly at Helena, his eyes dark. No doubt he was feeling the same tingling terror I was at the tale. We excused ourselves and went down the hallway to where Annie Fredricks was being kept. She remembered nothing, still, but Mulder seemed convinced that she would, as Helena had, and gave her his number, telling her to ring as soon as she did. It was a less emotional interview than the previous one had been; Annie had passed the incredulous, frightened stage, and was now simply angry at her incarceration and the 'course of injustice' which had led to it. Our next stop was back at the hospital to check Sabrina's condition and see what recorded data we could gather from the past few days. We sat down for a late lunch in the hospital cafeteria, trying to see what correlations we could find between crime scene data, Sabrina's machine readouts, and witness and suspect statements. I put down my pen for a minute to take another bite of my tuna sandwich, watching as Mulder jotted down figures. He paused, staring at his page, then hastily searched through the papers to find the report of the first murder. I knew he'd found something; I recognised the expression on his face. "What is it?" "Helena remembers nothing after about ten fifteen on the Saturday morning, right? And we know that immediately before that Sabrina had elevated adrenalin levels and immediately after that her brain waves flatlined. Yeah?" "Yeah," I agreed slowly. "And the same thing happened on Monday. Annie remembers nothing since just before six... Sabrina's EEG flatlined at five forty-three pm Monday and sprung up again at nine-eighteen am Tuesday... Mulder, that's not possible. Either the equipment was malfunctioning when it said that she was braindead or it's malfunctioning now." "Just stick with me here, Scully. Please?" I gave him a nod of weary affirmation, taking another bite of my sandwich. "Okay," he continued. "Now, we know that the changes in the EEG correspond with Helena and Annie's experiences in missing time, right?" "You're not going to tell me aliens are experimenting on this woman's brain, are you?" I asked suddenly. Mulder chuckled. "Not quite what I have in mind. We're looking at a little longer than nine minutes. "So, let's look at it chronologically. Sabrina has been producing heightened levels of adrenalin. Helena arrives enters Sabrina's room, reaching out to take her sister's hand. Immediately two things happen: Sabrina's brain waves flatline and Helena's memory loss begins. From witness reports we know that Helena left, pushing past Sabrina's doctor on her way out, and went to the low-level security prison where Sabrina was kept, where she asked to see Rhonda Tallerty. Prison staff checked the surveillance camera that was malfunctioning, by the way; they found Helena's fingerprints all over it. So she disabled that some time between arriving at the prison and meeting Tallerty. That's only a matter of minutes." "She must have planned this all beforehand," I mused, but the idea stuck. That would mean that this memory loss was only a concoction and I honestly didn't think that was the situation, particularly as it had happened also to an unconnected individual. "I don't think so," Mulder frowned. "Me neither," I admitted. "But go on." "Well, Helena and Tallerty go out to the exercise yard. Helena produces a letter opener - which has been identified as being from the private office of one of the hospital's surgeons - and slashes Tallerty's throat from ear to ear. She then runs, escaping we don't know how, and drives back to the hospital. Parking her car in the ambulance bay, we've got her on surveillance tapes running through and taking an elevator up to her sister's floor. The security guards, seeing the blood, think she's a panicking patient and try to stop her. She pulls away and keeps running. They let her go, but then receieve a call from the PD switchboard warning them that a killer fititng her description was seen heading in the direction of the hospital. That's when they chase after her again and one is knocked out. The other tackles her as she attempts to get to her sister's bedside. She manages to reach her comotose, possibly braindead sister, and lets out a cry, collapsing. At approximately this time Sabrina's vitals and brain activity returned to normal. Her sister regains consciousness several hours later and remembers nothing of the missing time except, later, the sensation of struggling as if being drowned. "As for Annelize Fredricks, her story is pretty much the same. She noticed Sabrina's vitals falling and went to investigate. Again, a bloodtest done an hour earlier indicates heightened adrenalin levels. On making contact with Sabrina Annie's missing time began and Sabrina's cerebral activity ceased. Peter Vanderhout was killed just past ten. Annie was not only witnessed at the scene of her crime but also left fingerprints all over the place. She wasn't witnessed re-entering the hospital the next morning but surveillance cameras have her coming in the back way. She was in a hurry, by the looks of it. We can narrow down the time when she returned to Sabrina's hospital room, too - we were only gone for half an hour. The EEG picks up around twenty past nine and ten minutes later we return to discover the nurse passed out on the floor." He put the papers down, exhaled heavily, and looked at me expectantly. "Well?" I shrugged. "A fine summary, but it still doesn't explain what or how Sabrina is doing these things." He frowned. "All the Betsy Grubb murders could be traced to people who had visited her in the hospital or even hospital staff, nurses and x-ray technicians and the like. Betsy's sister apparently looked up the hospital schedules and visitor's sign-in and discovered that almost all of the deaths occured within only a few hours of the killer's contact with Betsy. Two or three in some situations, others longer, five, six, eight hours - depending on how far away or otherwise inaccessible their target was." He paused. "They gave us a list of everything Nurse Fredricks had in her possession when she was arrested, didn't they?" I didn't know where he was going with that but I nodded, rifling through the papers to produce the list, reading it aloud. "Wait, hang on a second," Mulder interrupted. "The movie ticket stub - do they say what the date on that was?" I glanced down at the page. "No. Why?" "I'd like to find out." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - It was just as I thought - Annelize Fredricks left the hospital and went to see "Setting Free The Bears" at a local cinema. The movie finished just past nine and she drove from the cinema to the house of Peter Vanderhout, where she proceeded to shoot him with his own pistol and fled. "She went to see a movie." Scully stared at me. "You'd better believe it." Her frown didn't change one bit. "Why?" I grinned at her, knowing that this little matter was almost just as frustrating a puzzle as Sabrina's means to commit her crime, but a far more fun little mystery. "Eleanor Hutton, who was charged with the murder of Betsy Grubb's ex-husband, also went to see a movie before committing murder. Edward Sturday, convicted of killing Anna-Marie Westmacott, a colleague of Grubb's, spent the afternoon taking a leisurely walk in the park before going on to savagely slaughter his victim. Clarissa Bellman sat in an icecream parlour reading Gone with the Wind before killing." Scully frowned. "Okay, so these killers are - what, filling in some empty time? Is there some reason why they're postponing the killings? Were they trying to create an alibi, maybe?" I hadn't thought much about that. But that was how Scully and I worked - we filled in each other's blanks. "We'll have to look into that." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - We did look into it, but could find nothing. Only two of the people convicted for the Grubb-related murders were still incarcerated - the rest had either been let out on reduced sentences, died, or been otherwise committed. We didn't waste time trying to track them down - interviewing them would be useless, we knew. Betsy Grubb's sister, still trying five years ago to free those wrongly convicted for her sister's crimes - most of them friends or relations of hers - had established that time had yielded little more recollection of their 'lost time' than Helena Quaker had already disclosed to us. But we read up on the police reports, trying to find a connection between the killers' timeouts. Several had gone to the cinema, two of whom had gone to see old Clark Gable movies. "Popular guy," Mulder had observed dryly, and I'd suppressed a smile. I'd harboured a secret reverence of the actor ever since my father and I had watched Gone with the Wind together when I was only a little girl. It had been one of our favourite movies - it appealed to the romantic, however well buried under pragmatism and education, within me. Despite this, though, I couldn't see any real explanation or draw any further correlations, and we left for home, unanimously agreeing to banish not only it from mind but also Jacqueline's problems. It was an unremarkable evening. Dinner, and then Astrid disappeared into her bedroom - we hadn't dared to ask her how the essay had gone - and I'd sat reading in one of the armchairs, surreptitiously listening as Josh read aloud to Erin one of the books he'd been given as a prize at his school's presentation night, Roald Dahl's 'The Witches'. I felt a little neglectful as I snuck a glance at him. He was reading clearly, quietly expressive, grinning to Erin as she gazed up at him adoringly, eyes wide as if she were absorbing every word. Mulder and I would have never even thought to give Josh such a book. How was it that his teacher knew so much more about his reading taste than we did? Because it was clear that he was revelling in the Dahl. That thought triggered a flash of memory. When had I seen Josh reading a Roald Dahl story before? No time recently, I knew. But nevertheless, I could almost visualise it, hear a voice reading. Not my voice or Mulder's or even Astrid or Josh's or Mom's... Then it came to me. Jacqueline. In the very beginning, when Josh and Astrid had been camped out on my living room floor and Jacqueline on the sofa and all of them running for their lives, there had been a book, Matilda, that she had read to them. That, one night, I had read a chapter or two of to them. How long had it been since I'd read aloud to my children? I put my own book down. "Hey, Joshie, mind if I read for a bit?" He looked at me, surprised, then smiled shyly, knowingly. I moved over to the couch beside him, pulling Erin onto my own lap and letting Josh snuggle up against me as if he were three again, his face pressed against my upperarm. I called Astrid and she appeared sulkily in the doorway. "What?" I patted the empty space beside me on the couch. "Come here and listen for a while, huh?" She pouted at me, bad tempered. "I was busy." "Ripping up study notes doesn't constitute as busy," Mulder quipped, coming up behind her and grabbing her under the armpits, swinging her up and carrying her toward us. She was growing steadily but was still nevertheless a lightweight, small-framed child, and he carried her easily, dropping her down on the couch beside me. She sprung up again. "I said I have other things to do!" she cried, storming out. I could see disappointment and frustration cross his face and I shrugged. We should be used to Astrid's tantrums now, though they were becoming very... adolescent. She was increasingly moody, argumentative and uncooperative, and we didn't know what to do. "You come listen," I told Mulder, indicating the couch. He nodded, stretching out beside me, his feet up on the coffee table, his head on my shoulder. I started to read from where Josh had left off and kept going, even as Erin fell asleep and Mulder playfully blew on my neck, trying to get my attention. "...Then the most astonishing thing happened," I read, my eyes straying to the doorway where Astrid stood, red-eyed. I casually returned my gaze to the page and continued, "I saw one lady pushing her fingers *underneath* the hair on her head, and the hair, *the entire head of hair* lifted upwards all in one piece, and the hand slid underneath the hair and went on scratching!" Beside me, Josh giggled. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Astrid approach. "She was wearing a wig! She was also wearing gloves! I glanced swiftly around at the rest of the now seated audience. Every one of them was wearing gloves!" She was standing only a foot or two away from Mulder, arms crossed defensively, as if waiting for him to notice her. "My blood turned to ice," I read. "I began to shake all over. I glanced frantically behind me for a back door to escape through. There wasn't one." At that point, Mulder eased himself more upright and shot out an arm, grabbing Astrid around the waist and tugging her closer, pulling her onto his lap. She struggled a little but then drew her legs up under her, letting Mulder put his arms tightly around her tiny ball-like form. She gazed up at me through shielded eyes almost fearfully, as if afraid I was going to yell at her for her behaviour. But I wasn't. I knew it was hard for her and that she was trying her damndest. My yelling at her would only make things worse. She didn't deserve that. "I love you," I mouthed to her. "Okay?" She frowned, as if not letting herself believe what I'd said. But I knew she had understood. "Okay?" I mouthed again. Still frowning, her eyes still red-rimmed and troubled, she nodded. "'kay," she whispered. I turned back to the book and kept reading. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - JACQUELINE POV - "Wakey wakey." I felt a whiskery kiss on my cheek and frowned, opening my eyes slowly. Grae was sitting on the edge of the bed beside me, staring down at me. It looked like he hadn't shaved since I'd last seen him. I hated facial hair. "Go shave," I muttered, not wanting to face him right then. I still hadn't sorted things out and his reappearance was the last thing I needed. I hadn't known when he was coming back, just that he would, eventually. "You went to see Suzie." "Yes, I went to visit my sister-in-law," I retorted tightly. "What about it?" "Did you talk about me?" "God, your ego's the size of a small continent!" His eyes hardened and I squirmed more upright. I felt vulnerable enough as it was, in pajamas, only barely awake, without having him staring down on me. "Yeah," I admitted coolly. "We talked about you." He wanted to press me further about it, I could tell, but he didn't. Instead he stood, taking a step back and tugging back the covers. "I've got something to show you." Rebellious anger rose within me and climbed out of bed, pushing past him and moving over to the dresser. I refused to let him push me around like that. "I'm going to have a shower. You can show me later." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - "Wanna tell me about the essay today?" "No." "What was the question?" "I don't want to talk about it," she said stubbornly, rolling over and facing the wall. Pulling the bedcovers straight for her, I heard a small sniff. "Want a hug?" I asked, quieter. More sniffles, and she swung around, looking at me miserably and bursting into tears. I pulled her against me. Poor little Astrid. "I'm sorry," she sobbed between hiccups. "Oh, Astrid," I murmured, disbelieving. I was aching for her. "You have nothing to be sorry about." "But - hic - I do," she protested. She was pressing her face against my neck and I felt her tears slide down under the collar of my t-shirt. "I can't handle - hic - things like you and Mommy can." She was comparing herself to Scully and I? I was shocked. "Kiddo..." "You and Mommy deal with important stuff like death and shooting people and catching murderers and you handle it, most of the time. All I have is stupid school work and I can't handle it!" "There's a very big difference, Astrid," I said gently. "You're still only young. I used to have trouble with homework too, you know. Mom probably did too. It's just normal." "But I'm not normal!" she protested, anguished. Tears were still streaming down her face and, absurdly, she kept hiccuping. "Hush," I murmured, trying to calm her down. I sat her back down on the edge of her bed and took a small step back so I could look at her. "Let's see if we can stop the crying, huh? It's only school, Astrid. You've still got the rest of your life ah-" "I know it's just school!" she protested tearily, pushing away the finger I held up to hush her. "I know that, and that's half the problem because nobody else seems to understand that! I want to do well but sometimes I just really don't care because it's just too hard and I don't want to do it but I have to do it because it's part of the stupid syllabus and -" "Mulder?" Scully stood in the doorway, concerned. Have you got this under control? she asked silently. I nodded, shooing her away. No sense in crowding Astrid. She nodded slowly, still frowning, and left again. I turned back to Astrid, whose words had trailed off into sniffs. "I'm trying to be strong," she whispered pitifully. "But I can't..." Hushing her as new sobs errupted, I pulled her into another hug, stroking her hair. "Believe me, I know how that feels, kiddo." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - JACQUELINE POV - Kittens. Two little tigerstriped balls of fur, one pouncing on a string Ebony trailed along the carpet, the other hanging from the tablecloth, its claw caught. Grae gently reached to disentangle it, holding the tiny creature cupped in his hands. It stared at me with wide, bright green eyes. "What do you think?" Grae grinned at me, holding the kitten up, gripping it under the arms like a wet baby. It meowed, feet scrabbling for a foothold, and he held it securely against his chest. I stared at him, stunned. "Kittens?" He grinned at me again. "Picked them up at the RSPCA." "The what?" "Animal shelter. Cute, aren't they? That one -" He pointed to the kitten on the floor, now chewing contentedly on the fringe of the rug. "That's CD." "CD?" I echoed, my eyes lighting on a stack next to the CD player. He shrugged. "Okay, Tiger. I haven't really come up with anything yet." He held up his kitten again. "This is - What's her name again, Ebs? ...Ebony chose the name," he explained to me. She stood, careful to avoid the kitten, and picked up a thick old volume from the dark polished table. It was open and he only glanced at the page. "Ah, that's right." He grinned at me again. "Matilda!" Holding the kitten up as he had before, he began to waltz around the room with her, humming. What the hell was he doing? I wondered, unamused. "What are you doing?" I asked impatiently. He stopped and looked at me. "Don't tell me you've never heard of Waltzing Matilda?" I stared back at him, and, curiosity temporarily overcoming my anger, shook my head. "Banjo Patterson?" I shook my head again and he stared at me as if I was crazy. He picked up the thick volume again, closed it, and tossed it to me. I caught it, but only just. It was like catching a brick. "Have a read." I readjusted my grip on it and then laid it down on on the chair against the wall behind me. "You should have checked with me first," I said quietly, trying not to get angry with him. But it was hard. I hated that he didn't consult me first, that he was deciding not only his future and Ebony's but mine as well, and not letting me have any say in the matter. I'd known he didn't have plans of leaving any time soon and this was further proof. He wasn't going to give Ebony these kittens with plans of taking her away from them. He had made up his mind that we were going to stay indefinitely. That filled me with an overwheming loneliness. God, I missed Fox and Dana and the kids. I missed my own life, my job, even my apartment. I was miserable here, there was no denying it. But what could I do about it? I was trapped. Grae wouldn't give me a divorce, and even if he did, he wouldn't let me take Ebony away from him. And when he found out that... No, it was official. I was trapped. "I should have been consulted," I said again, my voice miraculously clear and steady, though cold. "It was a spur of the moment sorta thing," he responded, not even looking at me, and I wondered if that was some sort of dig as I remembered telling him the same thing a long time ago, explaining why I had Dana and Fox and the kids over when we'd organized a date. Was he honestly dredging that up or was I just being paranoid? I didn't dare respond, but instead left the room. The urge to cry was pressing down on me and I shoved it away, letting frustrated anger take its place. I went outside, finding the basketball and starting to shoot some hoops. The hoop was over the driveway and the gravel hurt my bare feet but I didn't give a damn. I was throwing hard, though, and the ball kept overshooting the ring, bouncing off the garage roof, which only made me angrier. "Hell!" I shouted, kicking the basketball angrily, stubbing my toe. I cursed again, watching as it sailed up into the air, caught in the low branches of one of the large sycamore trees. Bloody ball. Enraged enough as I was, finding Grae standing watching me didn't exactly improve matters. "What the hell do you want?" I demanded ungraciously. He took a hesitant step forward, still staring at me curiously. Was that the first time I'd shown such physical anger in his presence? I thought maybe it was, and that surprised and chilled me. Was this what our relationship was doing to me? "I'd hoped everything was forgiven," he offered quietly. "It's not," I retorted shortly. "Running away was a stupid way of trying to solve things." And I walked away. Bloody husband. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - It may have been an extreme action but we had reached the point where such action needed to be taken. With the aid of Sabrina's husband, brother and mother we pieced together a list of potential targets, people whom Sabrina was known to hold grudges against. We knew that we had too little evidence to enlist protection for these people - there were thirty-five, in all - but we noted down their phone numbers and addresses in case it was necessary to notify them. It was at the hospital end that we took stricter precautions. Visitors were banned from visiting Sabrina - though there had been few of them to begin with - and we limited the number of doctors and nurses attending to her, although that had been a difficult deal to strike, given the utter skepticism of the hospital staff. Obviously, a request that the staff be quarantined following their shift would have been denied, but we managed to reach an agreement that staff would be under surveillance for six hours following their last contact with Sabrina. That was a gamble based on the time pattern of the homocides; in the Grubb case and with the two recent murders, they were all committed within the first three or four hours following contact. And Scully and I waited. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - For the first twenty-six hours everything ran smoothly. It had been difficult gaining the co-operation of the hospital staff and I think Mulder and I had both been relieved to have our security measures in place. But by eleven Friday morning I was wondering for the first time how much longer we'd have to wait until another crime was attempted - and, even more so, whether we would last that long. The doctors were protesting because Sabrina's vitals kept fluctuating and our restrictions were preventing them from keeping as close watch on her as they would have liked. The fact that we hadn't yet observed the staff doing anything more than driving home and going to bed also contributed toward their growing impatience with us. "Is this really necessary?" a nurse had demanded impatiently. "None of us have gone psycho and killed anybody, and we're not going to." I'd apologised yet again for the inconvenience and promised that we were doing our best to ensure it would all be over as soon as humanly possible, a part of me silently hoping that an attempt would be made soon for no reason other than it would give us more credibility. And then I got what I'd wished for. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - Sabrina's EEG flatlined, again, at a quarter to ten. Hannah Feldman had been murdered at exactly ten fourteen am. We'd requested notification of any homocides within a hundred mile radius and turned up at the crime scene, a shopping mall parking lot, just past one. Crime Scene were still there, along with forensics and the coroner's van. Quite a crowd had been attracted and we pushed our way through. The officer in charge greeted us grimly. "Feldman worked in the mall, at a jewellers. She and a girlfriend were on their way from their cars to start a shift when a car comes round the corner at eighty miles an hour, ka-boom into Feldman. And as if that wasn't enough, the guy backed over her again, breaking every bone in her body. She was DOA at St Vincents. Her friend got away unharmed and got the license number for us." "Have you checked up on it?" "Doing," he said crisply. "Should have a name and address soon. There's always a risk that the car was stolen, of course, but I guess we'll know soon enough." Scully and I were talking to Feldman's coworker when my celphone rang. It was Agent Phillips, one of the agents on surveillance, reporting that Ella Martinez, whose early morning shift at the hospital had finished at nine-thirty, had collapsed outside the Lincoln Memorial an hour ago and been raced to the nearest emergency room. Scully and I glanced at each other sharply, a little confused by this turn of events. "Let's go." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - "She just screamed, like somebody had stabbed her or something," Phillips recounted, frowning. "Then she just fell down." "Do you know what time this happened?" Mulder asked. "Ten-twenty? Ten-thirty?" Phillips shook his head. "No sir. It was just ten oh-two." Mulder and I both frowned. "Are you sure?" I asked sharply. He nodded. "I noted it down, according to my watch." "May I -?" I gestured and he peeled back his sleeve. I compared the time on his watch with my own. He was a minute ahead of me. "This doesn't gain or lose time?" I pressed. He shook his head. "No, ma'am." We thanked him and went to check on Martinez. She was still unconscious but, according to the ER admitting doctor, they had been unable to find anything wrong with her. He shrugged and suggested that she had fainted and would come around soon. Heading back to the office, we went through all our files, trying to find a link to Hannah Feldman - she hadn't been on our list of potential victims and there was still the possibility that it was an unconnected murder attempt, or even an accident. On a hunch we went back to the shopping mall to the jewellers where Feldman had worked. None of the other employees remembered Sabrina ever coming in, but going through the books we found that thirteen months ago Sabrina Woodhouse had ordered the purchase and engraving of a gold bangle. She had been served by another sales assistant, Michelle Leeds, who had quit three months ago, we were told. "CU - RTP" was scribbled in large letters across the record. "What does this mean?" Mulder asked the store manager. "Customer unsatisfied - refused to pay." Chelsea, the store manager, was staring down at the page. "I remember her, now. She put a deposit down when she ordered the engraving and was supposed to pay the rest when she came to pick it up." "But she didn't come pick it up?" "Michelle rang her several times telling her the bangle was in. When she eventually turned up to pick it up she refused to pay for it. Said she'd changed her mind and didn't want it any more. Kicked up a fuss." Mulder stirred. "Do you know what the engraving was?" Chelsea produced another volume. "This is where we keep track of all engravings." She flipped it open expertly, flipped some pages and skimmed through the entries. "Here - this is it." "'LAURA'," I read aloud. I turned to Mulder, getting a faint glimmer of understanding. "That's the name of Sabrina's daughter." He nodded, his expression giving nothing away. He asked the store manager, "When Sabrina Woodhouse was contacted about the bangle, would have you mentioned to her what had been engraved on it?" "Not unless she asked us." Chelsea shrugged. "So you would have just told her -" "That her engraved bangle was in and she was free to pick it up any time in the next week or two." Mulder nodded, thanking her. As we turned to leave, he stopped to ask, "Just one last thing - Do you happen to know who served Sabrina when she came to pick up the bangle?" Chelsea glanced down at the first book. "It was a Thursday, so it would have been either Alice - she's in retirement, now - or Hannah." Mulder nodded, and I understood. All the pieces were falling into place. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - JACQUELINE POV - I'd never realised there were so many stars in the sky. I sat on the back porch steps, staring out, marvelling at the sheer number, the complexity and enormity of the world beyond. For such an insignificant race, we humans were pretty bloody conceited, as Grae would say. "It's like a blanket knitted by a blind man, huh?" He sat beside me, a little closer than I really felt comfortable with. I was still... well, not mad. My anger had long faded into a dismal sort of limbo. But I wasn't ready to forgive him, not yet. There were feelings I was still trying to sort out. "What?" "The sky is the blanket," he explained. He was in one of his whimsical moods. "The stars are all the holes. But they're not all even and symmetrical, they're random and all different sizes." "Uh huh." I didn't understand what he was talking about, or why he'd approached me with such an inane topic of conversation. "Sorry." His voice seemed to get a hard edge to it for a fraction of a second but he fought it off. "I guess the more romantic thing would have been to quote poetry; 'And when the stars threw down their spears, and -'" "You don't have to romance me," I said, maybe a little quickly. I wasn't sure why I was being so short with him, especially when he was trying so hard. And William Blake, too - I loved Blake. But I'd fallen out of rhythm - I'd forgotten how to talk to him. Not just the days we'd spent apart, him running away guiltily to Sydney and leaving us behind, but the events of the past few weeks, past month, even. It was surprising how easy it had been to keep our distance from each other; we didn't have to try too hard at all. "I'm sorry," I said, just as quickly, because I knew I had to get that in before he got angry. I felt suddenly exhausted, zapped of strength. It was difficult dealing with Grae even when things were going well. I slid a hand over onto his knee, giving it a slight squeeze. I didn't dare look up at him; I was too afraid to find out what he was thinking. So instead I focused on the stars again, let my mind be wrapped amongst the black velvet sky and the still coolness of the night, the cicadas and crickets almost deafening but my ears accustomed enough that they no longer counted as noise but rather as silence. Like all hot summer days, it was a relief when the night was cool. The mosquitos were terrible at night, but it was a small price to pay for the crisp, clean air and blossom-scented breeze. Two dogs in the distance were howling to each other but I knew Milo, curled up asleep on the floor in Ebony's room, where a fan was steadily blowing away, paid less attention to the noise than I did. Milo was a lazy old dog; he had a beautiful, loyal nature, but he was lazy. "It's past midnight. Are you going to come to bed tonight?" "Maybe," I said honestly. I didn't know yet whether I could put up with him. Yet his arm, now around me, was so sweetly protective, so gentle and maybe the littlest bit possessive... It would be nice to sleep in his embrace tonight, I thought. But I wasn't sure whether I should go with that feeling or put the question to my head, first. He was fidgeting beside me as he waited for elaboration on my answer. Usually it was pleasant when we sat somewhere together in silence - sometimes we liked to go down and sit on the roof of the cowshed in the bottom paddock, watching the last streaks of daylight fading from the sky as the sun set. His touch around me would be possessive but gently so, his heartbeat steady as I rested my cheek against his chest. Now he had none of his usual grim calm. "What are you so nervous about?" I wondered. I hadn't really intented to speak aloud but, my voice soft against the country noises, it didn't seem to matter. He shrugged, half looking away. "Hell if I know what you expect of me, Jacqui. I just don't know how to deal with you and what you expect from me." "What do I expect from you?" I asked, frowning. He shrugged again, a gesture of defeat and helplessness. "I won't know all the answers. I won't always know the right thing to say or the right time to say it." "I don't expect that from you," I argued gently. "But you do," he protested. He pushed my hand off his knee and stood, moving away from me, swiping at hanging filmy branches from a nearby tree moodily. "I'm sick of playing this role, of living up to the great Fox Mulder." I did a doubletake. "What?" "Don't give me that crap," he snapped. "I don't begrudge you your friends, Jacqui, and if you want to idolise Fox Mulder and Dana Scully... hell, that's fine with me too. But I'm not going to put up with you thinking of us in terms of them. We're our own people, we have our own relationship. I refuse to just play... Mulder to your Scully." I felt a tingling sort of numbness spreading through me and I shrugged it off, trying to process what he'd said, reconcile with what I knew of myself. I hated being disected like that, hated not knowing whether he was right and how I simply hadn't seen it or whether he was wrong. I had no idea how I was supposed to distinguish the difference. I had no sense guiding me and I didn't know why not - how, at my age, with everything that I knew, I still knew so little about myself and my own intentions. "That's not what I want," I said slowly. He shook his head - still defeated. Then he shrugged. Moving past me, he kissed his fingers and laid them on my hair. He paused in the doorway - I could feel the shadow the light behind him threw on me. "I'm going to bed. The offer still stands." I nodded, waiting as I felt the shadow lift and heard the screen door swing closed again on squeaky hinges. I didn't want to think about what he'd just said but instead turned my thoughts once more to the sky. My mind replayed his words early, the absurdness of his approach. But his departing words kept rebounding in my brain, and I felt a sudden longing for affection, for kisses and caresses and kind words. I had sensed from Grae that he was ready to shower me with those things again if I let him and I thought with sudden hunger that I wanted them. Nothing more than that. It would be a while til we got to more than that again. But the thought of making peace appealed to me enormously. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so terribly lonely. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - Jenny Rae Williams, owner of the small second hand car used to run down Hannah Feldman, was found in her parked car by cops only five minutes away from the mall. The vehicle, with massive front end damage including a shattered windscreen and large red stains and snagged human hair along the deeply dented front, had been suspicious enough for a cruising patrol car to investigate. Pulled from the car by one of the officers, they discovered that Williams had fainted. Reviving, she had appeared lost and confused. The officers had called in the license plates and discovered that the same car had been used only five minutes previously in a hit and run. Williams had been escorted down to the local precinct awaiting a medical examination. Somehow, we had only just been informed. Now outside the station, we were in the sunlight with the case notes spread over the car bonnet, trying to figure things out before we went to interview her. "We know that Sabrina's responsible for the hit and run," I thought aloud. "But there's no link between Jenny Williams and Sabrina." "There's no way she could have accessed Sabrina's room?" Scully demurred doubtfully. I shook my head. "The agents there would have called to let us know." I could see the case in my mind, like a puzzle with a few crucial pieces missing. One of them was the link between Sabrina and Jenny Williams. And that, I thought, was the key piece. "Do we know where Jenny Williams was earlier today?" Scully asked suddenly. I glanced down at the still-warm copy of woman's statement. "Busking, and that's *with* a license, apparently. Why?" "Lately there's been quite a crowd of buskers at the Lincoln Memorial, especially during lunch hour." "And that's where Nurse Martinez collapsed," I added slowly, the fragments crystalizing in my mind. Scully gripped the iron railing beside her tightly in excitement. "Mulder, what if this is some sort of a *virus*, something that's jumping from person to person with a simple contact? It jumped from Sabrina to her sister, then -" "Back again when Helena returned to the hospital," I finished. "I think you're right, Scully; I think this *is* some sort of virus. But it has intent. It's human." My mind was flying. A virus with will, intent, intelligence, jumping from host to host, overtaking them and then leaving them spent and without memory. A virus committing crimes - perfect crimes for which others would be punished. Killing in the same relentless, vicious way Sabrina Woodhouse had during her bank-robbing sprees. A Sabrina virus. And then it clicked. Something I'd read a long time ago, only an obscure little paragraph in a magazine, I didn't even remember which. Something which had been reported regularly in the 19th century, following plagues of illnesses where many people had nearly died. Soul-jumping. A soul that could leave its own living body and overtake another's. An unanchored soul. "Helena told us that after Sabrina's first accident that it was as if only half of Sabrina came back;" I said quietly, "the dangerous side. What if it came back without the anchors, without whatever it is that ties us our souls to our bodies?" I frowned. "And it left Jenny Williams, some time before the police picked her up. We don't know who it's in, now." "Mulder, souls aren't rea -" She cut off. "That's frightening," she admitted. "Yeah, it is," I agreed. "The question is, how do we catch it?" I left Scully to interview the officers who had found Jenny Williams and went to check out the local library, digging out a dozen enormous history books, trying to find references to unanchored souls. I found several articles in one of the books, although they were typically outrageous, tabloid-type articles which gave me little more information than I already had. I'd been waiting for a call from Scully, assuming that she would be finishing before I did, but I ended up calling her to find out where she was. "Hard Eight Cyber Cafe," she told me. I recognised the name - it was directly across the street from the police precinct. I turned up there to discover her sitting in front of a computer with coffee and donuts. I glanced at her screen. It was a search engine results page, listing all matches for Dana+Scully. Another three of four windows were open, one of them titled Federal Bureau of Investigation, another was the White Pages. "What are you doing?" I asked curiously. She swung around. "God! Don't scare me like that!" She laughed sheepishly, closing the windows. "I had some time to burn. Thought I'd look myself up and see how many people are invading my privacy today." I stared at her, then indicated the donuts. She laughed again. "So I got hungry. I just felt like donuts." She went to pay her bill, then grabbed the car keys from me, climbing into the driver's seat and revving the motor delightedly. Something had put her in an extraordinarily good mood. I wondered what. "What's up, Scully?" I asked curiously, trying to figure out where this wildness had sprung from. She grinned across at me. "Just felt like letting my hair down." As if to demonstrate she shook her head, her hair bouncing on her shoulders. It had looked less styled already, as if she'd been combing her fingers through it. But it was, I conceded, the end of a long day. And it was Friday. Sometimes Scully and I went a little crazy on Friday nights, if we had any energy left. We were stopped at some lights and she took me by surprise, leaning across and tugging me close to her, kissing me hotly. She grinned as she pulled away, turning back to face the traffic as the lights changed again. "Did I surprise you?" she asked, glancing across again, grinning childishly. I grinned back, amused, if a little confused. "You always surprise me, Scully." - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s Hook, line and sinker. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - I got a call from the agent at Sabrina's beside as I stepped in the front door, informing me that Sabrina had flatined again - not the EEG but her EKG: her heart. They'd tried unsuccessfully to resusciate her but failed. She was dead. Panic hit me with that. The soul couldn't stay out of its own body for too long, we knew; that was why after the murders the killers - or victims, as they really were - always returned to Sabrina, so that she could regather strength. The drifter's soul weakened as time passed - already it would be weakened. Without the soul, the body would die, and without the body, the soul would die. But it would go down fighting. In 1857 a Dr Leonard Watts had recorded a series of soul-jumps and noted that when the soul's body died the soul must take absolute control of the host body to claim it and live in it. Because the host's soul was whole and the drifter's wasn't, the host soul won out in the struggle and the drifter's fled to their own body. Wherever Sabrina was now, it would be a hell of a struggle. "Scully!" I called. She'd gone to the bedroom, saying something about wanting a bath. I quickly said goodbye to Kathy, who was leaving, and told Astrid and Josh to order takeout for us all, their choices. That was the usual Friday treat. "Hey, Scully? Agent Springer just rang." I stood in the doorway, watching as she held Erin up above her head, cooing to her. Erin was whining. "Sabrina Woodhouse flatlined about ten minutes ago. She's dead." She swung to look at me sharply. "Dead? Are you sure?" "They pronounced her." I moved closer, reaching to take Erin from her. "Hey, monkey. Howya doing?" "Uh-huh..." Scully had turned to face the bureau and fumbled for something in the top drawer. I instinctively looked up at her as she turned back. Maybe I saw the flash of silver reflecting the ceiling light. She was holding a knife. Everything came together with frightening clarity. Jenny Rae Williams, the officer who 'found her unconscious', the same officer who had later invited Scully to interview Williams with him. Sabrina Woodhouse. My precious Scully... And I had Erin in my arms. "What do you want?" I asked quietly, calmly stalling for time as my mind worked frantically. How could I exorcise Sabrina's soul without harming Scully? I couldn't lose Scully. I couldn't do anything to even risk losing her. The thoughts were overwhelming. She was gripping the hand of the knife tightly with both hands. It was from our kitchen, I realised. She'd picked it up and brought it in here. She'd been holding Erin. Why had she been holding Erin? Would she have hurt her? Oh Christ... "What do you want?" I repeated. "Why are you holding that knife on me, Sabrina?" Then I kicked myself as I realised something - because she wanted revenge on me. *I* had contributed toward Sabrina's capture. Without my profile it would have taken them far longer to capture her - if they'd managed to, at all. "I want to see that you go to that dark place with me," she said, and it was terrible because it was Scully's voice. "I've been there, and I know that it's twice as bad as hell could ever be. It leaves you fearless, dry of love, so full of greed and anger and *spite*!" She spat out the word. She was shaking. I shifted Erin to my left arm so that I could reach for my weapon if necessary, but the thought of that only compounded my dread. I tried to speak calmly. "Scully, I know you're still in there, and I know you're stronger than this. I need you to fight it." A spasm of confusion crossed her face and the hands holding the knife trembled even more violently. She was twitching, as if she had a nervous tic. "*Fight* it, Scully," I repeated. Sabrina had been free of her body for hours - she had to be weakening by now. "I know how strong you are, Scully. And I know how much you love me, that you don't want to hurt me. Just like I couldn't bring myself to hurt you when Pusher had me by the balls. You just need to take control of this." More twitching, a flash of agony in her eyes that I knew was all-Scully. Then coldness again. But silent tears flowed down her cheeks. "Astrid!" I yelled, not taking my eyes off Scully. They must have heard the urgency in my tone because not only Astrid but Josh as well appeared immediately. Neither of them said anything, only stared wide-eyed and terrified at Scully and the knife she held. I thrust Erin into Astrid's arms. "I want you to leave the apartment," I told them quietly. "Stay outside until I come and get you, okay?" Astrid stared at me with the same agony I'd seen in Scully's eyes, that I felt inside. "Daddy -" "Go!" I told them sharply, and they obeyed, scuttling out. But they'd only been gone a second when Josh returned, sidling in watchfully. "I told you to leave, Josh!" I yelled at him. I couldn't have them in the way. It was too much as it was. But he seemed to ignore me, his eyes on Scully as he reached to pick up the celphone that lay on the bedside table. Hers, just discarded. Then he ran out again. A few seconds later I heard the front door slam closed after them. Good kids. I felt sweeping relief that they were safely out of the way. They would be okay out there. They'd know what to do. They wouldn't have to see what happened. I stared at Scully. "Listen Scully, the kids are out of the way. The kids are safe. It's just us now. We're going to fight this together, okay? Because I need you. We've both gotta be strong. So put -" The phone ringing broke the utter concentration I had on her and I jumped. That split-second was all she needed - she lunged at me, just as agile as she had always been, but I'd never been afraid of her as I was now. "If I die, you die with me," she said hoarsely, high-kicking me in the chest, sending me to the ground, and bringing the knife to my throat. The wind was knocked out of me and my head spun but after a second I managed to grab her wrists, pulling it back enough that I could breathe without slitting my throat and struggled to take it from her. Any chance I'd had of getting my weapon was gone and I was absurdly glad for it, that I wouldn't be faced with the choice of whether to shoot her or not. That was a choice I wouldn't be able to make. "Scully..." I pleaded. "Scully, you have to fight this. Dana... Sabrina's getting weaker already, I know she is. You've just got to keep fighting her. She won't have any power. You're going to win this." She seemed about to crack but then she hissed at me. "No, dammit! I'm not going to lose..." I tried to ignore the other voice, still sounding like Scully, but not Scully. "Dana, let go of the knife. Let it go." I winced, holding my breath as she pushed it closer against my throat, the very tip digging into my throat. Thank God it wasn't razor sharp. Though being sliced open with a blunt knife would be more painful, I thought with a shudder. My own arms were shaking as I tried to push her away. She was so strong - Scully's strength, and the strength of a mad woman fighting for her life. "You leave her alone!" I shouted defiantly at Sabrina. "You can't be her!" That seemed to shake her a little and I managed to wrestle the knife from her grip, tossing it away from me, toward the door. She went for my throat then, but she was weakened enough that I pushed her off. We both jumped up, facing each other like wrestlers. I pulled my gun. "Stay back!" I warned. "I don't want to hurt you. Scully, fight it! Just fight it!" I saw the stranger slip from her eyes for a minute and she let out a frightened, hopeless moan. "Scully, it's all going to be over soon," I promised, feeling my own strength slip for only a moment before reasserting itself. "You've just gotta keep fighting. I'm here. I'm going to stay here til you win." I needed to be there for her, to give her the same psychological edge over her opponent the home team got at a game. I saw her handcuffs, tossed on the dresser, and started edging toward them, keeping my distance from her. I reached out to grab them and she hissed as she saw me, backing toward the door. I wasn't sure if she was going for the knife or the door but I couldn't afford for her to get to either. I was getting tired, too. I didn't know if I could wrestle the knife off her again. I lunged and grabbed her arm and she let out an angry growl, trying to pull away from me. I snapped the cuff on that wrist then reached around her for the other hand, yanking it back. But I didn't cuff that wrist yet. Instead, I shoved her toward the bed, pushing her down, and straddling her as I cuffed both wrists to the bedhead. She was writhing under me, like a wild animal. "Let me go!" she hissed, trying to kick me. I jumped back, grabbing a pair of pantyhose from her drawers and getting kicked in the jaw and chest several times before I managed to tie her feet, only then pulling off her pointed shoes. "Scully, you can beat this thing," I whispered, crouching beside the bed, as close to her as I dared, feeling a little dizzy with the pain and winded. "You and I are going to fight it, beautiful. We're going to beat it and get you back, and you'll feel safe again, and we'll all be safe." She let out an agonised cry. "Mulder..." "Yeah, I'm here. I'm here with you. You're not alone, Scully. You're going to keep fighting this, okay? We're going to keep fighting together til we win." "Mulder?!" I heard a voice from out in the living room. "Mulder, where are you?" It was Skinner. "We're in here!" I yelled out to him, feeling exhaustion and then panic because I couldn't afford to be exhausted, I had to keep fighting with Scully. "What the hell is going on here?" I glanced across at him as he stood in the doorway, lips set grimly. "We need a priest," I told him shortly. "Now." We were dealing with evil here, I knew. I wasn't qualified to fight that alone. It was an agonising twenty minutes waiting for him to return. Hisses and cries alterately came from Scully's lips, threats, pleadings for my help. I could no longer come up with anything more to say than "I love you, Dana," and I spoke the same four words over and over, unable to move my mind any further. I was consumed with terror. How much longer could either of them keep going? Was it a case of whoever gave up first lost? What would I do if Sabrina managed to conquer Scully completely? The thought chilled my blood. "IloveyouDanaIloveyouDanaIloveyouDana..." It was like a prayer to me, my mantra for this literal battle of wills. It was all I could think. "Mulder?" It was Skinner again. I broke off my mantra as I looked at the priest beside him. A young man with a childishly roundish face, looking stunned, a little embarrassed, even, as if he had interrupted some sort of sadistic foreplay. I stood, my limbs shaking under me. "Have you ever done an exorcism?" He stared at me, then at Skinner, then back at me. "You're serious?" I grabbed his arm, my fingers digging into the soft flesh, and pulled him closer. "We need prayers. Anything." He looked at me, frightened, and I pushed him closer. "Just go." He knelt down, then drew out a rosary with shaking hands, beginning to mutter a prayer quietly. "Louder," I yelled at him. "It has to be louder." I moved quickly around to the other side of the bed, climbing half onto the bed so my face was only a few inches from Scully's. "We're here for you, Scully," I whispered. "Me, Skinner, the priest. We're here for you." She hissed, snapping at me as if trying to bite my ear off, but I didn't draw back. "I love you Dana," I whispered. "I love you." It took two and a half more hours, and every minute of that I prayed would be the last. Sabrina was getting weaker, we could tell, as Scully started to ramble the prayers with the priest between hisses and growls. But Sabrina was a fighter and growing more desperate, and it was a struggle for Scully all the way. She'd been struggling in the handcuffs and her wrists were rubbed raw and bleeding. I'd held her wrists, trying to stop her from hurting herself, and felt every shudder and spasm that wracked her body. Several times I thought we'd won, saw recognition in Scully's eyes as she muttered, "Mulder..." in a sigh of relief, but then an eerie, chilling half-laugh, half-sob, that sank our hopes again, and more struggling. "Almost there, Scully," I promised, over and over. It was almost as if we were going through labor together again. "Almost there." She had been crying steadily for the last half hour, muttering prayers and my name as she sobbed, then breaking out to shout at us "We're going to hell! We're all going to hell!" I was again muttering my I love you mantra when she let out a scream, as if somebody had burnt her with a hot poker, and then she'd sunk back down onto the bed with a shuddery sob, and she was out cold. I couldn't lift my arm. Only my fingers, stroking her hair obsessively. I was exhausted from the tussle and Skinner had several times wandered in, telling me to get some sleep, but I couldn't. I wouldn't be able to fall asleep til I knew for certain that it was over, and that we had won. The priest had left, shaken, probably to go claim himself a hefty dose of Hail Marys. Skinner hovered in the doorway, watching. Josh had been sitting in the corner watching ever since Scully had fallen asleep and he had ventured in. Astrid had come in and tried to talk to me, but I hadn't been able to find the words or mindpower to explain everything to her. Not yet. Not when my heart still beat at twice its normal speed and my brain was numb to all but the question: "Did we win?" I couldn't be certain. All sense told me that Sabrina had weakened more and Scully had won, but Sabrina had kept fighting with such desperation that I couldn't be sure. All I had to substantiate my theory about Sabrina weakening was a hundred and fifty year old documentation that might not even be true or accurate. I listened to familiar noises out in the kitchen. Astrid heating up a bottle for Erin, who was whining. Wanting her mother. Astrid put the TV on, maybe to fill the deathly silence of the house. I could hear Skinner talking on the phone to the agents who had been at Sabrina's bedside and relieving the surveillance agents. Our phone rang again and Astrid answered it, telling Mrs Scully that Scully and I had gone to bed early, tired. We'd been busy earlier, which was why we hadn't answered when she'd called. No, everything was okay. "Mulder?" Her voice was slurred, her eyelids fluttering open. I felt elation pounding against my ribs but didn't allow myself to rejoice yet. "I'm here, beautiful," I promised her. Energy surged through my limp body and I moved closer, climbing onto the bed beside her. She was drowsy and I assured her, "Sleep." So she slept some more. Reassured, though still irrationally afraid of getting my hopes up, I felt safe enough to leave her for a minute to take a leak. Returning, I found her struggling to wake up again. "Mulder?" There was fear in her voice and I hurried closer. "I'm here." Climbing up beside her again, I reached up to undo the handcuffs but then pulled away so I could see her face. "I'm chained up," she murmured, surprised, as she tried to move her limbs. "I couldn't risk it," I admitted. "I didn't want to do that, Scully. But I didn't have a choice..." She gave me a wan smile. "It's okay." She drew a shuddery breath. "That was scary, huh?" I smiled gently at the understatement. Beautiful Scully, putting on a brave front. I could see she was half a second away from tears. Was it because Skinner was in the doorway and Josh was watching, I wondered. "Yeah, it was," I agreed. As if reading my mind, Josh slid off his chair and passed by us. He paused, as if wanting to say something, but only stared, his eyes concerned. He went out and Skinner closed the door after him. There was only Scully and I left in the room. "I didn't hurt anybody, did I?" she whispered. I could see terror in her eyes at the thought. Maybe she remembered holding Erin, I thought. I shook my head quickly. "No, you didn't. You scratched me a little but the others are fine. The kids are fine." She nodded, letting out a shaky, shuddery sigh. "I don't remember anything..." she whispered. "I don't remember anything since the police precinct, just after you left..." I shook my head, trying to hush her. "Doesn't matter, Scully." I got a flash of struggling - not my struggle to hold her, but the struggle that Helena had told us about, the life or death struggle that was like being drowned. I bit it back in utter horror. I reached up and undid the handcuffs, easing her badly chafed wrists out and bringing them to her sides. Then I untied her ankles, and scooted up to the head of the bed so I could pull her into my arms, folding her up on my lap like a ragdoll, rubbing her ankles to restore circulation, then, very gingerly, her hurt wrists. "You okay?" I dared to ask. My voice shook. "I'm okay," she answered quickly. "I'm okay." "You sure?" "I'm okay, Mulder. I'm -" She struggled to draw a deep breath, letting out a choked cry. "...I'm not okay, Mulder," she whispered, sounding scared, Scully at her most vulnerable. And she cried. Twisting to wrap her arms around my neck, she pressed her face against my chest and sobbed. For a moment all I could do was hold her, hold her so tightly my fingers were numb and I wasn't even breathing, and then I began to cry too, silently. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - JACQUELINE POV - "Melbourne?" He grinned at me. "Cricket at the MCG." "MCG?" I echoed. "Melbourne Cricket Ground," he explained. "I want to see the match Wednesday night." I stared at the kitten pouncing in front of him, watching as he playfully jangled a string for it. I didn't like the idea of travelling to another city with him. I was trying to accustom myself to his country-self at the moment and that was hard enough going as it was. Damn, I was trying. I couldn't do any more than that. Grae was a chameleon and I was beginning to hate it. At the beginning it had been fun; we'd gone into Sydney for New Years Eve, invited onto Grae's company's private yacht moored in Darling Harbour. Even though it had been only two days after he'd put his father in the nursing home and we'd left Ebony behind, for once, with Suzie, the presence of his friends had cheered Grae up enormously and he'd been kind to me, generous with affection and compliments. But just as he'd changed himself to fit with that crowd, he changed for every crowd, and I was lucky if I was able to keep up. We'd done whatever his mood or buddies had dictated, pubs and clubs and expensive department stores. There had been plenty I'd enjoyed - the fancy hotels and the art gallery and Centerpoint Tower and the monorail. He took me to the Chinese Gardens in Darling Harbour and was more tender that day than I'd ever known him. We'd made out in one of the little temples by a waterfall. I'd felt close to him then, incredibly close, but only an hour later I'd been wondering who the man beside me was as he dragged me into a video arcade and started hassling teenagers to compete against him. "Well? Jacqui?" I looked up at him slowly. "I'd rather just stay here," I said honestly. I had to tread carefully, I knew, or he'd take it as a personal insult. "You've been here for a month," he answered incredulously. "But *you* haven't," I retorted. "You want me to hang around more, is that it?" he asked, sounding more aggressive. I held up a hand entreatingly. "Don't get mad." He looked away, sourly. "I'm not mad." I didn't bother to dispute that, but instead knelt down in front of him, picking up and holding the squirming kitten, currently known as Clover. "We've been doing well," I reminded him. And we had been, since the night I'd agreed to come to bed. He'd held me that night despite the searing heat of the house. I'd let him, needing to reassure him that I was his. I licked my lips nervously, letting the struggling kitten go. "Grae?" "What?" "You want kids, right?" He didn't even look at me. "Things are complicated enough, for the time being," he said brusquely. I rose, moving a little closer, wanting to reach out to him but not knowing how. I was just about to touch his back when a scream cut through the air. "Shit," Grae muttered, taking off past me. "That's Ebony." More shrieking led us to Ebony - she was several meters up one of the enormous sycamore trees and the whole branch was rocking. It looked almost as if she was having a fit. "Shit!!" Grae, panicking, began to climb upward toward her. Reaching her, he wrapped his arm around her, holding her firmly against his chest, and began awkwardly to climb back down. Ebony didn't seem to notice. She just kept screaming. They reached the ground and Grae, panicking, was holding her in his arms like a baby. "She's hurt herself. We have to -" "Put her down," I said, taking charge. On her feet again, Ebony kept screaming and started flailing, slapping at her arms and legs, crying hysterically. Sounding almost as hysterical, Grae realised, "She's got ants on her... ants crawling on her." I knelt in front of her, brushing the tiny creatures off her skinny legs, grabbing her hands to stop her from hitting me. "It's okay, sweetie. They're not going to hurt you. I promise." "It's like she's never seen ants before..." Grae sounded bewildered, just as shaken as Ebony was. She was still shrieking although I'd gotten rid of all the ants and I pulled her against me to hug her. She hated hugs, I knew. She usually managed to avoid them in the first place, or squirmed out if caught in one. But she never let me hold her like this before. "She must have seen ants before..." Still bewildered, Grae sounded a little guilty and apologetic as well. "They're everywhere..." He was right. I couldn't explain it. Maybe it was being so high and attacked all at once, without us in sight, that had panicked her. She didn't often do anything outdoors unless we were around to watch. She was always awaiting instructions, never taking the initiative or being spontaneous, but needing a schedule. I knew that because I'd grown up in that sterile environment, too, having to follow orders far stricter than a parent's would ever be. She was still making choked, snuffling noises and I lowered myself to sit on the grass, drawing her more into my lap, crooning softly to her. I glanced up at Grae, who was standing with a hand to his head, looking overwhelmed with guilt. "Christ, Jacqui, I never knew this would happen..." "I know you didn't," I assured him. I reached an arm out toward him and he came to sit on the grass beside me, hesitantly reaching out to briefly touch Ebony's hair before quickly pulling back again. I put my arm around his back, accepting him, wanting to be accepted in return. So are our lives. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - The kids were still up. I didn't even realise how late it was until I saw that Skinner was asleep, stretched out on the sofa. Astrid and Josh sat at the kitchen table, Astrid's A+ english essay pushed aside, picking at a dish of leftovers from the last few nights, feeding wide-eyed Erin the occasional morsel. They hadn't gotten any dinner tonight, I realised. I wondered how long they'd stayed out, where they'd gone. Josh had rung Skinner for us. Smart kid. Astrid jumped up when she saw me. "Is Mommy okay now?" she demanded. I could see the fear in her eyes. "Mommy's going to be fine," I promised. Astrid was almost jumping out of her skin. "I need to see her," she pleaded, near to tears. "Can we see her, please? I just need to see to know that she's there and it's her and -" "Five minutes," I allowed, picking up Erin and putting her in the crib. "Keep her company while I get her some dinner." Twelve seventeen, the microwave read before I punched in the time to boil water for some soup. My own stomach had been rumbling for an hour or so, since the terror had begun to wear off, and I knew Scully had to be hungry too. She hadn't had anything since... since the donuts. I winced as I thought of the donuts. My mind flashed to kissing Scully and cockily telling her that she kept me guessing and I felt overwhelming nausea. I made a dash for the bathroom, upending what little stomach contents I had into the toilet bowl. I felt suddenly disgusted with myself, as if I'd cheated on Scully, somehow, as if I should have somehow known. Cleaning myself off, not taking more than the barest glance in the mirror, I left the bathroom. Skinner had woken up and was rubbing his eyes. "You all right, Mulder?" Bless the man. He genuinely cared. "I'm fine," I said, and it was true. Well, relatively. "You can probably go home now." "Sure?" I nodded. "I'll send the kids to bed soon. Scully's still half asleep." "And you?" "I'm fine," I reiterated. I gave him a quick, twisted grin. He knew I was avoiding the issue. I dropped the grin. "You may well have saved Agent Scully today, sir," I said quietly. He smiled briefly in thanks but shook his head. "No, Scully saved herself. She might not have done it without you, though." "All the same," I insisted, "we owe you big time. We've dragged you into a lot of things over the years and this... this was particularly terrifying." He nodded. He knew. "Well," he said, trying to lighten the mood a little. "It's not every day I get a call from a six year old asking me to help save his mother's soul." After Skinner left I mixed the soup and made some toast, all the time pondering Skinner's words. How had Josh known what was going on? We hadn't told him the details of the case except what he'd heard in our office that Sunday and the only time I'd had case notes out had been in the bedroom. How had he known what had happened to Scully? Carrying a tray into our bedroom, I discovered not only Scully asleep but Astrid and Josh as well, one on either side of her. I put the tray down on the dresser, noticing as I did a glint of gold on the floor. Scully's crucifix necklace - she must have taken it off before, and it had slipped from the dressing table. Slipping it into my pocket for the moment, I went and picked up Josh, carrying him into his room and tucking him into bed, then Astrid. Neither of them stirred. Returning to our room, I gently put it around Scully's neck. I forced myself to down the two pieces of toast and some soup and then changed into pajamas. Scully was curled up, still in the day's pants and long sleeved sweater, her jacket discarded before our confrontation, but I left her that way, not wanting to disturb her. I lay down beside her carefully, sliding an arm around her, kissing the back of her neck, wishing I could wake her just to be reassured she would be fine. But I let her sleep. Feeling concern and weariness etched into every feature, every limb heavy with exhaustion, I lay and waited for my heartrate to return to normal. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - JACQUELINE POV - I had a grandfather. It was a strange concept to me, because I'd never, ever thought of him that way, but Roger's father, still very much alive and living in a retirement condo in Florida, was the one and only senior family member I had. I'd hired the LC Guggenheim private detection firm - the same people who had long ago found Dana and Fox for me - to investigate for me in the US, compensation for my own inability to act in the country. Wade Moss had been the only name on my list not already investigated by myself or Dana and Fox half a dozen times previously and I wondered why I hadn't thought til now to ask him. I waited impatiently as the fax machine churned and beeped, spitting out pages one by one. Pushing aside the cover page, I grabbed the first one and began with trepidation to read the transcript. It was another window into my past - from an entirely different angle. Wade Moss remembered meeting Cate for the very first time - she'd been young but a very, very mature young lady for her age, with a lot of qualifications, so Roger had proudly boasted to his dad. She'd been working in the field for years. She'd worked with him and then continued to after they'd married. They'd been expecting a child but it had been stillborn, and they couldn't have any more. They'd kept in touch for four more years, though correspondance had dwindled down to little more than Christmas cards and order-by-mail birthday presents. And then Roger and Cate Moss had moved away and stopped writing. I put the interview transcript down, feeling depressed, and went to get myself a Coke. Returning to the living room, I found Grae sitting where I had sat, my faxed papers on his knee. "It says here," he read coldly, "that Cate and Roger Moss, your *parents*, were childless in 1980." He looked up at me expectantly. "It's wrong," I said, trying to keep my cool. He shook his head, rising. "No, it's right. So the question is, who the hell are you, Jacqueline?" I kept my mouth shut. He approached me angrily. "You owe me an answer! What is it, huh? What's the connection with Ebony? Is she your *daughter*, maybe? Huh?!" I was stunned by that suggestion. "Don't be ridiculous!" I shot back. "I was only eleven when-" Oh damn. And I'd fallen into his trap. Stupid of me. How could I have been so stupid? "Eleven when *what*, Jacqui?" "When she was born," I finished. My throat had gone dry and it hurt to swallow. "I'm only twenty, okay, Grae? I lied about my age. So what?" "You lied to *me*!" he yelled, jabbing himself in the chest. "Don't you understand, Jacqui? I just need you to understand. We're husband and wife and you're still lying to me!" "Stop yelling at me!" I yelled at him. "Stop lying to me!" he yelled back. He quietened down a little. "Tell me everything, Jacqui. Just tell me everything, and be honest." I dropped down into the other armchair, putting my head in my hands. "I'm just the same as Astrid and Josh and Ebony," I admitted, my voice muffled. "I was created by Cate and Roger as part of the project. Dana and Fox... 'liberated' me." I shook my head in derision. I was getting, maybe, a little hysterical, but this had to be done. I couldn't hold out any longer. "Dana and Fox have known all along. They've been helping me, as much as I could..." "Why didn't you tell me?" His voice grated. "You promised me, Jacqui. You promised you wouldn't hold anything back and now -" "I couldn't tell everyone!" I protested. "I'm not 'everyone'!" he retorted. "I'm your bloody husband, Jacqui." I stared at him defiantly. "I watched how differently you treated Josh and Astrid after you discovered how they were created. I didn't want you to treat me differently. I am who I am. My past shouldn't change that." He had buried his head in his hands and I was surprised to hear a quiet snuffling sound. He lifted his head a little and I discovered, stunned, that he was crying. "I just needed you to tell me that, Jacqui. All along, you just needed to stop lying and tell me the truth... But you just kept lying." I felt an awful churning in my stomach as the truth sank in. "You knew all along, didn't you?" I whispered in utter disbelief. "You knew the truth, somehow. You knew that I was lying." And that was why he'd gotten so mad every time I told another lie. God, what a fool I'd been. What fools we'd both been. "I didn't know you knew," I said helplessly, in some pathetic attempt at apology. He stared at me sadly. No more anger, for the time being, and this was tenfold worse. "That doesn't make it right." And maybe, I thought, I had been wrong when I told Suzie that Grae had met his match in me. Because, in all truth, I had met my match in Grae. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - I was alone when I woke up. It was still dark, only a quarter to four in the morning, my alarm clock told me, but I was alone, and God, that was the scariest thing. Where was Mulder? Almost jumping out of bed I went in search of him and found him out in the living room, sitting on the couch in the dark. He was barely a shadow. I switched on the lamp next to the couch and stood a foot in front of him, panic declining. I crossed my arms. "Can't sleep?" I queried, though it was a stupid question. I sighed, still feeling shaky and feeling tears pressing down on me. I dropped down on the couch beside him, drawing the rug around my shoulders, hugging myself as I studied his face. "You're still afraid," I observed unhappily. There was a tightness in my chest where fear wanted to be but I fought it back, feeling tears rising up in my throat. He reached out a hand and grabbed a corner of the rug, pulling it around himself as well. "I'm always afraid," he said simply. Concerned, feeling guilty, somehow responsible for his pain, I reached to caress his beautifully sculpted face with my fingertips. "I hate what can happen to us," he murmured unhappily, his lips moving under my fingertips. "I hate how close we're always coming to losing each other. Not just this time but so many other times as well... every time we've had a gun pointed at us or you've been taken and I've only just got there in time, that two more seconds and -" He pulled away, shaking his head. There was so much pain in his eyes. Too much. I had no power to take it away. He pushed away from the couch and started pacing unhappily. "There's been too much death in our lives, Scully. Too much death and to many times when our lives have been risked. I hate that." "There's nothing we can do about that, Mulder," I told him gently. "It comes with the territory. And as much as we may hate the fact, it comes with *our* territory..." A gust of wind, either evoked by my own mind or from an open window, made me shiver and I bit back a cry. I hugged the rug closer around me, feeling myself begin to tremble. "You know, Mulder," I admitted shakily. My voice was little more than a whisper, and I wondered whether I should be telling him. I knew it would only make him feel worse. "I'm not afraid of death, or whatever comes after this life... But I am afraid of that dark place." Another sob came and I couldn't hold it back. I'd lied to Mulder - I did remember some of the time I'd lost. I remembered all too well that terrible coldness, the dark. I looked up at Mulder, pleading for comfort through my clouding eyes, and he didn't disappoint, returning to the couch and drawing my weak, shaking body into his arms. Warm, strong Mulder. "I love you, Dana," he murmured into my hair, and I reached out to put my arms around him squeezing him to tightly I wondered if he could still breathe. His terrible ordeal was over, and he needed the comfort badly. But I had only fragments of it, and an overwhelming emptiness, an enormous gap in my consciousness just as terrible as my abduction. I didn't want to find what had been lost, but I knew it would come back to me, as I slept, as I worked, as I tucked my kids into bed. It always would. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - MULDER POV - There was paperwork to be done at work but I didn't want to leave Scully. I didn't want her home alone with Erin. There was still doubt in my mind, a niggling fear that maybe Sabrina wasn't really gone, only lying dormant. Somehow. I couldn't confess that to Scully, though, so I'd merely announced to her when she woke at ten-thirty the next morning that Skinner had agreed that we could tidy up the loose ends when we were ready. After what he'd seen, I knew he wouldn't have denied the request. I don't know, though, whether any of that really mattered to Scully. Last night somehow I had been the needy one, the one having an enormous amount of difficulty coping with what had transpired. But now, I thought, something had happened to trigger Scully's suppressed memories of the event. There was a hauntedness in her eyes that hadn't been there last night. "What are you remembering?" I probed gently. She shook her head, lips pressed together tightly. "It's over, Mulder." But it wasn't over for Scully, I realised. It was only just beginning. "Tell me what you're remembering," I prompted, more urgently. She looked at me with pained eyes, then looked away. She shook her head again. "Just let me have a shower first. Then I'll.. tell you." It was only a short shower - I thought that maybe she was afraid to be alone with her thoughts for too long. She seemed even quieter, still as she watched me cook her some toast and pour her some orange juice. She thanked me quietly, sipping the juice, not touching the toast. I'd given up really waiting for her to talk to me when she spoke up. "I kept screaming for you." The pain in my gut was almost like a physical blow. I couldn't hear this, I thought suddenly. I couldn't hear what she was going through, that she had dealt with something a hundred times worse than I had. I wouldn't sleep in weeks. But I forced myself to stay, let her go on. "You were there," she recalled shakily. She was trembling so much that I thought she would drop her glass of juice. Delayed shock. I gently reached to take it from her, clasping her hands in mine. Her fingers closed over mine. "But you were too far away from me," she continued quietly. "It was like I was being held down, away from you, and I kept reaching up, trying to reach you, screaming for you, but something kept pushing me back. The dark..." I released her hands and moved swiftly around the kitchen counter, putting my arms around her from behind, rubbing her arms in an attempt to stop her almost violent trembling. Her skin was cold and I grabbed the rug from the couch to put it around her shoulders. "You know when you can't sleep, when you lie awake and every second you're just praying for sleep, and you think you've lay awake for hour and hours on end - it seems like an eternity - but then you see the clock and realise it's only been ten minutes? Or you look at the clock one minute and it's midnight and the next it's three am and you don't remember anything between? That was what it was like. But instead of trying to sleep I was trying to reach you, trying for an eternity ... but I couldn't." "But you did," I whispered fiercely. "You did, Scully. That's how you're here with me, now." She shook her head. "But I'm still cold, Mulder," she whispered, panicky, tears in her voice. "I'm still so scared of that dark place." She slid off the barstool, almost collapsing but for my grip on her arm, and practically fell against me, blinded by tears. Still trembling, her skin ice cold, her face white, almost gray, I made a decision, getting a grip on her and lifting her up into my arms. "I'm taking you back to bed, Scully." But her response was immediate. "Don't, Mulder. ...I can't be in our room, not at the moment." She stared at me with wide eyes, pleading through her tears, and I nodded, instead carefully laying her down on the couch. She rolled onto her side, drawing herself up into fetal position, and I tucked the rug around her, kneeling beside her to stroke her ashen face. Her hair was startlingly, almost obscenely red in contrast. "See if you can get some more sleep," I urged gently, my hand rubbing her form through the blanket, trying to stop her from shaking. She shook her head. "No, I can't. I'll - ... I need something else to think about, Mulder." "Sure," I agreed softly. I understood. She was only taking up half the couch and I sat beside her, reaching to take her hand. She clutched it between hers tightly, her nails digging into my palm. "Have I ever told you about the time I almost caught bigfoot?" I got the ghost of a smile. "Mulder, you've never caught bigfoot." "I said *almost*," I teased, oh-so gently. "Are you going to let me tell the story or what?" Another tiny smile. "Go on." I launched into the story. She knew I was only making it up as I went along, but it was taking her mind off the previous night's events, at least, and making her laugh, however shakily, in the bargain. By the time I introduced the three Elvis-impersonating chupacabras into the story she had fallen asleep. It was Saturday but the kids hadn't wanted to go rockclimbing. I'd wanted them out of the house for the morning, at least, and sent them out with Kathy and Erin. Kathy had promised to keep them occupied as long as she could, but it was just before midday when they returned home. After their late night both Josh and Astrid seemed to be in bad moods. I imagined that they'd made things as difficult as humanly possible for Kathy. Neither of them had wanted to go anywhere and she would have been the target of Astrid's anger, in particular. I let Kathy off to have the rest of her weekend and told the kids to make themselves some lunch, but they both sat on the coffee table staring at Scully. Astrid jumped up, facing me accusingly. "She looks pale." "She's still tired," I answered, trying to be gentle because I knew it was only her fiercely protective nature, but wondering if I could stand a whole afternoon of it. "She's been through a lot." Erin, in her crib, was crying out for attention and I told Astrid, "You look after Erin for the moment, huh? See if she's hungry." She shook her head. "She's been like that all morning. She wants Mommy." Josh slid off the coffee table and I thought for a minute that he was going to get Erin, but instead he left the room. Reluctant to stray more than just a few feet from my sleeping Scully, I went to pick Erin up, returning to drop down in an armchair and flipping open a picture book to read to her. But she wasn't interested. Putting her down on the rug I gave her a cracker, watching as she greedily devoured it. She was so big, I realised suddenly. Still a small, waiflike child, but so much bigger than the newborn I saw in my mind, with a puckered little elfin face and those impossibly tiny hands, each with its own perfect nail, gripping on to me trustingly. She was growing up under our noses, more strong-willed, more capable. Soon she'd be taking her first step, saying her first word, and then soon enough she'd be running around with Josh and Astrid and arguing with us every step of the way. "Can't forget her vaccination," Scully said. I glanced across at her to find her watching me, her bright eyes burning like embers in her still-ashen face, the blanket pulled high up to her neck. I wondered how long she'd been awake. "Her vaccination shot," she repeated. "We've got an appointment for tomorrow." I nodded. "We'll remember." I picked Erin up and held her out for Scully to take. She looked at me with something akin to panic in her eyes. "I don't think I should-" Ignoring her protests, I lifted Erin up, sitting her on the couch beside Scully, who had rolled onto her back. She immediately clambered up onto Scully's covered form. Scully pushed the blanket away to free her arms and lifted Erin, pulling her closer. "Hello, my sweetie," she said gently. She glanced across at me, trepidation in her eyes, and I nodded reassuringly. "You know that she trusts you." Colour seemed to return to Scully's cheeks as she played with Erin and by dinner time she insisted she was well enough to join us eating at the table. The kids were clingy - they always were after something traumatic happened to one of us - and sat with us as we watched TV, fighting over being next to Scully. It was only just nine when I noticed Scully starting to fall asleep. I sent the kids off to bed and lifted her up, despite her sleepy protests, carrying her into the bedroom. The windows had been open all afternoon and the sweaty denseness of the room had gone. Once again, it was simply our bedroom. On Scully's pillow, however, was an envelope, with "Mommy and Daddy" printed neatly on the front in Josh's handwriting. "What is it?" I asked curiously, watching as Scully, yawning, opened the envelope and unfolded two sheets of plain paper. She skimmed through one page, flipped over and skimmed through the other. Finally, she looked up at me. "Poems," she said quietly, clearly touched. I climbed onto the bed beside her, resting my chin on her shoulder. I'd been expecting childish little rhymes, I had to admit, and was stunned when I began to read. It took me a while to grasp it but the first poem was about Astrid and Josh's relationship. It had changed gradually over the past four years - it was only as he described it that I realised how differently they interacted now. The poem was only short but the last verse in particular caught my eye - 'Puzzle pieces pulled apart And a shadow come unsewn Once existing as one voice We've come into our own.' "You think Josh wrote this himself?" Scully wondered aloud, incredulous. I myself was equally awed. This was a completely different league to the stories and plays I'd read in the past. Could Josh have written it by himself? Common sense said no, that even with his intellect and control of language it was something at least five years down the track. He was only *six*, after all. What did six year olds know about alliteration and symbolism and rhyming couplets? And yet... "Yeah, I think he did," I said softly. Josh had given us no indication otherwise, and he would have. That was how Josh worked. And there was something very Josh about the poem, too. Somehow, no matter what style he wrote or painted or drew in, Josh always managed to add his own personal touch, something familiar if you knew to look. "That's amazing," she murmured under her breath. "Wow..." She flipped over to the second page, another poem neatly written out by Josh. He must have copied these from his notebooks, I surmised. The paper was the higher-quality stuff the kids put through the printer for assignments. It was impeccably neat, but the way the light reflected off the page I could see indentations of writing, as if he'd written the poems out several times until they were perfectly neat. The second poem was longer than the first and startlingly personal. I hadn't realised that Josh knew us so keenly. This was a window into his mind and I was stunned. Were these all the things Josh wanted to tell us as he sat quietly minding his own business? There was no economy in his language now, for certain. 'Fear is an intimate and most oft-calling acquaintance who turns up uninvited, sometimes bringing with him Death and Pain. I have watched you struggle with these unwelcome foes, Seen the toll it takes and felt the aftershocks. I know that it's not a simple life that you lead, that shapes you, and shapes the way I grow, but that it is the life you choose And my respect for that, for you, is learned from what I see when Fear and Death and Pain are battled; A strength unmeasurable in any conventional form but love and loyalty that goes beyond this worldly realm. You may stumble on your way in search of justice but I won't kick you while you're down because I know you try so hard and won't give up. And that is why I remain with you though Pain and Fear may burst in at any moment; Because you are my strong fortress. You teach me loyalty and trust And that I am loved. And that's what really counts.' Scully exhaled, putting the page down as she finished rereading. "Whoa," she breathed. "Wow." "Deep for a six year old," I remarked, just as stunned as she was. "Could he have written this?" "He must have. Unless Astrid helped." But Astrid hadn't helped. We both knew that. They would have been thrust into our faces the second the ink was dry if Astrid had had any part in writing them. "That's incredible," Scully muttered. "He's *six*, Mulder! How can he be writing something like that?" I shook my head. I didn't have an explanation for it. What an incredible little mind. And only *six*. He still had a lot of growing up to do. He was still learning. What sort of poetry would he be writing in two, five, ten years time? Would he let us read it? Scully yawned and I took the pages from her grip, putting them down on the bedside table, and lifted back the covers for her to climb into bed. "You don't have to do that," she murmured, climbing in and letting me draw the covers up around her. "Yeah, I do." I grinned at her. I loved this woman so much. "It's in that love-honour-and-obey contract I signed." She smiled, eyelids fluttering, and then yawned again. "What are you thinking, Mulder?" she murmured with sleepy curiosity. "How much I love you," I answered honestly. I grinned. "God, Mulder, that's so cheesy." She chuckled, snuggling down contentedly. "I love cheesy." She reached out a lazy arm to pat the bed beside her. "You need sleep too." "Soon," I promised. "I've just got to check the kids and get changed." She nodded. "I'll wait for you," she murmured, eyes fluttering closed and staying closed. "Okay," I agreed softly, reaching to turn out the lamp. By the time I reached the doorway she had slipped into sleep, her breathing steady and relaxed. We'd returned to stable ground. Now we just had to watch out steps. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - JACQUELINE POV - "Are we almost there?" He glanced across at me and grinned. "You're sounding like a whiney little kid, Jacqui." "I have a right to whine," I protested, playful. He'd been in a good mood since he woke up and I was liking it, but still wary of pushing boundaries. "You won't tell me where we're going or why we had to leave Ebony with your sister." "We need some time alone," he explained gently. "*That's* why we left Ebony with Suzie." I couldn't disagree with that. The last twenty minutes he'd been talking about how Ebony had been getting in the way of our relationship, how she was a distraction for both of us, that we weren't focusing on each other. That was the purpose of taking me - and only me - out for the day. "Okay, so where are we going?" I tried again. He was holding back deliberately, teasing me. "I'll tell you soon." He grinned to himself, staring at the road ahead. I didn't know enough of the area's geography to know where we were going, though I hardly thought it was a tourist hotspot. The road we were travelling on was tarred but unsealed, giving way on either side to gravel and then the earth and dying grass and property fences. There was a horse stud approaching on the right, a vineyard on the - "Are we going to a vineyard?" I asked suddenly, staring at him, starting to panic. He grinned across at me. "Got it in one. One of the Hunter Valley's finest. You've got to try their reds." I winced internally, giving him a quick, forced smile as my mind flailed for a solution. "I don't want you getting drunk," I demurred. He laughed. "You've never done wine-tasting before, have you? You don't even swallow," he explained. "Just taste and spit it out again." I didn't even need to feign a look of distaste - it sounded pretty disgusting. "I'd rather not." "Okay," he agreed easily. He seemed to find my childishness more amusing than ever. Was it because I'd dropped the pretence? "We'll just get a bottle of wine with lunch. If you never drink another drop of wine again, you've got to try one of their reds. Seriously." God, this was just getting worse, and I was painting myself into a corner. But would a glass of wine really cause any damage? I wasn't sure. I didn't know what risks, if any, I was running... "Sure," I agreed. I kept silent the rest of the way. We went on a quick guided tour of the vineyard. Grae wouldn't do the wine-tasting without me - as he reminded me, this day out was a day to be together - and so we sat down together for an early lunch. I knew Grae could tell I was nervous as we ordered lunch and he picked the wine, but he didn't know what I was nervous about. He didn't ask, either. Maybe he was just assuming it was the date-like quality of the meal. It had been a long time that he and I had been on a date, it seemed. I'd made a decision, but when Grae reached out for his wine glass I found myself unable to do the same. Alcohol had a unusual effect on me, reacting to the chemicals in my blood. Who knew what that would do to the baby? He looked at me quizzically. "A toast?" I shook my head, reaching instead for the glass of water and taking a sip, frantically trying to find a coherent thought over my madly beating heart. He put his wine glass down slowly, still staring at me. "What's wrong?" I shook my head again, a little confused. "I'm okay. It's nothing. You go ahead." He indicated my wine glass. "You don't want it?" I shook my head. He frowned at me. "Why didn't you say something? This stuff isn't cheap, you know." "I'm sorry," I muttered. It was hardly as if he couldn't afford it, though. "You have mine, too. I'll drive us back." "You didn't even try it," he pressed. He held his own glass out to me. "Have a sip." A sip would hardly do any harm, logic told, but I still couldn't bring myself to. It was a psychological block. Pregnant women don't drink alcohol. I nudged the glass back toward him. "I'm fine, thanks." He pt the glass down slowly and sat back, staring at me. "What the hell is going on, Jacqui?" he asked. His voice was quiet but I wasn't deceived. He was getting mad. "What are you doing?" "I don't want to drink, that's all," I said defensively. "Why not?" Hell if I'm going to answer that, I thought. I just couldn't bear the thought of telling him. It was illogical, but I was afraid of what his reaction could be. Afraid what he'd tell me to do. "What are you hiding now?" he demanded. I wondered with further panic if somehow he'd accessed my file at the local doctor's surgery. He had found out everything else about me, somehow. If he'd sneaked a peak at my file he would know full well - "Are you pregnant?" No deceptively quiet questions now. He yelled it at me as if we were twenty feet apart, not two. I stared at him, flushing in embarrassment, guilt and fear. Then I dropped my eyes to the dish of fruit salad in front of me. "I wanted to tell you," I said quietly. I was shaking a little and my voice trembled. "I just didn't know -" "Cut the crap," he said roughly. He pushed his chair back from the table violently, shaking his head. "That's just great, Jacqueline. That's just perfect." And I was in for it now, I knew. "Shit!" he yelled at me. "Our relationship wouldn't be such a mess if Ebony hadn't gotten in the way, and now you want to bring more kids into the mess! Sure, *great* idea!!" His sarcasm wasn't exactly easy to miss. "I didn't plan this," I shouted back at him. He shook a finger at me. "Oh, but you did, I bet you did. The only reason you *married* me was for kids, Jacqueline." "That's not true!" I protested. I hated, hated with all my heart, how things could get so utterly out of control, how somehow I was always struggling to defend myself against him and ended up only deeper in trouble. "What is it, then? Are you sleeping around?!" Indescribable rage hit me at that accusation. Who the hell was he? What the *hell* made him think he had the right to accuse me of that?? "Go to hell!" I yelled at him. And God, that felt both wonderful and awful at the same time. Already feeling tears prickling at my eyes, I stood, grabbing my shoulderbag, and started to walk away. We were sitting on the terrace with a panoramic view of the vineyard but I ran away from it, into the main building. There were more cafe tables spread out but it was such a beautiful day that everybody was sitting outside. But there were half a dozen waiters pushing together tables as if in preparation of a banquet and I pushed my way past them, seeing through my tears only blurry black and white forms moving as they started to set the tables, silverware flashing in their hands. The occasional startled, curious face, but they only hesitated a second before moving aside tactfully so I could pass. I got out through the front entrance, planning to just wait near the car til we'd both coolled off, or even til I felt calm enough to call for a taxi, but when I reached the road and saw how it stretched ahead of me, nothing but road and grass and land, I couldn't stop. I kept running, my sandals slipping at little as I veered off the tarred road onto gravel, the dry grass whipping at my legs, my bag thumping against my side. It was a mild day, as summer days went, but only a minute running, no, probably less, and I was overheated. I was out of breath, too, crying and now starting to hiccup, which only made me cry more. Oh God... I slowed to a stop and dropped down in the middle of the road, drawing my knees up and putting my head between them, feeling a little nauseous. It wasn't a feeling I was familiar with and I didn't know how to deal with it, so I just kept my head down, my arms around my balled form, and cried. I had been wrong. Grae wasn't the emotional six-car-pile-up; I was. And it wasn't just the hormones or the strain of lying to him - it was that and more. It was being in a strange country and barely knowing my husband. It was having a mute daughter and a baby growing inside me, and not really knowing how or why or what the hell I was doing. I don't know how long I sat there in the sun, smack-bang in the middle of the road, feeling lost and sorry for myself. Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes - I was beyond keeping track of time. I was tired, emotionally drained, unable to cope any more with lies and confessions, Grae's tender affection and his abuse. I sensed him coming ten, maybe fifteen seconds before he spoke up. I kept my back turned. "You really shouldn't be sitting in the sun." There was a gentleness in his voice, but it was caught, trapped between distrust and guilt, maybe confusion too. I continued to ignore him but he crept up beside me, squatting down a foot or so away, passing his tongue nervously over his lips. "You're really pregnant?" Why would I make something like that up? "With *my* baby?" I lifted my head slowly to look at him, anger surging through me. "I hate that you're even asking that." "I'm sorry." He spoke the words as if they were in another language, all jolted. His eyes were on my face, searching, as if trying to discern whether I was finally, being completely honest with him. I didn't know if he'd believe me or not, fearing for a split second that he wouldn't, that he'd rage at me again. But instead his face crumpled. "I'm sorry, Jacqui," he said again, but this time there was a stunned sort of grief in the way he spoke. "I'm so sorry I doubted you." Crawling a little closer to me on his knees he reached to hug me. I let him, feeling his kisses on my hair. He was laughing a little, and crying I thought, too. But his tears, unlike mine, were tears of joy. He drew back, his hands on my cheeks, so uncommonly gentle. "I'm sorry I shouted, darling. You know I want this child." He leaned to kiss my cheeks, as if trying to kiss away the tears, but I couldn't stop. "I can't go on dealing with your mood swings any more," I sobbed. "I can't deal with your suspicion and distrust... You can trust me, Grae, when it counts." I looked at him, pleading. "I was stupid and I lied. I thought I was protecting you somehow, or protecting me. But you've got to trust me. I can't live with you if you don't trust me." "Hush, darling," he murmured. He produced a clean, folded handkerchief, gently wiping away my tears, pressing it into my hand. Drawing back a little, he drew a deep breath. "I can try, Jacqui. That's all I can promise. But, honestly, I don't know what you're doing. I don't you really know, either. That's very dangerous, I know." I'd almost managed to stop my tears but that just got me started again. That sort of criticism was the last thing I needed right then. He reached out to touch my upper arm, gently. "C'mon. I'll give you a piggyback ride back to the car." I let him, gripping around his neck as he trudged with me back down the road to the car, feeling like a lost child in a very alien adult world. - - - - } - - - - } - - @ t h e x - f i l e s - SCULLY POV - "I've got something for you." I muted the TV and pushed aside the packet of dried apricots I was slowly eating my way through to make room on the coffeetable for the stack of papers he held. He dumped them and I picked up the top set of stapled-pages. It was a report summing up the events of our case. But Mulder eased it from my hand. "Not those. This." He produced a slim CD case. "Just out on DVD. I thought you might want to see it." I took it from him. "Gone With The Wind," I read, delighted. He grinned, pleased with my reaction. "Well go on, put it on." I obliged, moving back onto the couch and burrowing back into my indented couch. Although physically I'd been feeling strong enough, I was still feeling mentally lethargic, restricting myself to minimal function, somehow still not trusting myself to do anything more than keep quietly out of everybody's way. I didn't want to risk somehow endangering those around me. Even though Erin and I had been constant companions, particularly when Mulder was out, I kept feeling twinges of apprehension and fear, of guilt, almost. I no longer took for granted my own will, but instead lived every hour wondering when it would happen again, to me or to somebody I loved, and again, I would have no control over it. And because of that, I stayed locked up in my fear. Medical diagnosis would have been low-grade depression. I picked up the remote but didn't press 'play' yet. Watching as Mulder moved the pile of papers to the kitchen table and then rifled through them, splitting them into separate piles and spreading them across the table, I ventured, "You coming?" He shook his head. "I've still got one more report to write." "I thought you handed the reports in this morning." The second Sunday morning in a row Mulder had spent at work. But a lot had happened in that one week. I wondered suddenly what this meant to Helena Quaker and Annie Fredricks. Would they still be convicted of the crimes they had committed? I couldn't see any way we could prevent that. And my life could have just as easily fallen apart as theirs did. Sitting at the table, tapping his pen nervously, he glanced across at me. "I hadn't written one about Friday night's incident, yet," he admitted quietly. "Skinner thought one should go in the case file, just for future reference." "Oh." Watching as he chewed on his pen, I offered slowly, "If you wait til tomorrow I'll help you write it. Add in what I can remember, get as full a picture as we can." He frowned, his beautiful eyes concerned. "Are you sure you want to do that, Scully?" "I need to," I said with certainty. I needed to truly deal with what had happened so that I could get on with things. I couldn't live the rest of my life with this fear and insecurity. That wasn't me. "If," I added, giving him a small smile, "You come watch the movie with me now." He smiled. Only a tentative, haunted smile, like mine, but a smile, one that promised comfort. "Sure. If you'll stop hogging the couch." "I'm not hogging the couch!" I protested, heartened by his playfulness. "Well, then stop hogging the blanket," he teased, grabbing me around my waist and pulling me closer, drawing the blanket around our form. We fought playfully over the remote, and some of the tension in my spilled out as giggles. Only Mulder could make me laugh like that, and I loved it when he did. He managed to wrangle the remote from me, holding it up, away from the reach of my shorter arms. "No fair!" I protested, still giggling. I was almost hysterical, I thought. I should calm down. Mulder seemed to sense that too, pressing 'play' on the remote and tossing it down on the coffee table. He wrapped his arms around me again, so indescribably, deliciously comfortable, and drew the blanket around us as we settled down, spooned on our sides, our legs intertwined. Forget Clark Gable, I thought. There was nobody in the world that was able to make me feel better like Mulder could, nobody else whose arms I'd rather be lying in. And somehow, being in his arms, it was impossible to feel anything but loved, even uplifted. We stopped the movie halfway through for a bathroom break and as we were settling back down again Mulder murmured into my ear, "You know, it's our twelfth anniversary tomorrow." I chuckled. "Doesn't feel like we've been married that long, does it?" "The anniversary of our partnership," he explained. I turned to stare at him. March 6th - the date we'd gotten married in the registry office. The anniversary of the date we'd first met in Mulder's office. "Wow," I realised softly. "I never even thought about that." "Me neither. Not til I was going through some old files." He grinned. "Pretty cool, huh?" "Yeah." I shook my head, still amazed. There was something incredible about that, something that spoke of more than just man-made choices, as if the decision I had reached early that morning had been not entirely my own, but that there had been another force at work. Whatever the case, it had been one of the smartest decisions I'd ever made. How could I have ever lived without such constant strength beside me? Would we have lasted this far? We returned to the movie but had been watching for only twenty minutes when Mom dropped the kids home. She'd taken them to morning mass with her and, I gathered from the large McDonalds soda cups Josh and Astrid held, stopped for lunch on the way back. I'd rung her this morning, telling her as simply as I could what had happened, and I thought maybe she was keeping the kids occupied longer just to ease the stress in my life, to help me carry my load. "I was going to take them out to see a movie but Astrid insisted on coming back here," she explained. I understood perfectly. Astrid was still watching me like a hawk. But I was thankful for it, and thankful that Mom was there to help. At one point I'd almost isolated her, I knew - my world had grown so small to include only Mulder and myself. But now, with the kids, I knew how important it was to have the connection to her. I was expanding my world again, slowly. She left and we put the movie back on. Brushing aside Mulder's piles of reports, Astrid settled down at the kitchen table and began to work on some math. Josh had been almost avoiding us since leaving us his poems and now he sat quietly playing with Erin. On seeing what we were watching, he moved closer with her, still keeping his distance from us. I didn't say anything, but only hoped the short note we'd left on his pillow would be enough reassurance for him. "Dearest Josh - We loved your poems very much. You are very talented and we'll always be proud of you. Keep writing, no matter what. Love, Mom and Dad." Mom and Dad. I sighed in contentment as I stretched out in Mulder's arms, loving that. Had I ever felt quite so completed by Mulder? At that moment, all I could think was that I loved him entirely, loved that he was my lover, my husband, my best friend, my partner, Dad to my Mom. Maybe I needed scares like this just to remind myself of how incredibly lucky I was. The phone rang just as Scarlett O'Hara rose up to proclaim the movie's final line. "Jacqueline or my Mom?" I thought aloud. We often played these guessing games - and we were usually right. Mulder, his arms encircling me, reached across my stomach to peel back his sleeve and look at his watch. "Jacqueline," he declared sagely. We grinned at each other. "Why are we so cynical?" I wondered, amused. "You fell in love with cynical." Flashing me a grin, he released me, giving me a gentle shove. "Go check. We're going double or nothing." Shaking my head in amusement, I picked up the receiver. "Hello?" "Dana, it's me." Why hadn't she rung on the videophone, I wondered. I always felt somehow reassured when I saw Jacqueline's face, as if I would have bruises as proof of his abuses. "How are you doing?" "Better," I allowed. "Better?" she echoed. "What happened?" The fact that Jacqueline hadn't known seemed incomprehensible to me. Jacqueline had always known what was going on. Now she was far away, way out of the loop. "There was just... a case. It got personal." I didn't want to elaborate further. "When are you guys coming back?" Hesitation. "I don't know if we will at all. For a while, I mean. We're content here, you know?" That rung very, very false to my ears. "Jacqui -" "No, Dana, you have to understand," she interrupted me. "Things are better, really. I've told him the truth about some things. Everything, really. He knows about my parents." "He knows you killed your parents?" I repeated disbelievingly. "He looked me up, Dana. I don't know how. But he knew everything... he'd known all along. And when he confronted me with it, I had to tell him the truth." It still sounded suspicious. Her voice dropped a notch. "We talked last night, Dana. I mean, *really* talked, for the first time since before Ebony came. He was so wonderful to me." I didn't know how to respond to that. To be honest, I'd been manipulated and lied to too many times to take something like that at face value. But what other choice did I have? "Just ..." I sighed. I could hear the hope in her voice and I couldn't bring myself to dash it on just suspicion. "Just take care of yourself." "I'm doing that," she promised me. "And I'm keeping busy, Dana. I'm still researching Roger and Cate. Grae's working, too - he's helping out on some project in the city a couple of days mid-week. We're building a life here." "But you don't want to stay there," I protested, confused. She'd told me dozens of times that she wanted to come home. Pause. "I don't know, Dana. I'm happy here. I'm making friends." A sudden thought occurred to me - was one of the reasons I wanted her to come home simply that I missed having her around? Not only there to take the kids of our hands when we needed it, but also as a friend? But I managed to put a note of encouragement in my voice as I told her, "That's good, Jacqui." "I'd never realized how important honesty is in a relationship," she admitted, tone lowered a little, self-conscious. "Pretty stupid of me. I should have known by watching you and Fox, how important it was. Truth... and trust... Grae and I kinda lost that. I can't believe after seeing how you and Fox *built* your relationship on those things, I could just let them slip away in mine, but they did." "You're only young," I reminded her, touched but a little concerned that she was seeing her relationship in terms of Mulder's and mine. Mulder and I had a very unusual relationship, a very different formula. "You're still coming into your own." "Yeah, I know," she agreed wistfully. "I know." Her voice picked up a little. "The kids around?" I passed the phone off to Josh and joined Mulder in the kitchen, sliding my arms around his waist in an affectionate greeting. "How are you doin'?" he asked softly, tilting my chin up. "I'll be okay," I told him, and I knew that was true. "I am okay," I added, and that was true too. Somehow, during the movie, that tightness within my chest had loosened. Lying in Mulder's arms, my fear had been cast out by the warm security I felt. It was impossible to stay afraid after spending so long feeling so loved. Not thatI felt entirely over what had happened - I probably never would be. But I no longer felt so overwhelmingly unable to cope with it, and the relief from that was enormous. "Sure?" he queried. "Sure," I promised him. He smiled, sliding his hands to my waist and lifting me up onto the edge of the kitchen counter. I put my arms around his neck and drew him closer, planting a kiss on his nose. I've had a love-hate relationship with Mulder's nose for a long time. He chuckled and leaned closer. I kissed those velvety lips of his and he returned the kisses, his mouth warm on mine, his body warm against mine. Was two in the afternoon too early to hit the bedroom, I wondered, feeling myself about to melt into puddle in his arms. "Twelve years together and still sexy," he murmured, his lips moving along my neck. I laughed, feeling utterly joyous, utterly aroused, and utterly safe. "Absolutely," I agreed, gently nipping his lower lip while my hands slid over his as he caressed my face. "Mommmmm! Dad!" Astrid, still sitting trying to study at the kitchen table behind us, groaned with all the eye-rolling of an embarrassed teen. "Take it in the bedroom!" "Gladly," Mulder murmured, sweeping me up off the kitchen counter. I giggled. He was the only one who could make me so giggly. Jacqueline was right - Mulder and I had built our relationship on truthfulness and trust. But there was more than that; there was such an incredible amount of respect, of equality, and there was blood and sweat and tears, too many long nights spent in fear and agony. This last incident had just been another pothole in the road, another impossible case we'd somehow managed to survive, another choice made that led to us being together right there and then. And it couldn't have been a more perfect place to be. "Twelve years and you're still the most important person in my life," he murmured. I smiled at him. "Twelve years and still counting." fin.