b u g s' f i c

FIC: The Seven Year Itch

2014-03-02T02:22:59Z

Title: The Seven Year Itch
Author: bugs
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 5,000
Genre: PWP-ish Domestic Secksy Times
Spoilers: post-IWTB: between the last scene and the credits roll.
Summary: Home is where the heart is.
A/N: Written to celebrate Dana Scully's 50th (gulp) birthday. Check out all the other great offerings at scully_fest!

~*~

Home at last, wrestling with keys, too heavy purse and the windblown door, holding her breath, not sure if she's ready for another "Let's talk" moment. The other option was not talking--like sex fixed anything but somehow it seemed like a better option right now.

Naturally, dread and anticipation meant that neither happened; the house was empty.

A note stuck askew to Mulder's office door.

Gone to Dakota Whitney's funeral. Be back later.

It was already six at night and dusk had fallen. With no car, how did he get to D.C.; how would he get back? She pushed aside the anxiety and tugged the note loose from the tack. He'd managed to chase UFO's, wrestle beast women, and discover alien-Kindred in honeycombs without losing more than a few brain cells and a year or two of his life. Surely he could hitchhike to and from a FBI agent's last rites in one piece, even though he was out of practice.

Toeing out of her shoes and shedding her damp coat, she settled in for a long wait. She was out of practice too, but anxiety flooded her veins and giving her a slightly seasick sensation.

Fear, anger...Guilt. There were the familiar old acquaintances onto which she could grasp for purchase. And then the dead woman's name scrawled in his familiar handwriting reminded her of another one. The flash of jealousy as that pretty young agent had touched Mulder's face. The astonishment in his eyes had only fueled Scully's discord. Had he been isolated for so long that he'd forgotten that women found him attractive? Of all the things that Scully had seen and felt in the past week, that hot emotion were the most shocking in a way. The once automatic reactions when another woman came around Mulder had been slumbering for eight years but were now reawakened.

Scully mounted the dimly lit stairs. Dakota was dead and yet she was still picking at that scab. How ordinary of her--how middle-aged housewife, only without being a wife. Her discontent weighed her down, making her light footfall sound loud in the empty space.

Every since they'd moved into this house, Mulder had always been here. Perhaps out in the yard working, or jogging down the empty dirt roads, but he was always back to her side within the hour. The rooms never echoed with her heartbeat.

In the bedroom, she discovered that he'd made the bed with his usual slapdash manner; the duvet tossed over the mattress but not smoothed. Scully did it now. She'd actually loosened up her housekeeping standards over the years. With her long shifts at the hospital, it was impossible to maintain the level of her expectations, particularly when there was someone else at home piling up magazines, using the toilet and utilizing every pot and pan in the kitchen to make spaghetti. The shambling disarray had become home to her, because it meant Mulder was there.

Shedding her crumpled clothes that she'd first put on before leaving for Christian's surgery, she took a quick scalding shower and pulled on a loose sweater and baggy exercise pants, then slipped into a pair of Mulder's thick wool socks, the heels going half way up her Achilles tendons. His just felt warmer than hers.

Padding back downstairs, she decided music would help drive the heavy silence from the house. Flipping through the CD's, she chose a selection of Monica's recommendation from years ago and loaded them in the tray. A variety of voices from hot, moist climates to drive away the freezing night. The first song started and Aaron Neville's ethereal voice, with rain washing down the windows as he sang about a coming storm, seemed appropriate.

She was making her way through the dim living room to the kitchen when the front door opened and she started. Seven years ago she would have automatically reached for her weapon but Doctor Scully just gave a girlie gasp.

Mulder was dripping rain from walking up the long drive.

"How did you get there? How did you get back? Are you cold? You're wet."

She had intended to play it cool but found herself babbling and plucking at his drenched coat.

His face lit up, the cheeks still pale and bright newly shaved skin. "Walter picked me up. Another agent gave me a ride back. She lives out this way." He bent down to put some bags by the door.

"She does? Seems like a bit of a commute to the Capital." Scully stepped back and leaned on the heavy dining room table--it had come with the house, as rooted to the oak floors like an old tree itself.

He didn't read her body language. "She's in the Richmond field office." He shed his coat and draped it over the chair closest to Scully. He loosened his tie, and for some reason, she found herself reaching out and stopping him from removing it.

"Keep it on."

She swept off his suit jacket and put it on another chair, but stroked the fine cotton of his shirtsleeve. "Keep it on," she murmured again.

He started to protest and then a slow smile came on his face. It was shy and sweet and made her heart squeeze tight. He would be her G-man for the evening.

Nudging him with her elbow, she said, "I'll start on dinner. you take your wet shoes off and build a fire."

"I brought food from the city." He hurried back to the door and when he lifted the bag, she caught a waft of spices, another long-forgotten memory. Ethiopian food from Fasil's; late nights after cases, when they were both too wired to go to their separate homes and so sick of middle America diner food that they had to burn the meatloaf grease and ketchup off their tongues with cumin and berbere.

"Fox Mulder, I love you," she announced and now his smile was a grin.

He held up a second bag. "And I brought Egyptian beer."

"Forever and ever."

She hugged him tight around the middle and inhaled the food smells again.

"Save that enthusiasm for later," he murmured into her damp hair.

She headed to the kitchen. Leaning back through the doorway, she told him: "Make a fire. We'll eat on the floor like we're at Fasil's." After gathering plates and cutlery, she joined him by the couch and coffee table, now lit warm orange by the fire.

He'd stripped off his socks and was wiggling his bare toes at the flames. She felt his damp feet. "Let me give you your socks--"

He rubbed her back as she knelt beside him. "I'm good. Keep them."

"Mulder, your feet are ice--" She stripped one sock off.

"No," he said firmly. "Put that back on." He stretched his long feet closer to the hearth. "They're going to heat right up."

After pausing for a moment with the sock hanging from her slack hand, she complied. She began to open the foam containers of food onto the coffee table, each one smelling more delicious than the next, but watching him out of the corner of her eye. Dark blue dress shirt, dull deep gray tie, charcoal dress pants, the bottom of the legs stained with mud and water. She didn't tell him to take those off.

But she did feel underdressed. She sincerely doubted that he had many twinges of desire the few times he'd ever observed her in ratty sweats Before.

Before. In her mind, it was always capitalized.

She hadn't even finished opening all the containers and he'd snagged a hunk of stewed beef with a corner of the injera bread.

"Hana remembered you. Asked if you were waiting at home. I told her yes."

Scully paused the hand that was going to slap his away from the stack of still warm injera. Instead, she lay her head on his shoulder. She felt in a very odd mood tonight.

"How's Christian doing? if you're home, hopefully that means the procedure went well?"

"Yes," she told him simply. That was another darkness that could stay away for the night.

Picking up her own bite with a piece of the spongy bread, she asked, "You were gone all day. Was there a wake after the funeral?" and shoved the food quickly into her mouth before the sauce could drip.

"No," he admitted, then gulped from his beer. "They invited me back to Headquarters."

She dabbed her lips with a napkin, waiting.

He turned to face her, his eyes alive again, as his features had been earlier. A certain light....that both made her heart jump and lurch; not a comfortable feeling to have while eating.

"They presented me with my back pay."

She collapsed against the sofa, relieved. Count on bureaucrats...

"You hadn't taken my death benefits, Scully," he scolded. "I wasn't in any shape to notice at the time, but you know that's what I wanted--"

"Good thing I didn't when we dug you up," she pointed out and sipped from her beer bottle. "Would have had to pay it back."

"Or dependent's benefits after I was left--"

She could see he was serious about this. "We were fine, Mulder," she said stiffly.

He rolled over on his hip and fiddled in the back pocket, removing a new wallet. He hadn't bothered with one for years.

"The check..." he showed her the stub and her eyebrows rose. "Yep, that's with interest," he said with satisfaction.

"I got a new social security card, then headed straight to Craddock's to reopen my account, and on to the DMV and got my license."

Despite her head spinning, Scully said encouragingly: "That's good. The insurance company asked about your license--"

He winced. "A bit too late. I'll replace your car and get my own." That glow again on his face. "An SUV. You should be driving something safe; not some sedan on these back roads." The bossy tone was back and she wasn't sure that she liked it.

It had always been her car. He'd come with her to buy the first one after they'd settled in Virginia and the salesman had been so obnoxious because Mulder was deferring to her that he hadn't come the second time--that car was only a year old, she remembered with a sigh. This was going to be a monster insurance hit; good thing he had all that money.

"Sure that you don't want to carpool with the agent from the Richmond office?" She took another sip of her beer.

Clueless, he shook his head. "Bailey was only in D.C. for the day to do some training."

Dakota, Bailey...When did women old enough to be field agents start having names like this?

"I'm sure," she said, hearing the bite in her words.

"She was excited to meet me though," he said a bit sadly. "Did you know I'm in the textbooks now?"

Scully hid her smile behind a mouthful of food.

"Not for the X-files, of course. For my profiles. Our work seems to have been wiped from any recorded history--"

She watched the fire consume the logs slowly and inevitably. "I'm not surprised." Finding his hand without looking for it, she gave his fingers a squeeze. "So..." she said leadingly. "Giving you a check wouldn't take hours either...."

He ducked his head. "The Violent Crimes chief wanted to talk to me. It's Vince Crabtree; remember him?"

Here it came. Among the to-go debris, she found a wet wipe and began cleaning her hands of the pungent spices' residue.

"They want to hire me as a consultant. As a contractor; not go back to the Bureau," he assured her in a rush.

She nodded slowly. "Of course. You're too valuable of a resource to be wasted out here."

He shrugged. "I don't know about that. Drummy was there and wasn't pleased. I got his partner killed--"

She started to protest, but he only gave her another shy smile. "I think he'd much rather have you come back."

Sadly, she shook her head. He nodded in reply.

"When do you start?" She fumbled in the dim light for her beer, clutching at the damp bottle.

"I didn't say yes--"

She whirled to face him and slammed down her drink. "Mulder!"

"I told them that I had to check with my partner."

"Oh Mulder." She sighed. "Crabtree isn't going to think much of that. He's old school--"

"Well, tough. It's the truth."

"You told them that you had to check with the little woman?"

"My partner," he corrected.

"They're going to think you're pussy whipped!"

His slow gaze traveled over her reclining figure. Despite the thick sweater and baggy sweatpants, a flush followed his look's path. Perhaps he had thought about her that way Before when he had caught her in schlub mode.

"I'll live with that," he drawled.

"If you're going to do this, you want to start off on the right foot, that's all," blustered Scully.

He shrugged, unconcerned. She toyed with the hair at the nape of his neck. "I suppose you'll go to a real barber now; my services are no longer required. Get a short cut--"

"You like it longer?" He found her loose ponytail behind her shoulder and twisted it around his fingers. "I like your hair longer too."

The old Her, in armor of dark suits and a shellacked helmet of short hair. She didn't want to go back to that, but if need be, she'd accept his prickly cropped hair. Patting his head absent-mindedly, she sipped the dregs of her beer.

Wiping his own fingers clean, he rooted in the pocket of his suit jacket hanging from the chair. "I got my own phone too. I've put your number in it, and Crabtree's, and Skinner's..." He wound down.

Dakota Whitney had demanded to know his cell phone number after being forced to contact him on Scully's phone late at night.

"I don't have one. Just keep calling me on Scully's number," Mulder had told her with a vague smile. The younger woman's gaze had shifted to Scully, standing with folded arms and one eyebrow stuck in its upright and arched position.

"That won't be particularly convenient, since Doctor Scully will be working," Dakota had pointed out. "We'll have a phone issued to you, programmed with the task forces' numbers."

He'd added Scully's number to the little flip phone as soon as he had it, but it didn't make her pick up any faster when she saw "FBI Generic Incoming" on her caller ID.

She should have realized having that warm device in his hand again was like a crack pipe to an addict. He had to take another hit.

"It's a Blackberry," he said, lovingly scrolling through features on the phone. "I can get on the Internet, send faxes--"

"Send faxes?"

He ignored her. "I'm thinking about investing in their stock. This company's products are the wave of the future."

Investing in stock? Had a shapeshifter taken Mulder's place while he was gone?

Scully began to gather up the flotsam of their feast, shoving it in the plastic bags. "Sounds like you have everything that you need to get back to work."

"It's still up to you--"

She paused and pinned him with her level gaze. "Don't put it on me, Mulder."

"And don't put it on me," he replied, just as tough. "We're still a team, even if it's not mandated by the Bureau."

She sidestepped for the moment. "I can't believe they've just wiped the X-files out of FBI history. I think you should write that book, Mulder. Tell your story."

"Our story," he corrected her again. "And if I do take this consulting job, I can't do anything to jeopardize my security clearance." He settled back against the couch and popped open another beer. "Not going to be your boy toy any longer."

Putting aside the bags, she looked at him with astonishment. "Boy toy; is that what you've been?" It had never occurred to her that he'd felt like a kept man, of all things.

"Your own Kato Kaelin then."

She decided to let it slide too. "If you're going to be a member of society again, you must update your cultural references. Kaelin? Boy toys?"

"Fine. Here's one that I heard in a song on the drive home. The song played four times in two hours, so it must be popular."

"I'm waiting with bated breath." Turning to face him, she propped her head on her hand.

"If you like it then you should have put a ring on it."

"That's that supposed to mean?" Her breath wasn't bated; it was gone.

"Put a ring on it, Scully," he repeated.

He nudged her foot with his toes and when she glanced at him from under her lashes, he lounged against the couch, long and lean, doing his best male model look. It was a bit worn these days, but still worked.

"I mean, if I'm going to be surrounded by all those agents and students at Quantico without you there to warn them off, I think I should have some sort of no trespassing sign on, don't you?"

Anger and embarrassment passed in a flash to be replaced by rueful laughter. He knew her too well but just chose his moments to point it out.

"I hate to tell you, but wedding rings will still attract some women--"

As soon as she said that, she regretted it. She covered by wiping her hands again, her head dipped out of view.

When she recovered, she pinned him with her level gaze, deciding to call his bluff. "Maybe you should have brought a ring then." Her frank statement was tempered a bit by her playing with the loose bottle cap collection on the coffee table top.

"Just like the job offer; I wanted to check with you first." He drained his beer bottle. "If I've learned anything in fifteen years, it's to assume there will be a heated discussion over everything."

He fished into his suit pocket once more and pulled out plane tickets in a paper sleeve. He lay them on the table beside her, giving them a little shove. "But I did get these."

"Those better not be tickets to Chaney, Texas." She lifted the top of sleeve and peered inside.

Popping the top off another bottle, he grinned. "A bit south."

"Belize," she said slowly.

"Yeah. That chance to just get away, get warm before I start to work. Or...A honeymoon." He shrugged.

"This is a lot to think about, Mulder," she said slowly. "A lot. A lot," she found herself repeating.

"I know. We don't have to make any decisions this instant. Let's sleep on it," he suggested. But the warmth in his eyes said that he wasn't thinking about sleep.

"Sleep," she repeated, slowly leaning over to kiss him. It had been years since they'd been frantic but that was all right. She knew exactly the way he'd tilt his head, just the amount of pressure of his lips on hers, how deep his tongue would slide on the first pass...And that intimate knowledge made her body flood with heat, turning instantly liquid. She melted into him, her fists filling with starched cotton--that was new, or at least it had been a very long time since she'd wrestled his tie loose, plucked small buttons free from their holes, tugged the tails from his pants.

His groans into her mouth told her that he'd missed this as well. "Scully," had that same wonder as the very first time she'd pulled him down atop her on her old couch and it brought tears to her eyes.

His large hands circled under her loose sweater, tickling at her ribs. His thumbs stroked the edge of her breasts and she realized that he was replicating that first time...That first time he'd been too afraid to be too aggressive, and she'd had to shift and press her breast into his palm. She did it again and he chuckled, breaking their kiss.

Why not? Why not start over yet again? Try things a little differently this time...

He started to rise, intending to lead them upstairs. That's what established couples did; not frantic grappling on the floor, but she wanted to meet somewhere in the middle.

"Nu-uh," she mumbled, her mouth latched at the ridge of his collarbone revealed by his open shirt. Grabbing his belt, she tugged him back to the couch, pushing him into its depths. Crawling into his lap, she tossed off her sweater over her head and any argument he may have had instantly disappeared from the green swirl of his gaze.

He gave her that sloppy smile that satisfied her deeply. Bare chested women--this woman--seemed to do that to him. Rather a nice strategy to keep in her back pocket--the instant pause button for his insistent chatter and exhausting overthinking. He filled his palms with her ass and drew her snug against him and she was struck dumb as well. It always amused her that two very intelligent people turned into simple, base creatures when hips met hips.

Grinding down on him, she returned to kissing him, following the bass thump of the Southern blues still drifting from the stereo. Because it was truly an enjoyable activity. She knew that at this point in their relationship, they were supposed to just get down to business and be watching Dave Letterman ten minutes later without even breaking a sweat, but dammit, she got too much pleasure from elementary foreplay.

Mulder seemed to as well. He toyed with her nipples, nibbled at her jaw, lazily thrust up against her still thickly clothed crotch but appeared perfectly content, if his dazed expression and ruffled hair was an indication. That hair...She tugged at it again, missing it already. His barely stubbled cheeks felt odd though, as though she was making love to a familiar stranger...which had its own appeal.

"Scully, you know I love you..."

What an odd thing for him to say-- She pulled back and stared down at him, befuddled.

"Yeah," she said carefully.

"Just that."

"Okay." She nestled against his chest, swaying in his arms. His thumb lazily circled one of her areola and his lips traced her hairline.

"This is nice," he murmured.

"Nice?" She gazed up, giving him an eyebrow.

He didn't relent. "Very nice," he qualified, but that was all.

Sweeping her up in his arms, he drew her breast to his mouth, and she was lost. The dying fire cast orange shadows up the walls, coiling and writhing as she was in his touch. He pulled her sweatpants and panties down in one motion and sought the smoldering heat between her legs.

She sank onto his fingers, causing him to release her nipple with a gasp. She grinned, suddenly giddy. She loved the element of surprise. Swiveling her hips, she made him pant her name.

But too much of his skin was still covered. She wrestled his shirt open and thankfully he had no undershirt on. Getting to his pants meant that she's have to move away from his touch, but it was worth it.

Staggering off him, she attacked his belt buckle, her usually nimble fingers fumbling.

"I need to go away more often," he observed as he lifted his hips so she could pull his pants and boxers down.

Ignoring his smart comments, she stepped out of her remaining clothes still tangled at her ankles.

He continued to tease her. "Doctor Scully, I have a few questions for you." Tugging loose her ponytail holder and combing her hair back over her shoulders, he welcomed her back onto his lap.

"Shut up, Mulder--" She bit his neck, finding a tiny spot where he'd missed shaving off his beard, and worried at the short hair with her teeth.

He kept going. "Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrial beings?" he gasped as she fastened onto one of his flat nipples next.

Peering up at him from behind her curtain of hair, she gave him a cold glare. "Are you going to try that on another crop of fresh agents?"

His hands were sliding along her bare back, his thumb tickling down her spine. "I'll save my alien probing just for you," he promised.

There was only one way to shut him up, she realized. She stood, and his face went still, his gaze wary. Her smile was wicked.

She turned her back to him and he exhaled; a sad sound. Taking one step backward, she waited. Hands spanned her flanks, drawing her to him.

"Scully--"

She remained silent. He was Fox Mulder, her partner, and it was wrong to think of him this way--The basement office could feel so small sometimes, two bodies circling too close, rubbing against each other as they passed, he going for a file, she to refill her coffee cup...

The couch frame groaned as he shifted forward. His lips were on her right shoulder, his tongue's tip finding the edges of the blade. His thumbs rode her spine downward again until they found the crease of her buttocks. Gliding further down, he widened her stance and brought her to slide down his full length, setting on his thighs.

Her sigh was loud in the dark room, crackling like the logs in the fire.. Her legs tightened around his, holding her close and keeping him from thrusting. But her feet couldn't touch the floor--she'd gone from dominator to a collector's specimen pinned to the board, wings outstretched...

Lolling back against his chest, she released another deep sigh, this time closer to a moan. She was in his hands now...Hands on her swollen breasts, hands traveling from their joining to her face, tracing her lips, letting her bite them, tugging at her earlobe, flicking her nipples, molding her hips tight against his gently rolling thrusts. Tilting his pelvis brought a deep pressure that caused sparks to light up her dimmed vision.

"Age...Agent Mulder...What was that question again?" she managed to pant.

"I'll need to check my notes." He sounded as desperate as she felt, but for the briefest moment, she remembered coming across a small notepad in his desk drawer after he was gone, with things like Organic yogurt Get tea New sheets on the pages.

Her laugh rose to a litany of near-shouted promises and gratitude when he bit the taut tendon at her neck and ground his knuckle on her clit. She shimmied and bucked on him--the chrysalis cracked and her wings fought gravity for flight; she was free again.

Yet another sigh as she sank back down, molten once more. He was licking sweat from her jaw, his touch gentle on her sensitive breasts. He was still hard and deep inside her.

"Mulder, if you're going to be working cases again, you must improve your solve rate," she said with her most business-like tone.

"Hey, I did my job," he said, sounding drunk.

"I would beg to differ." By some miracle, she managed to stand, only to collapse on the other end of the couch.

Concerned, he looked at her, but appearing utterly ridiculous, open shirt with cuffs still buttoned, pants and boxers at ankles, and glistened erection, red and impatient, pressed to his stomach.

She nestled back into the pillow and let her thighs fall open. "Well, Agent Mulder?"

He was on her with a grunt, somehow managing to shake off his pants but didn't deal with that silly shirt. She curled up with her knees tight to her chest, offering him only one target. He sank back into her with a long groan of his own, pinning her limbs. They rocked together for a few strokes and she was just thinking, this is very nice, when he put a foot on the floor and started to pound their bodies together.

She remembered when it was like this. He was terrified that she'd come to her senses any minute and send him home mid-fuck, she'd be overwhelmed by anxiety that he would just be gone, period. And then he was and his return only made her even more frantic during sex. It had taken a very long time to get over that and now it was all back, a wave washing over her head, pressing her beneath the water. She came again like a drowning woman gasping for life, declaring her love with her dying breath.

"Yes," growled Mulder and she knew it wasn't triumph at his completion coiling deep within her, but that he saw his own fear reflected in her eyes, that mirror bright as a new day. He fell on her suddenly loose body and she wrapped her arms around him, pushing her hands under the soaked shirt.

"Now we can go upstairs," she announced.

"Give me a minute," he gasped.

"You're getting old, Mulder," she chided.

"You're sounding out of breath yourself, Doctor," he pointed out, his damp nose poking at her throat like a snuffling puppy.

She harrumphed into his tousled hair.

The fire collapsed; only a few cherry-red embers remaining. The room chilled.

"Mulder," she murmured.

"Okay, okay," he moaned, then struggled up after disentangling their limbs. He helped her to her feet, and she swayed against him before finding her balance.

"Leave it," she told him when he tried to pick up the destruction of their clothing. He raised his eyebrows in surprise, but linked his fingers with hers to take the stairs naked to their bedroom.

"Shower," she suggested and he agreed.

It was a tight fit, but they only needed to wash their still flushed skin and dry it briskly. Nude, they wandered into the dark bedroom. Her limbs had the languid looseness of great sex...She sashayed with the tempo of a well-satisfied woman.

He spoke her thoughts smugly. "We still got it," he said, flipping back the duvet. But his knees cracked loudly as he crawled into bed.

"You keep telling yourself that," she said dryly as she joined him under the covers, seeking out his warmth in the chilly room. Even as she nestled her head on his bare chest, her thoughts turned to the strong and bright young agent that he'd watch be buried today. "You'll be careful, won't you, Mulder?"

Curling his arm around her head, he smoothed back the damp hairs at her temples with a fingertip. "When have I not taken care of myself?"

She just sighed.

"So that's a yes?"

"Yes, Mulder. That's a yes."

There was a long silence but she could tell that he wasn't falling asleep.

Carefully, he asked, "To which question?"

She only laughed. "Yes," she said simply, finding her home under his chin.

~End

FIC: The First Light

2014-02-15T03:56:14Z

Title: The First Light
Author: bugs
Rating: T
Word Count: 1700
Genre: Drama, Angst, Romance, UST
Characters: Mary, Anna Friendship; Anna/Bates; a whiff of Mary/Matthew
Spoilers: Through S4.7 but not in great detail.
Summary: Two friends trying to find their way free from their pain.

~*~
Sleep ended with a frustrating thump, leaving Mary angrily staring at the plaster ceiling of her bedroom. Dawn was washing it a very pale blue. Nights were still the most difficult times, without the new stimulations that her days presented since she'd become involved with the estate's workings. She could only sleep when utterly exhausted and once she woke, remained caught in the net of her despair, like a fish that had lost its fight and only fluttered its gills as some auto-reflex.

Finally she rose, draped her wrap around her shoulders and wandered to the window. Might as well face the day, as dreary as that prospect appeared.

Two figures were coming up the long drive, one tall and wide, topped with a bowler, his uneven gait aided by a cane. The other was much shorter, with the curved figure of a lady, her delicate ankles clicking along to keep pace. Her arm was laced through his, one gloved hand under his forearm to keep warm, the other in her pocket. It was Anna and her husband Mr. Bates.

Overcome by relief, Mary sank to the window seat. The couple was coming from the direction of their cottage, headed to their daily duties. It would appear that Anna had moved home, and Mary was surprised how much this one fact released the tension in her limbs. Laying her head against the casing, her eyelids drifted shut—

Since Matthew's death, everyone had handled Mary as delicately as filigree glass which served only to make her feel more brittle and close to shattering. Only Anna had treated Mary as though she expected her lady to get up every morning, dress, and behave somewhat human. It may have been the only thing that kept Mary going for those first dark months.

But something was now terribly wrong for her Anna. For the first time since Anna and her husband had moved to their own small home, Mary observed her maid coming alone up the drive during her dawn watch. And when Anna had brought in Mary's breakfast, her face had been battered, but it was the deep bruises in her eyes that truly frightened Mary. Yet the maid would tell her nothing of her problems and Mary felt herself crumbling a bit more with each vague avoidance of her questions.

When they returned from a quick trip to London, matters got worse. With Mary's mother's maid gone in the night, Anna moved back to the attics, leaving Bates as a gloomy shadow hovering in the corners of the upper galleries, watching for his wife. Refusing to believe that he'd behaved brutally toward Anna, Mary had hoped it was just some brief tiff. But even after Baxter had been retained to care for Lady Grantham, Anna stayed on.

Frustrated, Mary questioned her: "Mama has got her own maid now. Why not go back to the cottage?"

Moving with painful slowness through her tasks, Anna wouldn't meet her gaze. "I haven't gotten 'round to it."

"Anna, if you're in difficulties, I wish you'd tell me."

"I'm not, m'lady. Honestly."

It had been in Mary's experience when someone said 'honestly' they were hiding the truth. Vexed, she could only dismiss Anna and brood.

The answer had to be that Anna didn't really believe Mary was strong after all. She had left the home for which she had struggled so long and the man she'd professed to love as no woman had loved another. And beyond that, she apparently didn't believe that Mary could deal with whatever agonies had driven her to these unbelievable acts. The knowledge had crushed Mary.

The couple paused below her window. She leaned forward to watch again.

Bates looked around, as if to check for observers and Mary eased behind the thick satin curtain. Once the two passed around the corner of the house, they would be in the territory of the staff. But they believed that none of their charges would be awake yet, let alone looking out their front windows into the brightening day.

They were chatting. The servants rarely talked among themselves while in their masters' presence, but since the day that Bates had come to the house to work for the Earl, he and Anna had always had their heads tipped together.

Still, Mary had been shocked when Anna had chosen Bates. What the maid, such a bright spirit, saw in the taciturn gentleman's gentleman had elluded Mary at the time. He had neither good looks nor vitality. He'd spoken barely two words to Mary the entire time he'd been at Downton, and it was rarely beyond dull pleasantries delivered in slow, careful tones. In this reflection, she dismissed her first exchange with him, when he'd made her feel foolish and not worthy of her status, snooping through servants' quarters like some hall boy looking for penny candy to steal. He was the sort of man with whom she could discuss her disgraceful episode pertaining to the Turk and Bates' villainous wife's use of that information, yet all Mary got out of him was the fewest words possible and the assurance that all was forgotten and it was no bother, m'lady.

While Mary had vigorously worked to keep her own sister away from an aged cripple, she understood that Anna had fewer opportunities. Besides, she trusted her maid's strong judgement over Edith's desperate grasp to be mistress of her own home. If the soul of a poet lay beneath the valet's serge suit, Mary would help Anna any way that she could, even if this appeal eluded her at the beginning.

Then Mary had attended the tenant farmers' annual harvest dance. The Abbey's nobility were expected to make an appearance, while the servants went to Aaron Brewster drafty barn for a rare evening of frivolity.

She had noticed Anna standing off against the wall, which was odd. Usually the young woman was on the floor for every dance, lively and laughing. But her glances kept going to a tall figure leaning on a cane by Carson. The two men were watching the revelers, one craggy set of features faintly disapproving, the other impassive face showing a bit of yearning.

The next time Mary looked Anna's way, Bates had joined her. Although she was smiling and her eyes were humor-filled, Mary noted that her maid was gripping the table behind her tightly enough to turn her knuckles white. Bates loomed over the small woman—Mary had given a sigh of discontent. She was so tall that half her eligible prospects had been immediately discounted, and she'd always had a bit of envy for Anna's tiny figure, so entrancing to men...As it obviously was now.

It was just a man and woman talking to the casual observer, but Mary was aware of the expectations of the society within the walls of Downton. It was not just the dining table chairs which were to have a prescribed distance between them. Anna and Bates were standing an inch too close and the draw between their bodies must overwhelming for Anna to hang onto that table so hard.

Bates leaned another fraction of an inch closer and his gaze fixed on Anna's mouth. In the brief instance, Mary had finally seen that Bates may be a quiet man, but he definitely had the power to stir a woman, and not only her heart.

Carson, as romantic as an old stump left among the rose bushes in the garden and always on the lookout for impropriety, had apparently noticed it as well. He marched past them, giving one of his deep rumbling throat clearings, heard even as far as Mary's observation spot.

Bates had turned his head slowly, reminding Mary of one of those great cats in the zoo, that when gazing through the bars still gave her the impression that she was the imprisoned one and he was free to leap if he wished.

He'd cast Anna one last quick smile, causing her to—of all things— simper. Mary had never seen her sensible, wise-beyond-her-years maid simper, and had found it utterly shocking.

Now Mary smiled at this vague memory.

On the drive below, Bates tugged one of his gloves loose and cupped Anna's cheek. Yes, he would want his bare skin against hers. His head dipped to the side to kiss her under her own hat, and their faces were obscured-one black bowler, one dark red bonnet, hiding their faces from Mary's view. His hand moved to cradle Anna's neck, drawing her closer as his thumb stroked that spot where the jaw met the ear--Mary could feel his caress, smell Matthew as though he were there with her, holding her just as closely.

To relive Matthew's last precious moments, Mary had acquired the ability to slow time incrementally. Now she shared this gift with Bates and Anna, so that their brief kiss may last them the full day. Their faces finally parted, returning one to two. Only Bates' tender smile reflected what had just transpired.

Rising, Mary turned away from the window and drifted back to her bed. She suddenly felt as though she could sleep a bit more before Anna came with her breakfast tray.

She was able to approximate the manner of someone who'd slept through the night when Anna arrived.

"You seem brighter lately," she observed of her maid. "Have things sorted themselves out?"

A pause, then, "Not quite, but it's better, yes."

Mary pushed a bit harder. "And you've moved back into the cottage."

She received nothing but the fact in return. "I have, m'lady."

"Well, you're obviously not going to tell me what it was about but I'm glad if it's resolved," Mary said airily to cover her irritation.

At last, Mary had the opportunity to test her perception that she was hardened to steel once more. The morning Lord Robert was to leave for America, Mrs. Hughes knocked and entered her bedroom.

The older woman appeared agitated. "May I speak to you, Lady Mary?"

When Mary looked into the somber features of the housekeeper, she knew that she was finally to hear what was wrong with her beloved friend.

"What is it, Mrs. Hughes?" And there wasn't a single quiver in her voice.

~ end

FIC: The Heart of The Woman

2014-02-14T06:44:48Z

Title: The Heart of the Woman

Author: bugs
Fandom: Downton Abbey (Yes, I'm officially writing for too many fandoms that I need to start marking this on each story. And I have like 100 different things I need to be writing for, wow, let's start on some new characters!)

Rating: K+

Word Count: 2,400

Pairing: Bates/Anna

Spoilers: S1 and S3
Summary: A courtship happens at tableside over teacups, mending, and poetry.
A/N: Some S1 UST and Highlands fluff to fight off any S4 blues.

~*~

Duneagle's housekeeper checked over the spare beds' list for the visiting servants, ticking her pen nib down the names. Her head came up when she stopped at Bates followed by Bates. She glanced from Anna to John waiting patiently for their assignments.

"Your sister serves the Granthams as well, Mr. Bates?"

"My wife," John corrected her.

Mrs. Brand looked him over slowly, from his weary face to the tip of his cane, then glanced to Anna again. One of her dark brows rose, saying much without a single spoken word. She was a young woman to be running such a large house, but exhibited the harsh judgment of a woman much older than their own Mrs. Hughes.

"I'm afraid you won't be able to share," Brand said briskly, returning to her list.

Anna opened her mouth to speak but Bates held up his hand to stop her.

"We're accustomed to that, Mrs. Brand," Bates said carefully. "Only when we're at home do we have our own accommodation. Otherwise, it's the women's and men's corridors for us."

Anna was fighting giggles, and he was grateful that she was not upset even if his own pride was burnt around the edges. Idly, he thought of the long Scotland dusks, and how nice it would be to stroll in the evening after they'd put their charges to bed, into the gardens with its many dense shrubs...

They settled into their rooms and then Anna came to the door that sequestered the female servants from the back stairs. John casually checked the lock as he held the door open for her.

"Mr. Bates," Anna said, but the warning in her voice was teasing.

"Just making sure that you'll be secure," he said, guileless.

"Mr. Grantham," the butler McCree said in a manner nearly as imperious as Mr. Carson. "You shall sit here."

John was directed to a chair at the very end of the table, suitable more for a footman than the valet of this grand castle's honored guest.

Before Anna could sit beside him, she was herded by Mr. McCree to a seat next to the butler's spot at the head. Bates only shook his head. Either McCree had already been captured by his wife's charms, or the butler had heard their situation from Mrs Brand and and believed if they were seated beside each other, they would be driven by such passion as to engage in marital relations right on the table before the entire assembled staff.

Bates allowed his imagination to wander at the thought. Such a shame that their own dining table in the cottage was so small and a bit rickety, despite his work with extra nails and glue...How long were they to be at Duneagle; ten days...

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Anna's shoulders trembling with suppressed laughter as she sank into her seat. She was thinking the same thing. He bowed his head as Mr. McCree said a stern prayer before their meal. This was obviously a somberly kept house, and the Bateses must adhere to these standards or else bring shame on their own household.

Plates were set before them and the clatter of cutlery and glasses livened up the oppressive atmosphere. Until McCree noticed that Anna was only pushing the heavy potatoes and stewed beef around her plate. "Are you not hungry?" he asked, obviously in a pique.

"It's a bit early for us," she told him. "We eat our dinner after the family's."

Miss Wilkins, Lady Flintridge's maid, jumped in: "Oh, I agree with you, Miss Crawley. In London we eat last thing when all the work is done, and I prefer it."

The butler was not mollified. He turned to O'Brien. "How bout you, Miss Grantham?"

The maid glanced up. "Me? I do as I'm told."

Anna didn't look John's way when she started to speak, but he knew that she was firing a shot toward him when she said, "It makes me laugh when I hear Miss O'Brien and Mr. Bates called Mr. and Miss Grantham." Only then did she smile his direction, her eyes sparkling. Yes, as if he and O'Brien could ever be related, let alone wed.

He could play this game too. "Mrs. Bates and I don't often work in the same house party," he said, deciding to see if daring to speak of their shocking entanglement would spur the ill-humored butler to say something which would send Anna into a fit of giggles. Her gasp of a laugh earlier wasn't enough; he missed her easy humor already.

Sure enough, McCree fixed Anna with his beetle-browed stare. "Of course, you two are married, Miss Crawley. How do you manage at home, being called Bates and Bates?"

Even before Anna replied, Bates saw O'Brien's hackles go up. His volley had missed its target and somehow found the miniscule lump of coal that resided in that lady's chest.

"We're not. They still call me Anna, like when I was a housemaid."

Right on cue, Miss O'Brien spoke in her drawling tone: "Which isn't right. I do so hate to see a lady's maid downgraded." She looked John's way with her half-lidded snake's gaze, and he knew that she wasn't just talking about the address. Anna was degrading herself with a vile man as well, and he had to take a deep breath to keep from chuckling. His game had turned on him; now he was the one fighting for control.

"Oh, I so agree, Miss Grantham, but then we would think alike, wouldn't we?" Wilkins nattered. He took a drink of water to push his bubbling laughter down. At least O'Brien would enjoy the holiday with a like-minded soul, even if it meant the rest of them suffered.

The maid seated beside him continued: "It's a treat to have a kindred spirit come to stay. It really is."

When O'Brien sent one of her pained smiles Wilkins' way, Bates realized that he'd never seen her ladyship's maid fully smile with her teeth and he wondered if they were rotten. It would explain a great deal about her temperament.

The butler rose regally and they all stood.

"Tell Mrs. Crane I've gone up. I'll announce dinner in ten minutes." He did not excuse them to sit, so they all waited until his wide back had passed through the doorway.

As soon as they were back in their chairs, Bates leaned forward and gave his wife one of his looks which spoke volumes. Yes, she had won that round. But she simply returned a quick smile before beginning to toy with her cooled supper once more.

He didn't need to sit beside her anymore to feel her warmth, but such a little thing had meant a lot at one time.

His first day at Downton Abbey, he'd sat at the servants' hall table waiting for luncheon, wanting to be out the way of bustling kitchen maids and rushing footmen. Slowly the table had filled as the dining hour drew closer and yet no one sat beside him. Finally Mrs. Hughes sat to his left with a sharp nod of greeting, but it was obviously her place; to the right hand of Mr. Carson.

Then every seat at the table was taken but the two to his right. Miss O'Brien and the pale footman Thomas had taken the chairs directly across from John and stared with open hostility. The footman had been usurped by his arrival, but what did some whey-faced lady's maid care?

Anna dashed in and without hesitation, slipped into the seat directly beside him. He'd seen that she was a sweet girl from the first moment when she'd offered her hand, even though her arms were full. No one else had.

He stared at his plate, not wanting to take advantage of this young woman's kindness.

"How do you find your room?"

He peered at her from under his glowering brow. "Very nice," he said tonelessly.

She ignored his distant manner. "Do you need a bath towel? Or a face flannel?"

"No, thank you. Everything was in the bureau and quite suitable."

"That's good."

She didn't speak again. The pleasantries had run dry. Another maid took the last empty chair by Anna and started chatting with the head housemaid.

Her interest in him was not by chance. Any time he was already seated in the hall and Anna arrived, she'd take the chair beside him; as one was always empty. Even if he sat at the end, with a great stretch of vacant seats beside him, she'd sit at his side. To test her, he moved around the table, trying different seats. And she always chose to join him.

Not that he found this unappealing. It had been decades since any housemaid had cast a tender look his way, but that had been the tall and broad-shouldered footman John, not this stooped and crippled valet Bates. He was easily charmed--pathetic really, he told himself.

It was her laugh, a low gasp, and the way her eyes stayed locked to his while she did it. She was not coy, nor was she a flirt. She was a buttercup, all yellow and white and sunlight, simple country beauty right there in the Abbey's dim bowels.

She was more than a physical object to him, but also someone with whom to talk. In a household full of souls, their chatter an endless din that even rung in his ears when he was in bed, he felt terribly alone.

"What's your book?" she had asked as she took the chair beside him once again, but then added quickly, "oh, don't you hate when someone asks what you're reading. Just get your own book, I want to say."

He closed the slim leather-bound volume around his finger. "Not at all. I'd be happy to share my books."

She flipped open her sewing box and smoothed out her mending to find the tear in the fine silk. "That would be ever so nice," she said.

"What do you enjoy reading?"

"Long novels and poetry, the sadder the better- -" Her expression was bittersweet when she added, "Makes my life seem brighter, do you know what I mean?"

John nodded, but Patrick, one of the younger footmen, cut in, his Yorkshire dialect rough as grit: "Books? I prefer to see a show, I do. With lots of pretty girls."

Anna smiled at John and he felt himself smiling back.

Ignoring the interruption, he told her, "Reading's a good habit. Good for the mind. Keeps it nimble and not engaging in idle thought." He glanced over at Thomas and O'Brien, whispering together in the far corner of the room. "Which can be a poisonous thing.'

She peeked over her shoulder and gave him an outright grin. "I agree."

"Tea?" Daisy asked, struggling along with the large crock teapot.

John thanked her and slid two cups together to be filled. Closer than he and Anna sat. Finished serving, Daisy flopped down beside William at the end of the table, but watching for Mrs. Patmore with a worried shift of her dark gaze.

Turning slightly in her chair so her legs were closer to his, Anna took a sip of tea. She told Bates: "I was lucky, being the youngest. I was able to stay in school until I entered service."

She flushed and checked to see if William and Daisy had heard her as they flipped through a tattered old copy of Punch, looking at the pictures together.

"Not to say I'm any better than I ought to be, but I've had a bit more education than most girls in my situation."

He dared to turn in his chair so their legs were even closer together. "How very fortunate," he said.

"And my mother enjoyed me reading aloud to her. Her sight was failing and she saved it for her sewing. So I could read for hours."

"That was very sweet of you," he commented.

"T'was nothing." She blushed again and bent her bright head back to her sewing.

He contemplated for a moment, then opened his slim volume of Yeats. The page was on 'The Lover Asks Forgiveness Because of His Many Moods.' Best not...He turned to another verse.

"O what to me the little room, that was brimmed up with prayer and rest-"

She whispered, "Thank you, Mr. Bates. That's lovely."

He continued: "He bade me out into the gloom, and breast lies upon his breast-"

Miss O'Brien's caustic voice cut in. "Now, now! Ladies present, Mr. Bates! If you must read such trash, take it to your room."

John folded the book back around his finger and took a deep drink of his tea so that he could not shoot off a retort. Beside him, Anna's sigh was loud. They both shifted back in their chairs to return front and center.

Then there was the day that no one was in the servants' hall, or the kitchen, or around the long table. Only Anna working with one of the ladies' shoes, cleaning off scuffs from the pale satin.

"Where is everyone?" he asked, uneasy.

"They've gone down to the village," she told him. "Some traveling salesman's set up at the pub for the afternoon."

The afternoon. Hours.

The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them: "Alone at last."

She cast up her gaze and it was as vulnerable as he'd ever seen. Gone was the intelligent sparkle, the bright humor. In its place was pure, feminine yearning and he had to sit before his legs gave out.

It had been a small moment, and he had kept talking, went along with his own drudgeful duty polishing brass buttons on the Earl's hunt coat, but he also knew now that she loved him. All from sitting at that scarred oak table, day after day.

At Duneagle's own country table, he leaned forward and looked Anna's direction down its length. As if he'd called out her name, her head turned to meet his gaze. Her smile was slow and promising. As Bates drained his teacup, he decided perhaps Mr. McCree was right to keep them apart, at least for these ten long days.

Anna smile widened and he had the sense that she was reading his mind yet again. Whatever her game would be, he was sure that she would win.

~end

FIC: Smoke and Mirrors ~ Chapter One

2014-01-31T06:15:49Z

Title: Smoke and Mirrors ~ Chapter One
Author: bugs
Rating: T for now
Genre: X, A, MSR
Word Count: 2,500
Summary: Dana Scully gave up her son to save the world from an alien invasion. But 2012 came and went. Now the answers are revealed.
A/N: This will be a WIP and long. That's either a warning or a promise.

~*~

/I asked that girl to make this sandwich on twelve grain, not this crap they call whole wheat bread/

Lilac bush, needs to be trimmed, she wanted it trimmed but he never got around to it and now it's too late--going to bloom soon.

Alarm box, hiding place here, right here, careful, get the code right, ping, ping, ping, ping, no alarm now...Gate needs oiling, always needs oiling, climb over, yes, yeah, can do!

/Ten more minutes to eat this, read Kyle's chart, talk to his parents, somehow fit in before that damn meeting. Why do I have to go to these meetings, tea, I need tea/

Too much rain this spring, she doesn’t like the rain, rain on the windows, rain on the roof, mud, muck, dirty shoes—hate mud between toes.

Not the front door, surely he's listening for the front door,waiting for her, back door, kitchen door, careful for the squeak. Past office door, closed, good, music playing, stay quiet, quiet as a rat on the hunt.

Gun is in the box, the old box, the box with the wrinkled lid, faded label, first gun box out of Quantico. Good luck, not too great luck, wishes she'd had better luck. Bullets kept in small box. Careful, careful, don’t drop one. They ping, they ring, they’ll rattle around, roll under the couch.

/Never enough damn time. Thought I had time under control. Should just go home if I can’t do this job right. Take a really long nap with Mulder. He likes naps in the afternoon, naps after milk and cookies--No. No more naps with Mulder. Time’s up--time to go./

Door knob stuck. Carefully, very careful, push open. Need both hands for big gun. Gun the color of the back of the eyelids. This was what a gun felt like. Heavy. Dark.

“Mulder, show me your hands.”

“Scul—“ He turns too fast. Here, real, a breath away, he is too big. She thinks he's too big sometimes too, even after all these years.

Remember all the right words. “Sit back down. And show me your hands.”

“Okay. Nothing to get worried about.”

“I’m not worried. I’m not afraid. I don’t feel anything.”

Big mouth, wide mouth, cavern. Too pretty for a man--an old man. A man old enough to be the doctor, father, therapist. Plump lips turn inside out. He’ll eat his lips. Then he can’t talk.

/Should've told him I know. That I've seen the emails. He wants me to talk; tell him what's going on. I could tell him. But If I'd started talking, I would never stop/

“Fuckin’ stay still! Don’t do anything!”

“I’m not. Just tell me what you want.”

“The phone. Call Scully.”

Flat eyes. Beer bottle color. Suddenly quick, fast, flight. Show him the gun again. Put it close. Let him smell the oil.

“There’s no need for that. Whatever you want, I can help you.”

“I want Scully. Call her and tell her that you need her to come home now. Tell her you’re sick. Tell her the house’s on fire.”

“What’s your name?”

“Call Scully.”

“I’d like to know who you are, please."

“If you don’t call, I’ll dial, and when she answers, shoot you in the head. She’ll come then.”

He chews at the lip. It would bust like a strawberry under the heel.

“We don’t need you. I’m just being nice. Scully likes you. Scully loves you. Scully needs you.”

He looks away. "She won't come. She's moved out."

"She'll come. Call."

He picks up the phone, slow like picking the scabs off until the blood bubbles.

Punch, punch, punch, punch, punch, punch, punch. The right numbers; maybe this will work.

/Damn phone--it's Mulder. Don’t need this right now. I don't have anything to say./

He's watching. He can see the sweat on the palms. Can count the seconds until the gun slips from the wet hands. Answer, answer—She answers.

“Dana, it’s me—“

Hard enough to hear his skull crackle. That hard. Hard enough, but not too hard.

“That was pretty stupid, Mulder. But now she’ll know there’s a problem, won’t she? She doesn’t like to hear you scream.”

He can wait on the floor. He’ll stay cool that way, cold as a fish off the line, now on the bottom of the boat.

/Pick up, Mulder! Dammit! What have you gotten us into? When I thought it was over. Make the excuses, say the lies. Routine, even after all these years./

x

Mulder decided that he should try harder to get those dust bunnies from under his desk. Get down on his knees, not expect the Swifter to catch them all.

“Slow. Keep hands in view. Back into the chair.”

His office chair seemed a long way up from his present position. Had to try though. Crazy little girl had a gun.

When he looked at the clock, she gave him an update: “We have a little over 10 minutes. Sit still.”

He gingerly felt the lump on his brow and his fingers came back bloody. There was a crusty stream along his jawline, but he left that alone. “Let’s try this again. Who are you? What do you want?” he said. He was asking to make conversation. He had a pretty good idea who she was, or at least what she was.

Her right eye twitched in the socket. Before she had struck him, it had been the left doing all the wandering. “What does it matter?”

The ten minutes were ticking away. He had to get the gun from her. If for no other reason than it was Scully's piece, and losing it would be one more thing for her to be pissed about.

“I like to know who’s trying to kill me.”

The girl smiled with small, dirty teeth. “Mika.”

“That's an interesting name.” Just keep talking, Mulder told himself, even as she sneered.

"It's not mine. The family gave me the name. Not mine," Mika repeated. Her lips moved sideways instead of opening and closing as with normal speech.

Meth or straightforward psychosis? he wondered.

"What's your real name then?”

He'd apparently exhausted her good will. "Shut up," she said in her raspy, unhealthy voice.

Big eyes, blue and wide-set. Bleached blonde wavy hair, greasy, slipped down the sides of her skull, with a large patch of green dye over her left ear. Small, compact frame, balanced on the balls of her feet like a gymnast poised to leap, wide shoulders ready to catch the beam. And that mouth, juicy red and never still, even when she wasn't speaking. Three lip piercings rattled and trembled. The barbell-like eyebrow piercings undulated like stiff corn stalks in a windy field.

His own body was heavy in the chair as though the weight of Scully’s old service weapon was holding him down. He dared to look at the clock again. Not much time left. He had to disarm this girl.

“Why do you want us? Tell me what this is about.”

Scorn was his reply: “Don’t need you. Only her.” Her head twitched. “Get out into the living room. I don’t like being in a cage.”

She followed close enough not to miss with a shot from the hip, but far enough away to keep out of his reach. He tried stumbling, hoping to trigger her reflexes to grab him, but she just let him fall in a heap.

“My head’s still light,” he said, feeling like an idiot as he scrambled back to his feet.

He had gotten a good look at her dirty white flats and skinny ankles while he was down there, and her skin was laced with healed razor slashes. Easing into a chair, he asked, “How old are you, Mika? Seventeen? Eighteen?”

She didn’t answer, leaning against the sofa and glaring down her nose at him. Mulder was used to juvenile offenders saying that they don't care what he has to say but he can see that she truly didn't.

“I help a lot of kids like you, Mika. Maybe you know that.”

“I know you only work part-time. I know she practically had to put this gun to your head to get you to take a job. I know it’s the first job you’ve had in a really long time.”

Pissed off, as pissed as he was when Scully looked around his office last year and said, ‘You know, all this papering the walls with strips of newspaper? You’re reminding me of Tooms making his nest.’

“Yes, that’s true. It’s been a couple of decades since I've worked in a clinical situation. But it’s exciting and rewarding assisting young people like you.”

“There’re no young people like me.”

The tuna on rye that he'd eaten for lunch flipped over in his stomach. No, the teen gangbangers and underage dimebag dealers who passed through his office at the correction center had nothing on this girl. Didn’t like the look of those eyes—seen ones like that too many times before, and never in circumstances that resolved themselves without him bleeding and Scully’s face blank and hard with fear. He was already breathing too rapidly.

Mika's head jerked up, eyes off him for the first time since she had made her appearance. “She drove really fast. You must remain quiet.”

“I will. Just remember, when bullets start flying, they tend to hit things.”

“I won’t hurt Scully.”

Mika stood, her gaze scanning the walls of the house as though tracking the woman creeping along the row of azalea bushes that lined the yard.

“You’re the first thing I’ll shoot if you move. I don't need you anymore.”

She moved to the kitchen, stooped at the waist so she couldn't be seen through the windows. The gun remained pointed in Mulder's direction the entire time.

But Mulder watched too, knowing just how Scully would enter, plotting when to call out his warning. He'd only have one chance.

Mika crouched by the back door, reaching for the handle. As a shot splintered the lower panel, the girl darted out of the way. Fragments blew inward, and the bullet flew by Mulder's knee, but he still yelled, “Scully!” as he ran forward.

Scully's gaze met Mulder's and read the shift of his eyes. She swung to her left to confront Mika, their guns muzzle to muzzle in a perverse kiss.

Mika gave another of her empty smiles. “Careful, the Mother,” she mouthed.

x

Scully sat at the kitchen table, keeping her features still but her eyes never left the young woman, waiting for the storm to pass. Mika sobbed uncontrollably, incapable of speech. The gun secured in his pants' waist, Mulder washed the dried blood from his face, then rattled around in the freezer for some ice to fill a pack for his forehead.

The girl finally spoke. “I had to come. I’m sorry.”

"Why are you sorry?" Scully could barely push her voice to above a whisper.

"Always trouble. Cause trouble. No one wants me around."

Leaning against the counter, Mulder reminded Scully of a somber gargoyle watching the human drama from high above. She noticed the sink full of dirty dishes and started to say something before jerking her attention back to their intruder.

“How were you able to find us?” asked Scully. The old familiar paranoia washed over her like submerging in a tub of scalding water.

“I looked at your mail.” It was hard to comprehend Mika through her tears.

“I don’t understand.” Scully’s brow creased. “You would have to come here to look at our mail.”

Mika covered her eyes with her balled, grubby fists. “I see what you see. I hear what you think.”

Mulder moves behind Scully, gripping her chair. She eased forward so that he couldn't touch her.

"Telepathy?" he asked but neither woman replied.

Scully pleaded: “Talk to us—“

“Mika," said Mulder. "Her name is Mika.”

Scully reached out, tentative as one picks through poison ivy, and tugged Mika’s arms gently down.

Mika went silent, with lips twitching and eyes darting. Then she burst out, “I should take a pill, my meds, one of the pretty red capsules.” She rooted through her pockets, then triumphantly lay a rainbow of colored capsules on the tabletop, picking out two red ones.

Mulder filled a glass of water but didn't give it to her. “Where did you get those pills? What are they for?”

“What are they not for? What isn’t wrong with me? They say. So they say. What they want,” she sputtered.

Mulder held the glass close and waited.

“Doctor Larkin, Doctor Conrad, nice Doctor Singh,” she babbled. “A green one when I see things which are scary. The inside of bodies and brains and broken mouths--"

Scully clenched her jaw. So many autopsies for a child to watch.

"A blue one when I see things no little girl should know about yet--“ She looked slyly at Mulder, then continued: “A red one when I can’t stop thinking, thinking, thinking...”

"Take just one," Scully said. After she nodded at Mulder, he passed the water to Mika. The girl gulped down her medication greedily. Scully carefully moved the remaining pills to her side of the table. “You can see what I see—all the time?” she asked quietly.

“I can make it go away, sometimes. I can't choose to see when I want to," Mika muttered angrily. "But mostly I can’t stop it. I see my world and your world and their worlds--"

"There are others." The way Scully said it wasn't a question.

"Another girl who's boring and stupid and just goes to school and doesn't even care about boys. Another girl who fucks a lot and likes to do her hair and hates her parents, she's fun to watch," gasped out Mika.

"More?" asked Mulder since Scully couldn't speak.

"There were when I was little, but they went dark years ago." Mika's fingers danced across the table toward her pills. Scully eased them further out of her reach.

"Any others?" Scully dared to whisper.

Mika closed her eyes and finally told her secret. "His world."

Scully raised her face to keep her tears from spilling. "William."

"Sammy. My Mom calls me Samuel but you can call me Sam. Sammo, you dork!" bellowed Mika.

Mulder dared to put his hands gently on Scully's shoulders. She gave a short nod, replying to his unspoken question. Her son's christening and that moment when the priest asked for the full name. Sudden shock at realizing she had no middle name. Saying it without hesitation. Later wondering if naming a child for two dead men and a tragic girl was like putting a curse on his head.

“What’s happened?” Scully forced herself to ask because Mulder wouldn't, her hand creeping to cover his on her shoulder. This girl didn't come for some twisted family reunion. She was an albatross,on shore after eighteen years, settling her own curse around Scully's neck.

“There was a gun in his face, a gunshot—“ Mika looked at the weapon tucked in Mulder's waistband before turning her tragic gaze back to Scully. "I'm sorry, the Mother. He's dark now too."

~ end Chapter One

FIC: Contrapasso ~ Complete

2014-01-23T04:47:51Z

Title: Contrapasso
Author: bugs
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,200
A/N:Finally! For bsg_aussiegirl's birthday.

This story will be in my Ring of Fire universe for Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal but it's not necessary to read those two stories. Chiaroscuro and Ring of Fire can be found on my fanfiction.net page.

~*~

The prisoner stood straight, chin level, eyes appearing to be focused on the steel door, but really inhabiting a place far from the cell, a place green and open, breathing in air filled with the sun's heat and the earth's depth. Anywhere but the eight foot square concrete box that she was in now.

The cell door's small slot window opened. The guard barked: "Starling, git to the back...Hands flat on the wall."

She complied but there was the familiar tension between them; the guard knew who was in charge here.

"You have a visitor, Starling."

She didn't reply. The door remained closed.

"It's a doctor. He's gonna talk to you."

She finally spoke. "I've got nothin' to say."

Another voice overtook the guard's, shutting him out. "Ms. Starling, I believe that you have important things to say. I'd be happy to hear you."

Her lip curled in a sneer; contempt was the first emotion that she showed. She turned away which earned another order from the guard. "Face the door!"

Slowly, she resumed the position. The two men spoke in hushed tones outside the door and finally the guard's voice rose: "I don't think it's a good idea--"

The smooth tone of the doctor overlapped the guard's, but not high enough for Clarice to hear. She eased a step closer to the door. Suddenly it swung open and she froze.

The man filled the entryway, solid as the impenetrable door. There was no escape.

She gave him a shy country girl smile. "How do you do?"

He tipped his head in greeting, but kept his gaze level with hers. "I am well. How are you?"

"Could be better, but can't complain," she said but took a step back so the distance between them remained the same as he entered the cell. It was not a retreat. It was a tactic.

He gave an appreciative smile. "I am Doctor Hannibal Lecter."

"Don't suppose you're here to check on that pain in my neck."

"I could if you wish."

Her eyes shifted toward the door. The viewing window was still open. "They don't let anyone touch me."

"I doubt you want anyone to touch you."

"Startin' already, are you?"

He clasped his hands at his waist. "Starting what?"

"Trying to figure me out. Analyze what made me what I am."

"What are you?"

"I'm one of the few female serial killers..." Her smile turned sly. "At least one of the few caught. Pro'ly plenty of women doin' it, just not found out."

"Interesting theory." He quirked an eyebrow. "How are women doing it?"

She lay her hands flat on the wall as the guard had instructed. "They poison. Pussy kills."

"Not like you. You gut men like sheep at slaughter. You give them a single shot to the base of the neck."

She didn't respond. He decided that she had beautiful eyes.

He was accustomed to interviewing violent women, the rare killers in that gender. Often, they tried seduction, even those who hated men--particularly those. Their disdain meant they saw men as weak, ruled by their dicks and easily manipulated. But he could see this unique woman was using another type of seduction on him.

He was a man of great control and yet in these first few minutes with Clarice Starling, he wanted to spirit her away, to make her his lifelong enigma.

Her gaze shifted fractionally toward the door. She could read his thoughts and for the first time since he entered the cell, he was afraid. Yes, let's kill the guard. Let's slip through the shadows of the prison corridors. Let's run and run and run. And Clarice Starling kills another man, slicing him from the base of his throat to his groin, exposing his heart on a wave of red. But at least he would be her last victim, of that he was sure.

He made one step, blocking the view through the cell door's window. She smiled again in approval.

His lips found the highest plane of her cheekbone. Her breathing quickened, a heated course on his cheek. He stilled, watching for any sign that she couldn't continue.

"H..." she mused, her mouth brushing the single letter along his chin.

"Yes, Clarice."

"Just makin' sure it's you." Her eyes were still the most beautiful he'd ever seen, even as they searched his, as though looking in a mirror for a familiar face.

He rolled back to his side of their new bed, the one which would be their last. He needed distance between their bodies if they were going to talk. "Who else would I be?"

"One of the other identities that you've been...You will be."

"I told you. No matter what the role, I never lose myself."

Her eyelids closed and the curtain dropped on the vividly dressed stage.

The car trunk smelled of tool oil, moldy leather and fuel fumes. Her bindings were too tight to find a comfortable position. With the duct tape over her mouth, she could only breath through her nose, taking in the noxious odors again and again. But worse of all was the darkness, closing tighter and tighter around her, more choking than the bindings.

The lid screamed open and now she was blinded by light. Hands reached for her, efficiently pinning her face down into the fetid carpeting. He tore the tape off her mouth.

"Kill me like the animal you are," she hissed, her swollen tongue barely able to form words.

He stroked her matted hair from her hot cheek. When he tenderly said, "I love you, Clarice," she knew that he had to kill her.

"Look at me," she demanded. "Look at me when you do it."

The pressure lessened just enough to roll her onto her back. High above in the glaring blue sky, buzzards circled.

The blue was his eyes, bright enough to light the night. His sure fingers undid her shirt buttons. Yes, he'd want to watch her bare flesh part with his knife's blade. But it was his lips that pressed between her breasts, finding her heartbeat, a seismic tremor that only he could read. Still, her breath caught in her throat, holding her on the edge of death.

"Clarice," he whispered, rocking her in a loose embrace.

"I'll be okay," she reassured him.

His chuckle was rough. "My tough little girl," he murmured, before following the flutters of her breathing, chasing them under her rib cage, and capturing the deep intakes at her navel.

As she pulled herself from the river, the water coursed off her strong limbs. Standing over his reclining body, she wrung out her hair and flipped it back.

"Any bites?" she asked, nodding toward his fishing pole.

His gaze remained focused on the swirling waters marking from where she'd risen. "No," he said, his voice distant.

The tone made her angry. He thought that he could remain in complete control. She'd learned by now that he was just a man after all, neither monster or mastermind. A beating heart, red blood...both of which could be directed to a base need.

She tugged her clinging shirt off and her breasts swung free. Still no reaction, even as she dropped the shirt by his feet.

"I never believed you were a coward," she taunted, her hands at her shorts' waistband.

"Actually, I'm showing an amazing amount of bravery at the moment," he said as he flicked the pole, causing the line to jerk his bait below the dark surface.

She only barked a laugh as her shorts and panties dropped. Stepping forward, she trapped him against the tree. "Yeah, you're a regular Sergeant York," she sneered.

"Who's he?" Lecter asked, finally glancing up.

"A man of these hills with a noble heart and very good aim."

His thumb circled her kneecap. "A regular deadeye?"

"And a true man of God." It was her turn to look out across the dappled river. A water moccasin wound through the current. His long brown body made its own lazy path in the murky waters.

"I will worship..." The doctor drew her closer. Now she was the reluctant one. "At my own altar."

"Don't."

His mouth was at her navel, then lapping lower. "Don't what?" he murmured across her goose-pimpled skin.

"Don't be reverent. You know I hate that."

"What do you want then?"

"Just treat me like a woman." She took another step, pressing into his ministrations, Artemis coming down from her pedestal for her acolyte.

"That's impossible to define though, my dear," he said with his maddening calmness. "One man's woman is another's whore, one man's saint is another's--"

She had to shut him up. Grasping the tree's trunk, she ground into his mouth, stopping his speech if not his tongue.

"Just a woman," she choked out. "I'm just a woman. And you need me--" she said with wonder, even as she was the one who needed him desperately--needed him to never stop, to keep doing that, to finally consume her as he'd wished from the first moment that he'd seen her.

They were being watched; she could sense eyes somewhere in the trees, observing this sinful act. On the Lord's day, she was wallowing like a beast with a demon--

The bark was smooth beneath her flushed cheek, its scent wild and deep, something she'd missed for so many years working and living in stale concrete boxes.

Sun and mud and birch sap were her new world, and her pulse pounding behind her fluttering eyelids. The river's course was the sound of her man's satisfied lapping. This was a dawn and a dusk at the same moment.

"Better," Lecter said with deep joy, rising over her, his arms and chest pale blue in the dim bedroom.

She didn't answer, her face turned into the pillow, riding the currents pushing her back to the surface.

Still dressed, Lecter lowered himself onto the bed in the sleeping porch. The end of his cigar hung from his slack hand and he stared up at the ceiling, wondering if sleep would come yet.

"Where did you go?" she asked from the doorway.

"For some air." He took another deep drag from his cigar.

"It's dark in the woods."

It was dark on the porch as well. As she moved toward him, her satin robe shimmered like moonlight on the water. It caught the attention of moths and they were drawn to the screens.

She froze, watching the insects batter against the wire, their delicate wings shredding like paper.

"I'm not afraid of the dark," he said, breaking into her thoughts.

She smiled. "No, you are not."

"You don't have to be. I'm here."

He said this sincerely, but she laughed anyway. Sitting beside him, she smiled again. "It's not the dark that frightens folks, it's what hides in it. And you're one of those monsters."

Even as she said this, her hand rested on his thigh. He found himself staring at it, how the slender pale fingers curled around his limb.

"Are you ever truly afraid, Doctor?"

"Do you want me to be?"

"Perhaps," she murmured.

"What shall I fear for you?" he asked. As she shifted, her gown fell open. Her skin captured the moonlight. The madness of the moonraker entered his mind, trying to scoop treasures from deep waters.

Her smile was self-deprecating. Her answer was her hand on his fly and her mouth covering his. Her skin still smelled of mint and lemon, her breath held whiskey vapor. But her drunken languidness was gone.

Her robe slid free, the clouds drifting from the face of the moon. She rose above him, brushing his shirt loose. A breeze finally came up in the humid night but they remained flushed and heated.

He was terrified in a sudden moment. Pinned down, held in her grip and deafened by his thundering heart--no, a storm was rising. Rain urgently beat on the tin roof, then settled to gentle sighs waving over in time with their bodies. And he was still afraid. The fear tightened every muscle, locked his vision on her face, kept him from speaking.

Her brow furrowed as she touched his rigid features. She rolled off him.

"Don't--" he said, fumbling for her in the dark.

Her smile was just a sliver of the moon now. "It's okay. I understand." It was her voice, but with the clipped tones of a jailer. "I feel the same way. It's our first time...To really feel something with another person--"

"I ask that you not analyse us," he growled, fumbling for the blankets in their dark bedroom. "Now is not the time for therapy."

Her hum was just as distant. "You can speak like a poet. But words and actions are different."

He had to be get away. Struggling from the bed, he stormed to the window. The prairie rolled away from their new house, glistening silver strands under the full moon. The storm had passed just as quickly as it had risen and washed the grassland clean.

The buzzing in his head was a thousand bees swarming around his body. She was there again, turning him from the window and into the bright summer day, with the peach blossoms drifting around them, the bees' whirling wings catching the petals.

He didn't fear being stung but his skin danced under their light touch until it was too hot to feel anything so delicate. Her mouth was much more insistent, demanding obedience to its pull. She was the queen and he the drone. They were wrapped in the hive, the whir of the wings deafening him to even his own cries, and then the honey flowed free.

"Come back to bed," she urged him as she stood. "Come to bed."

The sheets were blissfully cool on his still thrumming body but he had to hold her. She'd found yet another way to keep him at bay. As he slipped into sleep, he was thankful that at least she wasn't leaving him alone in the bed.

The hotel room's connecting door wasn't locked but he knew nothing but danger lay on the other side. He opened it slowly, She had just finished undressing and turned to face him. She did not cover her nudity. He looked at her bare breasts, her narrow waist, the shadow between her thighs.

She waited for his inspection to end. "I thought you gave me your answer in the hall."

"I've had time to think." His tie sliding through his shirt collar had the low hiss of a snake in grass.

She gave a sharp nod in compliance and then turned her back to him.

His breath caught. Her squared shoulders, her finely tuned spine, the swell of her buttocks, the strength quivering in her hips... She gave it all to him. His lips found her shoulderblades, hard-edged bones to be chewed and sucked dry.

She nudged his pelvis in a slow circle, drawing him into her pyre. Leaning on the dresser, she remained at his bidding and the fear was back. He understood her submission was a trap from which he may never escape.

There was no refusal for him; he fell into the ring of fire. As if reading his mind, her rusty chuckle, jarred by his thrusts, mocked him. "It'll be all right," she promised and he could barely breathe at the terror.

Her face in the mirror reflected his fear and he could finally feel release from their mutual disquiet. His hands smoothed her long back muscles as she undulated like a galloping deer. Her sleek neck bent to take his kisses.

It was in a kiss that he tasted her climax and her heat burned his tongue. Nestling his forehead at the back of her head, he rode his own.

Staggering to the bed, he fell onto his back. Stars danced before his eyes; the last bees looking for their shattered hive.

Her cool hand stroked his sweat-soaked chest, worrying at his sternum with the twist of her fingernail. It was replaced by the tip of a fine blade dipping into his skin, finding the way between the cartilage and muscle until his heart was exposed.

"Thank you, my love," he whispered against her temple as her fingers tightened around his beating heart.

Her hand traced lazy patterns on his chest and she laughed into the crook of his neck. "Thank you?"

"Yes."

"Well I guess I'll say thank you too then," she said dryly and pushed back her tangled hair.

"You're welcome." The stars before his vision had set, replaced by the coming dawn.

x

After dressing in the morning, he found Clarice in the barn, crouched by the pen holding a small cluster of sheep. The horses she had already purchased nickered at Lecter as he passed, expecting their morning hay but he ignored them as she had.

The ranch had come with the sheep and the lambs had been born soon after they'd moved in. Clarice cared for them with a disturbing detachment, a stiffness to her back suggesting she was waiting for the doctor to say something...

"I'd like lamb chops tonight," she expected to hear. His test--

One lamb was suckling on her fingertip. He stood behind her and cupped her head with his large palm. Her hand eased along the lamb's skull, taking a moment to stroke its floppy ear. Her strong fingers wrapped around the small animal's neck.

"No."

"It's no big deal," she murmured. "It doesn't matter anymore. It's just a farm animal. He'll be slaughtered and another will be born to replace him."

"Trying to prove you're strong, so strong that you can crush the past with one hand--I don't need that from you. You've given me everything, my dear..."

The lamb bleated as her grip tightened. "Perhaps I'm in the mood for chops myself--"

He closed his hand around her wrist. "I've bought some pork chops. I'll do them for dinner."

Her laugh echoed in the silent barn. He wrapped his arms around her and tugged her away from the pen. The lamb scampered back to his mother.

"Come inside, darling. I'll make you breakfast first."

She stood, staggering a bit and he steadied her.

"Make me some co'n bread?"

They ambled down the barn aisle arm in arm. She reached out to stroke the seeking nose of her new mare as they passed her stall.

"Please, do not ask such things of me," he protested, relieved for the moment to have gone. "I can only do so much."

When they passed through the heavy barn door, they stopped, stunned by the bright pink and blue dawn.

"It's a new day," she said, saying what he thinking.

She looked up at him, illuminated by the morning light. Full white beard, his hair long enough to brush the collar of his canvas work jacket. He'd already learned to stand with a bit of a slouch and to keep his large hands in his pockets.

Henry McGraw and his wife Lillian had been born, their final roles.

bugsfic @ 2014-01-19T21:01:00

2014-01-20T06:01:35Z

An X-filey sort post...

wendelah1 compiled all the entries for the xf_santa gift exchange. I've posted my contributions here, but there's a lot more amazing works to sample. If you haven't given it a look yet, do!

And just when every Phile caught their breath from that, we're onto Dana Scully's birthday celebration! She's turning... *deep breath* ...fifty years old. Where did time go for ALL of us?? Sign up to participate or just to enjoy the results at the comm:

Now onto a bit of self-pimping. It's funny how fanfic happens. I'd taken a break from writing after XF went off the air and my own life got busy. But when I saw I Want To Believe, the old impulse started right up...Only I didn't write any XF for years after all. I wrote a the first few chapters, but got caught up in Battlestar Galactica soon afterwards. I've since learned that you can finish a story started years ago, so I'm going to do just that. I'm glad that I waited, as a matter of fact. Current political events will fit perfectly into the story and I've learned so much with my years of BSG writing. I'm pretty excited to get started...As soon as I finish bsg_aussiegirl's birthday fic! (Busy, busy, busy...)

FIC: Closing the Case (2/2)

2014-01-17T05:54:40Z

Title: Closing the Case ~ Part 2
Author: bugs
Rating: T
Genre: Casefile, MSR

March 3, 1991:

"Agent Mulder, a pathologist down at Quantico has just busted your profile," William Patterson said smugly, tossing a report on Mulder's desk.

He snatched it up. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Patterson leaned on the desk's corner. "I went there myself to challenge her. She stood her ground. You know the type, one of those little girls who started applying to the FBI after Silence of the Lambs hit the bookstores."

Mulder shot his superior an unfriendly look. Sometimes Patterson acted like a man of his generation.

Four bodies had been found on or near the De Paul University campus in an eight month period, murdered by strangulation. Three women and one male, all students at the school, but with no discernible connection to each other. All laid out in a stiff, almost formal pose, flat on their backs and with special care to arranging the limbs. No sexual assault; the victims were still fully clothed.

Mulder had determined the killer was likely another student, possibly in one of the sciences with a rigid and linear outlook. The killing was secondary to the enjoyment he received from the control of possessing, moving and arranging the body. He probably had sexual dysfunction with late puberty triggering the urge to kill, but may also be an older student to have reached this level of proficiency and care.

Mulder and his small task force of two other agents had spent hours a day, seven days a week, pouring over student records. They had even found a primary suspect; Harold Schreiber, a PhD. candidate in physics, unmarried and with no personal relationships, and two juvenile arrests for arson. Mulder had interviewed him and although this did not follow the analytical protocol, found him creepy.

When the fourth body had appeared three weeks ago, it had given Mulder pause. It was a male victim. Although no sexual assault was present, he still felt the killer was displacing feelings toward women in these crimes. The female victims had all had their long hair placed carefully, almost like a wimple, and their clothes were arranged to assure that the limbs were completely covered and modest. Their eyelids were open, the eyes cast upward. The heads were tilted in such a way as to make it appear that the victims were looking heavenward. When Mulder laid the crime scene photographs out, side by side, the image that popped to mind was the Virgin Mary.

Although the latest victim had been male, he had a slight frame and shoulder length hair. It could have been mistaken identification by the killer and then faced with a dead male body, had continued with his ritual. Mulder was sticking with his profile.

But now some teaching pathologist...Mulder opened the folder with a snap...Doctor Dana Scully...had decided that the killer was a laborer of some sort.

Although all the bodies had undergone forensic examinations initially, Doctor Scully had been assigned the latest victim, Joseph Hartley, to review in one of her classes. Once she found a certain substance, she'd pulled the other victims' skin samples, looking for the same thing and had found it--powdered masonry grout; not something a physics scholar would have on his hands.

"Son of a bitch--" Mulder slapped the folder closed.

"Are you still going to pull Schreiber in?" Patterson asked, the small smile playing on his thin lips. Mulder had been his prized student but he enjoyed putting the younger man in his place when the rare opportunity arose.

"I want to talk to this Doctor Scully," Mulder grumbled. "Has she confirmed that this substance is in quantities to suggest a laborer? Maybe there's just some dust in the space where Schreiber stores the bodies before placing them to be found."

"Fox, I wanted to go over that point with you. Have you identified where Schreiber could be keeping the bodies?"

"That's why we need the search warrant," Mulder said, impatient.

"So the answer is no."

Mulder folded his arms and met his mentor's concerned gaze. "You don't feel as though I have enough to bring this guy in?"

"He lives in university housing; spends his breaks at his parents' house, but it's clear out in Pennsylvania. There's just no place to put a body."

"An empty laboratory--"

"Agents have done sweeps of all the science buildings with cadaver dogs off of your profile, Fox. No sign that human remains have been present."

"So you think that I should start looking for laborers?"

Patterson tipped his head forward.

"Fine. But I still want to check in with this Doctor Scully."

Over the next few days, Mulder played phone tag with Dana Scully, never getting more than her cool words on answering machines.

He learned that the university chapel was being remodeled on the campus. Construction had been ongoing for two years, but the finish workers had been applying stonework to the exterior for the past year. The mortar used in the work matched Doctor Scully's findings. He left one more message, grudgingly giving her that credit, but never heard anything back.

The construction had been completed the day Hartley's body had been found and the crew had dispersed. For this sort of skilled labor, few local men had been used.

Mulder and his team began to doggedly track down the men. Three were found immediately and cleared of suspicion. Three more were not. One appeared to have been an illegal Mexican immigrant using a false identity and could not be tracked.

In the next months, with no new deaths, Mulder was put on other cases which took up his time. His girlfriend Diana Fowley left him. And then he was finally assigned to the X-files section, and the Crucible Killer slipped from his consciousness.

X

January 13, 1999:

Mulder poked his head around Scully's hospital door. "You awake?"

Her eyelashes fluttered open. "If I wasn't, I am now."

Disregarding her tone, he entered and pulled a chair to her bedside.

"Bored yet?" he asked with the understanding of someone who'd been in exactly her spot too many times.

"Out of my gourd." She looked up at the muted television with discontentment. "I wish I could get into soaps."

"Who's Erica married this time?" he asked with a grin.

She ignored that. "Shouldn't you be back in DC by now? It's Wednesday.”

"Taking some vacation days," he said, rooting some sunflower seeds out of his pocket. "Not like I've got anything important going on back at headquarters." He popped a seed in his mouth.

"Personnel will be thrilled with you," she noted. "Finally using that mandatory leave."

He snagged her slack hand nearest him and twined his fingers loosely with hers. "See, you're good for something."

Blinking, she was finally able to focus clearly. "Mulder, what's that file you have with you? It's not a vacation if you've brought work with you."

"Why would I have a casefile? Not on any cases." Nonetheless, he tugged the thick folder from under his thigh.

Her rapid mind clicked. "Did you steal someone's case, Mulder?"

"Technically, it's my case. Or it was. And yours." The corner of his mouth lifted with the irony.

She settled back in the pillows. This was going to be better than a soap opera.

"In March, 1991, you shattered the profile done by a brilliant young investigator for a serial killer labeled the Crucible Killer--"

She cocked her eyebrow; no amount of opiate medication could keep it down.

"With dirt--"

"Mortar grout powder," she corrected.

"Whatever."

"Are there more victims?"

He was obviously going to take his time. He started with: "After you blew away my main suspect, I followed your lead and checked the construction workers on a campus renovation project. But the trail went cold and I--" He leaned over her hand and spoke his words like a kiss across her skin. "I...Went in another direction with my career."

"1991," she said slowly.

He straightened in the chair. "It was in part your fault."

"Me?" Her eyebrow shot back up.

"I was pissed off when I got your report. And right then I saw that profiling had become a game. It wasn't about the victims anymore but being the smartest guy in the room. I was going to come down to Quantico and kick your ass--"

"Too bad you didn't. When I saw your name on the initial report, I'd wanted to get a look at the FBI Golden Boy," she said drowsily, "heard you were hot."

He snorted. "Did you just take a hit off your pain meds pump and I didn't notice?"

She lolled her head on the pile of pillows and looked his lean body over. "I think it's remotely plausible that someone would find you hot, Agent Mulder."

Embarrassed, he slumped down in the chair. Sipping out of his shoes, he put his feet up on the bed.

She wasn't finished teasing him. "I was always surprised that you didn't mention this case when we first met. I assumed that you'd forgotten it."

"Do I forget anything?" he challenged her. "When you didn't bring it up, I thought you didn't want to talk about it, like some one night stand gone wrong."

She started to laugh, but then grimaced in pain. He stared at the ceiling rather than watch. With a groan, she rolled on her side and squeezed one of his feet.

"More bodies?" she prompted.

"Two; the most recent one last week. I wouldn't have even known, but I had some time to read the back pages of the Metro section in the Times while hanging out in the waiting room."

She made a throaty huff and rubbed her thumb along the ball of his foot. He hunched his shoulders in delight.

"Remind me of the particulars on his modus operandi," she asked.

He flipped open the file. "Victims are of both sexes, ranging in age from eighteen to thirty-one. The original four victims were all college students at De Paul University, suggesting the killer either attended or worked at the institution. The deaths stopped after the completion of a chapel restoration at the school, also suggesting a connection. That was in 1991."

He turned over a separator in the thick file. "Two new deaths, showing the same posing of the victims. Both located in Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the Hudson from New York," he said, nodding toward the window. "Hannah Morton, a twenty-seven year old clerk at an art supply store. The second victim, found last Saturday, was Rick Bedford, nineteen year old student who lived in his mother's basement. Had the same long straight hair as the sole male victim in the De Paul killings, as well as a slight frame that may be mistaken for a female if the perpetrator makes impulsive selections rather than stalking a possible victim."

Scully broke in, "But the crimes suggest a deliberate, well-planned orchestration."

He waved her off and continued, "When I last worked the case, we had three laborers connected to the De Paul chapel construction as persons of interest that my team wasn’t able to locate. Outside of the incredibly restrictive visiting hours here, I've slipped into the Newark office and led them to believe that I'm on the case--"

"Mulder--"

He went on unheeded. "Seeing if we could track these last three men down. And I think I have my guy." His eyes were bright.

"You thought you had your man seven years ago." She was playing piggy with his toes through his sock.

He pushed his cheek out with his tongue. "You wanna hear the evidence or not?"

She watched him from under her drooping eyelids. "If you only could do a slideshow here."

He swung down his feet and started laying out photographs on her bed. "Here are the original four victims and our two new ones. I'll bet there's more out there, but these are the six we have."

She became more alert as she looked carefully at each one. "The deliberate posing--"

"Yes. But I think there's something more specific to it."

She slowly nodded. "Something..."

He waited. But she only asked, "Your suspect?"

"Jesus Montero, or at least, that's the identity that he stole in 1987 when he started working for construction companies that report to the IRS."

"Are you seeing a religious angle?"

He grinned with excitement. She was going down the same route as he for once. "Yes. I see them as saint-like figures with these poses. That was the main component of my initial profile of the killer--"

Motioning for the folder, she furrowed her brow. "Do you have a list of the dates of the deaths?"

"Right here." He reached over and flipped through until he found the right page.

"Show me one of the most recent victim's pictures."

The body was posed with the left hand raised and it was folded with the ring finger and pinkie folded to meet the thumb in the sign of a blessing.

"Just like the others…To create these elaborate poses before advanced rigor set in, he'd have to have complete privacy," she mused, "once the body was rigid, he could then place it where he wanted it to be discovered."

"My team searched for a house or building on the campus, but I wonder...A construction worker, traveling in a van?"

"I could see that. But…" she said, still looking at Rick's photo. "The date on this one?"

“January fourth."

"Damn, not what I expected."

"What do you mean?"

"That date of the Catholic calendar is for Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton."

He raised his eyebrow. “I knew you were attending church more regularly, but to the point that you have the saints days memorized?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Find my bag in the closet. Ritter brought my things over from my hotel.”

Mulder’s lip curled at the unfortunate agent’s name, but he retrieved her well-worn overnight bag from the hospital room’s closet.

“I should have a calendar in there,” she said, pushing her hair back from her damp forehead. “My mother gave it to me this Christmas in my stocking--“

“Don’t work on this if you’re too tired--“

“The calendar, Mulder.”

“You still get a stocking from your mom?” he asked as he carefully picked through her underwear.

“Don’t knock it until you have it,” she said, then looked sorry that she had.

Ignoring the tense moment, he found the leather-covered booklet and gave it to her. She flipped to December 1998. “When was the female victim killed?”

“December eighteenth.”

“No saint celebrated on that day.”

“The killer could still have a religious fixation without going to that depth of detail. Perhaps he kills the victim on the correct saint day,” Mulder suggested.

She shook her head slowly. “No. If he’s going to this amount of effort, I expect him to have every detail in place and it’s for public display. It’s as though he’s creating his own icons, but they can’t just be a generic saint. They have to fulfill a role.” She wasn't put off her trail. "Do you have copies of the crime scene mapping?"

He dug through Rick Bedford’s file and found the drawing from the crime scene.

Squinting at the crude map, she said, "East. The head is facing east."

"Does that mean anything?"

"Eastern Orthodox face the east to pray. Catholics don't." She lay the paper down and stared at the ceiling. "What if the dates match the Orthodox Christian Julian calendar and not the Gregorian one?"

Revitalized, he stood. “I want to check this out. Find a Julian calendar first--“

She urged him to go right then: "It's New York. You can get anything within a block of wherever you are."

He shrugged into his jacket.

"Not to rub it in, but I think I just blew away your profile again."

He straightened his tie. "What?"

"I assume Montero is Catholic. If this killer is an Eastern Orthodox follower, it's not him."

Her sly smile made his heart twist. "You haven't won yet," he murmured, leaning over to kiss her temple.

She snared his ear, holding him close for a moment. "Yes, I have," she whispered back.

The dates of all the victims did match saint days of the Eastern Orthodox calendar. However, when Mulder tracked down the two remaining stone masons, neither was practiced an Orthodox Christian faith. He typed up a report nonetheless, recommending that the entire construction crew's backgrounds be checked and sent it to the tactical team leader currently assigned to the Crucible Killer case.

Scully was transferred back to D.C. for her rehabilitation. Mulder joined her one afternoon at the physical therapist's, supposedly to be her cheering section but he just slumped on a roll of mats, chewing on the straw of his now empty soda cup and made her uncomfortable with his brooding silence.

Carefully lifting a small weight in an arm curl, she finally gave him a virtual shove. “What is it, Mulder?”

“What’s what?”

“What’s bothering you?”

“Nothin’.” The straw switched to the other side of his mouth.

“What’re you working on these days?”

He snorted. “Working…”

“What did you hear back from… Bain, was it? Agent in charge on the Crucible case?”

“Nothin’,” he repeated.

“Nothing? As in, no credit when they made the arrest?”

“Nothing as in, not a word.”

“Did you follow up?”

He glowered from under his brows. “Yes. And was told to fuck off. The pathologist assigned to the case was able to find a partial palm print on Hannah Morton’s back and they think they’re going to be able to find a match in the national database without any fancypants profile, to quote Bain directly.”

“Mulder--“

“They have the report. They have to follow up.”

They looked at each other, defeat etched on their faces.

“When do you think that you’ll be back to work?” he asked.

“Work,” she snorted. “Another week until desk duty.”

“Good. We can get back to our game of paperclip checkers.” Mulder finally smiled and she smile back.

Scully returned to work but then they received the phone call that Cassandra Spender had reappeared. The Crucible Killer case was forgotten for more important matters.

X

October 17, 2004:

Scully let Leyla Harrison into her apartment with a sense of dread.

The younger woman fought tears as she looked at Scully. "It's so wonderful to see you again, Agent...That is Doctor Scully."

"I'm happy to see you too, Agent Harrison," Scully said flatly. "It's been a long time."

Leyla stood in the middle of the studio rather than sitting anywhere. "Only a few years, but it's felt like a lifetime."

Scully decided to play dumb. "What are you doing here, Agent Harrison? Surely you haven't run across some stray receipts that you need me to code properly?"

"No, Doctor. I work out of the Richmond field office now. I've moved to research. The FBI found new uses for my encyclopedic memory."

Going to the kitchenette, Scully offered to make tea.

"That would be great. It's another cold night."

"I always called it morgue weather," Scully said as she started her electric teapot. "Mulder never even noticed, but it was the exact temperature for keeping bodies refrigerated."

Leyla bit her lower lip. "Doctor Scully, I want to extend my sympathies--"

It took Scully a moment to realize what the young agent meant. "Thank you."

"I’ve been assigned to a current case and was asked to pull all previous files. When I saw your names, it was a jolt from the past."

"A lifetime," Scully echoed as she placed two teabags in two mugs. She forced on a smile and invited Leyla to sit at the small dining table against the wall. "When were you transferred to Richmond?"

"I requested it last year. I got married, you see."

"Jeffrey?"

"Oh no. His name's Kyle." The young woman dropped her head. "He's a programmer at one of the software companies in the area. We wanted to live in a quieter place, more family-oriented..."

Of course. A young woman would want children, a house with a yard and a two car garage. Scully had thought about such things at one point of her life..."We all have to grow up sometime," Scully said briskly, moving to turn off the screaming teapot.

After placing the steaming mugs on the table, she asked, "Are you here to interview me on the Hampton case? Is that your new case?”

"I haven't been assigned to do interviews." Harrison dug through her soft-sided briefcase. "In fact, the lead investigator has been told specifically not to interview you. Orders from DC."

So Mulder wasn't the only one who was dead to the Bureau. Scully pulled the teabag from her mug and forced on a puzzled expression. "That may cost them the case. I'm a suspect with the police, after all. Surely I have some information that they can use."

"Doctor Scully, no one could suspect you--"

Scully stared unseeingly at the blank wall, her pale hands wrapped tightly around the hot mug. "Olivia Hampton found out about Agent Mulder...His death sentence...That I'd had a child and now it was gone. She put two and two together and got five. That my son had been taken away by Child Protective Services. Hardly the background a Catholic facility is looking for in a pediatrician. She could have ruined my career before it even started."

"You didn't tell her the truth?" breathed Leyla.

Scully gave a mirthless laugh. "No."

"None of that matters though. Tuttle, the agent in charge, is certain that Mrs. Hampton was killed by the Crucible Killer."

"But I'm convinced it's the husband,” said Scully. “He could have seen the other killings in the news, and patterned the murder of his wife after those," she suggested.

"No, Doctor Scully. You remember that palm print from '99?"

"Yes."

"It matched one found on her shoe. That hasn't been released to the public of course--" Leyla opened the folder and slide across two copies of palm prints.

Scully looked at them. The best fingerprint expert at the Quantico lab, Tom Slater, had signed off on the verifications.

"It can't be..." she said slowly. “I guess...” She passed a hand across her eyes. “Agent Mulder had urged that the rest of the construction crew be checked—if any were Orthodox Christians. It wasn't done in 1999...”

“No,” Leyla said, her eyes bright. “But I've done it now.”

“And?”

“Nothing,” the young agent said, her shoulders slumping. “There were two, one Ukrainian and one Lithuanian. But the Ukrainian returned to his country in 2000, and the other was permanently disabled in an accident in 1995.”

“They're both out.” Thoughtful, Scully removed the teabag from her mug.

"I'm going to leave a copy of the files," Leyla said, rising from her chair. “If you could take the time to review them and see if there's anything we're missing--”

Scully stared up at her in shock. "You can't do this, Agent Harrison. Your career--"

Leyla gave a bitter chuff. "They chose to ignore your work once before and it's allowed a killer to remain free to murder again. It's worth the risk. You left the Bureau in good standing. I trust you, Doctor Scully. I trust you to solve this case."

Scully stayed at the table, too weak to stand, as the agent let herself out of the apartment.

X

“A present for you.” Scully tossed the files on the coffee table in front of Mulder.

He started pawing through them and she turned away from the way his face lit up with excitement. She'd just become one of his secret sources.

“Who gave you these?”

“Leyla Harrison showed up today.” She explained that their work had never been followed up in 1999, and the dead end at which the case stood.

“Agent Harrison thinks that we…That I can see something that the Bureau missed,” she told him.

Mulder began to divide the papers within the folders into neat piles. “We need to start over then.”

Scully rubbed her eyes. She'd come off a twenty-four hour shift, and had given up two hours of precious sleep to bring Mulder the files. It didn't look as though any was coming her way soon. She sat at the end of the couch.

“The first victims were associated with the university,” he mused. “The New Jersey victims were not tied together in any way... But only two, then nothing until now.”

He peered up at Scully, who'd been allowing her eyelids to drift shut. “What does that spacing suggest to you?”

“Our perp has spent time in jail. Or perhaps didn't have the opportunity to stage these elaborate killings.”

He nodded. “It does require space, solitude...” He placed a crime scene photo before Scully. “Hannah Morton. The first New Jersey victim. A sales clerk in an arts supply store...”

Scully visualized the chapel on the De Paul campus. She'd visited it while attending a class last year, as though she'd somehow sensed this old case would rise again. She had examined the sculptures in the stations of the cross, done in a Byzantine style, much like Orthodox icons...

“An artist,” she suggested. “A sculptor.”

“Harrison could check the art department student list for '91, see if any happen to have criminal records--”

“Back to your original profile?”

“Wrong major though,” he grumbled.

Scully slowly pulled out her cell phone. “I'll get Harrison on it.”

She took a deep breath as she waited for the agent to pick up, preparing her performance. Fortunately, the best lies were rooted in the truth. She mentioned visiting the chapel, noticing the sculptures, and was now wondering if they’d been affixed with the same grout--perhaps the artists should be checked. All the while, Mulder hovered at her shoulder and she resisted the urge to slap him, knowing his yelp would alert Harrison.

“Doctor Scully, you’re amazing!” gushed Leyla.

“No, just a fresh set of brain cells,” Scully said, cutting off the younger woman’s enthusiasm.

“I’ll call you back as soon as soon as I have some names,” Harrison said.

Mulder was close enough to hear and his face beamed. Scully nailed him with a quelling stare. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said to both Mulder and Harrison. “You should keep me out of it.”

When she hung up, she told Mulder that she was going to bed, and to have her dinner ready at five o’clock. Leaving him slumped on the couch, flipping dejectedly through the files, she went upstairs to their bed.

Of course she couldn’t sleep. Lying in the dim room, her mind kept replaying conversations with Olivia Hampton. How the woman always stood six inches too close. The way the older woman’s eager gaze held Scully’s until she was forced to look away, her skin chilled.

It had been so long since Scully had had female friends. She’d hoped in her new life that would return, but of course, in the irony of careful what you wish for, she’d been dogged by this woman’s grasping and forced intimacy. In constantly pushing her away, had Scully missed the signs of a killer in the shadows, stalking Olivia Hampton?

Olivia Hampton administered the grant which funded Scully’s position, and she’d been able to coerce Scully into attending parties and events at her home. Scully visualized the family estate that the Hamptons lived on, the deep woods around it, where a man could lurk. The many outbuildings that sat out at the edges, perfect cover for someone to observe the home. The silent servants and sullen twenty year old son, who spent as little time in Olivia’s presence as possible, not watching out for her either.

The woman’s chatter, her armor against others' contempt and indifference, washing over Scully, who had so many more important things to think about…Caught between sleep and dreams, Scully forced herself to hear Olivia’s banal chatter and actually listen to the words.

“Val in our resident artist…Val is so talented…Val will be famous someday…”

Tossing the covers aside, Scully struggled out of the bed. But when she opened the bedroom door, Mulder was hovering there, clutching the evidence file from the Hampton’s home. “Scully, did Olivia Hampton ever mention a Valentin Azarov?”

“Val. Val is a man?” Scully combed back her hair behind her ears as though to clear her mind. She didn’t even bother to note that they’d arrived at the same conclusion at the same time. They were back in the Taurus, heading down the dark road once again.

“He’s a small-time burglar that Avery Hampton represented pro bono. Recently paroled from a two year stint on a parole violation for his original sentence, served 1992 to 1998,” Mulder told her, his eyes bright with excitement.

She tugged him over to sit on the bed and took the file from him. “Any idea if he attended De Paul?”

Mulder peered over her shoulder at the paperwork that she was leafing through. “That wasn’t asked in his interview on Thursday. But he’s living on her estate in a guesthouse--“

“Yes, she mentioned him a lot but I just wasn’t listening,” Scully said with a sigh. “Yet…I can’t see how such a deliberate killer would take a victim that could be tied to him so easily--“

“I’d have Agent Harrison check him out.”

Scully pulled on her robe, then headed back downstairs to find her cell phone, Mulder in close pursuit. She tried Harrison’s work number and got her voicemail. Her cell phone had the same result. She called the work number again and after leaving a message, pressed the pound key to reach the receptionist. “I'm trying to reach Agent Harrison.”

Mulder stood close, his head cocked to listen.

“I was expecting a call from her,” Scully explained. “Is she in a meeting?” She tried to put authority in her voice, as though she may be another agent, but all the while, hearing the shake in her bad liar voice, knowing her name was showing up on caller I.D. for the operator.

“Agent Harrison is signed out for the day, ma'am,” the receptionist said blandly.

Scully hung up. “Dammit,” she growled.

“She just went home?” Mulder said, incredulous.

“No, she's gone to the Hampton estate to check on Azarov. I bet she got a hit from the student list.”

“Why would she do that instead of taking it to the lead agent?”

"Because that's what Mulder and Scully would do.”

“So what are Mulder and Scully going to do?” Mulder was already putting on his coat, answering his own question.

“Mulder, you can't come--”

“But you're going, Doctor Scully?”

She was getting her handgun from the lock box in the closet. “I can't let that girl go in with no backup--”

“Just call the police, Scully.”

She quickly loaded the weapon. “And say what? What happens when they start to look closely at Dana Scully? Find this house? And you in it?”

“I just keep getting in your way,” Mulder said, shoving his hands in his coat pockets.

She just shook her head and found a dark jacket in the closet to wear, slipping the gun in one of the pockets.

“Let me drive then.”

“You don't have a license.”

“Fine, I'll ride shotgun.”

Scully never had liked working cases without Mulder. Not that she was afraid but because he'd just always been there and knew her moves. His hand would be there to give her support when she rose from a body, or push over the locked doors. Now he could only be her ghost partner without an identity, let alone the carry permit that she had.

“Okay, but you stay in the car.”

X

When Scully pulled her car to a halt under the trees by the Hampton’s guest cottage, Mulder tried again: "Scully, I'm not just going to stay in this car--"

"I should have left you at home. Hang onto this cell phone and if necessary, dial 911.” She pressed the phone into his tense hand.

She got out of the car and leaned in through her open door. “Stay here," she repeated, low and hard.

Mulder watched her bright head bob around in the encroaching dusk, then disappear into the shrubs by the cottage, his fingers of one hand dancing on the car door handle while the other clutched the phone.

Approaching the small house, Scully checked through the windows, but it was dark and silent in that ominous way that always made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She considered knocking, but saw a large shed with sliding barn doors, one standing half open. She noticed a FBI issue Ford Taurus parked on the other side. Keeping her ear cocked for any movement, she checked the car, finding it empty and locked.

That just left the shed. Groping in her pockets, she found her weapon and a flashlight. Slipping the safety off on the gun, she held her the flashlight above the barrel and entered the inky darkness, snapping the light on.

“Federal agent!” she called out. The lying was coming easier and easier today.

A dozen faces stared back at her and her breath caught in her throat as she tried to cover them all at once. Busts in stone, all in the style of Byzantine icons. She was getting closer to Val. Then she heard the faint sound of a struggle coming from the back of the building. She eased between pedestals holding half-done creations in stone, their solemn eyes following her as she sought the missing agent and the killer.

“Freeze!” she barked as her cold blue light shone on two bodies brawling. One had fair hair and a high voice rasping for help. The other was larger, stronger, and huffed like a bull goring the fallen agent. But she was fighting back. In the flashlight's beam, two hands were wrestling over a gun held in one. Suddenly, it was torn free and hurled past Scully into the darkness behind her.

“Azarov, I said freeze!”

Leyla Harrison’s terrified features looked beseechingly at Scully and her mouth gaped, unable to speak. An arm was wrapped around her neck and a gun was pressed to her temple. The killer was hiding even now, lurking behind the woman's head. He peered out, and snarled, “Stop right there or I’ll kill her.”

It is not an Eastern European voice; it's the sneering drawl of Avery Hampton.

The bogeyman was in the dark, he did want pretty young women. The smooth face of the lawyer contorted and morphed, becoming Donnie Pfaster’s bland death mask, then the grimacing demon visage she’d seen right before she pulled the trigger.

She’d do it again, but she knew that she was no longer the shot that she’d once been. Her fine motor skills were being honed for another area now. The shadowed right socket of his skull was her bullseye, but Leyla’s pale face kept sliding across her vision.

“I’m sorry, Harrison,” she offered--was it that she may kill the young woman? That her hero worship was so misplaced?

Leyla panted: “Agent Scully, do what you have to do.”

“Shut up, you two bitches! No one’s gonna do anything!”

There was the roar of a gunshot and Scully blinked. Her own weapon was still cold in her hand. Harrison was falling toward her, her pretty face splattered with blood, but she was screaming, loud and true, not the gurgle of a headshot victim.

Avery was the one curling to the ground like a burning leaf, then lost in the darkness.

Scully took Leyla to her, holding her shaking body close and swung her flashlight around the black barn.

The beam found a tall man and his white face with his wide mouth in a shy smile.

"Hey Boo," Scully said, her voice shaky.

"Hey Scout," came a reply and Fox Mulder stepped out the shadows, the thrown away gun hanging at his side.

Leyla gasped, "Agent Mulder--"

He smiled down at Harrison. "Not Agent anymore. Just plain old Fox."

She thought for a long moment, then shook her head. "No, I couldn't possibly call you Fox."

"Okay, Mulder it is," he said.

"We don't have much time," said Scully, "before you need to call this in." She took the gun from Mulder and wiped it clean of his prints. "Here, let me show you how to hold your gun so the fingerprints are correct for the shot angle," she told Leyla.

Mulder was already checking Hampton’s body. “It’s going to be tough, but thankfully he’s not much taller than you, Harrison.”

“I came to check on Valentin Azarov and when there was no answer at the cottage, looked in this shed,” Harrison said, beginning to form her report already. “I found a freezer at the back--“ She motioned into the darkness.

Scully pointed her flashlight and spotlighted a large standing freezer.

“I had my own flashlight…” Obviously still in shock, Leyla looked around numbly. When she found it, she turned it back on as well, adding to the illumination.

“There’s a body in the freezer…Male, mid-thirties, resembles the mug shot for Azarov.”

Mulder moved to the freezer and after pulling his sleeve over his hand, opened it. “Looks like he’s been here about a week.”

Scully joined him. “He couldn’t have been Olivia’s killer.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t kill the other recent victims,” Mulder said. “You were right, Scully.”

“Avery killed them? To create a cover to murder his wife?”

Even though it had been her original theory, she couldn’t believe the cold-bloodedness necessary to perpetuate this sort of crime.

“We’ll let the F.B.I. pull together all the details and finally close the case,” Mulder told the women. “But Scully and I better get out of here.”

They were at the doorway when Harrison called after them. “Thank you.”

“It wasn’t anything--“ Scully started to say.

“Of course, thank you for saving my life,” Harrison said. “But thank you for giving my faith back. It’s been tough to go to work some days.”

“I know the feeling,” Mulder said with a humorless laugh. “I’m just sorry that it came to this. I let this case go too many times in the past.” He looked down at Scully. “There just seemed to always be something more important to do.”

Scully furrowed her brow, worried at his tone. “It was important, Mulder. It still is.”

Unsure, Harrison raised a hand. “I don’t suppose that I’ll see you again...”

“We’ll be here if you need our help,” Mulder assured her. “Think of us as your secret agents.” Now his laugh was filled with joy.

Scully tugged his hand. “We’ve got to go, Mulder.”

Harrison watched them walk into the darkness, swallowed by the night. The last thing she heard was, “Admit it, Mulder. You’ve always wanted to live in the Bat Cave--“

X

Leyla Harrison skimmed details of the final report on the case of Crucible Killer.

Valentin Azarov, an art student at De Paul University in 1991, was credited with murdering four fellow students. After serving a sentence for burglary, he had two more victims while living in Hoboken, New Jersey before being returned to prison on a parole violation in Richmond, Virginia when he was found loitering outside a young woman’s home in possession of burglaring tools. It’s assumed that he was targeting her for his next victim. He was represented by Avery Hampton, who was shown to have visited Azarov numerous times while he served the two year sentence. It’s believed that Azarov confessed his murders to Hampton who began to formulate a plan to murder his wife. Subsequent investigations by the local police detective, Areti, discovered Hampton had numerous profiles on websites for anonymous sexual encounters. His wife was aware of his activities and had threatened him with divorce if he did not stop.

Wanting to retain his financial and social position, Hampton planned the murder, using Azarov as a cover. After Azarov was released from prison, Hampton invited him to stay at their estate, encouraging his wife to see the artist as a protégée. Whether Hampton first tried to induce Azarov into killing his wife can’t be known. But the two murders which occurred after Azarov’s release both deviate enough from the original crimes that it’s appears that Hampton carried them out, including the death of his wife, which happened four days after Azarov’s death happened. Hampton planted the palm print on his wife’s shoe using the dead man’s hand. By retaining the body, it seems as though he planned to stage a suicide with Azarov’s body on their property, but would assure that it would not be found until decomposition was advanced enough to make pinpointing the time of death impossible.

Special Agent Leyla Harrison earned special commendation for her role in uncovering Avery Hampton’s conspiracy--

Checking over her shoulder, Leyla saw that none of the other researchers were watching her. Rising, she went to the copier and made copies of the final report. Sliding the pages into an envelope, she addressed it to Doctor Dana Scully, care of Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital. Regardless of their new lives, or the quest they were still on, she knew that Mulder and Scully would want to see the case through to the end.

~ The End

FIC: Closing the Case (1/2)

2014-01-17T05:13:27Z

Title: Closing the Case
Author: bugs
Rating: T
Genre: Casefile, MSR
Word Count: 11,000
Summary: Mulder's tucked away in the country and Scully is dedicated to her new career, but one last case calls for resolution.
A/N: bsg_aussiegirl had to read it to make sure there were no plot hole whoppers. That's what friends are for!

This story was written for xf_santa's gift exchange for maidenjedi. I got a bit carried away with her wishlist and tried to wedge them all in one story...Er...And thus it got rather away from me!

October 12, 2004:
Dead woman reported on bike path running along east parking lot of Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital.

Detective Areti arrived at the same time as a pair of patrolmen. He'd been at Casey's Saloon when the call came through on his walkie-talkie. Popping a mint, he blundered into the dripping undergrowth, his palm resting on his weapon. Flashlight beams cut through the wet blackness, finding the narrow asphalt path, the looming trees, then red hair twined in glistening dark grass, a shock of white skin with a smear of mud on her earlobe. Dead, and from the still, unnatural position, murdered.

A little girl was hunched over the body, close enough to breathe on the clammy skin. Her lank hair was three shades lighter than the body's, glowing gold in their lights.

"Step back," Detective Areti ordered.

The girl raised her face, a pale sphere with a slash of red lips. "I'm a doctor," she insisted. She was not a child after all, but a slight woman, bundled in a heavy trenchcoat.

"But this lady's already dead," Sergeant Croft said, the senior patrolman.

"I just want to check something..." The woman did not touch the body, but examined the stark purple ligature marks on the wrinkled neck with her quick gaze. Then she inspected the hands, still wavering close, but never touching.

Areti said again: "Doctor, you can't--"

"This wasn't the location of her death," she mused. "Her body's been posed post-mortem. Please note that I did not move the body, or touch it beyond checking for a pulse."

"So you didn't try to revive her?" the detective said, his bushy eyebrows raised.

She finally looked up at him. "The moment I touched her wrist, I felt from the skin texture that she was deceased for hours." She stood, pushing her wet hair from her face.

The detective found it unsettling that she referred to this dead woman as a body, particularly when she added dispassionately, "It's Olivia Hampton. She volunteered in the hospital's pediatrics' department, fundraising, but had no meetings this week. I saw her last Tuesday but had not seen her since."

"So you're a doctor here at Our Lady of Sorrows?" the detective asked.

"I have a fellowship there, yes," she said carefully.

She looked around. "Olivia would ride her bicycle to the hospital along this path. I'd have your men search, but I doubt they're going to find it. It started raining this morning around six when I went outside the hospital for fresh air but it's dry under the body. I passed here at eight last night and she wasn't present then. With the rainy weather, it appears that no one has come along today to find her--"

"Why are you on this path, Doctor?" asked Areti, digging out his notebook. He gave some quick directives to the patrolmen as he awaited her answer.

She creased her brow. "I live in an apartment off Whipple." She waved her arm down the path. "I used this shortcut to get home."

"At this time of night?" Croft asked.

"Why not?"

"Women don't usually feel comfortable...Alone...At night in the dark..." The patrolman floundered under her level gaze.

"I'm not afraid of bogeymen," she said.

"Murders and rapists aren't bogeymen," Croft said, looming over her. "They're sons of bitches who just love little things like you."

She didn't back away, only tilted her head up to hold his gaze. Her upper lip slowly curled into a sneer. Turning on his heel, the patrolman stormed off without another word.

Areti broke the tension. "You were walking home. You found the body. Did you see anyone suspicious around?"

"I told you. She's been here for hours." Moving to stand at Mrs. Hampton's feet, she scanned the body again. "There's something familiar about this one--"

"You said that you knew the victim," pointed out Areti.

Croft returned with a bright tarp and a roll of caution tape. The patrolmen covered the body and the doctor stepped back.

"Somewhere else--" She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. It's the husband."

"Excuse me?" said Areti.

The doctor tucked her hands in her coat pockets. "When Olivia chatted with me on Tuesday, she said that she believed her husband was going to kill her."

"And you didn't report it?"

The woman shrugged but her face was contrite. "I just took it for the ramblings of a woman with very little excitement in her terribly unhappy life."

"She's had some excitement now," Areti noted. "Your place is close?"

The doctor nodded.

"Let's get inside out of this rain," Areti said, "I'll need your full statement."

"Of course," she said, sounding exhausted. When she passed him, he heard a hitch in her breathing and knew that she had smelled the booze on him.

x

The apartment was only a studio, the sort of place interns and residents rented. A fold-out couch on one wall, and a microwave, a mini fridge, table and two chairs on the opposite, with a bathroom in a corner of the room. All that was needed for the few hours off shift.

But this place was so coldly impersonal, it made Areti's skin rise in goosebumps. There was no television, no pictures on the wall. The only bookshelf held nothing but medical text books. One hardback novel was on the side table; Lovely Bones.

The woman hung up her coat and sat on the couch. She did not offer refreshments. Before they could start, the doorbell rang again.

"My partner," Areti said and let Carl Tide in.

The doctor started her statement without being asked: "My name is Dana Katherine Scully. S-C-U-L-L-Y. Date of birth, 2, 23,64. This is my address. My phone number is 757-555-1231. I’m a physician in residency at Our Lady, doing a fellowship in pediatric neurology through De Paul University."

The detectives exchanged interested looks. She knew the drill.

"You're sure the victim was Olivia Hampton?" Areti asked. She nodded. "Do you have a phone number for her husband?"

Doctor Scully flipped opened her cell phone and scrolled through the names, then read a number off. "That's their house. I assume he can be reached there."

Tide took it down. Areti told him, "The victim's purse wasn't around. Patrol is checking the bushes. We'll call Avery Hampton and see if he's noticed his wife is missing; take it from there."

He turned his attention back to the doctor. "You said that you believe her husband killed her?"

"I said that she believed that her husband was going to kill her--" she corrected him.

He repeated his earlier question: "And you didn't call the authorities?"

The doctor took a deep breath. "If you'd let me finish--I didn't believe that he was really going to kill her. It was the sort of unhappiness she exhibited. I didn't take it seriously."

"All right, she was unhappy. What does that mean, besides believing her husband wanted to kill her?"

"She was a gossip. Always poking and prodding into people's personal lives. She would snoop in police records online, search newspaper archives--it went beyond salacious gossip. When I first saw her dead and laid out as if sleeping, I thought she'd killed herself--"

"But it's not easy to manually strangle yourself."

She flexed her jaw but had no retort.

"And had Mrs. Hampton gossiped about you?"

The pale eyes flicked up; they'd been focused on her clenching hands. "She had a different interest in me."

"Oh?" said Tide silkily.

"She wanted to be my friend."

"And you didn't want her as a friend," Areti suggested.

Doctor Scully shrugged her narrow shoulders. "I don't need any, particularly someone like her."

"Was she annoying about it?"

"Yes. She didn't have personal boundaries. She found out some things about me and thought that would make me be her friend."

Areti leaned forward. "Blackmail?"

"She didn't seem to have the self-awareness to see it that way."

"But you felt threatened."

"I was concerned."

"What sort of threats did she make?"

"They weren't threats. She simply told me what she'd found out."

The older detective flipped to a fresh page on his palm-sized notebook. "Would you care to share these threats of hers?"

"It's not relevant to the case."

"We are probably the best judges of that."

She pursed her mouth; her bowed lips kept drawing Areti's gaze. "I feel my judgment is sound."

He waited.

Finally, she spoke grudgingly. "One thing you'll find out soon enough...I used to be an FBI agent. That's why I was checking the body...Old habit, I guess."

"Quite a career change," he commented.

"I was a forensic pathologist for the Bureau as well. I have simply changed specialties." She raised her chin, daring him to say something.

"This was your secret she was holding over you?"

"It's the past. It's not something that I want my coworkers to know." She looked from one detective to the other. "It tends to make people nervous." They shifted in their chairs.

Areti gave her his most endearing smile, showing all his tobacco-stained teeth. "As one professional to another, who do you think killed her?"

"As much as I hate to feel that I was disregarding a true threat because of my own discomfort with this woman's inappropriate behavior toward me, I assume it's her husband. Statistics bear that out; she was an upper-class white woman, found in her workplace. There's a very low crime rate in the area. The last stranger on stranger murder was over ten years ago. And the body was moved after she was killed; this was no random crime like a purse snatching gone wrong."

"Did she say why her husband would have wanted to kill her?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"I mean, besides the usual reasons why men kill their wives."

"She said it was for her money. If he divorced her, he would get nothing."

Detective Tide finally broke into the questioning. "Her husband is a hot shot defense attorney with Reese, Lester and Collins. He's not hurting for money."

The doctor nodded. "Yes, but Olivia has a great deal of money. Ten fold his income." She looked around her dumpy dwelling. "People become accustomed to a lifestyle and aren't willing to give it up."

Areti rose and his partner followed. "I think that's all for now. We'll probably be speaking to you again--"

Her face was grim. "I'm sure."

She followed them to the door and they heard the deadbolt shoot closed behind them. The detectives made their way down the stairs to the parking lot.

"Lesbians?" suggested Tide. "That would be hot news. They worked at a Catholic hospital after all."

"Dykes don't usually kill each other," said Areti. "To use her statistical measures," he added with a sneer.

"This old broad hits on our pretty doctor. Doctor pushes her off, she keeps coming, doctor strangles her, repulsed by her attentions. Then moves the body to the bike path--"

"You're thinking like a man," said Areti. "That's how a man would react if some dude squeezed his dick."

Tide shrugged. "I'm a man. What can I say."

Areti looked up at the drab apartment building. The light was off in Dana Scully's apartment already. "But there's definitely something not kosher about our good doctor."

X

Mulder slowly opened his eyes and looked up into Scully's disgruntled face. "When did you get home?" he rasped, rubbing his face.

"Just now. Glad to see your cat-like reflexes are on alert." She dumped her purse on the table and stripped off her coat. "There's trouble."

He was immediately awake. Swinging his legs off the couch, he jumped up.

"I found a body at work. Murder."

"Just can't get away from the business, Agent Scully." He headed to the kitchen to make coffee. He didn't like the depth of the dark circles under her eyes.

She trailed after him. "I think it's just going to turn out to be the husband."

"You know her?"

"It's Olivia Hampton; that woman that I told you about."

"Interesting." He leaned against the counter beside the burbling coffeemaker. "Are you the prime suspect?"

She poked him in the ribs with her elbow and got down two mugs from the cupboard.

"But the odd thing is...Her body was posed...And it seemed familiar, like an old case..." She passed a thin hand across her eyes. "My brain can only hold so much information and with the upload I've had to do during this peds residency, I seem to have overwritten some important data."

Sweeping aside her lank hair, he rubbed her neck, his strong thumbs finding the hard knots. "Describe it to me."

"She was flat on her back. Legs together and straight, toes pointed up. In fact, stones were used to keep her feet in position."

He made a noise in the back of his throat, but let her keep talking.

"One hand was flat on the heart, but other hand upright, and the fingers folded to make the sign of blessing--"

"The Crucible Killer."

She leaned against him, tired to the depth of her bones. “Yes, that one." Then she shook her head. "It can't be. He was last working in the late nineties, had move up to New Jersey--"

"No, Scully. He's taken two victims within fifty miles of the hospital in the past six months."

"What?" She furrowed her brow. "Had you told me?"

He filled the coffee cups. "No."

"Why not?"

Handing her the steaming mug, he stared at his feet, rubbing his loose sock toe into the crack of the oak floor. "You've been working day and night with your fellowship. I want you to relax when you come home. Not think about the old job.”

"But you've been following the case."

He quirked a smile. "I had to have something to cut out and stick to my walls."

She touched his arm. "Mulder, we can't get involved--you can't get involved. Let the authorities do their job--"

He leaned against the counter. "You're going to let a killer keep roaming free--"

"It's not the Crucible Killer. It's the husband; I'm sure of it." She sipped her coffee, settling in for the old familiar discourse.

He rolled his head back in agitation right on cue.

"Mulder, you have this case in your head from the recent killings. I describe a scene to you and you're filling in the blanks. It's a straightforward case. Olivia was just one more woman who annoyed her husband one day too many. It happens all the time."

He smiled again. "Now who's projecting?"

She squinted at him, not ready to concede defeat. "Olivia doesn't fit the profile of the previous victims unless the new victims are different from the previous ones. She would be the oldest, significantly. She was wealthy; none of the other victims were so prominent--"

"But Scully, the bodies are posed in a very specific way--"

"Mulder, wouldn't you say the hardest crime to pull off is for a husband to murder his wife? He's the first suspect; the crime is usually done in the home which is notoriously difficult to clean.

Avery Hampton is a criminal defense lawyer. He's defended everyone from pro bono spree killers to drunk driving spoiled sons of friends. He’s seen all the mistakes; if anyone could plan the perfect crime, it’s him.”

Mulder just gaped at her, incredulous.

"He did it." She tossed out the dregs of her cup in the sink and washed it out. "I’ve had this creep back me into corners at parties. He’s an arrogant asshole who believes he’s exceptional, and I bet anything that includes getting away with murder."

"You're going off your gut? Your intuition?" He made a show of looking around the kitchen. "Laura Petrie, when did you take over for Dana Scully?"

"Shut up, Mulder." She folded her arms and glared up at him. "As a matter of fact, since I don't need to give a damn about writing this up in a report at the end of the day and I don't need supporting evidence...yeah-- I can go with my gut feeling. And it feels good." She gave a reflexive shimmy of her shoulders. She was no longer encased in her dark wool armor, nor was her head weighed down by the hard red helmet.

Mulder grinned at her as he if read her thoughts.

Wondering if he could sense her next one, she glanced at the clock on the stove. "I'm going to bed. I have twenty-one precious hours until I'm due for my next shift. I'd like to spend one hour in carnal indulgence before sleeping for the other twenty." She went to the stairs. "If you're interested..." she tossed over her shoulder.

Her voice was flat and bland, but he found that twice as arousing as any come-hither tone. He doused the kitchen lights and joined her at the foot of the stairs. Dawn leaked in around the closed curtains.

"You sure you weren't followed?" he asked.

"I waited a couple hours before driving out in case they were watching the apartment. And took the long way here."

He draped his arm around her waist and they mounted the stairs together. "You've still got it after all these years."

She laid her head on his shoulder, relaying her exhaustion. "I hope so. If not, just fake it for me."

He chuckled and turned off the last light before closing their bedroom door on the world.

X

Areti and Tide looked over the Feds who’d joined them in one of the station’s conference rooms. They were outnumbered. There was Tuttle, the lead investigator, Jackson and Reynolds, his tactical team, and some little blonde who was called a researcher, Harrison. Tuttle did the talking for all of them, but he let Areti make his report first.

"We've taken a close look at the woman who found the body, a Doctor Dana Scully. From the moment we talked to her, she's been throwing suspicion on the husband, which looks pretty shady in itself. She mentioned the victim had been snooping into her past and when we did some looking, we saw why."

Areti held up his hand before Tuttle could speak. "Sir, I understand she's one of your own, but she didn't exactly leave the Bureau with all flags flying, did she?"

Jackson glared at them, but the other federal agents remained impassive, even the young woman.

"And this Mrs. Hampton was obviously obsessed with Doctor Scully. On Tuesday, when the doctor reported they last saw each other, Mrs. Hampton had visited the same beauty parlor used by Scully. She requested and received the exact hair dye that the doctor normally got. Doctor Scully stormed into a different salon--" Areti consulted his notes. "--Michelle's Cuts, the next day, and had her hair colored a different shade."

"And this all means?" Tuttle asked, bored.

"Olivia Hampton was making Doctor Scully very uncomfortable."

"The husband? What's his recount of events?" Tuttle asked.

"He saw his wife at dinner on Wednesday. She seemed as usual. She retired before him; he had a case he's preparing for. He admitted the no longer share the marital bed; she uses one of those sleep apnea aides and he can't stand the sound. But when he walked by her bedroom at midnight, he heard it merrily churning away."

"The morning?"

"He rose later than she usually does and found her gone for the day. As Doctor Scully told us, she often takes her bicycle to get around, even if this rainy weather--it's one of those old ladies' sort, with the basket and no gears. It was gone from the garage when he went to work, so he assumed that she was out for coffee with friends; he says that she does that often. So the previous night's dinner was the last time he saw her alive and then he got our call to ID the body."

"House has been given the full forensic work up?"

"Yes, sir," gritted out Areti. "No forced entry. No signs of a struggle anywhere in the house. She appears to have risen and prepared for the day as usual. Pajamas hanging on the back of the bathroom door, bed made, and that bicycle is gone. We've yet to find it, by the way."

"So the death appears to have taken place away from the house." Tuttle didn't phrase it as a question.

"Correct, sir," replied Areti.

Tuttle stood. "Olivia Hampton's death and body follow the pattern of a serial killer called The Crucible Killer. The FBI will be taking over the case."

"What the hell?" burst out Areti, exchanging furious looks with Tide. "You let me go through all this--"

"I assumed you needed the practice. You don't get much society capital crime cases, do you?"

Areti breathed heavily through his nose, then held up his hand when he'd regained control. "Wait a damn minute. Doctor Scully is former FBI. She may know about this killer. She was a forensic pathologist. She'd know how to set up a murder scene to mimic the killer's work--"

Tuttle nodded his head at his fellow agents, signaling that it was time to leave. "Good day, detectives. Stay out of our way from now on."

They left the door ajar as they exited. Tide was the one to go slam it behind them.

X

October 14, 2004:
"Doctor Scully? Dana?"

Scully's head shot up from the pile of patient records that she'd been reviewing in her corner of the residents' office.

"Avery!" she stood, closing the top folder. "I'm so sorry for your loss," she said, unable to put any real emotion into the trite phrase.

There was a quality about Avery Hampton that reminded her of Alex Krycek and that could never be a good thing. The plastic sheen to his surface. The flat shark eyes. The pretty mouth.

Before she could dodge away, he hugged her. Olivia had kept touching her as well, making Scully's skin crawl. Perhaps being an investigator and pathologist, and touching so many bodies without the person's consent, had given her very strong personal boundaries. As a pediatrician, she considered it one of her strongest qualities that she always asked permission before beginning her examinations.

She stepped out of his arms. "What can I do for you, Avery?"

"They told me..." He took a deep breath. She waited. She'd watched many attorneys perform in court and he had all the familiar tics down. The catch in the voice. The meeting of her eyes with his steady gaze. "The police told me that you found poor Olivia."

She may have found him sincere if he hadn't tossed in the 'poor'.

"Yes, Avery."

"Did she...suffer?"

Scully wanted him to leave. She shifted toward the door, hoping to herd him in the direction. He sat in her chair.

Folding her arms, she gazed down at him. "They told you how she died."

"Strangled..." He put his face in his hands.

""I'm afraid it's no painless," she said dryly, feeling cruel even as she was certain of his guilt. Which meant she was alone in a room with a killer, but she had no fear.

"The police had a lot of questions for me." He looked up and his eyes were dry. "An unpleasant sensation to be on that side of the table."

"I'm sure," she murmured.

It was time to move him along. If she were going to investigate this crime, she would have pumped him for information, but the less she knew, the better. If he was covering up the evidence as poorly as he was performing now, the police would be making an arrest by the end of the week.

"Is there anything I can help with?" she asked. "Of course, the hospital will want to honor Olivia's in some way--"

He shot her a sharp look. He was probably assuming that she was shaking him down for a donation in his wife's name. That got him going.

"You're so kind," he said smarmily, moving in for another hug.

She managed to sidestep him and took his hand instead, squeezing it. The strength of the returning pressure was enough to snuff life from Olivia Hampton's waddled neck.

She closed the door firmly behind his well-tailored back.

X

October 15, 2004:

"Scully, come watch this."

She was shuffling around the kitchen, still in the grumpy first awakened state when Mulder knew to leave her alone. This must be important.

He was on couch, leaned forward to watch the television intently. A press conference was going on. She sat beside him.

"It's the Richmond FBI. They're in on your killing--"

"My killing?" she said.

"If the FBI's in on it, they're going to say it's the serial killer."

"I'm telling you, after talking to Avery Hampton, he definitely did it."

"Evidence points to Olivia Hampton being the latest victim of the Crucible Killer," said the square-headed man behind the podium.

Mulder smirked at her over his shoulder. "Am I ever wrong?"

Squishing the throw pillow into the proper shape to nestle her head, she worked pointedly at ignoring him. As she reclined, he snagged her feet and rubbed them between his palms.

"Wait, look at agent to the right. Isn't that Agent Harrison? Leyla Harrison."

Scully peered at the screen. Her glasses were in her purse. "I think you're right."

Behind the Violent Crimes section head for the Richmond field office, a short blonde woman stood, trying to keep the steely expression of her fellow agents.

"You should give her a call. Find out what's going on."

With a groan, she sat up. "Are you crazy, Mulder? And bring more attention to us?"

"Actually, I'm sure once the Fibbies review the original casefile and see your name in there, they'll be calling you."

"I've got to stay out of this, Mulder," she pointed out. "If they keep sniffing around me, eventually it leads back to you."

He pulled her easily into his lap and inhaled deeply. "You do still smell of me--"

She struggled free. "You've reminded me. I need to shower before heading back to the hospital."

"Scully--"

"No, Mulder," she tossed over her shoulder.

He opened his mouth to continue the argument, but her light footfall on the stairs gave her rebuke.

end~Part 1 of 2

FIC: Malum

2014-01-12T02:41:21Z

Title: Malum
Author: bugs
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,500
Genre:MSR, Post-ep for En Ami
Summary: Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it...
A/N: Written for the_red_diva's gift in the xf_santa gift exchange. Be sure to head over to the comm and check out the many other offerings! Lots of great stuff in.

~*~

"I think you should get a rape kit from the lab--"

"No."

"I'm not saying that you go through a screening at a hospital. You could do it yourself."

"No."

"Scully, you told me yourself that you were unconscious for an unknown amount of time with that man--"

"Drop me off at home, Mulder."

But he doesn't leave after she slams his car door. He parks across the street from her building; she can make out its familiar shape clearly even in the dark. He's hiding in plain sight, thinking she'll relent and call him, demand that he come up and talk like a man. She closes her blinds, turning his view to a blank wall.

The phone is cold in her hand.

"They did a rape screening on me when I was returned from my abduction, right?"

He can't answer.

"Did you read that report?" She doesn't give him time to reply. "Did you read about my vaginal secretions? Condition of my inner and outer labia?"

"Scully."

"Can you even begin to comprehend how that would feel to know? That a stranger looked at and touched my genitals while I was unconscious--and it was different from my medical rape by Them...how? That you and Skinner read that report--were there photographs accompanying the report?"

"We were trying to solve a crime."

"That makes it all better."

She hangs up. That probably isn't the conversation that he planned on having.

Her pajamas are clammy as she puts them on, sliding across her discontent limbs like damp leaves, but it feels good. Her body is heated and heavy since she's returned from her little weekend away. It reminds her of a long lost monthly sensation, when her equilibrium would be off and she was in the grip of something beyond her control.

Other women called it a curse, but for Scully, it was an inconvenience having to deal with the practical matter of being trapped on long stakeouts with Mulder, or out wandering deep woods for hours on end. She didn't like that sense of vulnerability; of being the girl. But tonight she's safe in her own home, and chalks the sensation up to her anger, that it has bloomed hot as a crimson rose. The weight sinks low in her abdomen as a swollen blossom would hang tenuously from its slender stem. She dares Mulder to pluck the flower; the petals will rain down like blood, leaving nothing but the thorns for him to grasp.

She lets her phone ring until one ring before it goes to voicemail.

"I don't expect you to understand why I'm angry and worried about you. You come from a very different kind of family."

"I lived on military bases, Mulder. I hate to tell you, but your type of family was pretty common. My parents were just lucky to be in love."

"I'm sure Bill and Teena were in love for ten minutes at some point." His voice has that blankness that Scully enjoys. She can assign any emotion she needs to it. "I just...This guy slept with my mother. It isn't even the being my father part. It's...That he felt that way about my mother and she felt the way that she did...Seems to have felt that way until the end. The things that she'd still do for him, even when she said that she hated him. Just like you said you hate him."

Scully doesn't like being compared to Teena Mulder for many reasons, but she knows when to keep her mouth shut, and it's when a man is talking about his recently deceased mother.

"And to now know that bastard feels the same way about you--"

"Mulder, he doesn't. He needed me for something, that's all."

"He's always told me that he likes you. I just wasn't listening."

"Liked me? As in, we're in seventh grade?" Scully shakes her head. "I think you're putting too much thought into this, like everything else."

"I have nothing to do but think, Scully." The edges of his words are knife-sharp and the released poison seeps from her festering wounds. "He's kept you alive all these years because he liked you. He had some purpose--"

"Because he knew you'd kill him first, then every one of Them, slowly and painfully, if I was to die at their hands."

She shouldn't have said that. He's tricked her into acknowledging his love. She can hear his smile over the phone.

"This has that feeling of when a guy wants to know about all my former lovers. That conversation never ends well. You haven't asked before and now I sort of wished you had."

"I haven't had to. I think I know them all by now."

There's one more that he doesn't know about. The one she's most ashamed of, even more than some bar pickup would ever be. She gives a hum and now it's her turn to smile cruelly as she hears his replying grunt of surprise. Yes, Mulder, more lies by omission wait out there.

“I understand,” he says, condescending. “He said what you wanted to hear. It was a seduction—that's what I mean about it being like my mother. I'm not believing that you would fuck him—but you allowed him another type of intimacy.”

“How generous of you.” She flicks the blinds wide open enough to stare at his car. His hand is pressed to his forehead in the silhouette.

His chuckle shakes like bones in a jar "Then again, you let me into your bed and I'm probably the worse guy that you can do that with."

"Sometimes you're so tiresome, Mulder. Relentlessness about obscure paranormal minutia is one thing, but your capacity for self-loathing just makes me want to smack you on a nearly daily basis."

"Not if it's true."

"Do you understand that by saying you're not worthy of fucking, what that says about me?"

He corrects her: "I'm saying I'm not worth of making love to."

The daring in his words is like a glowing pot on a stove, drawing her hand closer and closer--

"Please, Scully--"

"Don't ever beg with me, Mulder."

"You don't like that...Not even a little bit?"

That sly smile in his voice is back and she wonders who is seducing whom. He would protest that he was incapable of seduction, that his feelings toward her were as simple and honest as a eight year old boy's—except for the incredible sex part.

"You're bad," she growls and hangs up the phone again.

She'd never deceived Mulder before. Not just because it was obvious that a lot of women in his life had deceived him and she wanted to be different. That would have been noble reason that she'd say aloud to a therapist. The real reason, the reason that stuck under her skin like a sliver; she was incapable of lying to him. He'd immediately seen through her attempts as she'd gone off with Spender. But she'd have to try one more time tonight, with feeling.

The knock batters around in her skull. She's been waiting with her forehead against the solid heft of her front door. She cracks it open and looks him up and down. He fills the space from the top of his rumpled hair to the thick soles of his black boots. She opens it just enough to let him slip through and blocks his way from going any further into her apartment. Standing close, she can only focus on the concave depression in his tee shirt, and watches it rise and fall with his breathing.

He has to bend in a painful manner when she won't help him out. "Scully," he whispers in her ear. "I was worried."

Her fingers creep between his low-slung waistband and his shirt's hem to find the cut of his waist, the first rib, then the next...Where's the missing one for her to fit in? Her thumb brushes his nipple instead.

He tries again. "Scully, I want to talk to you--"

She needs to show him how easy seduction is; it was for the smoking bastard, when he gave her just what she wanted. Could she give Mulder what he wanted, just to prove a point?

"We are talking," she says, right before going up on her toes to seal her mouth over his.

He falls back against the door with a thump. She straddles his thigh, squeezing it tightly, trapping him.

Cold fingers at her pajama bottoms waistband...Shimmying them down, silk whispering unseemly thoughts in the darkness as they slide off her heated skin. Another set of fingers fumble at the buttons of her top, just enough open to give entry to the hand, covering her breast, sinking onto its warmth as a whimpering puppy finds its bed.

She seeks his fly in the dark, hearing the zipper opening as a loud ripping sound, a scream of terror. Frantic gasps at the back of her throat pull his tongue deeper into her mouth; she is finally afraid. But she can't stop this now that she's started.

Turning and lifting in the same movement, he slams her against the door, his thrust resetting her manic heartbeat. Her pulse matches his as it flutters inside her body with the strokes of a crow's wings. She lay her head on his shoulder, rocking there, her lips resting on his carotid artery to ride his river's course.

Her fingers, strong as a tree's seeking roots, lace through his hair, bringing his ear to her lips. "I love you, Mulder," she says and his heart breaks within her, flooding her with his life. Her seduction is complete, and she feels triumph swirl around them like sharp smoke.

~end

Emma Thompson Rocks!

2014-01-10T06:12:13Z

Emma Thompson was on today's Fresh Air radio show, and as usual, she was amazing. Becoming faint from lack of breathing while shooting the library scene in Remains of the Day, how handy it is to have Jim Carter living down the street when one needs a butler and several excellent pwnings of Americans, done in the nicest way possible...Just fabulous.

FIC: Contrapasso

2014-01-06T04:19:47Z

Title: Contrapasso
Author: bugs
Rating: M
A/N: I swore to myself that I wasn't going to 'go there' with Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, but it is bsg_aussiegirl's birthday and I know it's what she really, really wants... *putting on big girl panties* But remember, 'careful what you wish for'!

And with a few other projects on my plate, I'm afraid you're just getting a teaser! But I know where I'm going with this, I really do... *shifting eyes*

This story will be in the Ring of Fire universe for Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal but it's not necessary to read those stories.

~*~

The prisoner stood straight, chin level, eyes appearing to be focused on the steel door, but really inhabiting a place far from the cell, a place green and open, breathing in air filled with the sun's heat and the earth's depth. Anywhere but the eight foot square concrete box that she was in now.

The cell door's small slot window opened. The guard barked: "Starling, git to the back...Hands flat on the wall."

She complied but there was the familiar tension between them; the guard knew who was in charge here.

"You have a visitor, Starling."

She didn't reply. The door remained closed.

"It's a doctor. He's gonna talk to you."

She finally spoke. "I've got nothin' to say."

Another voice overtook the guard's, shutting him out. "Ms. Starling, I believe that you have important things to say. I'd be happy to hear you."

Her lip curled in a sneer; contempt was the first emotion that she showed. She turned away which earned another order from the guard. "Face the door!"

Slowly, she resumed the position. The two men spoke in hushed tones outside the door and finally the guard's voice rose: "I don't think it's a good idea--"

The smooth tone of the doctor overlapped the guard's, but not high enough for Clarice to hear. She eased a step closer to the door. Suddenly it swung open and she froze.

The man filled the entryway, solid as the impenetrable door. There was no escape.

She gave him a shy country girl smile. "How do you do?"

He tipped his head in greeting, but kept his gaze level with hers. "I am well. How are you?"

"Could be better, but can't complain," she said but took a step back so the distance between them remained the same as he entered the cell. It was not a retreat. It was a tactic.

He gave an appreciative smile. "I am Doctor Hannibal Lecter."

"Don't suppose you're here to check on that pain in my neck."

"I could if you wish."

Her eyes shifted toward the door. The viewing window was still open. "They don't let anyone touch me."

"I doubt you want anyone to touch you."

"Startin' already, are you?"

He clasped his hands at his waist. "Starting what?"

"Trying to figure me out. Analyze what made me what I am."

"What are you?"

"I'm one of the few female serial killers..." Her smile turned sly. "At least one of the few caught. Pro'ly plenty of women doin' it, just not found out."

"Interesting theory." He quirked an eyebrow. "How are women doing it?"

She lay her hands flat on the wall as the guard had instructed. "They poison. Pussy kills."

"Not like you. You gut men like sheep at slaughter. You give them a single shot to the base of the neck."

She didn't respond. He decided that she had beautiful eyes.

He was accustomed to interviewing violent women, the rare killers in that gender. Often, they tried seduction, even those who hated men--particularly those. Their disdain meant they saw men as weak, ruled by their dicks and easily manipulated. But he could see this unique woman was using another type of seduction on him.

He was a man of great control and yet in these first few minutes with Clarice Starling, he wanted to spirit her away, to make her his lifelong enigma.

Her gaze shifted fractionally toward the door. She could read his thoughts and for the first time since he entered the cell, he was afraid. Yes, let's kill the guard. Let's slip through the shadows of the prison corridors. Let's run and run and run. And Clarice Starling kills another man, slicing him from the base of his throat to his groin, exposing his heart on a wave of red. But at least he would be her last victim, of that he was sure.

He made one step, blocking the view through the cell door's window. She smiled again in approval.

His lips found the highest plane of her cheekbone. Her breathing quickened, a heated course on his cheek. He stilled, watching for any sign that she couldn't continue.

"H..." she mused, her mouth brushing the single letter along his chin.

"Yes, Clarice."

"Just makin' sure it's you." Her eyes were still the most beautiful he'd ever seen, even as they searched his, as though looking in a mirror for a familiar face.

He rolled back to his side of their newest bed, needing distance between their bodies if they were going to talk. "Who else would I be?"

"One of the other identities that you've been...You will be."

"I told you. No matter what the role, I never lose myself."

Her eyelids closed and the curtain dropped on the vividly dressed stage.

....To be continued...

FIC: Unpresentable

2013-12-31T05:55:58Z

Aussie and I managed to do a little stand-alone in the Adamsverse for Christmas!

What do you get the man and woman who have everything, or the money to buy it?

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three

Unstoppable is also available for download as well.

Download: Unbreakable

2013-12-05T06:07:41Z

Due to the ~~whining~~ encouragement of a couple friends, the next fic I've converted to a single downloadable file is Unbreakable, the first story in the Adama/Roslin AU from Adamsverse, written with bsg_aussiegirl.

Click here for the Dropbox link to download.

Fic: Six Times Someone Learns About William, Part 6

2013-12-03T09:17:14Z

Title: Six Times Someone Learns About William ~ Part Six
Author: bugs
Rating: T
Word Count: 2,200
Genre: A, MSR
Spoilers: Through TheTruth
A/N: Well, that didn't go quite as I expected.

~*~

Mulder can still smell Scully on his skin, feel her strong fingers in his hair and taste her fresh breath on his tongue. He chooses not dwell on the realization that his heightened sensory reaction probably means that he stinks and desperately needs to brush his teeth.

He spins to grin at Skinner, who still lurks in the shadows after Scully had been ordered away by the guards. His 'lawyer' can remain, needing the few hours they had to prepare for the tribunal.

"One down, one to go," he tells the other man.

"What?" Skinner says, squinting.

"I've held and kissed Scully. William's next."

Skinner just stares at him, his mouth slightly agape.

"You want your kiss after all?" Mulder can only laugh at Skinner's look of distaste. He can't stop his joy from bubbling up, despite all the weight remaining on his shoulders. He paces the small cell. "They probably won't let her bring a baby into this prison, but maybe to the trial--"

"Mulder...Fox."

Something in Skinner's voice makes Mulder stop in front of his friend. He blinks slowly, willing time to stop. Scully is in his arms again and this time, he feels despair bleeding from her limbs even as she desperately kissed him back. Finally, he states: "Something's happened to William." He doesn't bother making it a question.

"It's not that simple." Walter lifts his glasses and squeezes the bridge of his nose.

Mulder lunges against the iron door, his heart suddenly racing. "Scully!" he yells.

Skinner drags him away. "She's gone. I've told her to go home and get some rest before the trial begins."

"What happened," Mulder hisses. "Did they kill him?"

"He's alive. He's well," Skinner assures him in a rush.

"Then what's wrong!?"

"Scully had to place him with another family--"

Place him with a family--this sounds as though their son was a stray dog. Mulder cocks his head, trying to comprehend the words and knock down his rising fury,flames in his heart.

Skinner steps close and grips his arm tightly, as though to hold him to the ground. "They came again and again, Mulder. As close as a man with a pillow over William's face before Scully shot him."

When Mulder closes his eyes, he hears Scully screaming anger and fear, feels the concussion of the shots in their bedroom, feels the warm blood splatter his skin.

"They wanted you dead too. They managed to kidnap William once, putting Doggett in a coma in the process--"

"Son of a bitch!" Mulder whirls away from Skinner's grasp but there's nowhere to go in the dank cell.

"They said that they'd give William back if Scully would bring them your severed head. This was obviously about more than just taking a baby that they thought was special--"

"He's just a little boy." Mulder leans against the wall, no strength in his body.

Skinner looks uncomfortable "No...He had some powers..."

"Powers?" Mulder now feels nauseous. He never should have left. He should have gone Cro-Magnon in Scully's ass, dragged her off to a cave...

"At least others thought he did...These people thought he would play a role in stopping the invasion...And Scully saw some things that she couldn't explain...Even Jeffrey Spender showed up, acting on what he believed William was--"

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Mulder spits the curses out like blood-soaked glass.

"There was only one way to stop it."

"No, there was another way. I could have come back."

"Scully wouldn't let you," Skinner points out, ever practical. "She wavered once, and looked what happened--"

Mulder just shakes his head petulantly. "I shoulda been a man--"

Skinner reminds him: "She told you that you were no good to her and William dead. That's still true. William can't be with you two, but you can only preserve this world for him to grow up in if you're alive."

"Where is he?" Mulder grinds out.

"We don't know. Scully had me set up the adoption, but I went through a middleman to assure that even under torture, I couldn't reveal his location."

Mulder's on the move again, but now his arms are swinging too, his clenched fists coming close to the concrete walls.

"Hey there." Skinner steps between him and the wall and puts up his large hands. "You gonna punch something, hit my hand. No sense breaking your knuckles right now."

This sounds like a great idea. Mulder puts all his power behind a one-two bevy to Skinner's solid palms, only to stagger backward in pain. "Son of a bitch," he gasps. "Might as well have hit the wall."

Skinner shrugs. "Got it out of your system though?"

"Yeah, I guess." Mulder wipes the tears from his eyes.

Briefly wrapping him in a hug, Skinner says in his ear: "You gotta be strong for Dana. Or I'll kick your ass."

Mulder steps back and looks the other man in the eye. "Is there something you need to tell me, Walter?"

Incredulous, Skinner raises his eyebrows. "You were the one kissing her, Mulder. Tell me if anything's changed since you left."

"No."

"All right then. I gotta go. Turns out some crazy bastard has asked him to be his legal representation--" Skinner checked his watch. "And I've got until eight hundred hours to obtain my law degree."

"Thanks, Walter. For everything."

Skinner just waves him off and leaves the cell without a backward look. Mulder slides down the wall to the bare floor, now his familiar bed. Just what he deserves; cold, painfully hard and unyielding.

It seems as though he's just closed his eyelids when a sound breaks into his roiling thoughts. It's the crunching of sunflower seeds.

He looks up. His father leans against the door, fastidiously spitting the shells into his palm.

"What do you want?" Mulder asks.

Bill raises his eyebrows. "I thought you were the one who wanted to talk to me."

Six or seven years ago, yes. Today, not so much. He'd found almost too many answers over time.

"Why would I want to do that?" he challenged.

"Looking for advice, one no good father to another?" suggests Bill.

Mulder stares up at the ceiling. The old man has a point.

Might as well start at what was foremost on his mind right now. "How'd you do it, Dad? How'd you sleep again after what you did?"

"I had a higher purpose which I was pursuing," Bill says evenly, crunching seeds between his words. "I couldn't allow my personal feelings to cloud that. And now you, although you weren't there to make the decision, have made the same sacrifice."

His old man always could find the slightest of paper cuts to rub salt in. Mulder says: "I've been traded for again. Scully gave away our boy so I might live." He struggles to his feet. "When the fuck--" He punctuates every word with spit. "The fuck is everyone going to figure out I'm not worth it!?"

"When are you going to figure out that you are?"

Mulder just slumps against the wall. If these apparitions are his sub-conscious, this one seems to be doing some unwanted self-analysis.

"You were such a good boy, Fox. You don't remember that, but you were. You shared with your sister; most boys aren't like that. Just ask your Aunt Flora what sort of big brother I was--"

"Aunt Flora died in 1998," Mulder says hollowly.

Bill shrugs. "Take my word for it. I was a little jerk. But after Samantha was gone, you got even worse. No worries about you becoming a juvenile delinquent from the trauma. Top of your classes, working for the government..."

Only his father would sound confounded by a son being a credit to the family name. And yet Mulder had kept seeking his approval, and that of men like him.

Mulder wanders the cell, ignoring his father for the moment. He and Samantha had shared a room until her disappearance. His parents had been in the process of setting up his 'big boy' bedroom when she'd been taken. There were moments of confusion afterward for Mulder, where he kept hearing them saying that it was time to separate the siblings and that somehow explained where Samantha had gone. She wasn't abducted; she was just in another room. He refused to use his new bedroom for months, doing as he'd once told Scully, closing his eyes before entering their shared bedroom to will his sister to be in her single bed to the left of window, slumbering under the pink-ruffled bedspread. Now it all seemed like something a psychologist would have a field day with and probably explained a lot about his intimacy issues and problems developing positive sexual relationships, but right now, it just caused him to start crying again.

His father obviously wasn't going away. "You remember when I'd bring a box of donuts home from Hansen's Bakery? It was down the street from the State Department--"

"Yeah," Mulder says listlessly.

"You'd let Samantha have the first pick, only she liked the same kind that you did; with the colored sprinkles. She'd always break it in half--she was a good kid too--but the point is, Fox, you need to be a selfish bastard every now and then."

"What's your point, Dad?"

"Get out of this place. Go home to your woman. Make love to her. Forget all this."

"All this? You mean this hell that you wrought; you and men like you?" Mulder turns his back on his father. What measures that Bill Mulder had done to stop the invasion hadn't been enough. He's still cleaning up the mess.

"You've been doing the same thing for years now, without much success," Bill reminds him. "Let me just point out, that when you finally allowed yourself to be selfish--falling into bed with Dana Scully--something very wonderful and earth-changing happened."

Mulder shakes his head.

"At least admit that you wanted that baby just as strongly as you want to stop the invasion--" Bill urges him.

"Scully wanted it," he says automatically. "I've just been along for the ride."

Bill smiles craftily. "Remember where I live now, son. I know your inner thoughts. Even the ones that you won't admit to yourself. You've spent over ten years holding a patronizing pity for all these creatures you encounter on cases, who did horrible things in the drive to reproduce. And in the end, you were just one more of them."

His father cracks another seed. "But if it makes you feel superior to say you were just trying to help a friend out, fine. 'Sure, Scully, I'll be your sperm donor'," he mocks his son with a droll tone.

Then he lifts his shoulders. "I gave it to you anyway."

"Gave it? You mean--" Mulder waves his hand.

Bill nods.

Mulder shakes his head as if to fling away this insanity. "First of all, that means I have to believe in God, then that you are with that god and have his ear."

Bill chuckles. "Believe what you want. William came to be, and neither you, nor your delightfully lovely little scientist, have an explanation."

Mulder just wants his father to go away. He strikes out. "My leading theory was that your friend, the smoking bastard, had done something. He was the source of Scully's cancer cure, and he had her before she became pregnant."

His small smile becoming a smirk, Bill says, "He thought he could. I got there first."

Mulder purses his mouth. "Doesn't matter," he said shortly. "William's gone."

The seeds are finished. Bill brushes the salt from his hands. He pins his son with his cool stare. "Are you going to blame Dana for that?"

Mulder only glares back, trying to close his thoughts against a spirit which he does not believe is real and feeling like a damn idiot in the process.

"Your mother hated me every day after Samantha was taken. Don't be like that too."

"It's not the same," Mulder says, the words catching in his raw throat.

"True. Dana Scully is stronger than I am. But you are your mother's son," Bill says, cursing Mulder as lightly as touching him with a raven's feather.

Mulder leans against the wall again, requiring its cold comfort. "You and Mom didn't survive. How will Scully and I make it?"

"Just take the damn donut, son," Bill urges him.

Sliding down to the floor again, Mulder shakes his head in protest. He is his father's son; he has lost the battle to stop the invasion, and in the process, allowed every immediate happiness to be lost as well. There are yet more sacrifices to be made. Only then does he realize that the cell is mercifully silent again. He is alone.

When the touch comes to his shoulder and he hears Scully's pained breathing, he assumes that it's another vision. Then she says, "Mulder's it's me."

It's always her. And he wakes to fight again.

~The End

Bugsfic for Electronic Readers: Turn the Page

2013-12-02T01:27:10Z

In the very old days, when I had a website for my fic, I'd offered single documents suitable for download of some of my fics. Technology and time has passed us by, but I've kept the idea tucked away. After a bit of practice, I'm reasonable confident that anyone can download this file and upload it to their device. I used a Kindle and Aussie used the Kussie (or whatever that Australian device is) so I think it'll work on just about anything.

First follow the Dropbox link and download the Rich Text file. You'll see that it reads like real book on your device, making for a much easier reading experience than all the clicking that Livejournal or Survival Instinct requires, as well as not needing a internet connect to read.

I'll be adding more as time allows. Feel free to let me know if you have any specific requests!

Turn the Page/Flip the Page

Summary: Laura Roslin, faced with the greatest challenge of her life, meets her favorite writer, suffering his own crisis. Their need for faith twines into one journey. Flip the Page, an AU of this AU, is added as an epilogue to the document.
Genre: Battlestar Galactica Adama/Roslin Romance Alternative Universe
Rating: MA ~ Intended for adult audiences for sexual situations, profanity and some violence
Word Count: 150,000

FIC: Six Times Someone Learns About William ~ Part 5

2013-11-24T21:31:26Z

Title: Six Times Someone Learns About William ~ Part 5
Author: bugs
Rating: T
Word Count: 2,400
Spoilers: Through The Truth
A/N: OMG, this story! I thought it would be some light easy-to-toss-off ficlets...Particularly this part; 250 words, max! Then I realized this character's investment in the scenario required me to view a bunch of episodes doing research and reacquainting myself with the canon...Thank goodness, only one more part to go! And that will be easier. Or it better. *eye twitch*

~*~

Part 5:

"Apparently someone's made a New Year's resolution," said Harris with mild interest.

Kerry peered over his shoulder at the surveillance camera monitor. After watching for a while, he finally cringed. "That's why you should have sex more than once a decade. Jeez, they're gonna hurt themselves if they keep this up."

Minutes ticked by. "You owe me five bucks," said Harris, holding out his empty hand while shoving an Oreo in his mouth with the other. "I called it. He cried first."

"Son of a bitch," grumbled Kerry, digging in his pocket.

He looked at Spender, sitting across the room and smoking silently. "Well boss, is this part of the plan or a problem?"

Expelling a long stream of smoke, Spender said, "I can't say at this time."

He walked out of the cramped room without looking at the screen.

Plans; he had had many plans over the decades, but the goal had always been the same. Now, with few options left, his focus had narrowed, becoming fundamental and primal.

Eternal life. Living forever through a child of the child of his blood.

Breeding stock had been one of his specialties for the Syndicate. He'd judged Fox Mulder to be too unpredictable for a reliable donor despite his physical and intellectual superiority to many humans. Dana Scully had been another matter.

She shared Fox's intelligence and instinctual smarts so essential for survival. But she'd been deemed much more suitable with her family background of adherence to government authority and her ambition, both qualities Fox had rejected earlier.

Spender had had her steered to the X-files assignment, hoping her immature physical appearance would trigger Fox's sister fixation. Once she was close to him, he would be susceptible to her information-gathering directed by Spender's backroom machinations. Previously, Diana Fowley, with her hard, brittle edges, had failed. Even when Fox had fucked her, he couldn't be turned to the right side. Being a woman under it all, Diana had stormed off rather than be just a part of Fox's life instead of all of it.

Spender had expected that Dana Scully would be able to synthesize Mulder's discoveries into useful data for the Project and eventually move into the cadre of brilliant doctors working on hybridization. When she had not cooperated, he found a different sort of stable in which to place her; as a broodmare. Her genetic material had been very useful over the years.

Then two years ago, Dana had forced Spender to make another choice between his commitment to the Project and his personal loyalties:

"Female X3112 is seeking in vitro fertilization; didn't think we'd see that one come in," Richmond had said during his weekly report to the group.

Spender had remained at the coffee carafe, his back turned to the other men but he could sense that Richmond was looking at him as he spoke.

From behind a veil of cigar smoke, a disembodied voice asked: "That's the FBI agent who works with Fox Mulder?"

Richmond confirmed it. "We can have her fertilized eggs ready once we've directed her toward Zeus--let's see if we can get her with Parenti," he added.

Drifting to the window, Spender had watched the rowers on the river below. Their long oar strokes barely caused a ripple in the water and yet they moved with great speed and determination.

Weeks more of reports and now Spender made himself face the group and Richmond as the underling read from his files. "No success with X3112," the man had said with disgust. "Parenti confirmed that the the next stage fertilization was successful with her eggs and the alien DNA--there were some concerns after the problems with the first round in the nineties. But no implantation has taken."

"These embryos aren't nickels to be dropped in a gumball machine," chided Markle, a wizen man who only spoke to fret.

Lighting a cigarette, Spender dared to place some doubt in the other minds. "She's reaching the outer limits of acceptable age. I'm not surprised at the lack of success."

Richmond had curled his lip. "Perhaps we'd do better fertilizing with the sperm provided by her partner; the mobility is excellent and a very high rate."

Although other men at the table chuckled, Markle was not amused. "A human child is of no use to us--"

Spender had inhaled and only Richmond had seemed to notice his brief smile. And now Fox and Dana had reacted to the failure at artificial procreation by occasionally and desperately engaging in the biological act. Shadow puppets on the wall; melded hands forming one body from two bodies but incapable of creating a third, so returning to two clenched fists. They truly were two of the most enigmatic individuals that Spender had ever encountered.

It had not been easy to lure Dana away. But over the years, he'd gained sufficient knowledge of her mental workings to anticipate her reaction to his seductive overture of the cure for all human disease. Although only fragments were rooted in truth, he'd always found the most successful lies had their foundation in reality. Spender discovered it was easy to play devotion to Dana even while she was unconscious.

His team didn't have much time for their task, but they were accustomed to working quickly. Then everything came to a sudden halt.

"Mr. Spender, there's something odd on the sonogram," Dr. Fallbrook had said.

He'd been standing at Dana's head, behind the drape covering her exposed genitals and the invasion of the internal probe. "What is it?" he said, leaning in to only focus on the fluttering monitor screen.

"This can't be--"

"What?" Spender repeated, impatient.

"Her ovaries are severely damaged, as we knew, so this shouldn't be possible--"

"Doctor," Spender said dangerously.

"It's an egg. In her right fallopian tube."

"We took all her ova--"

Dr. Fallbrook nodded. "I'm aware of that, sir. I can't explain this--"

Spender fumbled for his cigarettes, then remembered that he'd tossed them away for her.

"Mr. Spender, what do you want us to do?" the other specialist demanded to know. He had been waiting with an egg from a younger subject, fertilized with Fox Mulder's sample. Another gamble; Dana Scully would not abort a pregnancy that should not be. "We don't have a lot of time," he added pointlessly.

The only reason Spender was still alive today was the ability to process new information quickly and change his course of action. "Let's abandon the procedure. Take her to her room before she awakens," he said.

"Another attempt to access her during her next cycle will be risky," the shadow-cloaked doctor said, his tone edgy.

"We won't take that risk," Spender agreed.

Fallbrook continued to manipulate the sonogram wand in Dana's body. "How could this happen? I'm certain it's a viable egg. I've been doing this for twenty-five years after all. I can spot them in my sleep."

"The hand of God?" Spender suggested, meaning to be facetious, but hearing something else in his voice. While disrobing her form for the procedure, the fastidious doctors had removed Dana's necklace. He lifted it from atop the pile of her belongings, dangling it from one nicotine-stained finger. "We don't have much time. Let's get her dressed," he repeated.

His final plan; leaving it all to God's will. What else do dying men do?

x

Richmond heaves his body over the top of the ladder and into the dark stone-walled chamber. He collapses, sweat streamed down his face. A woman has watched his ascent through a window. She moves to stand over him.

"Water," he moans.

Slowly, she retrieves a ladle from a large barrel kept deep in the shadows. He drains it immediately and holds it out for more.

After refilling it, she waits, hands clasped at her waist.

"Hot as hell out there," Richmond gasps.

A wheezing chuckle ripples from out of the deep shadows.

The woman holds out her hand expectantly.

The visitor wriggles out of his backpack and opens it. The box of Hostess powdered sugar mini donuts is half-crushed, but the woman snatches it from his grip and retreats.

"And for you," he said, tossing a carton of Morleys into the dimness.

"Thank you," Spender drawls. He'd always been proud of his melodious voice, and doesn't like the rasp that's always rattling behind his tracheotomy now.

After refilling the water cup, the man sits on a rock bench. "I have news."

Spender leans forward, despite not wanting to appear eager. The isolation which protects him also keeps him from obtaining his beloved information. Until it was taken away, he had not realized he was as addicted as to nicotine.

The courier must sense his excitement and takes the time to drain the drinking cup before continuing. "Dana Scully had her baby."

Spender fumbles with the cigarette carton, tearing the cardboard with renewed strength. "What was it?"

"A boy." Richmond finds his own pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. "She named him William--for the father's father." There's a sick satisfaction in his voice.

Smoke swirls out of Spender's trac opening as he exhales. "As it should be," he says, giving nothing away. "Bill was a great man in his way."

"And we had a mishap while engaged in discussions with your son Jeffrey," the visitor adds.

"Is he alive?"

"In a form."

Spender nods. There's prices to be paid. Jeffrey wasn't worth much, having no more heft than a Canadian dime found at the bottom of his pocket. In the end, he has placed his genetic stake solely on a stronger horse and his chosen mate.

"How'd you do it?" asks the visitor.

"Do what?"

"I was there, you may remember. When we first performed the tests and genetic collection on Agent Scully. And I viewed her medical charts after her cancer treatment. She could not have children."

"You're not privy to all the plans, Richmond."

"That's what you say," the other man says levelly. "I have to believe another purpose was being served by Agent Scully's pregnancy."

"She's just one of the many," Spender said soothingly.

"No. The alien super soldiers found where she was hidden to give birth--"

Spender has to place the cigarette over the opening in his neck to keep a sound from escaping. Smoke billows around his face.

"But they chose not to take the baby." Richmond shrugs. "He appears to be nothing more than a human baby. I've seen the tests."

Exhaling, Spender takes a moment to form his response. "Then he is."

"But he can't be!" bursts out Richmond.

"What other explanation is there? Perhaps Dana sought fertility treatment at a source more trustworthy than Dr. Parenti."

Richmond loses his patience. "We would know! We were watching her day and night!"

Spender remains impassive. The woman returns from her room, the donut box now empty. She tosses it on a dead fire in the corner, then crouches by the doorway.

Richmond has fallen silent at her entrance but seeing her as no threat, resumes his questioning. "Did you do this? Did you endanger everything that we've worked for all these years...Now, when any false step would mean the extinction of the few of us remaining --"

Spender smiles, even though he knows that Richmond can't see his face in the dark. "Why would I do something like that?"

"I don't know," the other man admits in defeat. "Why do you do anything that you do?"

"To prepare for the inevitable."

"Your death," pronounces Richmond, stalking toward Spender.

"Oh, I'm not going anywhere." Spender tosses away his cigarette.

The woman, forgotten by Richmond, leaps. A flash of steel in the dimness, and then dark again as it is rammed between the visitor's ribs, finding his heart. He collapses silently.

Wiping the blade on her pants, she looks down at the body. "I guess I'll get a rope," she says with no emotion.

"Drop him into the shaft out back," says Spender, easing back into his seat. "We won't want a smell."

He allows her to do all the labor. He's too ill to assist. These days, he is nothing more than bones held in place by skin and the breathes he took. Each one is a treasure.

But he has the confirmation for which he's waited a long year. His genes will live on, more breaths taken every day, only stronger and deeper. At no point had he been certain the plan would work--and the best plans are just that, balanced on a fine blade. Fox's nobility, Dana's assumptions about that part of him; would the drumbeat of biological urges, deafening after seven years, be enough?

It had been. Spender had profiled Agent Scully, seeing her as his son never would--her black habit replaced by a revealing gown befitting her beauty and body. The power to entice and capture a man was there. Yes, the self-indulgent exercise had been a risk; would there be a setback when Dana returned?

But another success from a momentary failure; with anger had come renewed passion, stronger than before. A bit of uncertainty is a good thing for a man, Spender believed. Fox had been too certain of Dana for too long. It had been necessary for Fox to restake his claim thus increasing the opportunities for fertilization of those miracle eggs. And triumph, just before his son had been lost. If Spender hadn't believed in God before then...

He manages to stand and goes to Richmond's abandoned backpack. Perhaps there is more....His shaking fingers search each pocket. Finally, he discovers a crisp piece of thin cardboard with his yellowed fingertips.

When he pulls it out, he staggers to the doorway for the light, barely able to breathe. A surveillance photograph of a woman pushing a stroller down a busy DC street. The long lens means the focus is not sharp, but he can see a round face, pink cheeks and a small white fist waving at the sky.

A warrior had been born; the old king can die now.

~ End Part Five

Get Your Santa On!

2013-11-17T23:45:36Z

Because nothing says the holidays like isolating yourself from friends and family members to frantically work on a fandom-related gift for an internet stranger! Whoo-hoo!

xf_santa will be goin' on this year and encourage all those Philes on my friend-list to prance over and sign up! I know there's a few of you, even dormat ones!

Clink here:

Fic: Six Times Someone Learns About William, Part 4

2013-11-12T05:09:46Z

Title: Six Times Someone Learns About William ~ Part 4
Author: bugs
Rating: T (Adult sexual situations and language)
World Count: 8,100
Spoilers: Through The Truth
A/N: Sorry for the long wait. I got 3,500 words written, realized it totally wasn't the direction I wanted to go, started all over, and ended up with 8,100 words!

Part 4:

The room is dark but for the frantic dancing of guttering candlelight on the wood walls. Mulder calls out, "Scully?"

Her, "Mulder," is barely a whisper.

As he stumbles forward, the smell of blood and the sound of rasping breathing meets him.

"She's exhausted," Monica Reyes murmurs at his shoulder.

"I brought medics," he tells her. "Get them."

The medical personnel are already there, caught in the narrow doorway with their equipment and backboard. Suddenly hysterical, Mulder is the picture of the frantic father, a Ricky Ricardo-like figure running manically in circles and banging into walls, as he can't seem to figure out what to do next.

Until Scully calls to him: "Mulder, take the baby."

In the darkness, he can only see the half-moon of her cheek and a single pale, determined eye focused on him.   She has a tight bundle of rags tucked under her arm.

"Take him."

Him. It's a him. That's a start; first question answered.

Suddenly he's joined at the bedside by the medics and their clanking boxes. They point flashlights at Scully, exposing her sweaty face. He has the irrational urge to knock the lights away.

When the female medic reaches for the baby, Scully is strong and definite. "No. Only he can have the baby."

Breaking from his stupor, Mulder lifts the swaddled form from Scully's side and presses it under his teeshirt against his own body. Warm. Babies should be kept warm. There's some squirming, but no protest.

"How is she?" he says over the top of the medic's rapid questions to Scully and Reyes.

"Has she passed the placenta?" is asked.

Monica looks horrified. "Was she supposed to?"

The patient speaks for herself. "No, the contractions have stopped and he hasn't nursed."

Relieved that she's found another medical professional, the medic talks to Scully. "We've got to transport you. Give you some Pitocin if we don't see any action within the next half hour."

Something is wrong and Mulder can't do anything but sway in place, rocking the baby. A damp set of lips mouths at his stomach.

"Uh...I think he's hungry now."

The medic gives Mulder a few seconds of her attention. Her businesslike hands give a very quick examination, exposing the baby to her flashlight beam. Mulder can see that he's still covered with dried amniotic fluid, although his nose, mouth and eyes have been cleared. A couple inches of umbilical cord with a frayed string tied around the end hangs from his belly. His eyes are closed even as his lips purse.

The nurse dismisses Mulder's concern. "He's sleeping. It's just a reflex."

"We need to get out of here," says Monica. "In case those people change their minds."

The other medic has put in an IV to Scully and she is moved onto the board.   Once she's loaded onto the helicopter, Mulder clamors in as well. Monica waved off the co-pilot's offer of his seat, checking her weapon before striding away from the helicopter as it lifts off.

Mulder assures that he's strapped in tightly. Scully calls out to him. "You have the baby?"

He doesn't take it personally. He knows that this fear is all she has right now.

"Yes, Scully, he's right here with me. Nothing will happen to him."

The twenty minute flight to the closest trauma center seems like twenty hours. Once he staggers out of the helicopter awkwardly, refusing the medic's offers to take the baby, they whisk Scully onto a gurney and all hurry toward the elevator that carries them down to the warmth and light of the hospital.

While Scully is taken into a labor room to complete her birth, he is routed toward the neonatal ward. Before she can admonish him again, Mulder tells her, "I won't leave him."

He does allow the nurse to take the baby from him but he keeps his gaze on the squirming infant until his tired eyes burn.

"Sir, you're going to have to wait outside--"

"I'm not going anywhere," he says. Clarity and direction finally return and he's able to smoothly act. He pulls out his old FBI identity card that Scully had given him as a 'back from the dead' gift; she'd been keeping it around her apartment. He had numerous photos of her, but that was all she had to prop at her bedside during his absence. Of course, his pictures were spare crime scene photographs where she looked really pretty.

"Special Agent Fox Mulder, FBI," he says, affecting the flat tone from days gone by. "This baby is evidence in a case we're investigating. I'm not to allow him out of my sight."

The nurse, an older woman with a harsh mouth but kind eyes, raises an eyebrow but then turns back to her duties. "Just keep out of our way, Agent," she scolds.

He watches the two nurses and attending physician as the boy is briskly toweled until his skin is bright pink. The umbilical cord is clamped and the end removed. This gets a lusty cry, the first sound Mulder's heard from the child. His eyelids squeeze shut to put power behind the screams, but then they snap open and Mulder is pinned in a blue-eyed gaze, so like another that has the power to paralyze him.

"Is he all right?" Mulder asks nervously. He knows the rooms are too far apart, but what if Scully hears? Will she think that he's failing?

"Yes, sir," the doctor says. The tiny Asian woman listens to the baby's heart and lungs and shakes off the nurse's suggestion to put him on oxygen.

The nurse locks a plastic band around the boy's ankle. "This has a sensor for detecting if the baby is removed from the facility," she says to Mulder, as though he'd suggested their security was lax.

"That's good," he responds, "but we're concerned about a number of threats against this child and his mother. Not just kidnapping."

This makes the woman look properly chastised and Mulder's grimly pleased. The other nurse has made imprints of the baby's feet before taking a blood sample from his heel. Mulder watches the one drop of deep red blood bubble out and be captured on the paper.

Billy Miles had bled red too.

Another nurse pokes her head in. "The mother is ready to see her baby." In her harried tone, Mulder can hear Scully expressing how ready she is.

"Is Scully all right; is Agent Scully all right?" Mulder babbles.

"She's passed the placenta and has been stabilized," this nurse says after seeing a nod from the doctor.

Mulder trails after the nurse pushing a bassinet with the baby, slumbering again after his outburst. This kid does seem to sleep a lot; Scully's child indeed. He follows down the hall, keeping close as a heeler dog.

The hospital room is dim and blissfully quiet. Scully's been watching the door though, her eyes huge and dark.

"Here we are!" says the nurse cheerfully.

"Everything's fine," Mulder assures her before she can ask yet again.

Without having to be told, he lifts the baby and brings him to Scully. She tugs loose the blanket that he's wrapped in and does her own inspection, gentle yet efficient, giving particular attention to the clamped cord.

The nurse starts to look nervous--this is no ordinary mother.

Scully gives her a tense smile and folds the blanket back over the baby's fat belly. Mulder takes this as permission to relax and collapses into a chair beside the bed. She reaches out and grasps his arm.

"How are you?" she asks and he can only laugh.

"Let me take the baby--". The nurse steps back when Scully's blazing eyes shoots up.

"We're fine," Mulder assures the older woman.

When the door snicks shut behind the nurse, Mulder and Scully look at each other.

"Well..." he says and crosses his legs, jiggling his top foot.

"Damn, help me with this gown," she says.

He's not sure what she wants at first, and finds himself trying to pull it up as Scully's trying to pull the gown down. When he sees her white breast, the parts click together.

He quickly sits back down.

"I'm sure some lactation consultant will be here any minute," she grumbles. "I want to take care of this on my own."

Of course Scully doesn't want the help of yet another cheerful, intrusive stranger. But Mulder can think of no way to help at all, so he remains fixed to the hard plastic chair, twining his fingers and watching her induce her son to feed. Pain etches on Scully's face and she involuntarily groans. He wants to tell her to stop if it hurts so much; that she's been through too much already; but he finally knows to keep his mouth the hell shut.

He's given her nothing but grief since his return, from the moment that he'd opened his eyes.

"Do you have any idea what you've been through?" Scully had asked him.

"Only what I see in your face." He watched the tears slide off her eyelashes and her lips waver. She draped herself on his shoulder and just her gentle weight is nearly enough to send him back to unconsciousness. It's real. He was home... "Anybody miss me?" he said.

Her fingers laced with his. He could feel the swirls of her fingerprints as she stroked along his palm.

"What do you remember?" she said, her voice low.

The sharp slap of memories, harsh and painful. He wouldn't say it. "I thought I signed up for the aromatherapy."

"You already used that joke," she scolded gently. Her lips pressed on the back of his hand.   "Do you remember that?"

He thought. "Yes," he finally said. "I'll try to get some new material."

Her chuckle was watery. "That's okay. I'll always laugh at your jokes. I'm just worried that you don't remember--"

He lifted his hand; heavy as rock. The few inches to her face was miles in effort. He touched her cheek. "I remember."

It was just the right thing to say. She kissed the tip of his thumb before taking his hand and drawing it to her body.

His fingertips grazed the curve of her breast...Yes, he remembered...Then there was another roundness, and it was hard and firm. He managed to loll his head and forced his eyes open as wide as they would go, in a ridiculous attempt to somehow see more.

Scully settled back in her chair, biting her lip and waiting.

"Wha--" he gurgled. He was strapped to the chair; there's pressure everywhere, crushing him to the point as close to death as he could be while still breathing. Then there was the tiniest of pinpricks entering his body--at his groin, in his mouth, under his sternum.

Blackness washed over him, and Scully's voice was very far away. Now her hands were light, brushing like a breeze across his suddenly heated skin.

When he returned to consciousness, Skinner was sitting there, hands on his knees, staring at the wall. A nurse hovered. She started feeding him ice chips every time he opened his mouth. He finally got a hand up to stop her.

"Now you're going to say that you have a bun in the oven too," Mulder sputtered.

Skinner turned his sharp gaze. "Don't be an asshole."

The nurse scurried away.

"Where's Scully?" Mulder gasped.

"She needed to rest. She hasn't slept since you were....Revived."

Mulder tried to sit up, but fell back on the pillow. Skinner didn't move to help him. "What happened to Scully?" he finally asked.

"She should tell you herself."

Mulder sighed deeply and the action hurt. Everything hurt.

Skinner succinctly explained the events as they pertain to Mulder for the past six months. He wanted to leave, to escape what he was being told, but he couldn't rise from the mattress. The pressure was back; the blade to the heart.

The door cracked open. "Is he awake?" Scully whispered.

"Yes, Scully, I am," Mulder mumbled.

Skinner stood. "I'll get a cup of coffee," he announced.

Taking the chair he vacated, Scully flashed Mulder a nervous smile.

"Feeling better?" she asked.

"Sure." Might as well get this over with. He flapped a hand at her. "So you've been keeping busy while I was away."

She worked her jaw in that way that always gave him the impression that she was chewing on profanity instead of spitting it out. "Yes, I've been occupied."

"More fertility treatments?" he suggested.

"I didn't get any more treatments. You may recall how lightheaded and ill I was feeling in Bellefleur. It wasn't the alien presence."

He heard women's screams echoing out of the darkness. He'd been unable to move his head or see anything but the floating white faces before him, but he could hear the words over and over, don't take my baby, coming from different female voices. Closing his eyes couldn't block out the cries so he stared at Scully until his eyes watered.

"I had sex with one man though. And I don't have to be a doctor to attest that you contributed all the genetic material necessary and then some," she said painfully, folding her arms tight.

"But Scully, you--"

She raised a finger to stop him; a rare flash of temper.

He took a breath. "Scully, all I'm asking is that you think like the scientist that you are. How could this have happened?"

"It's happened to other women. Rachel and Rebekah were barren--"

"Oh my god, Scully."

"Exactly, Mulder. My God is a merciful god. And don't you think that we deserve mercy--"

He stared at the ceiling, not replying.

"You were the one who told me not to give up on a miracle--"

He snapped his head around to glare. "I said that to make you feel better! Not because I believed it!"

It was her turn to clamp her mouth closed and glower.

Long minutes ticked by. Finally Mulder said: "Okay."

"Okay, you believe me?" The pleading in her voice was more painful than the scalpel into his gut had been.

"Okay, I want to go home."

He heard the scraping of the chair as she stood. "They want to transfer you to Bethesda Medical Center first. It'll be closer to home, but we can't release you until more tests are conducted."

"Sure," he muttered.

He was utterly shocked when her lips pressed to the corner of his mouth. It hadn't been a plea. It had been the simple fact of her unspoken love and this he could believe.

The baby's lips slip off Scully's nipple and she wipes his mouth gently with the corner of her gown. She coos wordlessly to him and baby and mother's gazes lock as if involved in a telepathic conversation.

"I love you, Scully," Mulder says, seeing if it will make Scully feel as he did then.

Her brow furrows as she tries to find a place to put what he's just said. He realizes it's not her that she wants to hear that he loves. He's screwed up again. She and the baby are falling asleep though, and it's a discussion which will have to wait.

He takes the baby from her slack arms. "Let's get this guy to bed," he says softly.

"Burp him," she mumbles, pulling her gown back up.

"Oh, right," Mulder says. Gingerly, he puts the baby to his shoulder and begins to pat tentatively, just like he sees people do in movies. He's never done this with an actual child.

"Harder, Mulder," Scully says bossily.

Before he can follows her order, he hears a surprisingly deep burp in his ear. "Bros stick together," he says into the boy's ear, but Scully hears. Her smile makes his heart lurch.

"Do we need to do something about the diaper?" he asks. He feels as unsure and fumbling as he had when he had woken from his death.

"You'll know when it needs to changed."

Mulder cringes and pulls the blanket over the baby's bare chest. Yes, there will be plenty of stinky diapers to change soon enough.

Turning back to her bed, he repeats the gesture, covering her with the blanket as well. "You need to get rest."

She protests even as he eyes keep drifting closed.

"I'll be right here," he assures her. "I won't go to sleep."

"You must be tired too," she insists.

His answer is to kiss the top of her head. He straightens, and looks into her questioning eyes. Then he goes to the bassinet and kisses the baby's head too. Only then does Scully release a long sigh and close her eyes once and for all.

He tries to make himself comfortable in the chair. Now that she's not watching, he allows the tears to slide down his cheeks, even though the sight of them would probably make her happy. She would believe that he wept for the birth of their child but he can't lie to her. It's another wave of these uncontrollable emotions that have flooded him again and again since his return from the dead.

His feelings are tender, like his feet if stripped of shoes and he's trying to cross a rocky shore. He is a seven year old, sulking because while he was away at summer camp, all his stuff--friends, home, job--got drawn into some other orbit. And Dana Scully is that glowing sun. Skinner looming over her, glowering down like Uranus's large body. This Mars, John Doggett, with his sharp gaze drawn to her again and again. The whirling asteroids, the Gunmen, his friends first, fussing and hovering over Scully and taking her side..He nearly goes blind with rage at that one. If anyone should be horrified at Scully's pregnancy, it should be those three. Instead, they carry her grocery bags and try to keep him from seeking the truth.

Yes, he's been having a child-like tantrum--not angry, not unhappy, but good old-fashioned, throwing stuff in his room, mad.

And through it all, Scully's been patient, understanding, even smiling at his painful jokes at her child's paternity. Hell, he would have kicked his own ass if he had the guts these days. Perhaps she had focused on the fact that very soon, she'd be having an even more helpless baby to care for and had little interest in catering to his needs.

His gaze goes to the baby. He would not be jealous of an innocent child. He would not. Then he looks at slumbering Scully. She always appeared so tiny and helpless in hospital beds; not his Scully at all. Perhaps it was similarities to another time, when she'd lay dying, that's kept him on edge.

She'd been just as determined then to follow her own truth, just as she is now with her baby. As much as she obviously still loved Mulder, he could come along for the ride or else she'd leave him by the roadside.

He wipes away his fresh tears. Yep, he's nothing but a big baby himself.

All he'd had was his love for her to survive, but even that had finally failed him. He'd given up and begged for death and it had mercifully come. His first thought on waking was that he'd have to confess to Scully, and how would she react to his abandonment...Only to have her steal his emotional spotlight with her own shocking reveal.

After his initial rebuke, she hadn't even bothered to try and convince him. Now in retrospect, he has to wonder if she'd sensed how skittish that he was and had played it nonchalant. After all, glacial had been the pace for their romantic relationship. With the speed and dignity of two Galapagos tortoises, they'd finally mated.

He'd hidden out in his apartment, putting everything back exactly the way it was before, allowing dust to settle on surfaces and bought a new mollie. But he couldn't help but be drawn to her apartment door...

He had held up a bag to her peephole. That got the door opened. He sees that the usually well put together Scully had moved into a fuzzy robe and slippers phase. With her rounded middle, she reminded him of a stuffed toy; he wanted to squeeze her until she squeaked.

"Donuts," he offered.

She showed the briefest of rueful grins, but didn't invite him in or accept his offering.

"You don't want a donut?" he said plaintively.

"Just something my mother said," she replied with a shake of her head.

He shifted uncertainly on his feet. "Okay, well, I guess I'll go on home then."

Giving a slight eye roll, she held the door open wide enough for him to enter. "Come in," she said ungraciously.

Dropping onto the sofa and tossing down the greasy bag on her coffee table, he had stared at his clenched hands. Now that he'd entered, he had no idea why he was there and what he wanted.

He'd been surprised when she comes up behind him and ran her fingers through his hair in that achingly familiar motion; sometimes meant to arouse, other times to sooth his spirit. It only broke his heart now.

"What can I help you with, Mulder?" Her tone was neutral, but when his gaze shoots up to meet hers, her eyes were filled with pain. He'd hurt her deeply and nothing he said will change that. So he might as well keep up his pursuit of the truth, regardless of her reaction.

Before he could speak, she did. "You want proof, right?"

He nodded.

She went to her desk and removed a folder from a drawer. "I had an amniocentesis test." Sitting beside him, she flipped the papers over until she comes to one with black dots lined up together. "Here's the fetus's DNA sample...And mine...And yours that we had on file."

"And it says that I am the father."

"Yes." There's no triumph in the word.

"But?"

She looks out across the room. "After I had this test, I came to distrust the doctor who drew the sample; I can't confirm it's my baby's."

"So now what?"

"I wait until the baby is born. I can't risk another test."

"All right." He leaned back into the deep cushions and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. The seat shifted as she rose. When he heard the clicking of the VCR, he lowered his hands.

She was cueing up the TV.

"This is the latest sonogram," she said, still dispassionate.

Balancing on the edge of the coffee table, she traced the shape on the screen for him. "Here's the head--"

He came around to sit on the floor beside her. "It looks large," he said cautiously.

Her hand settled to his head and ruffled through his hair again, but this time, he had the impression that she was making a point about his large-sized noggin.

He watched the white blob rotate before the sensor. "What is it--I mean the sex."

"I've been poked and prodded and tested for months. I want one surprise, dammit."

"Okay...But that--" He pointed at the screen as the blob turns again.

"It's a foot, Mulder."

"I was just thinking, like father, like son..."

The hand in his hair tugged and he tipped his head up to grin. He'd made Scully smile for only the second time since he opened his eyes. Cupping her cheek, he drew her face down to his.

He was surprised again. She dived at his mouth hungrily and he remembered that he has been gone for months. While he was taking his dirt nap, she had been living alone.

Billy Miles sloughed his skin to be a super soldier. Mulder's inner core seemed to be a selfish bastard. He kissed her back like the long-lost lover that he is, but broke it by struggling to his feet.

"I better go. Got some things to follow up on."

She flicked off the TV. "Sure."

"Can I take the tape?"

"You want to have it checked out," she said, her voice tired.

"No, I'd like to watch it again. I'll bring it back tomorrow."

The sound of ejection was loud and nearly covered the sound of her sniffling.

She walked him to the door. He cradled her to his side. Her changed shape had taken some getting used to, but he found that if he dipped his hip just so, she still fit close.

"I believe...In you, Scully. That's all I had during my abduction," he murmured in her ear. "All I had."

"I understand," she promised.

"I don't see how you can--"

"I understand," she reminded him firmly and he clutched the plastic video tape like a tiny lifeboat. He almost told her everything right then, but chickened out and had fled. With her pregnancy, Scully needed a protector, not some basketcase.

Some paragon like John Doggett. Mulder may have had trouble figuring out what was going on at first, but caught on to this guy's feelings for Scully pretty quickly. Oh wait, that was Dana.

Mulder shifts on his chair, seeking that sore spot on his hip, just to grind his irritation a bit deeper. John Doggett with his big house full of empty bedrooms and a backyard, perfect for a swingset. And who'd had to point out to Mulder that after the baby was here, what then? So intent on the fetus only as a form growing within Scully, Mulder hadn't given a moment's thought to the time when one life became two.

He looks at the wall clock. Five thirteen. Every minute is ticking forward and he has no idea what does happen next.

The door bursts open and he leaps to his feet, ready to meet the threat. It's just Maggie Scully, with her light floral scent and soft body pulling him into a hug before rushing first to the bassinet, then to Scully's side. Her daughter struggles out of sleep and to sit up.

"So much happier reason than the last time I drove hours to find you in a hospital," Maggie says, tears in her eyes as she settles beside Scully.

Mulder stands, shifting on his feet. Maggie Scully always has this effect on him. She smiles up at him; he's in her good graces for the moment. She's been giving him the side eye since his return. The unasked questions hung in the air during their mutual visits to Scully, until he'd flee back to his apartment.

She pulls a bag from her deep coat pocket. The fragrance wakes his hunger. "The only place open this early was the donut shop," she says.

For some reason, Scully went pink. "Mom," she hisses.

"Do you want one?" Mulder asks, muffled because he's already crammed a glazed raised into his mouth. He extends the bag.

"I'm fine," Scully says stiffly.

Maggie hops off the bed. "May I pick him up?" she whispers.

"Of course," says Scully, lying back on the pillows. "If I get the second turn."

"And you're third in line?" Maggie says to Mulder.

Envious of her confidence, Mulder watches Maggie swing the baby up to her shoulder to let him breathe in her scent. Only then does she cradle him before her so that she can look at his features, stroking his nose and chin.

The baby's eyes opens and he looks back, solemn.

"Have you got a name for him yet?"

Scully doesn't answer. "Who called you?"

"Assistant Director Skinner," Maggie replies, pursing her lips at Mulder.

His shoulders slump. He shoves another donut in his mouth, desolate. Grace was short-lived.

"i've brought the car seat and the baby bag and some clothes for you," Maggie says briskly.

His hand fumbles at the bottom of the bag. No more donuts. He'd dragged Scully out of her apartment without even a change of underwear.

"That's great, Mom. It's nearly six. I'm sure we can check out soon. I'm fine, the baby's fine--"

Maggie's not giving up. "The name?"

"We haven't decided," Scully says.

Mulder has to take deep breathes to stop those damn tears from coming back. "It's your choice, Scully," he says. He can't make any demands. Maggie starts to chatter about all the names that she's thought of, and Scully smiles over her mother's shoulder at him.

She's sailed along like some great frigate, and he's been bobbing in her wake. The obvious parallel to his search for the truth, with him expecting her to faithfully be at his side in the quest, hasn't been lost on him.   She has seemed to accept what he was able to give her so far, but this wasn't a matter of a man fearing some other man was a baby's father. After all, Bill Mulder had raised another man's son.

Instead, Mulder was overwhelmed with terror for her life and what would happen to her if there was something wrong with her son. He's heard stories of how close to a breakdown his flinty Scully had been when she had to be dragged from his dead body.

Like anyone recovering, he'd had good days and bad. Seeing her back in the hospital, her pregnancy in jeopardy, nurses keeping him away for not saying the word "yes", he took refuge in the familiar; work.

Finally, he had left a crime scene and the pain coming off John Doggett to see Scully in the hospital. He had to remember that he had his woman and his perhaps child right there and he knew that made him an idiot for being away.

When he peeked into Scully's room, he could tell that she's been waiting for him, but there was no reproach in her, "Where have you been?"

His babbling about the case sounded pointless even to his ears. He tried to turn it into his noble pursuit to aid a fellow agent. He reached a crescendo of self-righteousness: "You can't help a man who can't help himself."

She gazed back levelly. "He's worth the effort, Mulder."

He knew that they weren't talking about Doggett anymore. He hated when that happens.

Flat on her back in her hospital bed, her protruding belly had been impossible to avoid. He had willed himself not to stare, he would not stare...He was staring...And he must touch. He hadn't touched her stomach since that first day when she'd put his hand on it. Jeez, he'd reacted worse than Ruskin on his wedding night at the sight of his nude bride. It was a perfectly natural female body...

He gingerly lay his palm on the firm mound. Her glowing smile showed him that even the tiniest effort on his part had its rewards.

Once, he had fought with her about the source of her cancer; it had been very important to be right at the time. Now, he'd shut the fuck up and let her believe in her baby. It was time for Fox Mulder to be a grownup--nothing like a baby on the way to make that abundantly clear.

When he'd finally been able to take her home, her apartment had smelled of stale, abandoned pizza. "Damn, let me get rid of that and go out a fresh one," Mulder said quickly, grabbing the cardboard box.

When he returned, she was in her robe and slippers. Her mouth turned down at the label on the pizza box. Mulder fussed in the kitchen, getting plates and napkins.

"You miss your regular pizza man, don't you?" He can't do anything right.

"That's okay, he's coming by later." This new Scully was unsettling. Not only does she let his shit slide, she expected him to take her shit on a regular basis. All the other men in her life have obviously been spoiling her rotten and she had gotten used to it.

She finally had the chance to open his gift and appeared enthusiastic at the sight of the ratty old doll. The way that she said that she'd been wondering what on earth he could have given her suggested that her imagination went in another whole direction than stained family heirloom. Seeing it in the light of her clean, well-lit apartment, it looked like what it was. Coming out of a cardboard box in his place, it had been enrobed with all its history; his great-grandmother's journey from Holland, his mother's careful care of it, Samantha only allowed to touch it, not play with it and he not allowed to touch at all, and yet he was the last one, the only one, to touch it now. He had to pass it on...To his own child... He tried the term out in his mind.

Scully rubbed salt in his wounds, saying that he'd given her the courage to believe. Yes, he saw the utter irony in his inability to believe in a miracle for them, but that doll told its tale of life's hard truths.

One last press into the raw spot: "I hope that's a gift I can pass on," she said. As if anyone would wish a child to be as deluded as he could be on some of his better days. He had nothing to respond beyond a weak smile.

"I guess you will want to get to bed," he finally said, his voice strained. "Your own bed."

"That sounds wonderful," she agreed.

He tugged her out of the deep sofa cushions and led her to the bedroom as though she didn't know the way. Helping her onto the high mattress, he pulled off her slippers, then quickly retrieved some socks for her chilled feet before tucking them under the covers.

"Thanks," she murmured.

He wavered on his feet beside the bed. "You're welcome," he said formally.

"You look tired too." She was gazing up at him with her drowning pool eyes, the expression that always aroused him in the past and made him feel like a sick bastard now.

"It's been a long couple of days...Week," he admitted.

"Why don't you lay down then?" she suggested.

"I can sleep on the couch...In case you want anything later." He actually toed the carpet.

She was done pandering to his delicate nerves. "Mulder, get in bed," she commanded.

He scampered around to the other side of the bed, kicking off his shoes and wiggling out of his clothes. Her giggles let him know that she appreciated his enthusiasm.

Rolling over to face him, she cradled his cheek with her cool hand. "Please lift your leg," she said.

Confused, he complied. She slipped her leg between his and all system went on red alert. He forced his breathing to slow. She gave a low moan. "That feels better," she drawled sleepily. "I usually put a pillow between my legs to sleep, but you're a better substitute."

Oh. He was her big pillow.

Her arm slid under his, and drew him flush to her body. Not good. He'd been pathetically grateful to wake one morning in the hospital with an erection. The number of scars and marks on his gentitals had been terrifying, particularly when he had Scully and two other doctors standing over him with the charts in hand, all their brows furrowed in concern. This was not the way a lover should find out that her man was now a eunuch.

But even with renewed function, he hadn't been able to even summon one masturbatory session, when the moment that he closed his eyes, his usual fantasy of naked, lithe Scully took on a whole new rounded dimension.

He was adapting, however. Just needed some time to get over the shock, apparently. Her breasts pressed to his chest were fuller and heavier, not a bad thing. Her skin, that had always smelled briskly fresh, scrubbed clean of the scent of death, was now warm and yummy, for lack of a better term, like vanilla and brandy-- intoxicating.

He buried his nose in her hair and breathed in.

Her mouth went to his ear. "I want to make love to you so badly, Mulder."

He had gone momentarily white-blind in the dark bedroom. Their bodies twined, those strong thighs of her holding him deep within her, their mouths panting together--

Her voice was filled with regret: "But--"

"Of course," he babbled, trying to wiggle away. "I understand--"

There was the Doctor Scully voice, explaining something about premature labor triggered by orgasm, and the risk of another partial separation of her placenta and all he could think about was finding a way to induce a reverse erection, where he somehow could retract his entire penis up into his abdomen. He just wanted to lie with her here in this bed, but this bed which had meant only one thing in the past year--sex..really, really fantastic sex.

"I could help you out here..." Her tone was only slightly less clinical as her hand slipped between their bodies.

He scooted out of reach. "Scully," he warned her. "I've been around while you're 'helping' me out, remember? Your reaction is just as enthusiastic. There's still be a risk of contractions."

Her low chuckle in the dark was so seductive that the problem is nearly resolved right then and there.

"I guess you're right..." she mused, her voice husky. Her hand moved back up to rest over his heart.

He could hear sleep overcoming her and was overwhelming happy. Stroking her hair and peppering light kisses on her face, he eased her into slumber and he soon followed.

"Mulder?" woke him sometime in the night. Their bodies had shifted to spoon, her favorite sleeping position, but his leg was still doing its duty between hers.

He was instantly awake and his hands went to her belly as though he can feel any disruption in the force. "Is something wrong?"

"Could you get me a piece of pizza?"

His head fell back on the pillow. "Sure," he mumbled.

As he stumbled toward the kitchen, he took comfort in knowing what little he could give her seemed to be enough at the time.

Maggie hands the baby from Scully to him. "Here's your little man," she says, and it does seem that easy when he hears it aloud.

The journey back to DC is hours long and he and Maggie take turn driving. If anyone had said he would spend eight hours in a car with his sort-of-mother-in-law, a tired Scully and her frequent naps, and newborn, he would have put it up there with the drive down to the team-building weekend that never happened. But it's oddly comfortable, as though traveling into a vision of another life. Maggie knows how to chatter harmlessly from years as a military wife. Scully has obviously warned her mother off while he was throwing around his illegitimate FBI agent identity to get out of the hospital without filing a birth certificate.

"Let's deal with it when we get home," Scully had said, not meeting his gaze. He knows then, when she does complete it, the father section will be blank and the last name will be Scully.

"Mom, drop us off at the FBI. Mulder's car is there."

He glances up in the rear view mirror in surprise. She's finished feeding the boy and is strapping him back into his carseat.

"Honey, what do you mean? You're surely not going to work?" Maggie asks, astonished.

"Of course not," Scully says, with that slight stutter of untruthfulness. "Mulder just needs to get his car."

As soon as her mother drove way, Scully says, "Bring the baby," tensely.

"Where are we going, Scully?" he asks, although he has an inkling.

"To the lab," she replies.

They hurry through the quiet halls of the Bureau headquarters. The few agents there after working hours give them curious looks, but no one dares to stop them. They slip into the DNA testing laboratory. It's mercifully empty and Scully locks the door behind them before turning on the lights.

After snapping on rubber gloves, she lays out three sterile swabs and motions Mulder to sit beside the baby. His carseat is up on the table like a throne.

"What is this, Scully?" Mulder asks, even though he knows.

"A DNA test." She's coming at his mouth with the swab.

He takes her wrist, stopping her. "Scully, we don't need to do this. I don't need this. Really," he whispers, pain closing his throat.

She strokes his stubbled cheek. "But I do."

After a long moment, he opens her mouth for her to wipe the inside of his cheek. She seals his sample, then quickly replicates the process with the baby and her.

While she performs the test, he walks the boy around the lab, showing him the specimens inside jars, contorted in horrifying ways. He's getting comfortable to the frustrating combination of the dead weight and squirming limbs while carrying the baby.   His basic fear of dropping the baby is ebbing.

"Mulder."

He knows she has her results. He hurries to her side.

"Scully, I mean it. It doesn't--"

"He's our son." She leans her forehead into his chest beside the baby's kicking legs.

Their baby. He cups the back of her neck and kisses the top of head.

She clears her throat and stand back. "I need to clean this up and we should get out of here."

"Scully..." He's puzzled.

"You need to go to your apartment and pack everything."

"Right now?" he says with a laugh, just so happy that she wants him to come home with her and their baby.

"Yes." Her gaze burns bright and he can never deny that look.

"Okay. But I may be all night."

She nods. He smiles before giving her a kiss. "It's worth it. We'll have the rest of our lives," he dares to say, and her eyes fill with tears.

He drops Scully and their boy off at her apartment and is driving to his when his phone rings. Assuming it's her to tell him that she's changed her mind and wants him to turn around, he answers with a cheery, "Yes?"

"Fox Mulder." The voice is flat and contemptuous.

"Yeah?" he says cautiously.

"It's Deputy Director Kersh."

"Yeah."   He can be just as nonplussed. This man wasn't his supervisor anymore.

"I understand congratulations are in order."

Mulder stared at his phone. Scully had scrubbed down that lab and taken the results with her--

"Let me offer you some advice."

"What?" Mulder growls.

"Get out of town before someone puts you under the ground, this time permanently."

Furious, Mulder can barely keep his car on the road. "Thanks for the advice, Kersh, but you're not making any threats that I haven't heard a hundred times before."

"It's not a threat, Mr. Mulder. It's a warning." Kersh sounds utterly bored as though reading off an index card someone has left by his desk.

Mulder hangs out without another word. He doesn't have time for bullshit from shadowy conspiracy figures. He's got fifteen years of crap to clear out of an apartment in a night.

x

The next morning, he meets the Gunmen leaving Scully's bedroom, there to visit the blessed event. They know to clear out; it's his turn.

Uncertain all over again, Mulder crosses the threshold. "How's everybody doing?"   He'd wanted to call every hour the night before, but had feared waking them.

Sitting on the edge of the bed with the baby, her face shows that she'd missed him just as much. "We're doing just fine."

Yes, they are we now, not us. He's okay with that.

She brings the baby over for him and he peeks under the blanket. The boy starts to fuss. "Hey now," he says, trying to sound fatherly. "None of that." This effort gets a tentative smile from Scully.

He whispers, "Hi," to both of them. It's new, all over again. Perhaps this morning can be a fresh beginning.

He asks the question that should have been his first that day when he learned that she was pregnant. The sort of question that everyone asks expectant mothers: "What're you gonna call him?"

"William. After your father."

His head shoots up and he meets her gentle eyes. His last name wouldn't be on the baby's birth certificate, but she will acknowledge that this is his son in another way.

He was so grateful, he has to take refuge in humor. "Well, I don't know. He's got your coloring and your eyes...but he looks suspiciously like Assistant Director Skinner." Now that the baby's features have stopped looking squished and his head has taken a round shape, the size of William's nose was all the confirmation he needs; no DNA test necessary.

He's surprised by what she says next: "I don't understand, Mulder. They came to take him from us. Why they didn't--" She finally shows her fear, that thing she's been hiding from him since he returned.

He can't stop looking at his son, noticing the strong brow and creased forehead--a thinker. "I don't quite understand that either. Except that maybe he isn't what they thought he was," he muses. "That doesn't make him any less of a miracle though, does it?" He finally pulls his gaze away from his baby to look at Scully, acknowledging what she'd hoped for when he'd first awoken.

And yet she says with a humorless huff of a chuckle, "From the moment I became pregnant, I feared the truth and how and why..."

He wraps his mind around that. Scully hadn't feared her child was an alien product, but that her God would have chosen to give her this gift. That was a weight just as great as the one he had carried.

"And I know that you feared it too," she says.

He had wondered how she had been putting up with his crappy attitude for all these weeks. She hasn't faulted him because she shared his uncertainty.

"I think what we feared were the possibilities," he says, his voice low. "The truth we both know."

"Which is what?" She looks at him levelly, ready for one of his truth-telling moments.

He shows, rather than tells her. Leaning across their son, he lets his lips settle on hers, waiting to see what she thinks of his theory before he presses his point.

When he lessens the pressure, waiting for her response, it is her hand on his elbow and a squeeze, and he sinks back into her mouth, remembering, remembering...I love you whispered in his ear when she thought he was asleep.

William gives a gurgle, breaking the moment.

"You'll get your turn," Mulder says before dropping his lips to the boy's downy head.

Scully snuggles closer, their three bodies twined and swaying.

"You have to go," she murmurs in his ear.

He laughed. "I just got here! Do you need something at the store?"

"No, Mulder. You have to leave; to go into hiding."

He steps back; he needs a clear head. "What the hell are you talking about?" He's holding their son out of her reach.

Her hands, the fingers white, are clasped as if in prayer. "Those people didn't take me or my baby. But now they know what you are capable of doing. The DNA test shows it. You have made a barren woman pregnant--"

"So what does that make me?" he sputters.

She raises her eyebrows.

"Scully, that Rohrer person, the super soldier, told Doggett that your chip made your pregnant. I just gave my donation in the usual manner," he protests.

"Those super soldiers have lied all along," she insists. "But you have the power to create life where no life could grow. They will do anything to eliminate you or worse, turn you into one of their lab rats--" She's started to pace in her agitation.

There's no way he's going to tell her about Kersh's threat. He has to make her see sense. "Scully, how can I protect you and William if I'm not here--"

"you will be searching for the truth, Mulder. You will preserve his future by finding the answers. You can't do that here, helping me with midnight feedings."

"But it's all I want."

"We will have it," she promises, moving back into his embrace. "When your work is done. And you can't do it if you remain here to be killed." She takes William from him, and he immediately misses the weight.

Wrapping his arms around her and the baby, he buries his face in her hair. "Don't make me leave," he rasps.

"Let's have a day," she says. "A day of being together as a family. Then you have to go."

He squeezes his eyes shut. Twenty-four hours. Not enough. "Two," he begs. "Give me two."

"Two," she agrees.

~ End Part Four

The Occasional Deep Thought on Writing

2013-11-10T02:21:48Z

I've always said that writing fanfic and 'real' writing are exactly the same except the money part. The same impulse, issues and frustrations are shared.

I watched a documentary on Harper Lee, Hey, Boo, and was reminded of that again. There're always the great classics in a particular fandom from a writer who never writes another thing. In real writing, figures like Lee and Salinger (And Margaret Mitchell to some extent) have always perplexed me because the urge to write is like the reflex to breath. How could you write like that, and yet, never write again?

The saddest thing that I ever heard from another fanfic writer was: "I want to write just one book and make enough money to live the rest of my life."

That was Harper Lee. After watching the film, I could see her suffering the paralysis I see with One Hit Wonder fanfic writers, who are always 'working on something really slowly,' and talk about their 'muse isn't there,' and spend a lot, a lot of time on comms talking about writing, but apparently have little time to actually do it.

And there's nothing wrong with that. I think some people only have one story in them. The world needs To Kill a Mockingbird. If Lee had written 200 more books and they were all crap, would the original gem have been tainted? (I guess so to some readers and writers and that's one of the reasons not to write when you've been perfect.)

A utterly fascinating bit that I hadn't know was, there was a persistent rumor that Truman Capote had written TKAMB. (Accompanied by a clip from a film with Sandra Bullock doing an AWFUL Southern accent) First off, uh, what??

But one of Lee's defenders was Mark Childress saying that he'd received a letter from her once, and it was exactly the voice from TKAMB. There in lies the answer to the mystery, in my mind. A letter can have a beautiful, distinct voice, but it's not a plot.

There were some quick references at at the beginning of the documentary about how her editor worked with her for over 2 years to get her series of vignettes and sketches into a plot for the book. Two years? When she had NO OTHER job? The book isn't that long!

So I ended up wondering if Lee wasn't capable of plotting and that's the 'help' she received from her editor. (Why she then wouldn't get his help again, who knows.) And once she'd told the one story that was so close to her heart (Just like a fandom), she had no will to write more; it was just too damn much work.

Or am I just writing Harper Lee RPF?

Fic: Six Times Someone Learns About William, Part 3

2013-10-27T08:27:34Z

Title: Six Times Someone Learns About William, Part 3
Author: bugs
Rating: T
Warning: Adult language
Word Count: 2,000
Spoilers: Through The Truth

xox

Part 3:

"John, I was so happy to hear from you." Monica Reyes took a tentative step toward Doggett, as though to move into a hug which didn't come. His outstretched hand kept their bodies apart and after a pause, she shook it.

"Thanks for comin', Agent Reyes," Doggett said. "I know it was short notice--"

She pasted on a smile and looked up for the Helena airport baggage claim sign. "It sounded important."

"I thought you may have some insight into a case I'm on," he told her as he fished his cell phone out of his pocket. "Let me check on the status while you get your bag. I'll see you out front."

The phone to his ear, he strode away, leaving her to head for the luggage carousel. After collecting her suitcase, she waited outside on the sidewalk. A rental car pulled up beside her.

Doggett leaned across the front seat to open the door for her. Raising her eyebrows at his gallantry, she tossed her bag in the backseat, then settled into the car beside him.

"So what's the case?" she asked, fumbling for her pack of cigarettes.

Pulling away from the curb, he tapped the No Smoking sticker on the dashboard. "The FBI'll pissed if I lose the cleaning deposit."

Sighing, she shoved the box back in her pocket.

"The case," she prompted him.

"I've been assigned a missing person investigation. A FBI agent named Fox Mulder. You know of him?"

"Hell, yes," she said with excitement, twisting in her seat. "Who hasn't heard of the infamous Fox Mulder?"

Harry Schmidt, the lead agent on John's first case, had tipped his head. "See that guy?"

John had squinted across the crowded conference room. A tall, dark-haired man stood apart from the other agents gathered for a briefing. "Yeah."

"Stay away from him."

"Who is it?"

"Fox Mulder."

"The profiling golden boy? I read a number of his monograms while at the Academy--"

"Not a golden boy anymore. He's tossed his career away to chase aliens."

"Illegals?"

"No, little green men."

"What the hell?"

Harry shook his head. "Just never get on a case that he's connect to. Two different options happen, both bad for you. He'll solve it with some cock and bull theory and make you look like an idiot. Or it won't be solved and it'll get stuck in his X file cabinet, pushing down your solve rate." Clasping John's shoulder, Harry drove home his point. "You're going somewhere in this agency and it's up. He's in the basement already and his career's sinking fast. Don't ever get tied to him, even for just one case."

Just then, a short, red-haired woman had joined Fox Mulder, approaching from behind. She didn't speak or look at him, but he glanced down at her. He murmured something out of the corner of his mouth and John could see her fight a smile. Mulder was still looking at her, but when she gazed up at him, he turned away. It was a strange sort of interplay; an intense awareness of each other, but with a reluctant aloofness.

"What about her?" John nodded toward the couple.

Harry glanced over. "Oh her. His partner. Another person who could have had a career, but she chooses to stay in that basement. She's a warning to anyone who does get tangled up with him."

Doggett pulled into a parking lot. "Yeah, that Fox Mulder."

"We're meeting the other agents here?" Monica got out of the car.

"No, they're still following up on a lead. I thought we'd grab some coffee..."

He studied the cafe's whimsical sign with dissatisfaction. Perk Mi Up it read.

"Can't just get a damn cuppa joe and a donut anymore," he lamented. "Even in Montana."

Monica smiled behind his back. "Have a breve and a cranberry scone. It won't kill you."

After picking up their order, they chose a table away from the few patrons. The strong espresso nearly wiped out her craving for a cigarette. Once again, she probed at the reticent man beside her as he stared broodingly down into his Americano.

"Missing person's case. Fellow agent. Details."

Efficiently, John explained that Fox Mulder, after an alternately brilliant and checkered FBI career, had disappeared several months ago on one dark night while searching for an alien spaceship.

Monica shook her head. "A what?"

"You heard me." John bit off the end of his croissant and swallowed with no pleasure.

"And I'm going to assume that you didn't follow that lead."

"Nope."

"What is your theory?"

"The evidence I've gathered early on says that driven by the utter failure of his years of work, and faced with a terminal illness, he staged the greatest disappearing act the agency has ever seen."

She peered at him over her cup's rim. "Pretty fanciful for you, John. But--"

"But what?" he grumbled.

"You're the one who's left the but hanging in the air."

"My butt's right on this chair," he told her.

"But--" she prompted again, not to be dissuaded.

"His partner is stonewallin' me at every turn. Keeping me in the dark, haring off to follow up on leads..." He wound down with a shape of his head.

"So he believes that Agent Mulder was abducted by aliens?"

"She." Doggett looked around as if expecting a waitress would materialize to top off his coffee.

Monica leaned back in her chair. There was a lot of weight put in one short word.

"She's bought into Fox Mulder's bete noire?"

John's brow furrowed. "Huh?"

"Does she believe in aliens?"

"She says that she's seen things she can't explain...And there's another problem."

Monica broke off the corner of her scone. She was suddenly ravenous.

"Agent Scully--that's the partner--she was rendered sterile four years ago...She says at the hands of these various nefarious forces that are in cahoots with the aliens--" John dismissed everything he said with a wave of his hand.

"She told you this?"

"It's in this section's files. These X-flies they worked on."

"Okay..." Monica said slowly.

"But now she's pregnant."

"I see." Yes, things were becoming more clear with each moment. "How far along?"

"Far enough," John said, the tip of his head answering her next question before she could pose it.

"Would Scully cover up for Mulder?" John had asked Dan McKeowen who'd served on several task forces with the X-files agents.

"Well, he's got a big dick," McKeowen replied with a smirk.

Jackson, his partner, topped off his coffee mug from the break room carafe. "No, no, I heard she's got a really tight twat."

Both men roared with laughter and John forced a smile on. Keep 'em talking...Dana Katherine Scully, doctor of medicine and battle-seasoned special agent for the FBI, could be reduced to just another horny broad by a couple of tossed-off phrases. The way it worked never failed to amaze John. Sometimes his job disgusted him.

Monica shoved her balled up napkin into her now empty drink cup. "The victim. You searched his home. What did you find?"

"Typical middle-aged guy bachelor pad," John said with a shrug.

"You'd know," she muttered.

He continued on as though he didn't hear her. "Signs of recent female companionship."

"What told you that?"

"Outdated porn stashed in the back of the closet; scented candle in the bathroom."

She gave a definite nod. "So just one woman. Wouldn't bother for casual pickups."

John shoots her that quick sideways smile of his that always made her want to drink an ice cold beer really fast. He continued: "No condoms suggested the woman in question was Agent Scully."

"And look where that got them." This time, he didn't return her grin, so she returned to her business-like tone. "How outdated?"

"What?"

"The porn, John. You checked, I assume."

"For investigative purposes only," he protested.

She grinned again, but hid it behind her hand.

"Two years out of date," he admitted.

"How long have they been partners?"

"Seven years."

She raised her eyebrows. "Interesting."

"How so?"

"I mean, you either do or you don't, pretty quick, wouldn't you say?"

He shifted in his chair. "Maybe she played hard to get."

"Maybe he did," she suggested.

John snorted incredulously. "Do men do that?"

She turned in her chair so that John couldn't see her expression. "He could have been shy," she suggested.

"He was a man, Monica."

She squinted at John. "And Agent Scully is a woman, I take it."

"Of course she is," he said, wrinkling his brow in confusion.

"I don't mean the type of woman that a man would finally notice has a pair of tits after five years. I mean a woman," she said with emphasis.

He stared into his own empty coffee cup.

"Oh, yes she is," Monica murmured.

"I just figured...Work relationships can get messy. They must have known that."

"Yes, they can get fucked," Monica said harshly, causing him to finally look at her.

John added: "And when I went back to his apartment for a follow up, I found her sleeping on his bed. She said she was there to feed the fish..."

"You prefer your evidence concrete like that," she observed wryly.

"Yeah, but this damn case is anything but a smooth ride," he bemoaned.

Monica cleared her throat, hoping it would clear her thoughts as well. "So where do I fit in, John? You asked me out here for a reason."

He looked relieved to be back on solid ground. "I need your skills. I need you to talk Dana out of this craziness and to accept that Mulder may be dead. Or worse."

We've found two others who were taken that night with Mulder, I assume by the same people. Both were brutally tortured. One's dead and one was abducted right out of the hospital where she was being treated. I want to stop Dana from clinging to this idea that Mulder's just gonna show up fine and dandy. When we find the truth, it's gonna kill her." His rough voice finally caught. “And we have to think of her baby."

"How can I help?" Monica said quietly.

"I'll show you the reports of injuries on the other two abductees. I think it's some sort of ritual practices--"

"What about your theory that Fox Mulder faked his own disappearance?" she interjected.

"I want an answer, Monica. One that will cause as little pain as possible for Dana and close the door on this." He rose from the table. Apparently the background briefing was over.

"The other abductees were found here in Helena?"

"Yep, out in a remote field."

"I want to go there. I may feel something."

Doggett rolled his eyes at at the word 'feel'. "If you think it'll help," he said grumpily.

For some reason, Monica was suddenly very angry. "You were going to tell me about Fox Mulder. But you've spent an hour telling me about Dana Scully. I'll need to find out what I can about Mulder on my own," she said, then stormed out to the car, leaving John to clean off the table before joining her.

X

The undulating hills carry away Monica's discontent, clearing her mind. She needs to center her thoughts on the case, the facts as they've been given to her, and on finding Fox Mulder. She puffs on her cigarette, finding another kind of peace.

This prairie is the sort of place that every breeze turns into a babbling discourse in the rattling strands of grass. If only she could hear what it's trying to tell her...

She's focusing on the twisted branches of a hangman's tree when the others approach. She quickly grubs out her cigarette and turns.

She'd expected Dana Scully to resemble John's willowy blonde ex-wife for some reason. Instead, she has to look down, down, down from her own awkward, gawky height to see this delicate doll face, incongruously on the soberly-robed figure of a slender Medieval saint. Rounded features capped with sun-flamed hair and then Monica gets to the eyes...a welding torch blue; the most intense gaze that she's ever seen, set over a contempt-curled set of soft lips.

Monica's smile of embarrassed greeting turns to a grin. Yes, Dana Scully is a woman. And Fox Mulder is still alive; no man was leaving that force behind; he wouldn't dare.

~ end part 3

E/N: Yes, I did like Doggett and Reyes. Shoot me.

Fic: Six Times Someone Learns About William, Part 2

2013-10-22T05:35:10Z

Title: Six Times Someone Learns About William, Part 2
Author: bugs
Rating: K
Genre: MSR, S, A
Word Count: 2,000
Spoilers: Through The Truth

Part 2:

Dana's tear-edged message makes Maggie snatch up her receiver to return the call, but she just gets her daughter's machine. A few frantic moments of digging finally finds the number to Dana's cellular phone, but there is only voicemail there was as well. Maggie leaves word that she's home and will be waiting to hear from Dana on both machines.

Next she tries Fox Mulder's numbers, but can only leave messages there too. He always contacts her when Dana is in trouble, but he could be equally endangered. Maggie settles in for the long wait for the return call. Since Dana became a field agent, these actions have become a sickening routine for her mother.

The phone finally rings. "Mom, it's me," says Dana.

"What's happened?"

"I can't talk--" Her daughter sounds distant, both from the cell phone's echo and emotionally. "I'm in Arizona right now, on a case. I'll come by as soon as I'm back."

"Honey, can't you just say--"

"I can't go into it on the phone." There are those tears in her voice again. Dana disconnects the call before her mother can protest any further.

Maggie considers calling Fox again, but she and her daughter's partner are always careful as to how often they team up against Dana's reticent moments. She can only go to that well so often.

Two days later, she receives another short call, telling Maggie that Dana is on her way over. Rain clouds are gathering, and she's irrationally afraid of Dana driving in this weather. She stays by the front window, watching for the car to appear.

When Maggie opens the door and sees her daughter's battered face and bleak eyes, she can't hold back her gasp.

"Mom, it's okay," Dana says, and brushes by to enter the house. "Come on inside and let's talk," she adds, as though inviting Maggie into her own home.

Perhaps Dana believes she must show her mother yet again the sort of place that she inhabits--not a house filled with chintz upholstered furniture or cabinets of Limoges porcelain. but of shadows and blank-faced evil. Locking the door behind them, Maggie follows to the living room.

She needs to remind her daughter who's the hostess here. "Would you like some tea?" she asks.

Pacing the Oriental rug, Dana shakes her head, then nods. Moving to the kitchen, she begins to automatically go through the motions for tea; filling the kettle, putting it on the stove, pulling down the tin and cups from the cabinets.

The storm clouds sink low and black over the house. Maggie turns on the lights against the dimness. "Honey, sit down," she orders, gently pushing her daughter to the kitchen table and taking over the tea-making duties.

The younger woman sinks into a chair. Maggie flinches as she gets a better look at the large abrasion and bruise on Dana's jaw. A cut is sutured closed on her forehead.

"How did you get hurt?" she asks, tense.

Dana combs her hair behind her ears. "It doesn't matter. I'm fine."

"Something was already wrong before this trip to Arizona," Maggie remembers, her fear mounting.

Dana licks her lips in slow motion, a nervous gesture that her mother knows denotes anxiety.

Maggie sits beside her and takes her hand. "Tell me."

Tears glistens in Dana's eyes but her voice is strong. "Mulder's been abducted. He's gone."

"You thought he was in Arizona?"

"Yes."

"But you didn't find him."

It's not a question. Dana shakes her head.

"Who has him?"

Dana looks away. "You can't know details--"

Maggie gently squeezes her daughter's slack fingers. "He's gone. That's what matters."

"I have to find him--"

As the kettle screams, Maggie reaches back to turn off the burner. "Of course," she says. The tea can wait.

Another lick of Dana's lips. "Because..."

Even as the clouds close in, darkening the windows, the room goes white and Maggie's body becomes weightless. Her only anchor is her daughter's suddenly strong fingers, holding on tight.

"...I'm going to have a baby."

"Thank you, our blessed Virgin, for hearing our prayers," Maggie says in a rush, the words on her tongue before her daughter can even finish.

"Oh, Mom," Dana says with a combination of affection and exasperation.

"Oh Mom, yourself," Maggie sobs, pulling her daughter into a hug. "You don't think you were the only one praying for this, do you?"

"Of course not," Dana grumbles in her mother's shoulder.

"The IVF worked? I thought your last treatment was over a year ago." Maggie disentangles herself and rises to quickly make two mugs of tea. When Dana doesn't reply, she looks over her shoulder. The younger woman is staring down at her twining hands. "Dana?"

Her daughter clears her throat. "The IVF didn't work."

"Oh, I see." Maggie puts the cups on the table and slides the sugar bowl closer. "So you really need to speak to Fox," she says archly.

"Yes. We need to investigate--"

"You don't need your combined doctorates to figure out how it happened," Maggie notes with an unlady-like snort, her joy bubbling up through her nose.

"Mom!"

Maggie raises her eyebrows. "Dana, you don't think I believed Fox's story that he was dropping off donuts when I came by to pick you up for early mass that morning, do you? A mother knows," she says smugly.

Dana hunches her shoulders. With determination, she tries to change the subject. "It was so nice to come back to the rain. It was over 110 degrees every day in Arizona--"

Ignoring her, Maggie probes a bit more. "We're both adults here--"

"Mom, I really don't want to have this conversation," Dana insists. "There's more important things to talk about--"

Her mother is relentless. "But I am talking about that! All I mean is, it wasn't an immaculate conception."

"It might as well be. I've seen the medical test results--"

"There are a power greater than any doctor's," Maggie notes firmly.

"I prayed, but for the IVF to work," Dana says, her voice low and pained. "I believed that the failure was my answer from God."

"I did more than pray." In her happiness, Maggie has dropped her guard.

Dana furrows her brow. "What do you mean?"

Maggie twitches a smile. "Nothing."

"Mom..." Dana is the inquisitor now, her gaze sharp.

Maggie finds the rain splattering on the kitchen window utterly fascinating. "You'll think it's silly..."

"I'm more worried it's something dangerous."

"I would never harm you or the baby!" Maggie protests.

"What did you do?" Dana asks with deadly calm.

"I...Do you remember me telling you that Donna Bolton went to France last fall?"

Dana clearly doesn't, but Maggie forges on. "She went to Lourdes..."

Dana jumps up from the table. "Mom!"

Maggie holds up her hand. "I asked her to bring back a bottle of the healing waters from the holy grotto--"

Collapsing back in her chair, Dana fights between a smile and tears. "Oh, Mom."

"What could it hurt?" Maggie points out.

"You slipped me some magic potion?"

"Actually, both you and Fox," admits Maggie. "Remember when the two of you came over for New Year's cookies? In the tea water." Maggie nods to her mother-in-law's Wedgwood teapot on the countertop.

Her daughter's mouth falls open. "Mulder?"

"You never know where the problem really is in these cases--"

"Yes, we do know, Mother," Dana lectures. "We had all the test results. My few preserved ova were barely viable, while he had excellent sperm mobility--" She stops. "I did not want to talk about this," she says to herself.

"It couldn't hurt," repeats her mother.

"I just can't believe you did something this desperate, Mom." Dana takes her mother's hand again.

"And spending months, thousands of dollars, and how many tears on the fertility treatments wasn't some leap of faith?" says Maggie, stung by her daughter's pity.

Dana drops her head. "Faith...If only I could believe this is how my pregnancy came about--"

"What else could it be?" Maggie asks practically.

"Mom..." Dana whispers, raising terrified, tear-filled eyes for Maggie to see.

She gathers her daughter in her arms, holding her close and fierce. She understands. "That's why you need to find Fox. You need his power to believe."

Dana nods frantically, leaving a train of mucus on her mother's neck. Maggie is suddenly reminded of such moments from thirty years ago. But this isn't a pain that a Bandaid and a kiss will fix.

Instead, she reaches for the box of Kleenex on the counter and both women blow their noses.

"I don't know what to believe, Mom," Dana says haltingly. "I've been shown medical tests...Results saying that Mulder was terminally ill--"

Maggie gasps, covering her mouth.

"The FBI is saying that he was desperate, had nothing to live for, and that's why he's gone--"

"He wouldn't have kept that from you," Maggie says definitely.

Dana gives another half-sob and leans against her mother's comforting shoulder. "They don't know him like I know him. He had everything to live for," she rasps. "Even if he didn't know about the baby yet, he wanted us--" Her words are choked off.

Maggie smooths her daughter's hair back from her hot forehead and makes low cooing sounds.

"We were so close to finally having some peace," Dana finishes.

"You do have peace, my love," her mother reassures her. "It is there, growing within you."

Dana gasps out a laugh. "I doubt that. I already have morning, afternoon and evening sickness."

"So until Fox gets back, you'll stay here during your leave of absence--" Maggie can be just as bossy as her daughter.

"What? No, I'll still be working on the X-files--" insists Dana, struggling loose from her mother's hold and going to the stove to refresh her tea.

"Why in the world?" asks Maggie.

Dana leans against the counter, cradling her mug. "First, I need the money--"

Maggie waves her off. "You can ask for a reassignment to a desk job--"

Her daughter licks her lips again, caught with her excuses. She puts the mug down with a clank on the tile countertop.

"And second...This is our section, Mom. And they've assigned some lackey to it, for the sole purpose of running it into the ground, just like when they gave the X-files to Fowley and Spender."

Mulder didn't stop working when I was abducted, and I won't either. If he was dying this past year, he still kept working. How can I--"

"You're pregnant, Dana," Maggie points out. "That's not the same. You have another life to protect."

"I am protecting my baby, Mom, when I try to find the truth--"

"Or try to find Fox," adds Maggie.

Dana stares out the window over the sink. The drip in the drainpipe sounds like a tolling bell. "I've got to find him," she says in tune with the thudding drops.

Maggie is afraid of the stark emotion that she hears in her daughter's voice. Dana has held herself apart from love for so many years, this flood may drown her, just as she needs to keep her head above water.

"You will," she says with nothing but her faith to back it up. "And you will have a beautiful baby."

"From your lips to God's ears," Dana says with no irony.

"Shall we pray?" her mother suggests, bowing her head before Dana can answer.

"Yes, please."

She comes back to the table to sit beside her mother and drops her own head with relief before lacing her hands together. They speak old, familiar words weighed with new meaning and urgency until their voices are raw.

"Amen," Maggie finally says softly . The two women cross themselves. Then she clasps hands with Dana. "Do you feel better, sweetie?"

"I do," her daughter says, speaking as if coming from a trance.

"That's what mothers are for." Maggie lays a warm palm on Dana's abdomen. "You'll see."

At her daughter's bright smile, she knows that she's said the right thing.

"I am going to be a mother, aren't I?" Dana says, as though the idea has suddenly come to her.

The answer is in the rhythm of the water in the drain, now a rush of excitement, all the heavens open.

~ end part 2

FIC: Ring of Fire (Finished)

2013-10-17T02:48:55Z

I've been posting this fic on fanfiction.net rather than here because...Well, frankly because I assumed that no one on my friends list would be interested! But I've been pleasantly surprised that a few people have read it! Although I did say that I didn't consider it a Clarice/Lecter 'ship fic, I did turn some into shippers, so perhaps I veered off course there...

Anyway! It's finished, and I can mark another fic off my 'to-do' list. I started this fic, totally seriously, ten years ago. I hit a point halfway through where I just didn't know the direction that I wanted to go, and put it aside. But for years, I thought about it, and how much I did like certain things I did in it. And on reflection, I'm really glad I did put it aside, because I feel as though I needed to mature. I try to learn something in nearly everything I write, and what I learned from this one is, as much as I want to be a 'git 'er dun' sort of writer, sometimes it's okay to put things aside. If you truly want to tell the story, you'll get back to it. (Yes, I know I have other WIP's)

I'd recommend starting with:

Title: Chiaroscuro
Rated: T
Word Count: 17,000
Summary: Hannibal Lecter has been captured

Then onto:

Title: Ring of Fire
Rating: M
Word Count: 70,000
Summary: I fell into a burning ring of fire...

Fic: Six Times Someone Learns About William, Part 1

2013-10-14T04:05:47Z

Title: Six Times Someone Learns About William, Part 1
Author: bugs
Rating: G
Genre: MSR, S, A
Word Count: 1,200
Spoilers: Through The Truth
A/N: I had the best of intentions to write all six parts by the end of xf-is-love Free for All day, 10-13, but it didn't happen. I've never done one of these 'times' fics before (I think), so I'm bumbling around a bit. But there were so many missing scenes of various characters finding out about William that it seemed like a fun project to complete them.

~*~

One:

Time slips into that sickening slow motion that it does when something terrible is happening. Sound becomes muffled. Frohike is suspended above his body, looking down at Dana Scully drifting to the floor like a loose dove feather, caught on the tips of their fingers as he and the others ease her descent.

When he covers her with his black leather jacket, Agent Scully appears very small, her face a white smudge in the darkness. Her pale lips move and her vein-etched eyelids flutter, but she isn't truly present in the room. He loosens her clothing and elevates her feet and now has nothing to do but fight his terror as the EMT's finally arrive--seven minutes felt like hours. Time is still moving with the grind of rusty gears. He has to break its glacial bond to the events.

"Anything?" he barks at Byers, motioning toward the man's cellphone.

"It's going straight to Mulder's voicemail," Byers reports with a shake of his head.

One EMT has a clipboard. With his pen hovering over the form, he asks, "And chance Ms. Scully is pregnant?"

John Byers speaks first. "There's no--"

Time stops, then flares like a star imploding, briefly blinding Frohike. He cuts in. "It's a possibility, yes."

Byers and Langley stare at him with their mouths hanging open.

The paramedic takes that note and tucks the clipboard between Scully and the bodyboard. Two more EMT's wheel in a gurney and the three friends step back.

Frohike returns to the matter at hand. "We've got to get Mulder on the phone," he commands. "He has to be warned....And told about this."

Langley dials too. "Straight to voicemail," he echoes.

"I'll try Assistant Director Skinner," says Byers, scrolling through his phone's numbers.

Frohike doesn't take his eyes off Scully. Still unconscious, she is carefully lifted and placed on the gurney, then the straps put in place over her. As she's wheeled past, he takes her hand briefly. "We'll be at the hospital," he promises her, even if he wasn't certain that she understands. But he always goes to her sickbed; he'll be there again.

The other two men are still fighting with their phones in frustration. "Nothing," they announce in unison.

Checking the clock, Frohike shakes his head. "It's after midnight in Oregon. We'll have to contact the closest field office and see if we can get some agents out there to check on them. I don't want to be the one to tell Agent Scully that we've lost touch with Mulder."

Trailing behind him, John and Langley mirror his head shake.

But half an hour later, ensconced in a line of waiting room chairs, there is still no contact with either Skinner or Mulder. Frohike now wishes fervently for time to not just slow, but stop dead until that phone rings back.

Byers crosses his legs and straightens the crease on his slacks. He clears his throat. "Frohike, why did you say that Agent Scully may be pregnant?"

The older man leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He peered at John over his shoulder. "You didn't actually believe Agent Scully's story that she was dropping off donuts when we met her coming out of Mulder's apartment that morning, did you?"

John smoothes his tie. "I haven't really considered it one way or another," he says with great dignity.

"I did," confesses Langley, his adam's apple waggling.

"Me too," Frohike says, brooding.

"But that is not to the case," protests Byers. "One does not follow the other because we know all too well that Scully isn't able to--"

"Mulder told us to watch out for her," Frohike says. "I was covering all contingencies."

Byers nods unhappily and finally falls silent.

Under the hot stare of the subject herself, Mulder had pulled the three of them aside before he left the Hoover Building. Only to have her take Skinner in a corner, her low voice somehow the strongest one in the room, giving her supervisor his own implicit directions.

Byers' phone rings, stopping any further protests. He quickly connects his call. "Yes, Mr. Skinner?"

Langley and Frohike slump slightly at the name that's not Mulder.

After listening to a terse few words from Skinner, Byers blanches white under his beard. Frohike buries his face in his gloved hands.

"I see...Yes," mutters Byers. Then, after a long pause, adds, "I'm afraid there's bad news on our end as well." He goes on to explain, then nods at whatever Skinner is saying, even though the other man can't see him.

When he hangs up, he says, "Well, that's it. He's coming back as soon as possible. There's nothing more to be done in Oregon."

Frohike nods, his head still in his hands.

The minutes tick by in their precise, painful sixty second intervals before a doctor finally comes for them. He surveys the motley group. "Only one," he announces.

Squaring his shoulders, Frohike stands. "I'll do it," he says, more to them than the doctor.

Having listened to the usual warnings not to stress the patient, Frohike enters the dim room and sinks to the chair beside Scully. Her eyes are closed. He gently lifts her slack hand and cradles it in his gloves. Her fingers warm and flex slightly.

"Mul'er?" she murmurs, her eyelids fluttering.

"He's not here yet, Agent Scully," Frohike hedges.

She lolls her head over to focus on him. "Okay," she says child-like, her gaze wide-eyed.

He takes a deep breath to hold back his emotions at this sight. "Good to have you back with us. No more laying down on the job," he says too gruffly, trying to cover.

Her squeeze on his fingers shows that she forgives him.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"For what?"

"They tell me that you warned the EMT's that I may be pregnant; averted possibly endangering my fetus."

There's that breath again, so like a sob, rising in his barrel chest. "No problem," he manages to say.

Her brow furrows. "How did you know...If I couldn't know."

That finally breaks the tension for him. He adores Dana Scully when she worries that she's missing a joke, even if it's a cosmic one.

"I make my living by imagining the unexpected, unexplained and unbelieved, Agent Scully. It was just another such moment."

"My pregnancy and flukemen...On the same front page," she says and he quickly makes clear, "Never."

The grip tightens on his hand. Her smile is tremulous. "I need to talk to Mulder," she says and it sounds like a question instead of a statement.

Her hand is light; the white feather floats in his grasp again. He lifts it to his mouth, and presses his lips to the translucent skin on the back. He cannot meet her gaze or say the words, but in the hitch to her breathing, he knows that she understands.

But she still says it again: "I need to talk to Mulder," and there is no question this time.

end ~ part 1

E/N: Yes, I took the comic relief characters and made them be angsty!

FIC: Hesykhia

2013-10-13T09:15:31Z

Title: Hesykhia

Author: bugs

Rating: G

Genre: SAR, MSR

Word Count: 1,600

Spoilers; Through IWTB

~*~

"Can I help you?" I attempt to sound threatening.

A tall, dark-haired man looms over Dana's desk, poking through her papers.

He turns and smiles vaguely. I quickly try to memorize his face for hospital security. But all I have is 'goofy looking' with his pouty, soft mouth, large nose and droopy eyelids.

"I'm looking for Scully."

"Dr. Scully?"

"Yeah, Dr. Scully." The vague smile is back.

"Dr. Scully is in surgery." Should I have told him that? I try to sound tough when I say, "Is there something I can help you with?"

He holds up a crumpled paperbag. "She didn't bring her lunch."

I knew that.

"Damn, I forgot my lunch," Dana had said, rooting through the satchel that she brings to work every day.

"I didn't bring anything either," I said quickly, shoving my lunch bag under my desk with my toe. "If we're both free, we could grab something."

"Sure, that would be nice," she said, but there was tension in her tone.

I didn't take it personally. Dana Scully had had a rough start at Our Lady of Sorrows. I'd been on the hiring panel for her interview. Two priests, three administrators and myself as the one doctor.

"Your background is in forensic pathology, Dr. Scully. How would you expect to make a contribution for us? Our clientele is alive." Father Leonard put on his usual gentle smile to cloak his cutting words.

The woman at the end of the table blinked slowly. I'd never seen anyone who could sit so still. It was more than her body. I believed that if I'd taken her pulse, I would have been barely felt a flutter under the pressure of my touch.

Her voice was equally controlled; low, with each word perfectly measured. "I'm ready to meet new challenges. In my years as a pathologist, I've identified numerous conditions and diseases--"

The priest's smile widened. "But you were not be called upon to treat them."

Her answer was quick; suddenly she crackled with energy. "As I said, I'm seeking challenges."

Once Dr. Scully was excused, we all reviewed her paperwork.

Not looking up from the file folder, Ms. Ford, our senior HR specialist, spoke: "Treated for cancer, but in remission for more the five years--" she admitted grudgingly.

As an oncologist, I was looked at to assess the risk. I'd only checked her medical qualifications and publications; not her work background and certainly not her medical history. Channeling Dr. Scully, I controlled my temper. "She appears quite healthy now."

Ms. Ford's assistant fussed on: "There's a number of other hospitalizations in her records. The last thing we need need is someone getting on staff and then upping our insurance premiums--"

I had risen from my chair. "If we're finished here, I have to go on rounds."

Father Neil, the one who let others do the talking but made all the final decisions, said, "Dr. Sinclair's right. It's time to move forward."

I was completely shocked when they granted Dr. Scully a residency. Then I discovered that I had offered to share my office as well.

She was quiet, tidy and considerate. At first, this spectral figure drifting quietly through my office creeped me out, then made me slightly angry, and finally, what I am now, curious.

Lunch was going to be my opportunity to get to know her better and now this overgrown delivery boy is cutting me off. He must live with her if he knew that she hadn't made a lunch...Her slacker brother, having risen for the day to play video games, and noticed her oversight?

He sits at her desk.

"I'll put this in the fridge," I say, snatching the sack off the corner of her desk. I notice there's a smiley face drawn on the paper bag with 'Dana' written below it.

"Thanks," he says as I shove it in the small refrigerator.

"This office is great. There's a window," he helpfully points out when I raise my eyebrows at his assessment. "She didn't have a window before."

"Before?"

"At the FBI."

"You brought her lunch there too?"

"'Sometimes." There is finally an edge to his lackadaisical manner. "Sometimes she brought our lunch."

I go to the door. "I'll let Dr. Scully know," I say leadingly.

He looks through a medical journal. "No need," he says. "I'll just wait."

"She may be hours--"

Dana pushes the door open, hitting me in the back.

"I'm sorry," she gasps, then spots the man.

"What are you doing here?" she asks nervously, glancing between us.

"You forgot your lunch." He tosses aside the magazine. "I made you a sandwich."

"I meant to bring a salad," she says reproachfully.

"Beggars can't be choosers." He shrugs with no shame. ."Thought we could go eat outside, if the weather's good--"

He peers at the window. "Which it is." He sidles closer to her. "You can see that without having to stand on a box."

They exchange an intimate smile. Left out of the joke, I return to my reports.

"Nice desk," he notes, and they smile at each other again.

Dana nods toward me. "I still have to share an office, but Dr. Sinclair hasn't done one slideshow."

Not sure what she means, I just shoot them a pained smirk. But neither notice. He ducks his head and she gives a quick lick of her lips as though she's fighting laughter.

"Let's grab those sandwiches--" He looks around.

"I put them away," I remind him disagreeably.

"Right." He retrieves their lunch as Dana sheds her lab coat and swaps it for her jacket on the coat hook.

"Would you like to join us?" Dana asks me. "I'll be happy to share; I can never finish this guy's sandwiches." She elbows his stomach without looking back at him as she says this.

He makes a dramatic 'oomph' sound but she ignored him, pulling on her jacket. He flips her hair out of the collar and this earns him a murmured, "Thanks."

"No thanks," I reply

"I have these test results to review--I just remembered." I finish quickly before Dana can remind me of my earlier claim of my own missing lunch.

"All right," she says uncertainly.

The man is holding the door open for her. "Dibs on the hoagie roll," he says, his gaze only for her. He's forgotten my presence.

After about half an hour, I need to stretch my legs. At the window, I can see the couple has chosen a bench below. I easily recognize the hunch of Dana's shoulders, but the sideways smile that she gives her lunch date is new. Her long hair, twisted in its familiar loose loop at the base of her neck, draws his hand again and again. Between bites of his sandwich, his fingers play with the blunt ends, flipping them around as if to catch the light.

I go back to my desk.

When the hour is up, Dana returns alone.

"Enjoy your lunch?" I say peevishly.

"The effort was nicer than the result," she says, searching her desk drawers for a mint. "Too much pickle relish...He never can get that right."

"I didn't know you were married," I say, still sounding irritated.

"I'm not," she establishes. "He's my partner...He was my partner," she corrects, then laughs at herself.

Trying again, she says lamely, "He was my partner at the FBI and when we left the agency...we stayed partners."

"I see." I don't see at all. "I thought you were a forensic pathologist of some sort."

"That was part of my work, but I was primarily an investigator."

"Like a cop?"

She shrugs. "I was a field agent."

"Wow." I look over her slight frame. "With a gun and everything?"

"Yes," she says quietly as she sits at her desk. "It seems a long time ago."

"You left that to work in medicine and he--"

"He's taking a sabbatical," she fills in.

I realized that he had not introduced himself and she was not supplying a name. "He's a doctor too?"

"Hardly," she says with a giggle--a shocking and heart-stopping sound.

"I just assumed that you weren't with anyone," I dare to say. "No photos on the desk, you didn't bring him to the Christmas party. That usually means single, or...Someone that you wouldn't feel comfortable having the administration know you're with."

Glancing at the clock, she snags her lab coat. "No, just old habits. I guess we spent so long not having an office romance that I forgot that I can put a picture on the desk."

As she passes me, she drops a light hand on my shoulder. "Thanks for the idea, Chris. I'll have to bring one in."

The next day,Dana isn't in the office when I arrive, but there is a small picture frame sitting beside her monitor, facing her chair.

Keeping one ear cocked for the sound of the door, I ease around her desk. She and the goofy guy at the beach, or hiking in the mountains; perhaps in Paris?

It's a younger Dana with shorter hair and a fuller face. She holds a baby wearing a blue onesy with a giraffe on the chest, capping his pale downy head with her hand. In the months that I've known her, I've never seen a smile like she's giving the boy, even when she was with the man yesterday. The photograph is battered, with foxed corners and creases across the shiny surface, as though it's taken a long journey before ending up in the wooden frame.

I replace the picture, making sure that I've aligned it exactly as it was on the desk. Returning to my seat, I stare at the frame's blank back for a long time before I finally turn on my computer and begin to review my email.

~end

Livejournal Can Be Fun

2013-10-09T03:21:03Z

I recently ran across this comm while comm-hunting on someone's user info: little_details. Perhaps it's my own writer's mind, but trying to imagine the stories behind the requests comes up with the most amazing tales. I mean, seriously, this has got to rock, although the request to know how to bleach a corpse is, shall we say, intriguing.