Sanctuary 13

Monday

Maggie Scully felt the warmth of a hand against her wrist. She opened her eyes and squinted into the perennial brightness of the hospital room. Dr. Bandrapalli was standing over her. The conscious aches of sickness seeped in and filled her. Her mouth was thick and dry.

"Doctor, I saw him..."

He was at the end of the bed now, looking at her chart.

She strained to force her voice above a whisper. "Doctor Bandrapalli...?"

"Yes?" He looked up.

"The man who came to my door...to tell me about my daughter..."

"Mrs. Scully, you may have seen many things. This fever has played games with your mind, with your brain's ability to function. It's inevitable..."

"No..." She struggled to pull herself up. "I saw him. I know it." She set her jaw and felt a momentary strength.

He came around to the side of the bed.

"You're convinced of this?"

"Yes..."

"Do you know when this was? Long ago? Hours?"

"I..." She looked at the ceiling. It was always the same here--no night, no day, no windows--only the interminable harshness of fluorescent light. She sighed. "I don't know. But there was another doctor--the one with the red hair?...He was there, too..." She pointed weakly. "Standing outside the window..."

He poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on the bedside table, put a straw in it and held it so she could drink.

"I will ask..." he started.

"Do you think it could have been just a hallucination? It seemed...different from...from the things that I've been...dreaming, seeing..." She sighed and let her head go back against the pillows.

"Then I will ask my colleagues. I learned long ago not to leave any stones unturned."

She smiled a weak smile. "John Byers told me...about your family, about the ones you lost in the accident..."

"Bhopal" he said, "was not quite an accident." He pressed his lips together and stared at the far wall. "An accident waiting to happen in a place where the value of a poor life is considered cheap, yes. I lost 31 members of my family, including many children..." He raised an eyebrow. "...And I suppose every patient I have had since then has benefited from that loss. In a way"--he glanced briefly at her--"I work to save those I could not save."

"Then you must have many grateful patients..."

"I do my best..." He sighed, studied the bed rail a moment and looked up. "Oh, I do have news of a sort. I have a hunch--I'm having Byers and his friends check it out this morning--but something came to me. I may have an idea what this illness is. I've put you on erythromycin..."

"The antibiotic?"

"Yes. If I'm right it will give us a head start. And if this sickness is what you think--you and your friends"--he nodded toward her--"then this mysterious man will find himself disappointed...at least, if I have any say in the matter."

"Has anyone heard from my daughter?"

"We have reports that she is well."

"Does she know about this?"

"I don't believe so."

Maggie shook her head. Her lips pressed hard together. "Don't tell her."

He looked askance at her.

"I never understood before," she said. "My daughter once...she had a...a health crisis--a very serious crisis--and didn't tell me. I was angry when I found out. I was angry with her right there in her hospital room...But I know now...why she didn't tell me, what she was...trying to...to save me from..." She looked up at him. "Don't tell her. Not yet, anyway..."

Mulder shifted into first and pulled into Sandy's yard at a crawl. If she was still asleep he didn't want to wake her. He didn't want to wake Scully, either. To keep her safe...he'd go to any length, but she deserved to know; she needed to be able to count on him to tell her. It was a matter of trust. She was a dogged investigator; maybe there was something she could do, or figure out, that would help her mother.

He circled the trailer to the left and managed to slip the truck behind it where it was out of view of the road. He turned off the motor and let his head rest against the steering wheel. His eyes closed. Three hours--maybe three hours sleep at the most--once Bethy'd gone back to bed. Neither of them had said a word; they'd just sat there close together, two people with their respective burdens looking at the pale, moon-flooded still-life outside the picture window--two people not quite so alone. Eventually she's started to drift and he'd herded her back to her room and tucked her in.

His head slipped to one side and he sat up abruptly--arms weak, head thick, eyes that didn't want to open again. And eight hours of latrine-and-locker duty to face. And this.

This.

He forced his eyes to stay open, made himself look up. The living room window reflected first light off the hillside beside him. Dim behind it he could see Scully's face looking down, curious at first, then concerned. He swallowed. She pointed toward the back of the trailer, to the back door. He got out of the truck, closed the door quietly and walked toward the wooden stairs that led to the back door, watching dirt and gravel pass his shoes. The door squeaked open. He looked up.

"What is it?" she said. She wore that look, the one that said she'd just wakened and hadn't quite gotten her bearings. He knew that look from experience now; it was a miracle.

"A mail from Byers. It came in last night..."

No other words; he only stood.

She hesitated, glanced behind her and motioned him inside.

What's wrong, Mulder? What's happened?--he could read the questions in her face, in her eyes, though her finger was against her lips. She led him quietly past Sandy's room to the living room.

"What?" she whispered.

He looked at the ceiling and down again.

"Your mother's in the hospital, Scully..."

Shock, then widening eyes, then a swallow.

"What is it, Mulder? How is she? Was she in an accident?"

"That might have been preferable." He glanced down, pursed his lips and looked back at her. "Sit down," he said softly.

"Mulder..."

He sat on the edge of a couch cushion; reluctant, she settled beside him.

"It's no accident, Scully. We're pretty sure it was Smoky..."

Her eyes widened--darkened, it seemed.

"What does she have, Mulder? What's wrong with her?"

"They aren't sure. They said it looks like pneumonia...with non-characteristic delirium. But they're not convinced..."

"Of what?"

"That it's not something else, something that was..."--his jaw set--"deliberately given to her. To her and Isaiah Wilkins. And I don't have to tell you how familiar that sounds..." His hand curled around the edge of the cushion beside him and squeezed.

She stared, wide-eyed, and swallowed. "When did this...when did it happen?...and...Wilkins, too?"

"Apparently"--he glanced down the hallway toward Sandy's bedroom--"we've got Wilkins to thank that things aren't worse. He'd been speculating about what Smoky might try to do to flush us out and he figured..."

"...That he might do something to my mother, to...make me come, to draw me into the open...away from you..." She stared at him, distant.

"Divide and conquer."

"Mulder, that man..."

Her eyes were hard, the corner of her mouth wavered. Her near hand was curling tight. He took it and smoothed it between his own.

"Anyway, that's one of the reasons Wilkins was hanging out with your mom, because he figured something might happen, but he had no way to be certain..."

"How long has this been going on, Mul...No, wait. My mother sent me a mail on Thursday. She said she was coming down with something..." She looked up.

"Yeah, well luckily Wilkins contacted the Gunmen as soon as he started to show symptoms. They've got an M.D. friend of theirs--some guy they're pretty impressed with--keeping an eye on both of them. Byers took your mother to St. Anne's in Silver Springs yesterday." He paused. "They've been trying to carry the ball for us, Scully. I guess they were hoping they could put out the fire and then they wouldn't have had to tell us at all..."

He looked across to the far window, where bright, colorless light filled the glass.

"Mulder, I..."

She shook her head. She sighed, leaned in against him and let herself be held.

Tracy tied her hair back with a rubber band and looked into the mirror above the low, broad dresser: oversize T-shirt that hung to mid-thigh, the baby definitely adding his shape now, breasts unfamiliarly full...or maybe just no longer negligible. Woman. She'd never seemed like...anything other than herself--not child or teen, certainly not...It seemed so strange, the thought, odd to handle, like an object you'd never seen before, but Alex was right. And the baby--what would it be like, two of them everywhere? Company, as Alex said. But the looks would be even worse now, more penetrating. A child with a child and still no memory--not a single thought or fleeting image of how, or when, or why...

She looked up, to the reflection of bright light beginning to flood the window, and reached for the plastic thrift store bag in front of her. She took out the broad, dented metal bowl, and the pans, and the old wooden spoon. Late morning, Marisela had said. The timing would be just right.

She opened a left-hand drawer and took out the bag of flour, the small container of salt and the small packets. It would feel good to have her hands in the dough, working it, doing...what? There'd been something inside her, pulling. Maybe this was symbolic, the way she'd been for Alex at the beginning. Maybe it was just an attempt to get back there, to the familiar and comforting, to a place she'd never be able to reach, or return to.

Still, the idea was to do this for him. It was simple enough. She made herself smile and tear open the paper flap on the flour bag. When had giving ever been hard, or sad?

"Don't even think of blaming yourself, Scully." His voice was quiet. "You know it was Smoky who did this..."

She shook her head against him and looked up. "I'm not."

"Dale said something to me last week that made a lot of sense...that it...it isn't whether you get tricked that's important, but what you do to get out of it. We lose ourselves in...But maybe that's just me. Guess I sat up for hours, thinking what I'd like to do to him...what I could've done years ago..." He shook his head.

"No, we've got to keep clear heads, Mulder." Her face was strong, resolved. "If I went--of course I want to see her, be with her, but...it would give him exactly what he wants. That wouldn't help my mother."

"The Gunmen have been monitoring everything, keeping track of your mom, Wilkins..." He sat up straighter. "I think I know where Rita might be. I think she might have gone to take care of Wilkins..."

Scully smiled a fleeting smile.

"They can get a message to my mother..." She corners of her mouth wavered. She fought them into straightness. "I can search the Internet. There are lots of medical databases..."

"I think we probably don't know the half of the support we've got back in D. C. The important thing is to stay in touch and to keep a few steps ahead of Smoky. We keep putting out the fires but we've got to get ahead of him somehow..."

"We'll find a way, Mulder. We have to..." She squeezed his hand and paused. "What?"

"You." He smiled. "You're amazing."

"You put too much faith in me, Mulder."

"No, I...I don't think so."

Sandy put on her robe and looked down at her legs, stretched tight from forming scabs. They looked awful but they'd heal. It was probably a good thing Annie'd come. And what would've happened if she hadn't run into Ben on the road? She hadn't even stopped to think what he'd been doing there in the first place, just walking down the road like that; she'd been on automatic.

She ran a brush through her hair, set it back down on the dresser and picked up Roddy's teddy bear. It'd been getting raggedy but he liked it. There was supposed to be a new one for his next birthday; she'd put in on layaway and hadn't had whatever it took to go back to the store and cancel. Probably they wouldn't even ask why, but it wasn't worth chancing. Sandy the poor, confused, high school dropout widow with the bad sense to marry a guy who'd kill his own little boy. She held the bear close to her cheek. It was losing its smell--the way it smelled of dirt and Roddy and being played with, it's realness just slipping away like...She swallowed and fought the sudden swelling inside her. Get going, girl; world's still turning--heaven only knows why--and you're still in it. Annie'd be awake by now. The carpet passed by her in shaggy greens as she went down the hallway.

At the end she looked up, stopped abruptly and reddened. Ben and Annie were sitting on the couch, wrapped around each other. His cheek was tucked against her head.

"Sorry, I guess I was just barreling on through..." Just keep on talking.

Both looked up. Both looked somber.

"Something wrong?"

"It's Annie's mother," Ben said quietly. "The man who wanted your husband dead has infected her with something in order to flush us out into the open. He's hoping Annie'll panic and show up at the hospital..."

She watched the line of his jaw, set, his mouth a thin line.

"My god...I swear, this is all like...like something out of a movie." She shook her head, pulled a chair from its place at the table and sat down. "Do you know what's the matter with her?"

"It appears to be pneumonia," Annie said, sitting forward now, clearing her throat. "But it's probably something easily misdiagnosed as pneumonia. There are Internet medical databases. I can search them from the laptop."

She paused and looked down. Ben pulled himself to the edge of the cushion.

"Gotta go," he said quietly, close to Annie's hair. "Gotta paint them lockers and clean them toilets."

"I hope Joe lets up on you," Sandy said.

She got up, made a smooth exit into the kitchen and opened the door to an upper cabinet. Ben stood up and Annie followed. He talked quietly, close to her, and brushed a kiss against her forehead. Annie's hand was on his arm; her eyes closed when he touched her. Sandy took out the oatmeal and clattered around looking for measuring cups.

"Sandy..."

She looked up. Ben came toward her.

"Give her a hand today, will you?"

"You bet," she said, and nodded.

She watched him turn and go down the hallway. Annie went to the window and looked down. Eventually the sound of the motor passed the corner of the house and faded in the direction of the road. Annie turned and smoothed her hands back through her hair. She pressed her lips together.

"I'll have breakfast ready in five," Sandy said.

Annie forced a smile. "Thank you. There's...a lot of work to be done. I guess we'd better get started."

Tracy watched as Alex went slowly up the stairs, pausing slightly between steps, keeping a steady rhythm, one based in growing strength. There was no wheelchair now. He'd walked the flight of stairs to her room, stood there while she'd finished washing the flour from her hands and arms--luckily he hadn't seen, or asked questions--and then begun his ascent to the roof. She stood on the landing below to give him space, not to crowd him.

He'd been volleying it around in his head again, whether to try to contact his mother beforehand, to know whether she'd help, though it might put her in danger if his father discovered him, or whether to wait for the last possible moment, depend on the element of surprise and his hope that she'd come to his aid. Her aid--it was her he was doing this for. Or whether to strong-arm Skinner into giving him an e-mail address that would circumvent his mother entirely and give him direct access--or maybe a direct line to Mulder's direct and unqualified rejection. That was what really worried him. He expected Mulder to slam the door in his face. Mulder had reason to.

"Tracy..."

He was at the top now, looking down at her, flushed with exertion, pleased with his effort. Concerned about how she'd take it. She hurried up the stairs.

"It was good, Alex," she said. "You're doing better."

He looked at her--looked into her--and shook his head. "You're a trooper," he said.

"Just keep telling me that..."

He stopped short and gave her a look. "You are."

He was full of a momentary buoyancy. She smiled without thinking and they continued to the wall.

"Thanks for the castle last night," she said.

"No problem."

He was looking out into the distance, at the haze of morning.

"I didn't make it all the way through. I...What was it, Alex, about that stairway? I remember starting up the stairs, the way they'd been worn down in the middle from so many people stepping on them for so long. I can't imagine how many people it would take to wear down stone that way...But...there was something up there..."

"Dungeons," he said. He didn't look at her. "Open to the air, just"--a shrug--"iron bars and snow on the mountains..."

He'd been held in a place like that--not up in a tower, but he knew the cold, the shivering cold where there was no warmth at all, only aching numbness or knawing pain, with too much weakness to stand, the surfaces too chilled to sit on. He wasn't alone in the place he saw now in his head. One man had died. Alex and a third man had rolled him onto his stomach and sat on his body to keep themselves off the penetrating cold of the cement floor.

"Tracy, don't."

He was looking at her now, a hard look that softened as she focused on him.

"Don't look at that."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't..." She shook her head. "Sometimes I can't help it. It's just right there in front of me and..."

He looked at the grains along the top of the wall. He was doing it again, consciously pressing the memory into some dark little compartment, sealing it away out of reach.

"You didn't see the view from the top," he said. "It's pretty nice."

"I don't want you to have to go past those stairs..."

"It's okay. I can make it now...Besides, the view's nice--even there. You'll see..."

She bit her lip and nodded, then slowly closed her eyes. She followed him up the stairs, around and around in circles until they came out onto a stone roof patio. She went to the edge and looked out. Before her lay miles and miles of empty, rolling plains, soft in dormant shades of blue and tan.

"It's so...so empty. But it's beautiful, too. It's like your mountain, Alex, that...feeling, that you could just spread your arms and fly off into it, into the sky and soar over the land like a bird..."

(view upper castle)

"Well, gentlemen..."

Byers sighed and looked across the darkened room.

"Rani's going to have to look like he's with the program or he's going to be in danger here, too, if the Cancer Man's watching," Frohike said, looking absently at his gloves, flexing them.

"You're going to have to stop going, Byers. You know he's going to check surveillance...or set up his own..." Langley's face seemed to float in the shadows, the bright reflection off his glasses set off by long, uncombed hair.

"The old bastard can just look at her chart and see we've found the key...if Rani's right about this water contamination thing," Frohike said, getting up from the stool he'd been sitting on. "Speaking of which, Langley, you and I have work to do. Grab yourself a set of coveralls."

"Colson's Plumbing?"

"The one and only..."

"I'll see what I can do about the hospital situation," Byers said.

Frohike shook his head. "Imagine that bastard posing as her brother." He pounded a fist on the table. "Time to bring the son of a bitch down."

"Hey..."

Mulder steeled himself and turned around.

"You're moving up in the world..." Joe wore one of his plastic smiles. "I'm sending you to the Big House today." He paused and raised his eyebrows. "Bathrooms over there get dirty, too."

Mulder shrugged. "Yeah, I guess they do everywhere..."

"Come on," Joe said. He turned and headed toward his office. "I'll get you a site map."

Mulder glanced back toward the lockers. It was a good thing; hopefully something would come of it since their boxed evidence had disappeared. He'd checked the end locker first thing and as he'd figured, it was empty. They still had the airport angle, though, if Dale didn't come up dry. He knew some private pilots who flew out of Lexington; he was going to drive in after work and see what he could find out.

Mulder made himself follow Joe. There had to be something in the other building--something they could use. For Scully's sake there had to be.

When he got to the office doorway, Joe was rummaging in a file drawer. He pushed through folders and pulled out a yellow sheet of paper.

"Here..."

Mulder reached out and took it.

"Nice catch," Joe said.

Mulder looked up.

"Excuse me?"

"The girl--Sandy. I heard you were out at her place yesterday. She's a...well, she's a little like an untamed mustang."

"She's just a kid. Anyway, I was out running yesterday. Came across her on the road. She'd fallen and scraped herself up and I walked her home, that's all. If I need a woman I'll find one who's grown up."

"Whatever..."

There were a few things he'd like to do with the smirk on Joe's face.

He made himself turn and leave the office. Nailed again. No matter how careful you were or what precautions you took, half a dozen people in Owensburg knew every move you made. The road had been deserted; nobody'd passed him or driven by. But then it could have been anything--a neighbor with a telescope. A telescope would be a big boon to the gossip industry in a place like this.

Mulder loaded his cleaning cart. He could feel his pulse pounding through his fingers where he gripped the handle of the cart. Hopefully Scully was still buoyed by the resolve she'd showed this morning, but hope--strength--could be a fickle thing and it'd be hours before he could check on her. He pictured Joe's office again, metal filing cabinets lining the wall. They melted into his old basement office--file drawers full of evidence he'd gathered so painstakingly, years of work and emotional investment gone up in smoke, then the office and the assignment taken away until, armed only with mops and toilet brushes and bottles of glass cleaner, he was reduced to the flimsy hope of finding some piece of evidence in a factory trash can that might help to bring Smoky down.

"'This is the only day I'm driving up," Sandy said as the old station wagon bounced up the road. "I love the walk--or the running. I really do."

She glanced over at Annie, who was looking out the window.

"Annie, if there's anything I can do...any old thing..." She sighed. "You know, I know exactly how empty that sounds, believe me I do...But really. You've been such a help to me..."

Annie turned and made herself smile.

"I'm glad you've got Ben here. I didn't realize you two were..."

"More than partners?" She seemed to surprise herself by speaking. She colored. "I didn't either until a couple of weeks ago." She looked away, out the window. "I always thought I was looking for something else--someone else. Someone more...conventional, I guess, more...stable..." She stared at passing trees. "When you...when you know someone so...well, so thoroughly, with all their little quirks and..."

"Warts and all?"

Annie smiled and nodded. "Then something happens to make you see...how deeply woven into your life they are..."

"I wish I'd realized that more...at the time..." Sandy sighed. "It's so easy to get wrapped up in the little things where you clash, all that petty stuff--you know, where you end up counting whether you're getting enough back for what you put out, like it's some kind of scorecard..." She shook her head.

"I think maybe," Annie said, "we're always out there looking for what we think life is...supposed to be..."

They took the stairs together, down and then pause, down and then pause, a regular rhythm, practiced, fingers intertwined in a firm grip; the railings were on the wrong side here and he was tiring.

Sometimes he'd smile in between stairs, small smiles, something his face had little practice at. Sometimes he counted the stairs in his head. Down, pause. Down and pause.

Her hand squirmed suddenly. He looked at her, alarmed. On the next stair she pulled away and swallowed.

"He's coming, Alex..."

He braced himself and looked down. Five more. "Where is he?"

"In the elevator. It's stopping. Can you make it?"

He nodded for her to stand there, slightly away, close enough to look attentive, far enough not to raise the old man's suspicions.

The sound of the elevator door sliding open, and footsteps. The old man appeared, cigarette in hand, headed toward the door of Alex's room. He glanced up and stopped.

Alex shrugged. "Getting a little exercise," he said. "Made it up a flight and back...nearly." He took another step down, paused and took another, more slowly than he had before. 'Feel like an old guy. Going to need a nap like one, too."

The old man nodded, pleased, and took a drag on his cigarette. Tracy cringed inside.

"News, of a sort," the old man said. He let the smoke out.

Alex reached the landing. The old man let them pass and watched Alex as he went to the door.

"I have things to get--out," she said quietly, nodding toward the street.

He knew her look. She didn't want to be here, didn't want to be anywhere near the old man.

"Do you need anything from the drugstore?" It was just talk and he knew it.

"That one prescription's almost out. You can have it filled again."

It wasn't, but he wanted her to pocket the bottle. It would look good to the old man.

"Okay," she said.

He could feel it, her discomfort. But she did have something to do. And she knew the old man's news as surely as she knew what Alex's reaction to it would be.

She went into the bathroom and got the bottle from the shelf. In his mind he touched her as she passed, a hand on her arm, reassurance. The old man was watching, seeing nothing, his mind full of Scully's mother and where it would lead. She made herself look at him as she went out, a slight nod to acknowledge him. He fed on being acknowledged.

She closed the door and settled herself. Alex still had her in his mind, trying to guard her, shelter her from the awful man who was his father. She looked up, up the flight of stairs they'd come down, and started to climb. The metal bowl was sitting on the desk chair in front of the window, covered with a towel. It should be ready now, rounded as her own middle. She glanced down momentarily and made herself step up.

Scully clicked on her second e-mail.

"He's awaiting specific test results," she said, reading from the monitor. "Isaiah Wilkins may be our saving grace here--the fact that he anticipated this, that we haven't been misdirected by the obvious..."

She sat back and swallowed. The air around her was quiet for a moment.

"But there's something you can do, right?" Sandy said. "You said you could look things up..."

Scully nodded. She stared at the screen and then pushed her chair back from the desk.

"Go ahead, Sandy. You can write to your dad if you want."

"I can wait. This is more important than a little old letter..."

"No, I'm...I'm thinking about something. Something that happened a long time ago..."

She moved to the bed--half-made bed she hadn't been in since she and Mulder had drifted here in the warmth of midday yesterday. She pictured base housing, grid-perfect neighborhoods and stamped-out houses, each one the same pale green, palm trees dotting endless stretches of otherwise vacant lawn. Sandy sat down carefully at the desk and placed her fingers gingerly over the keys.

"I haven't done this in a long time," Sandy was saying. "A long time." She seemed slow-motion, distant.

Scully could see her mother's face, the disbelief and shock as she told her. Not one but two neighbors, elderly veterans who'd been at a convention on the East Coast, dead in an epidemic of some sort. She'd followed the investigation, her budding interest in medicine urging her on. It'd had something to do with the air conditioning in the end--commercial air conditioning...But that wasn't a factor here.

The keyboard keys sounded in intermittent clunks.

It had appeared to be pneumonia at first, though. A medical mystery; it had caught her imagination and she'd followed it...San Diego. She remembered Missy, more interested in boys by then than in the games they'd played as smaller girls, the way she'd wanted to go to the beach and Mom had refused to let her go alone, or to designate Dana as chaperone. She's even younger than you are, Mom had said, hands-up in exasperation. Beach tans were better than backyard tans, Missy'd insisted.

Scully smoothed the patch of sheets beside her hand. San Diego. There was the Children's Center years later--how could she ever have imagined?--the court appointment and Mulder's hand at her back in the hallway in it'll-all-work-out-Scully. The way he'd picked Emily up immediately in the middle of the night while the worker had gone to call 911--to do the 'proper' thing--Mulder the immediate responder, the personal touch, the intimate connection, the fingers tracing the silhouette of a missing child in a mantel photograph or the flannel cut-out hearts of small victims long buried, as if the act of tracing would summon their essence so he could feel it, weave himself into it, understand it. Mulder, half-asleep, his fingers absently tracing her back, eyes closed, stubble framing a drowsy smile.

She could feel him, shadow-arms around her, the simple comfort of warm skin on skin, warm breath at the back of her neck. But there was work to be done. Air conditioning--how did it figure in?

Dispersal of bacteria in a spray of warm water.

She looked up. Sandy was sitting back, looking at her.

"I think I've thought of something," she said.

"Scully's mother has been taken to a hospital in Silver Springs," the old man said. "They think it's pneumonia, of course..."

He took a drag on the Morley, opened his mouth and let the smoke out in soft clouds.

"And you figure Scully'll be coming?" Alex said from where he lay on the bed.

His coloring was better these days, not nearly so pale. He was a strong one anyway, but the girl seemed to have taken to her work, to be keeping up with what he needed to strengthen himself.

"She arrived too late to see her sister. I think that would have an effect on her. She's seemed...attached...to her family...easily inflamed..."

He looked for the ashtray without finding it.

"Desk drawer," Alex said, nodding toward the one on the right.

He pulled out the ashtray--washed, not merely wiped out--set it on the desktop and tapped off a growing length of ash. He put the Morley back between his lips and turned toward the bed.

"It may take her a few days. Longer may be better, actually. More time means she's done more...arguing...with Mulder, over what course to take. He'll tell her not to, of course, if he suspects anything. He'll feel guilty...as if the cause of this is my desire to get to him, the way he...tormented himself--stirred himself--over Scully's illness..." He smiled briefly and looked toward the narrow window beside the bed. "But I believe she'll come..." He shrugged. "It's possible we may even get Mulder if he...torments himself sufficiently...decides to...sacrifice himself nobly, for his partner's mental well-being..."

He looked up. Alex was watching him, dark eyes, every move and nuance, the same way he watched Alex. It was reassuring and unnerving at the same time.

"In any event, I have a trip to make at the end of the week..." He turned to tap off the ash again. "London and...Tunisia..."

Alex's eyes registered quiet surprise.

"I leave Wednesday evening," he said. "May not be back until Saturday. At any rate, I may miss the...excitement...here. I have my people in place, of course, at the hospital...But I'll leave you to coordinate. When she shows up..."

"...If she shows up..."

He paused and then nodded. "Yes, of course..." Devil's advocate or challenge? No matter, the question was valid.

"...We'll need a place to keep her...until I return. I'll leave that to your discretion. You don't have to go out, of course; just monitor what's happening. I'll e-mail you the contacts."

It was an offer of trust.

"And if she doesn't show? If her mom starts to get better?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Then we may need to up the stakes a bit..."

"No problem. I'll be here."

"You're doing well, Alex," he said, nodding. "Scully may be surprised to see how well you're doing..."

Tracy got up from her chair and walked across the broad expanse of restaurant kitchen. The floor was butterscotch-colored tiles that sloped slightly to a drain in the center of the room. The counters and ovens were gleaming chrome. She stood and looked up at the bright light coming through a high window. The room was silent and orderly; it would be hours before the restaurant opened for dinner. It was almost a place of meditation. She looked back at the chair she'd been sitting on, a simple leather-seated chair brought from Marisela's homeland--deep brown frame, reddish-brown seat held in place with decorative brass nails. It seemed to fit the tiles it sat on and the clean vacancy of the kitchen.

She went to the oven door, opened it slightly, and closed it again. She smiled at the smells that came out. It had been too long--much too long. She pictured the garden outside the kitchen window, her mother in between the green beans and the cucumbers, weeding. And then last spring, the poles where the sweet peas had bloomed, the bushes dried in place, crisp and tan and fragile. She turned away and pushed open the swinging doors that led into the dining room.

Dim overhead lights cast a low glow over the tables. Marisela was cleaning tabletops and chairs.

"Alex has been to your castle," she said, approaching, picking up a cleaning rag and dipping it into Marisela's bucket. She pulled back a chair, got down on her knees and began to wipe the smooth ribs of the chair back. "The castle in Segovia, too. He showed me pictures."

Marisela nodded. "Very big. Very, very beautiful. It was Queen Isabel's castle--the one who sent Colon...how do you say it here?"

"Columbus."

Marisela nodded. "Your Alex, he's doing better?"

"Better." She nodded. Marisela always said 'your Alex'.

"He's the quiet one. He looks, he watches...While he waits for the food to be ready he notices everything around him."

"You must notice," Tracy said. "If you noticed what he sees."

The girl stopped and flushed. "Perhaps. I didn' think about it."

Marisela went back to cleaning her chair seat. Tracy smoothed her rag over the rungs and seat, working the rag into the small depressions where seat met ribs, where little bits of dirt or food collected, then returned to the arch of the chair back, a smooth, graceful motion. Up and curve around, up and curve, like the stairs going up to the castle tower. How many places held the dread of memory for him the way that stairway did? And yet he'd returned, once he'd managed to seal the memory away, to bind and gag it. He'd gone back to take her past it to the top, to a view he knew she'd want to see. She moved to a second chair and dipped her rag into the warm bucket again.

Marisela nodded toward the kitchen. "We should keep an eye on your bread. The oven is different than a small one in a house."

Tracy squeezed out the rag, laid it on the table and stood. She passed the picture of the castle on the wall, and the rocky peaks behind the village, and the picture of Hemingway. Marisela was thinking it again--that she was like the girl Maria in the story, a young girl with an older man.

Tracy went through the swinging door into the kitchen. Bread smells filled the room; she smiled. There was something more, though, lurking beyond the fragrance of yeast and flour--a thin essence of something that ached. Time to be strong, Alex would say, and he'd be right. It was one of those times.

"Knock, knock..."

Scully turned around and looked toward the screen door. Sandy stood there, one hand holding something beyond where she could see it.

"Come..." she said.

"I don't mean to disturb you if you're busy," the girl began, looking down slightly. "I guess I just hoped you'd made some progress...and I wanted to give you these. Adrie and I picked 'em."

Adrie appeared beside Sandy. He wore a smile.

Scully stood and opened the screen door. Sandy stepped up.

"Want to come, Adrie?"

Adrie only smiled and shook his head.

"He seems happy today," Scully said. "He's usually...absorbed in his play, not unhappy but...serious. It's good--to see him smile...Ooh, very pretty."

She took the flowers Sandy held out, pale lavenders and yellows and whites interspersed with ferns and other greens, all in a peanut butter jar.

"Some of 'em won't last more than a day," Sandy said. "But they'll be nice for now. They cheer a room up, you know?"

"Yes, they do." Scully set them on the small counter beside the desk. "Thank you."

"Have you found anything?" Sandy sat on the edge of the bed.

"I think I may have. I've spent the last two hours searching the Internet, but actually the idea just came to me, something I remembered from when I was twelve or thirteen. Sandy, have you ever taken down wallpaper?"

"Ugh." She made a face. "Yeah. More than I'd like to. Well, it was only one room, in my mom's house, but it's an old place and the stuff was stuck to the walls--I mean stuck."

"How did you get it off?"

"We scraped for a while. Well, okay, I scraped while my mom spent a lot of time on the phone with Joe, whining about it." She paused and looked down. "Okay, I guess I probably wasn't too much fun to work with, either. But it was hard stuff. We tried putting wet towels over it but then you've gotta hold them there and it takes forever. And then Joe told my mom about this little machine you can rent; it kinda steams the paper off. You just hold it there and when it gets enough steam it just comes rolling off, pretty much..."

"Exactly," Scully said.

"So what's that got to do with anything?"

"A lot, maybe. My mother and Agent Wilkins were taking down some wallpaper at the beginning of last week..."

"This guy must be a good friend of yours..."

Scully paused. "Actually, I've only known him a short time, but...yes, I guess you can say he is." She pursed her lips. "Anyway, this disease I remember hearing about when I was young--it appeared to be pneumonia. There was a big outbreak of it at a convention in Philadelphia and a number of people died. At the time they had no idea what it was, but they named it Legionnaire's disease after the convention. Eventually they determined that the outbreak had been caused by contaminated warm water in the building's air conditioning system that had come through the duct work as an aerosol..."

"Like a spray?"

"Yes."

"What do you mean, contaminated? Like some terrorist thing?"

"No. Just a bacteria that's sometimes found in water. The air conditioning system vaporized some of the water and spread it through the building, contaminating the people at the conference."

"And you think that's what happened to your mom?"

"She and Wilkins both developed symptoms after they'd worked on the wallpaper. A home air conditioning system doesn't work the same way. It wouldn't have that effect. But a steamer for taking down wallpaper would. And contaminating the water supply would be easy enough to do."

"But how would somebody know she'd be taking down wallpaper? They couldn't exactly count on something like that."

"They wouldn't have had to. Just taking a shower would have the same effect--warm water vaporized."

"...I get it." Sandy sighed and shook her head. "Annie, I don't...I just don't understand. I mean, I know I've lived my whole life in this little town, and it ain't Lexington, or probably a lot of other places out there with sharp, slick people, but...What makes people like that?--like this guy who thinks he can just step on people like little plastic army men in the dirt and it don't mean anything?"

"He doesn't have any...scruples, any moral..."

"He's got no heart."

Scully smiled a pained smile. "I think that says it all."

Sandy's lips pressed together. She looked down and studied the carpet, nudging at the surface with a toe.

"Well, my Cy and Roddy may be gone, but your mom's still alive and we've got to do whatever it takes." She looked up. "Have you sent what you found to her doctor?"

Scully nodded. "About ten minutes ago. He could have it already."

"Thank goodness for e-mail." She stood. "I really gotta go. I gotta see what Roddy's..." She reddened. "Ohmigod, I..."

Scully stood. "You okay? Sandy...?"

Sandy gulped. "I...I think so. I think he's--Adrie's...I guess I'm getting on better with him now. I guess it feels more familiar...Yeah, I'm..." She shrugged. "I'll be okay. I think. What about you?"

She must have looked doubtful; the girl's arms were around her suddenly.

"You be strong, Annie."

"I will." She leaned into the strength of the embrace. "I will."

Krycek climbed the stairs for the second time. Five minutes, she'd said, her face with that glow only half-hidden; she had no idea how transparent she was. He'd waited the five. If he were her, he'd know for sure...He paused at the landing, waited a moment and stepped up again. Ten to go, nine, eight. He'd never counted stairs before her, before that first trip up to the roof, a place he'd never been until she'd taken him, even for all the time he'd lived in this building.

He reached the third-floor landing and stopped again to let his breathing even. She'd be monitoring it all; he might as well be on camera. Not that she could help it. He looked up, at her door, covered the last small distance to it and knocked.

"Come in..."

He could picture her face, the way she'd look when she said it, cheeks flushed, mouth pressed tight to keep the overflow inside. He turned the handle and went in.

"Hey..."

It smelled incredible.

A sudden hitch in the flow--awkwardness, how weird was that?--and heat in his cheeks. It was changing again; the dynamic was changing.
"Come on, Alex..."

Spell broken somehow. He closed the door behind him.

"Sit," she said, smiling. "It's just going to get cold..."

"How'd you manage?" He came around the bed and eased himself onto the desk chair that sat in front of the window.

"I asked Marisela if I could use the oven at the restaurant."

"Good work."

"Just tear off a piece," she said, gesturing toward the loaf sitting on paper towels at the edge of the bed. "I don't have a knife."

"Hold it for me?"

"Sorry." She flushed and came closer. She held the loaf while he took a warm chunk, then sat on the edge of the bed. "I should know by now."

"No problem." He took a bite and nodded. Good. Really good. He took another, chewed and swallowed. "In Europe they make it mostly in little bakeries, not in homes. It always smells good, fresh bread, but...not quite like this. It's a little sweeter here...just...different. Good. Especially when somebody's taken the time..."

"I've got butter if you want it. Marisela gave me some of those little wrapped-up pats..."

He shook his head. "No, it's good like this...just the way it is."

She held the loaf out, waited while he pulled off another piece, then sat back and pulled one leg up under her.

"I used to make it at home," she said. "My mom taught me and eventually I just took over; it was one of my...things, I guess. She was more at home in the garden and I did the household stuff..." She looked up and flushed. "What a homebody, right?"

"It's a skill." He nodded toward her. "Every skill has a place." It'd been an art the way she'd come up to him that first time he was stuck in the dark by the window, all care and confidence, easing him past the circuit-shorting pain.

She flushed and looked out the window. "I haven't made it in so long but it's been working away at me lately--you know, wanting to make some, to get my hands back into the dough...the rhythm of kneading..." She turned back to him. "I got the bowl and pans at the thrift store. They had a two-for-one sale..."

He nodded.

"But it's been a long time...since I've made any. Not since I was there, not since..." She sighed.

"Since..."

"Since..." She took a breath. "She didn't have the energy to chew it..." She turned away again, toward the head of the bed. He finished what was in his mouth and swallowed it.

"I don't mean to..." she started, and shook her head. "I guess I've just had this...thing...in the back of my head for a while now, the bread and...I don't know what it is...you know, why--why I wanted to." She studied her hands. "Maybe I'm just trying to get back there somehow..." She turned back. "But I did want to make it for you. I really did."

"I can tell. Thanks." She'd read it inside him, the extra.

"I've been thinking..." She traced a line on the blanket with one finger, then looked up. "I think I need to go there again, Alex...To face it, maybe. I feel like...like I'm not going to go back there...ever...like I'm moving away from there somehow but I...have to go back there and face it first, the way you always face everything." She looked for his reaction.

"You sure you can handle it?"

"Maybe when I leave here..." Her finger ran over the surface of the blanket again. "Maybe then..." She shrugged. "Guess I'll find out."

Just leaving would be rough enough. And he'd seen what the memories did to her.

She looked up suddenly at his worry. His jaw set. She'd done it again, seen it all--this--everything--all his father's loose threads swirling inside him. He closed his eyes against the sudden spike of frustration, pressed it down and opened his eyes again.

"Tracy..."

She was watching--but that was the point; it was more than just physically watching. It was like being strip-searched, always naked under bright lights, though she didn't mean it that way; that wouldn't be her. Probably second nature, like breathing, but it was there nonetheless--always there--and he hadn't noticed it as much before, when the pain was so bad he'd had no choice, no choice but to accept what she offered, anything to get away from the driving pain...

His breath caught--had already caught; he let it out. She'd seen it all. Plunge the knife in and twist, stupid. He reddened.

She turned away.

"Tracy..."

He tightened inside, working to compartmentalize, to compress, to package. It was what everybody did to her eventually, the way everyone reacted.

"Alex..."

"Tracy..."

She stood.

"Tracy, don't..." He shook his head; she knew. Eyes shut. "I just...I need space. I need to be able to think this over...for myself...by myself. It's not you; I just can't..." He looked up at her. "I can't do it this way, with an audience. There are too many things right now..."

She was looking out the window.

"...things I have to figure out on my own."

She bit her lip and nodded. She was empty, lost. Bleeding--why wouldn't she be?

He held out his hand; she hesitated, took it but only half-heartedly. She stared through the glass.

"Just a while. Maybe an hour or so." He smoothed his thumb along her wrist.

"I'll go for a walk, Alex." Her voice was small.

"Bread's going to dry out," he said quietly. He let her hand go.

She moved to the bed and covered the partial loaf with a towel. He watched the way her hair hung, light and smooth.

"I just...need some time to think..." He stood. "Tracy..."

She turned to face him, more composed now.

"Help me down the stairs?"

She took the hand he offered, fingers working into their familiar places.

"Maybe an hour," he said.

"I'll go for a walk," she repeated.

"Come back."

"I will."

"He hasn't contacted you yet?"

Rani shook his head. "Nothing. Do you think he will? Or was he just coming to see for himself--to see that his plan was in place?"

Byers rubbed a thumb against the steering wheel. "Actually, I have no clear idea. But evidently he does know that you suspect something--medically, at least. Undoubtedly he's going to have his own surveillance in place, either video or personnel, and that's going to include you."

Rani shrugged. "I'll know if I see someone different. I'm quite familiar with all the staff..."

"It could be easy enough to buy the temporary loyalty of someone already here...especially someone on the lower end of the pay scale..."

Rani stared out across the broad expanse of parked cars. "I would protest..." He shook his head. "We have a fine staff here. But I've seen the power of money..." He let out a sigh.

"We'll have to be very careful when she begins to recover..."

"Even if we have found the root of the mystery, John, and it seems we may have, the extent of the infection in her lungs..." He shook his head. "Things are not quite as easy as simply changing the medication. I believe she's been infected for longer than Wilkins. Her symptoms didn't begin to show themselves until, coincidently, Wilkins' did, too But I believe that was only a matter of coincidence. If the bacteria were there earlier, in the water system..."

"Just a daily shower would have done it."

"Precisely. Oh, did I mention? I heard from her daughter not an hour ago. She'd suggested the same thing I'd already thought of..."

"Legionnaire's?"

Rani nodded. "Not a common diagnosis."

"She's not a common investigator--or physician, for that matter."

Mulder picked up the yellow sign from the entrance to the women's bathroom and put it back on his cart. Three women were waiting to get in, two young ones chewing gum, looking bored but probably glad for the excuse to be away from their stations a few minutes longer, the third a woman of about 40 with her hair drawn up into a pony tail. She jotted something in a little notebook as she waited. Mulder pushed the cart to the side and dipped his mop in the bucket. The two gum-chewer exchanged glances and half-hidden smiles and went inside; the older woman continued to write. Mulder pressed the mop in the wringer, took it out and began to swab it across the tiles.

There was a big plastic bag of trash to go through later, but it was an outside chance--hope that was damn close to self-delusion. It'd been different being the only one. Being booted out of the Bureau was bad but it was bearable. Then it'd been both of them and together that had been bearable, too...okay, sometimes a whole lot better than bearable--a little bit of heaven in the middle of purgatory. But now...the clock was ticking; stay here in Owensburg too long and somebody was going to find them out and they were no closer now to pinning anything on Old Smoky than they'd been weeks ago, or years ago for that matter. What they had was bits--maybe five jigsaw puzzle pieces out of five hundred--a body autopsied, a little more information about the plant, a possibility of something at the airport if Dale found anything worth looking into.

A lot of ifs, nothing concrete and Scully's mother hanging in the balance. And Smoky wouldn't wait forever if Scully didn't show. She was bound to think of that, too, once she'd gotten past her need to do research for her mother. She might solve the medical mystery--if anyone could, it'd be Scully. But if she didn't show, he'd do something else, something more, and how much could they take in the end? She was feeling strong now--the strength that comes from knowing you can't afford not to be, the kind tightrope walkers must feel halfway across, nowhere to go but to the other side or down, and down's not an option. But what about later? What when Maggie didn't get worse and Scully didn't show? Smoky wouldn't just shrug and walk away. He'd tighten the screws.

Eventually she was going to realize that.

Mulder dipped his mop in the bucket again and wrung it out. He started on the floor again, long, even strokes, automatic now. He was approaching the woman's feet; she was still busy in the notebook.

" 'Scuse me," he said. "Bathroom's open now."

She looked up, startled, then half-smiled. "Thanks. Grocery lists should be so all-absorbing, eh?"

She tucked the pad into the pocket of her lab coat and passed him, headed into the restroom. Mulder's mop stopped. It was quiet suddenly--quieter than before. He could picture Debbie in the park, expression intense, her arm twined around Ray's, rocking slightly as if it were the movement that kept her running.

She wheezes, she'd said matter-of-factly.

She'd almost been able to forget about her 'gift'. They said it was a gift but what good was it if it only separated you from people, made them draw away from you as if you had some awful disease, one you'd never be able to get rid of?

Almost normal for a while there--a blissful while--she and Alex falling into a kind of rhythm, her anticipating, him understanding. But he was right; he hadn't had any choice. The pain--his necessity--had taken away his options. Maybe he hadn't noticed so much that she was watching, what she could see while the pain was causing so much static inside him. He was doing better now and that was a good thing; he needed to be strong, to be able to go on with his life. But it crowded him now, knowing she saw everything, that she knew what was in him almost before he did. Alex of all people, who sealed himself away to protect himself, to stay anonymous. To stay alive.

She leaned back against the tree trunk and looked up at the canopy overhead. She sat with her back to the square--to the people on the benches--and tried to focus on the leaves overhead instead of the murmur of minds behind her. It was so natural to hear them, but for them, not knowing, not seeing into those around them...what would it be like? A kind of blindness, but one they'd accept for not knowing anything else. How blinding the light, then, when they saw it revealed. How terribly harsh. But she'd been the same--unknowing, assuming for so long that people could see into her; maybe it was why Alex found her so transparent. Maybe it was why she couldn't lie, never having suspected that people couldn't see the truth in her.

A squirrel darted along a tree branch and stopped suddenly, peering down to look at and then chide her noisily. She smiled up at the small, intense face.

Come back, he'd said, and then repeated it in his mind. Who else had ever said that, once having known?

She looked at the park perimeter, at the cars passing in the street and the storefronts beyond the flow of traffic. Across the street was a hardware store with red sale signs in the window. The thrift store had had a sign in the window, too. 'All house wares 75% off--today only' it had said when she'd passed by this morning on her way to Marisela's.

She stood up and brushed off the back of her dress. There was something she wanted to get.

It was his fourth grade teacher standing at the front of the room; he was small again. He looked around to see his classmates all there, too.

"This citizenship award goes to Isaiah Wilkins, " the teacher said, nodding toward his seat at the back of the room.

Several white faces turned around to stare, noses wrinkling, though most deigned not to gratify him with so much as that. He didn't remember doing anything to deserve an award.

The teacher was smiling. She was shorter than he remembered, kindly. She repeated his name and waited for him to stand up. More heads turned. He squirmed uncomfortably in his chair, his face warming.

"Isaiah?"

He could feel his brow wrinkle. "What was it I did again?" he said quietly.

There was a low eruption of laughter.

"Yeah, what did he do?" one freckle-face kid demanded.

"Why, he pulled that dog away from where the bus was coming, Randy. He probably saved that dog's life. It was a noble thing."

"It was a stupid thing," a voice behind him rasped. Two fingers poked him in the back. "You coulda got yourself run over, stupid. Where wouldya 'a been then?" The fingers jabbed again.

"Will?"

She was beckoning again, waiting, one hand held out and a paper in the other, fancy scrolling around the edges. His mind puzzled. He wanted to hunker down in his seat and wait for her to go on to someone else's name except that the fingers behind him kept poking through the slats in the chair. Now there was a shoe wedged against the small of his back. He stood.

He walked slowly forward, eyes on the gray linoleum tiles and finally, when he had to, up on her. She offered her hand for him to shake--one hand open, the other with the paper in it. He reached out, feeling the eyes behind him boring into his back as if they were hot pokers.

"Will..." she said again. Unlike the others, she meant the smile she was smiling.

He put his hand forward and let her take it. Her hand was cool and small.

"Will..."

He opened his eyes.

"Stay with me, Will..."

He was in his bedroom. His mouth was hot and thick, his head ached. His chest ached.

"The doctor says they think they've found out what you and Maggie have got." Rita squeezed gently against his hand. "They know how to treat it now, they think."

He blinked.

"It's because of you, Will. If you hadn't stuck with this thing, nobody would've known."

His eyes closed. He could see the classroom again, the pale faces watching, some blank, some staring, some with something unpleasant simmering behind the eyes.

"Stay with me, Will," the teacher was saying.

She came close and smoothed a cool hand across his forehead. He was tired. He let his eyes close.

She hadn't asked. She wouldn't. It wasn't in her or like her.

But the need was there all the same; he could see it as surely as if he could read her the way she read him. Something was drawing her home, something she needed to settle, but how would she make it through the confrontation? In the woods...it had showed, what the memories did to her. It wasn't something she should go through alone.

Here it came, the kicker of the last few weeks--out of practice, out of shape, out of perspective. No perspective at all, just the myopia of knowing what she needed, but she'd be gone, and soon--too soon--leaving one hell of a crater in the middle of his life. He could see it and he didn't care--that was the part that should set off bells. It did set off bells. But he wasn't jumping.

The old man was leaving town; it would give them a couple of days with no pressure, no one looking over their shoulders. But the old man was leaving him in charge of coordinating his thing with Scully's mother. Two weeks ago he'd never have thought of taking off in the middle of an assignment--not one that could get him somewhere, give him a greater toe-hold, net him some information, whatever he could scrounge out of it; he always came away with something.

And if Scully's mother started to get better? But he was still laid up, or as good as; the old man wouldn't leave it to him to get rid of her.

She'd want to come, Scully would. She'd have that fire in her eyes, that holy indignation. But Mulder would find a way, if he kept his head--some way to keep her from walking into this. The question was whether he'd keep his head, or whether she'd listen. It'd depend on what she had to gain by going--ease of conscience, the resolution of knowing she'd done whatever she could--versus what she had to lose by leaving Mulder, and only she knew what that was. She'd been spooked enough at the end--even he'd noticed that through the shock, lying there bleeding onto her carpet. He'd watched them through the bathroom door, her sitting on the counter like a shaking child, wide-eyed, immobilized, Mulder dabbing the blood off her, washing her neck and cheek, making a bandage, handling her as if she were made of porcelain. Trying to clean the blood off her shirt, giving up finally, bringing her another and then having to put it on her. If she'd been in any kind of shape she would've decked him; it was Scully, after all...unless they'd already crossed that line. But it hadn't seemed that way--the way he handled her, too careful and tentative. Who knew what would've happened between them after two weeks on the run, though. Pressure--extremity--did strange things to you, shot you right through into the twilight zone. He should know.

He did now, anyway.

God bless, and please write back so I know you got this. Annie let me use her computer to write this mail.
                                                                                                                                                                    -S

"Knock, knock..."

Scully glanced up from the book on the bed beside her. Mulder stood outside, Bethy in hand. She smiled and got up.

"Looks like Grand Central here," she said, opening the screen door. "Hi, Bethy..."

Bethy smiled and looked past her to where Sandy sat in the desk chair. Her cheeks were rosy against her pale skin.

"Go on," Scully said, nodding toward Sandy.

Bethy let go of Mulder's hand and stepped up into the trailer. Scully stepped out and down the stairs. She could feel the color rising in her face.

"Didn't expect to see you here."

He shrugged. "Yeah, well I just spent eight hours worrying about how you were doing. Figured I'd stop speculating."

"Did you walk?"

"Didn't have much choice. Someone might have spotted me driving up here." He paused and frowned. "Apparently somebody saw me coming out of Sandy's yesterday..."

She gave him a quizzical look.

"Joe greeted me this morning with a little comment about my..." He lowered his voice. "...'nice catch'."

Scully frowned and glanced behind her, to where Sandy and Bethy were deep in conversation.

"Dale's supposed to be heading for Lexington to see what he can find out at the airport, so I picked Bethy up, parked at Rita's and we took the trail behind the house from there. I figure anyone watching me'd just think we're inside."

"And Rita's car...?"

"In the driveway so it looks like she's home..." One eyebrow went up. "Any news with you?"

She let out a careful breath and nodded. "We think we may have it figured out--her doctor and I. We've been in contact several times today; we're just waiting for confirming lab results now. We'd both come to the same conclusion--suspicions, anyway. Legionnaire's disease."

"But...isn't that contagious? Aren't there huge outbreaks?"

"It's bacterial, not viral. And no, usually there aren't, contrary to popular impression...But we've certainly got Wilkins to thank that we knew to look deeper at all."

"How's he's doing?"

"He's..." She looked down. "He's not in the hospital. His symptoms certainly aren't anything to envy, but he's doing a little better than..."

She stopped, let out the buildup of air. The sticks at her feet were arranged in a pattern--Adrie's handiwork, undoubtedly. Mulder's hand settled against the small of her back.

"Hey," he said softly. "Why don't we take a walk?"

She looked up, managed a small smile and turned around to where Sandy was half-watching, trying not to intrude.

"Sandy, we're going to..."

"Why don't you guys go take a walk?" she said, waving a hand at them. "I've got Sweet Pea here and we're going to go check out what Adrie's doing..."

Scully nodded and smiled. "Thanks." She turned to Mulder and they started down the trail that led downhill and to the left.

"Smooth," he said, raising an eyebrow. "You two have that choreographed?"

"Practiced for hours," she said, letting herself smile.

"I give it a 9.5."

His arm went around her waist.

"Come on, Mulder," she said. "Let's walk."

Tracy took the hot bread gingerly from the toaster and spread it with jam.

"See?" she said, turning to where he sat on the edge of the bed. "It's almost better this way."

He nodded, mouth full. There were crumbs on his lips.

She sat down on the desk chair and put her feet up on the rungs. She took a bite of her toast. He crumpled his paper towel, sent it cleanly into the waste basket beside the microwave and lay back against the pillows. He was watching her, thinking, half-guarding what was in his head. She was conscious of the movement of her jaws, the loudness of her own chewing in her ears. Maybe it was what he felt like--the watched feeling--when she was around. She swallowed self-consciously.

"How far is it?" he asked.

She looked up at him, questioning.

"To where you lived?"

"About three hours."

"He's left me to coordinate his little plan," he said, tilting his head back farther and looking out the narrow window behind him. "He's flying to Europe for a few days at the end of the week..." She watched the small peak his Adam's apple made.

"He isn't going to make you...?"

"Do anything to her? Nah..." He shook his head. "I'm still sidelined as far as he's concerned. He's..." He shook his head and looked over at her. "He's been...too careful, too...concerned...about how I'm doing." He pulled up slightly and pushed a pillow farther under his head. "He was happy enough to set me on top of a car bomb a few years back. It doesn't track, the...concern--the show of concern." He shook his head. "Keeps me awake sometimes...thinking about it, what his angle is, what..." He shrugged and stared at the ceiling.

"Do you want to know?" She pressed her lips together and looked at her hands in her lap.

"What?"

"His concern...Alex, I can't help what I see. I just...don't know any way to...to block it out, not to..."

"Hey, I..." He shook his head. "...didn't mean to rag on you...you know--before. It just...sometimes it builds up..."

She put one arm over the chair back beside her and leaned against it. "I've seen it more than once in him, Alex. He carries it around in his head and it...it surprises him, the way it did the first time..."

"What?"

"That when you were in the hospital--the first time--in surgery...they almost lost you...for a little while there. There was a point and...something went wrong, people were...yelling all of a sudden--I can't tell what they're saying--and everyone's hurrying around you and...he's shocked. He knows he shouldn't be--he likes to think he's ready for anything, but he's not...And he has to leave the room--that bothers him because he never leaves; he can watch anything but he can't watch you there..." She shook her head. "I don't know, Alex. He doesn't know how to...love, how to value people, but...it's like...some little vulnerability he wasn't expecting..." She shrugged. "I don't understand it, either..."

He was staring at the corner of the ceiling. He'd nearly died before, he was thinking. Not the first time. No big deal; he was here. But it shook him all the same. She watched his jaw, the way it set.

"I was thinking this morning..." she started. She ran a finger along the smooth edge of the chair back. "I have been thinking..."

"About..." He was still caught, hooked by her revelation.

"I was kneading that dough this morning and all of a sudden...I was thinking about me, Alex--is that awful or what? That when...when the baby comes they'll be staring at me even more, that it won't just be what they think of me already but that added to it, and..." She sighed.

"Any more than they do already?" His voice was quiet. He nodded toward her middle. "You're not exactly a secret, you know..."

"It's not that..." She shook her head. "It's that I was only thinking of myself. What kind of..." The corners of her mouth were slipping. "...mother...I don't think I'm ready for this...to do it right..." She let her head rest against her arm. She closed her eyes a moment.

"Any kid'd be lucky, Tracy. Really lucky..." He shrugged. "Whatever you have to do...you find a way..."

"Doesn't mean you'll do it well..."

"You will."

He watched her a moment, clear-eyed. "I didn't mean to...turn on you...this morning...like everybody else..."

"How could you help it? Having someone watching you all the time this way. I guess...I have to figure out a way to get past it. It's never going to hit people any differently, what I do..."

"Maybe it's like a lot of things, like...tides, or waves, just...something you have to learn to ride out, to wait out and...keep your equilibrium...know you'll come out the other side." He rolled slightly toward her. "Close your eyes..."

She gave him a curious look but let her eyes close. They were near the ocean, looking down from cliffs. The sky was gunmetal blue with thin, bright slashes of yellowish light. Out in the water were lots of...something, bobbing along. Small black things.

"What are they, Alex? Seals?"

"Surfers," he said.

She could make them out now, the heads of men--boys--in wetsuits.

"They're waiting for good waves. They'll stay out there for hours. They walk out..."

She could see one now, walking slowly into the water, seeing a wave coming, holding his arms up and letting it pass by, walking on farther and doing it again, over and over. No wave carried him away or moved him from where he was; they only moved past him on their way to the shore.

"You have to focus on where you're headed, not on the wave...present a small front...know it's going to pass you by...wait it out..."

She opened her eyes. He was studying her, the picture still in his head, blue-gray sky and row after row of waves coming, passing. And something else. Woods. Trees.

He wanted to offer--wanted to say the words. The thought that he might terrified him.

"I followed him to Rita Johnston's house," Raylene said. She picked up a wooden spoon and stirred the crumbled hamburger in the pot in front of her. She shook some salt and pepper into it. "He had Rita's granddaughter with him."

"Makes sense," Joe said from the far side of the table. He was hidden behind the sports section.

"Makes sense why?"

"He's her nephew. It's not like he's a stranger or something."

"Still..." She dabbed at the contents of the pot. "He's still there. I waited a good long while and he never came out." She listened to the meat sizzle, smelled the steam coming up from the pan. "Joe..."

"Huh?"

She turned around. "Were you listening to anything I was saying?"

"Huh?...Yeah, I heard it. I just didn't figure it was very important."

"Joe Charters!"

The paper came down.

"I just don't see what the big deal is, Raylene. You two fight like cats and dogs anyway. She's an adult...I guess I don't get what your interest is here."

"That's because you don't have kids..." The corners of her mouth tightened. "Not any you ever had to raise, anyway..."

The paper went back up again.

"Reds beat the Cardinals in extra innings," he said after a moment.

Raylene turned back to her hamburger. She watched bubbles sizzle up between bits of meat, the red color fading gradually to gray. She opened a can of tomatoes and poured it into the pot. There was a sizzle of protest, like water on a campfire, and then near-silence.

"Anyway, if you'd quit breathing down her neck, Raylene, maybe she'd stop running. It'd make anybody crazy..."

"Joe, I do not..."

She half-turned, gripped the spoon more tightly and stared back into the pot. Her eyes felt as if she'd been slicing onions. It was all she knew, all she'd ever known. It wasn't so easy--trying and trying and always getting it wrong.

Scully let the waterfall in front of her go momentarily out of focus. The quiet roar of passing water deepened. Mist drifted against her face; she closed her eyes. The rock ledge was hard and cool beneath her; sunlight heated a patch on her leg. She leaned back against the warmth of Mulder close behind her, his arms around her waist. They moved together slightly, the expansion and contraction of breathing. A chirp overhead, then a warble; she opened her eyes. Above them, an orange-beaked finch skipped from leaf to leaf and stopped on a young, thin branch, fluttering slightly, waiting for the seesaw movement to stop. It was the way he'd held her at Teena's in the middle of the night, the way he'd been holding his sister in the picture at the end of his mother's hallway--young Fox, attentive protector of the contented, vulnerable Samantha. He said nothing now, made no movement.

"Mulder?"

No reply other than the slight nudge of his cheek against her ear.

An image grew gradually in her mind--a hospital bed, monitoring equipment. White walls. A privacy curtain in institutional green. Her mother's face, pale.

No.

She moistened her lips, wrapped her hands around his wrists and turned back, toward him. His jaw was set; he stared toward the water.

"He's already changed her medication," she said. "We aren't sure how long she's actually been infected, but we should start to see some improvement by the end of the week."

He nodded slightly. The waterfall reflected in his eyes.

"Hard day cleaning?" She smoothed a thumb across his wrist.

"Emptied trash. Cleaned toilets. Mopped." He sucked in his lower lip. "Came up pretty dry in the end." He blinked. "I think I found this one woman the blind girl was talking about. I was hoping I could catch her after work but she disappeared right away; she was halfway out of the parking lot by the time I made it to the front door...." His jaw tightened.

She turned forward again, toward the waterfall. "There has to be another way for you to approach her. This is Owensburg, Mulder. Anyone's bound to know where she lives..." She smiled grimly. "...and almost anything else about her, for that matter. She shouldn't be hard to find."

No reply.

When she turned to look again, his eyes were closed. She scooted forward, eased his arms from around her, stood and turned to face him. She smoothed her hands past his cheeks and into his hair; his head came forward to rest against her.

"Shit, Scully, what are we doing here?...I mean, I go in every day, I go through the trash looking for evidence, it's like...digging through dumpsters hoping to come up with a winning lottery ticket..." A sigh. "In the meantime Smoky's doing...unspeakable things...to your mother, trying to flush us out..."

She let her lips rest against the top of his head.

"I...I guess I ran out today...just...ran dry...All day...eight hours I was trying to think of something--something to get us past this instead of...always being three steps behind Smoky, trying to play catch-up, jumping though one of his damn hoops..."

"Mulder, don't. Don't let him get to you. It's just another one of his tricks, his strategies, to make you blame yourself, to...immobilize you..."

She cupped his face, kissed the bridge of his nose. His head came forward again and rested against her shoulder. His hair was soft against her cheek. A kiss touched her collarbone, then he was pulling back, sitting up, looking at her. He shook his head.

"I don't know how you're holding up through this, Scully..."

She felt her eyebrows rise. "I don't either. I guess...I have to. I don't have a choice."

"I think I...I know what you feel like, now...when you're out of...hope, when..." He sucked in his lower lip and looked past her. "When you look ahead and nothing's out there--nothing different you can see. All day...looking for some...countermove..." He looked down at his jeans and shrugged. "I just don't like being...dead weight..."

"Mulder, do you know...?" She tipped his chin up; his eyes closed. "Do you think I've never felt that way, that...'partner'...wasn't at all an operational term, that you were carrying that load and me along with it? Mulder, I need you, not just your ideas. not just your...hope, when you have it...if you have it..." She took his hands. "Do you remember what you told me once?--that the truth would save me? I have to believe that it will, Mulder. And if I can't see my way ahead to where it saves us from this...situation, this dilemma, to how it saves my mother...at least I know...I've got you--we've got each other--and that's a start, it's a place to rise up and stand, to see out over this...storm..."

She kissed the line between stubble and smooth cheek, rested her cheek against his and let her eyes close. The steady sound of water poured past. His grip on her hands was firm.

"Whenever I bottom out..." His voice came finally, quiet up against her. "Scully, you're always here..."

Sandy sat in the shade of the tree line. It was as close as she was going to get to the Miller family plot. Gram didn't know what to say to her anymore; neither did Cy's brothers. They were lost, still in shock. They still thought Cy'd done it--shot Roddy--and what could they say to her after that? Someday--sometime if this whole mess got resolved--they'd know the truth, that at least Cy hadn't killed his own son, that he was drugged into running down Rita Johnston's boy and then shot in cold blood, just a little pawn in some heartless man's game and what was his point, this man who sent other people to do his dirty work for him?--why hadn't he come and shot Cy and Roddy himself? Could he have pulled the trigger? What was he getting in exchange for all the lives he took?

She leaned back against the tree behind her. Cy's grave was on this end of the plot. There were little pale grasses starting to grow over the loose dirt. The soil'd been smoothed out good, but it still showed, the fact that it'd been dug up recently. Another month and nobody'd know--not the casual passerby, anyway. For all they knew, the grave could've been here forever. A whole life sealed into a box and faded away, nobody talking about it anymore, as if it'd never happened. Life went on, they said, only it was black-and-white now with just a few flecks of color here and there--Adrie when he was excited about something he'd built, the pain of falling in the sticker bush in the parking lot, Rita Johnston and soft little Sweet Pea, the way she'd sit up against you--she knew. She knew what a person was going through. Annie when she'd taken the thorns out of her knees, or Annie with Ben when he'd come to the trailer this afternoon. What it'd be like to feel that again, what she could see happening between the two of them when they got near each other. They were so lucky. She was lucky, too, to have them here. Maybe some day it'd all be resolved, what could be fixed of it, and she'd be able to go into the supermarket or into Daily's or Walmart without ten people turning to each other behind her back and saying, "There goes that Sandy Miller. Her husband shot her little boy and then killed himself, can you imagine?"

She reached down and drew a trail in the dirt with her finger. She wanted him back. She wanted him warts and all with his tickly beard and the big arms that came around her from behind, his baseball caps and even the dirty clothes on the floor. She'd be glad to see him go off with the guys if only she knew he'd be coming home afterward.

It was no use; nothing was more impossible in this whole world.

She wanted him anyway, wanted him so bad it made her bones ache.

"Tracy?"

She shook herself and stared at him suddenly, wide-eyed. Pale.

"What?"

"You were...You okay? For a second there..." He shook his head.

Her mouth twisted at the corners; she tried to fight it into straightness. One hand gripped the other in her lap. She shifted, got up from the edge of the bed and turned away. Eyes on the floor; she was avoiding him.

"It was nothing, Alex. It was just..."

"Didn't seem like nothing. You looked like you were about to pass out..."

She shook her head. She was facing the shelves, not him, her voice unsteady, giving her away.

"I think I need to take a walk. I'll..." She shifted from one foot to the other.

"Hey...

She shook her head, turned and started for the door.

"Tracy..." He pushed up on one elbow.

She stood at the door, knob in hand, fighting with whether to turn it. Her forehead went against the door frame, her hand still gripping the knob. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. Whatever it was hurt her like a physical pain.

"I guess..." She turned to look at him through strands of thin blonde hair. "...maybe I should stop running...again..." She straightened, turned slowly and leaned back against the door.

"What?"

She shook her head slowly. "Alex, you're not going to want to know this one..."

He watched her face go from pain to reluctance to sadness. She shook her head again.

"Tracy..."

"I can't. How can I...?"

It had something to do with him, something he'd done or thought.

Her mouth opened and then closed again.

He nodded toward her. Come here. Sit.

She shook her head but came anyway, reluctantly, working to control the quivering of her mouth. She sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and stared at her hands. Her fingers knitted themselves together.

"I saw someone," she began, rocking slightly.

"In your mind? Like Skinner?...Like the way you came to me?"

"I just saw them; I wasn't...there. I was just watching..."

He waited. Her lips pressed together.

"You don't want to know..."

Tell me.

"It was..." She half-looked up at him, lost. "...the little boy's mother, Alex."

He swallowed. For a moment no breath came--not in nor out. He could see himself again, firing, Miller with his broad reddish beard slumping slightly toward the passenger seat in the dull light of the car interior, a pause and then the body's gurgle and the wail, loud and abrupt like a siren, a jolt of panic--the need to stop the noise--stop it now--and the second shot, without hesitation, almost before he could think.

He glanced at her.

She was looking down, red-eyed, as if she'd been able to reach past his own recollection and right into the man and the boy. No point in trying to justify it; she'd seen everything and anyway, there was no justification beyond instinct and that was cold comfort now. He could've been an inconsequential kid who'd have grown up to run his car off the road when he was seventeen, drunk or trying to kiss some girl. Or it could've been her kid. Either way, playing it over wouldn't bring the boy back. He was gone now; he'd been gone in an instant, the way so many instantaneous decisions changed the course of things, lives or the history of nations.

She was looking out the far window, eyes shiny. She stared at the skyline, at the hazy brightness of afternoon. She was hurting, probably for all three of them, the living girl as much as the other two, but the last reassurance she needed now was his. His hand flexed; he made it curl around the edge of a pillow.

Her mouth opened. No words came out.

Tell me. I can take it. I deserve it, I guess, whatever it is. You do something, you've got to be able to deal with the consequences--no dark, convenient corners for the weak or squeamish.

"It was just..." She looked down. "She's just...She's not much older than me, Alex. She was...hiding in the trees. It's her father-in-law's place. Her husband's grave is there and she just hides in the trees and sits and watches it. She wants him back so bad; she just hurts and hurts..." She leaned forward, buried her face in her hands and then turned to look at him. "I don't mean to..." Her mouth quivered; she waited until she could make it stop and let out a sigh. "I'm not trying to do this to you. It's not..."

"You didn't do anything. Tracy..." You didn't do anything except be here, help me...get a lot of stuff you never deserved.

"I think I'm..." She sat up straighter. It was sadness, not anger. Not condemnation; it might've been easier if she'd given him a face filled with hate. "...going to go lie down for a while. My stomach hurts."

He could feel his pulse, loud and echoing. Her fingers reached out; he took them before he could stop himself, the way he'd reacted when he'd heard the kid. She squeezed against his hand, thin fingers searching out comfort, needing something he couldn't give.

She got up and went toward the door.

"I'll be down later..."

You don't have to.

She turned back. "Do you want me not to come?" The corners of her mouth wavered.

He tried to swallow back the confusion inside him.

"Did I get any mail?"

Mulder came up behind the desk chair and slipped his arms around her. She was cooling now, sweaty still; they both were. Her hair was tied back. He leaned over and kissed at a stray curl on the side of her neck.

"Look at this, Mulder. Dale did make some headway."

He read over her shoulder, still wrapped around her. "Baltimore's close without being D.C."

"He's going again this Sunday..."

Close to where her mother was. Don't go there, Scully. "Wonder who he's got meeting him on the other end?"

"Probably not Smoky himself. He has lackeys; he'll insulate himself..."

"Unless this is that important to him..." He let his hands slide to her shoulders and rubbed them carefully with his thumbs. Hopefully she wasn't thinking about trying to go. Maybe he could. But who knew what or who might be waiting on the other end. He looked away from the monitor. Reality--too much too soon--the momentary oasis they'd just created fading fast. But it was good news; it was headway.

"You can stay," she said, looking up at him.

He returned her smile. "You sure you don't want the shower first? I can wait..."

"No, go ahead. I want to see if I've got any mail from her doctor. I need to write to Wilkins, too. It's...amazing, really. I only worked with him twice and yet...he's helped us so much, Mulder..."

His lips grazed the top of her head. He straightened and turned to go, stopping to pick his clothes off the floor. He'd rather just leave them off and make love to her straight through till tomorrow morning. Or be made love to--it had been like that this time, different than before, as if she could make him whole again with the strength of her giving. He picked up his jeans and looked back at her, fingers resting lightly on the keyboard in anticipation, waiting for her mail to load. He pictured her the way she'd been in Oregon--that very first case--young, full of eagerness, eager to dig into the challenge of the mystery. Not worn, not diminished by the constant weight of burden and loss.

"What?" She turned to look at him.

"Nothing." He shook his head and smiled. "Just you."

He picked up his jeans and took them into the bathroom.

Krycek hit 'send', lay back against the pillows and closed his eyes. Nothing like exposing yourself completely, but unless Skinner was a lot denser than he thought, he'd already figured out that he didn't want to see Mulder captured. Not that Skinner would trust him. But he had leverage; he should be able to make Skinner jump.

She was probably asleep up there in her room; better if she was...unless she had dreams. It was obvious now, something he'd missed in the chaos of the moment--that she was taking it all on herself, trying to shelter him from direct contact with what she'd seen in the girl--the mother. As if he deserved that. As if she deserved what it did to her.

The time was getting short--her time--and the longer it went on, the more she got hurt. She deserved better. Whatever best was, that was what she deserved.

He reached beside him, groping for the beanbag, and rubbed his thumb across is absently, then opened his eyes and focused on the screen. The message had failed to send. He hit 'retry' and waited.

He could see the old Spanish men again--sitting at an outdoor cafe table with four of them in a little village near El Escorial, he and Victor, trying to see young men through the wrinkles and the gray hair, to find a connecting place. Two of them had bragged, coloring their revolutionary exploits with splashes of machismo and the sandpaper of time; probably they'd been nothing more than wait staff for some general or spent their time in the rear guard. The third man had been nearly silent, seeing backward with the hollow look that said he'd been there, seen too much and done too much, that in the end it was all the same, both sides an accumulation of rage--spilled guts, fear, corpses lying in piles or sprawled in the dirt, muddy and bloating. The fourth man spoke quietly of terrorism--of the power for influence of a single man, a single act. He'd set off a bomb in a crowded intersection at rush hour, he explained. It'd had incredible strategic effect--he'd held onto that, the authorities searching desperately for some powerful mastermind group that never existed, all their efforts and attention misdirected; it was all about misdirection. But he wouldn't have done it again, the old guy'd said at the end. Why? he'd asked at the time, uncomprehending; he remembered leaning forward across the table.

The old man had shrugged, given him a raised eyebrow and a nod. Only time would explain that, his expression had said. Experience. When you had it, then you'd understand.

Rita looked at herself in the restroom mirror: pink uniform with small white buttons down the front and a white cardigan sweater. She looked like all the other volunteers and that was the point. Nobody would think to look twice at a gray-haired volunteer entering a hospital room, not in person or on videotape; little old ladies were harmless, after all. She smiled a grim smile at her reflection and adjusted the curly wig she wore. If only Bob could see her now. She'd managed to elicit a broad if tired smile from Will; any smile was a good sign.

She went to the door, opened it and walked out into the hallway. She counted the doors to the elevator, got in and pushed the button for the third floor. Maggie might not know her--the delirium came and went, Rani had said--but it would be comfort nonetheless. A hand held and knowing someone cared about your predicament were always a help, whether they came from a stranger or from someone you'd known all your life. Besides, she wanted to do this--as one mother of a lost child to another.

The doors slid open. Two weary-looking parents and a worried teenaged girl got on. They rode in silence, huddled close together. A slowing, a dip she could feel in her stomach, and the door slid open again. Rita pictured the floor map in her head. She walked past the nurses' station and on to Room 310. He'd appeared here himself, the man who was responsible for everything--Andy, Sandy's men, Will. Ben and Annie's flight. Will had described him; she wondered if she'd recognize him if he chanced to pass the window again. What would she think or say? Would she speak or just find herself shrunken into fear like everyone else?

Beyond the glass, a woman lay small and pale in the bed. Rita slipped inside the half-open door and approached her.

"Mrs. Scully?"

Maggie Scully's eyes fluttered open. She stared and then attempted to focus.

"Is it time to go?" she asked, attempting to pull herself up. She reddened at the strain and collapsed back onto the pillows in a fit of coughing. Rita winced; the sound was way too familiar. When the coughing had passed, Rita held out a glass of water with a straw in it. Maggie sipped thankfully.

"I...I don't know where I left my clothes..." Maggie said finally, puzzled. She glanced to the left, past Rita. "That was silly of me."

Rita pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down. She leaned close and took the woman's dry, limp hand.

"I just wanted to see how you're doing, dear," she said. "We've all been worried about you. We wanted you to know we're all pulling for you."

Maggie nodded absently.

"Will sends his best..."

Maggie's eyes grew wider. "You know Will?"

"Yes, dear."

"And is he...? How is he?"

"He's doing okay. He's getting his rest."

"Oh, good. I thought...I heard his ship was late, that it was due into port last week and hadn't come in..."

"Your daughter sends her best," Rita went on, speaking quietly, close to her ear.

"Melissa? Oh, it's been so long...Thank you." There was a squeeze against her hand. Maggie's eyes were wet. "Tell her hello for me.. Is she coming?--coming here?"

She started to pull up again. Rita tried to coax her back down but it was too late. She reddened and coughed again, paroxisms that wracked her whole body. Rita waited, knotted inside, and offered Maggie more water when she'd quieted. For a moment, glancing back from bedside table to bed, she thought she saw Bob's face, worn but making an effort for her sake. "Give us a smile, Rita," he'd say. Sometimes he'd fall asleep as soon as he said it. Sometimes, when he'd just taken the medication, he wouldn't make it that far.

Rita looked through the glass into the hallway beyond. Except for a man in green pushing a linen cart, it was empty. A clasp of dry fingers came against her wrist. She turned back to the bed. Maggie's eyes were clear and dark.

"Do you know how Dana is?" she asked. "Do you know Dana?"

"Yes, dear," she whispered, covering Maggie's hand with her own. "Dana's safe. She's found sanctuary."

Tracy cupped her hands against the glass and looked into the display window. Her eyes traced the streets on the stretched-leather map of old Washington. She tried to picture it as a small town with cherry trees blossoming in the spring, with white picket fences and dogs barking and muddy streets when it rained.

She'd slept for a while when she'd gone upstairs. By the time she'd wakened the stomach ache was just a dull remnant but the maelstrom in Alex's mind was loud inside her head, the boy and the old Spanish veterans, whether he'd done the right thing, whether he'd seen clearly--justified himself--or whether it had been self-delusion and how was it possible to fight the nightmare future he saw in his head with lesser means, other means? Her, and the way he was only hurting her more with each passing day. Scully's mother and what would happen if she began to improve. He probably needed space to think and she'd remembered her mother's words and gone out walking, aimless at first, then drawn toward Farragut Square as surely as if someone had spoken the words and told her to go there. She waited now, for whatever would happen.

The sun had slipped behind the buildings, leaving a hazy pinkish glow in its wake. She turned away from the shop window and walked toward the opposite side of the square, passing the phone booth. Alex had been secure when he'd met her, tightly controlled, taut, sure; now his reasoning tore at him like a taunted dog. He'd given her so much when it was so unfamiliar to him, so hard and unpracticed, and yet all he could think was that he'd hurt her. It was the pain of growth; he'd tell her that himself if she were to bring it up. Something you have to go through, learn from; he'd shrug as he said it. Still, it hurt to watch him hurt.

She sat down on a bench.

If she were to go now, would it be better for him--easier for him--in the end?

"Tracy?"

She spun around. It was Walter, the soldier. This time the look on his face was different--relief.

"I was..." He let out a slow breath and cleared his throat. "...Maybe I just hoped you might be here."

He came around the end of the bench and sat down carefully, glancing to the left and right.

"What is it?" she said.

"Are you...?" The corner of his mouth twitched. "Are you alright? Is there anything you need, anything I can...help you with?"

"I'm okay." She nodded. "I'm...doing okay." She was. The last two weeks had nearly wiped away the emptiness of the time before.

"Are you still...?"

He couldn't bring himself to say the words.

"Helping Alex?" She nodded. "Yes, I am."

"There's something..." He paused, gauging her. "There's something I need to know. He's asked for someone's e-mail and frankly...I don't know that I can trust him, whether it might not put this other person in danger..."

"It's Mulder, isn't it?"

His eyes widened involuntarily. He patched himself together with reason--if she could get into his dream, she could know this--and nodded. "I know he doesn't appear to want Mulder to be found, but..." He set his jaw and looked across the square.

"He won't let his..." She caught herself and swallowed. "The old man--he won't let him find out. He's not like...him. If he has a way to keep the old man from finding Mulder, he'll use it." She paused and looked at her lap. "He deletes all his mail as soon as he reads it," she went on, starting on his unasked questions. "He cleans out the temporary files, the recycle bin--all that stuff--every time he shuts down his computer. He doesn't leave anything...nothing..."

Skinner leaned back against the bench. His instincts--all his experience--told him not to trust Alex.

"He can help Mulder," she said. She paused and shrugged. "Not that Mulder will believe him anymore than you do."

He pulled forward and scowled. "You know Mulder?"

"A little. He might...remember me, I don't know."

Skinner sighed and glanced around the square.

The light had paled to a thin yellow. She needed to be back; Alex would worry if she were out after dark, just a pregnant girl alone and what could happen to her.

"You're sure?" Skinner said. "You're certain he won't compromise Mulder?" He was wondering why he should trust her at all, why he was sitting here, except that he needed to be sure and there was no other way. It was no more inexplicable in the end--this--than having hovered, spirit-like, above a jungle in Vietnam, looking down at his own motionless body.

"I know he won't." She shook her head. "He wouldn't."

She watched him gaze at the far buildings, unseeing. His nose twitched slightly.

"What about you?" he said, turning to her. "Isn't there anything I can do...to help you?"

He could see she was doing better than before; it puzzled him.

"I thought," she said, looking down at her shoes, "that I was here to help him..." She looked up. "But he's gone out of his way for me. I've got everything I need."

He didn't understand.

"It's getting dark," he said, nodding toward the setting sun.

"If you can just wait with me at the bus stop...over there..." She pointed.

He nodded and stood.

"Thank you."

She got up and they crossed the square together, Walter matching his longer strides to hers. For a moment his thoughts turned to Sharon, to the comfort of waking up next to her and all the things he was never able to say.

Scully jumped at the knocking on the trailer door. She hurried to pull a sweater over her head and finger-comb her wet hair, then went to the door, closing her eyes briefly, trying to focus herself back into a world that didn't take her senses on a roller coaster ride and make them melt, helpless. She reached for the latch. Mulder was still in the bathroom; hopefully he'd have the good sense to stay there.

David Barker stood outside, the glare from the porch light reflecting off his glasses. Bethy stood beside him.

"I was wondering if you'd found anything," he said. "I didn't know how long it would take for your tests...but I figured there's no harm in asking."

"I heard from Dr. Wykoff this morning," she said. "I meant to leave you a note and then something urgent came up. The results showed..." She glanced at Bethy. "...just what we'd suspected. The evidence was all there."

He nodded, sober, and paused to let the significance sink in. "I, uh..." He forced a smile. "Thanks. Thanks for your efforts..." He turned to acknowledge Bethy. "She stayed for dinner with us. Haven't seen her in quite a while; she and Adrie had a great time together. She's growing up fast." He paused. "Anyway, I'm on my way to Dale's to take her home. He's been a major help to us since I took the job in Lexington. Don't know what we would've done without people pitching in..." He looked at the ground briefly.

"I know the feeling," she said quietly.

"Well..." His head came up. "Thanks for all your efforts."

"You're quite welcome. I wish the news could have been better somehow..."

"A little late for that, I guess." He shrugged. "I still mean to get a look at those records when I can."

"Every little bit helps."

Bethy yawned. David turned to her.

"Looks like we'd better make tracks," he said.

He nodded at Scully, turned and led Bethy up the trail. She watched them until they disappeared around the corner of the barn. A yawn overtook her. She closed the door and flipped the lock switch. The bathroom door opened.

"Coast clear?" Mulder said, sticking his head out. He smiled when he saw her.

She nodded and yawned again and shook her head.

"I hadn't realized how tired I"--another yawn--"was until Bethy yawned out there," she said, sitting down at the desk, beginning to ready the computer for shutdown. "I didn't get much sleep last night at Sandy's..." She glanced over. He was already between the sheets. "Sleep, Mulder," she repeated, trying to hold back a smile.

"I'm ready..."

She waited until the screen went black and reached for the bedside lamp, switching it off. She stood and took off the sweatpants and the sweater, folded them carefully and laid them over the chair back. He held the blankets back for her and she slipped in beside him.

"What kept you awake?" he asked, curling around her from behind.

"She gave me Roddy's room," she said, closing her eyes and threading her fingers between the ones that wrapped around her waist. "I think it was too much--the association...It just...filled my head with questions..."

His breath was warm against her neck. "About Emily?"

"Uh-huh..."

"I was thinking...while you were in there cleaning Sandy up..." His cheek rubbed her shoulder

"What?"

No answer. She turned back to him.

"Samantha'd gotten to be a...a pretty feisty little kid. I wonder if...whether she resisted at all, if she...gave them a hard time in any way...What...whatever she's been through...what that would make her like now..." His breath caught; she held hers, waiting. Finally it came out of him, a small rush of heat against her shoulder.

"I used to think..." She smoothed a hand over his. "...that if I knew her past--Emily's past--who she was, what she liked, what made her sad or happy--then that would be enough for me, that I could...live with that...live with that much, that it would be enough. But last night..."

She looked up, out the window into indigo sky. The leaves were faint black silhouettes against it.

"What?" He nudged her softly with his nose.

"Sandy was...She cried--she hurts so much, Mulder...And I stood there comforting her--holding her--and I could only think of what Emily might have become, who she might have been...when she might have come to me, needed me..."

"I need you..."

"I know."

Soft lips kissed her shoulder blade.

The corner of her mouth twitched. She swallowed back the pressure. "And then I realized...that...you're probably the only other person who would understand that--that need to know...and where I'd be, how I'd...cope, if I had to carry that alone..."

She turned and rolled to face him, let warm limbs surround her.

"Get some sleep, Scully..."

She kissed his chest and closed her eyes. A warm hand drifted across her back.

"I don't even know..."

His voice was quiet, faraway.

"...if I'd know her, Scully. Would I know her?"

Skinner read the e-mail for the third time, settled the cursor over the 'send' button, paused and got up from the couch. He went to the picture window and looked out into the abstract pattern of lights dotting the night. Mulder would know--he'd know where Krycek had gotten the addy. He might figure he'd had no choice, but still, if Krycek tried to track it...Could he track it? Someone in electronic surveillance would know, the Bureau's 'official' hackers, men who came to work in business suits and could walk the walk, but underneath they weren't that different than Mulder's three contacts.

Tomorrow.

But tomorrow could be too late. 'Urgent', Krycek had said, but when had Krycek ever played it straight with anybody? Still, there was the girl. She didn't seem like the type to lie, and yet...It could be something akin to Stockholm syndrome, where captives developed sympathy for their captors. Not that she was a physical captive; still, she was young and potentially very impressionable and she defended Krycek in a way that made no sense. Maybe she saw something in him, but what it might be was impossible to tell. She had a way, though--a way of seeing things, comprehending them. He could picture her again, the first time he'd seen her, broad straw hat, oak branches spreading overhead, him telling her things he could never have told Sharon. She'd seemed to understand, though there was no way to explain how she could.

He went to the kitchen, took a glass from an upper cabinet and added ice from the dispenser on the refrigerator door. He set it on the counter, took a bottle from the door below and poured the glass half full. Go with your gut, Lanier would have said. He'd gone with his gut when he took off after Bronco. Or had he? Had he done it from a sense of duty, or the need to prove himself, to show he wasn't as paralyzed with fear as he felt? Lanier had paid the price, though he didn't carry the burden. Hey, I'm still here, he'd say and shrug as if it hadn't changed his life.

But this was Mulder. More than that, it was both Mulder and Scully. The decision needed to be weighed, all angles considered. Two worthy lives, two valuable agents--and where had he gone for information? To a waif carrying a child, a vision from a dream he could neither explain nor deny.

He took a sip from the glass and set it on the counter. Did she know he was coming tonight? What had made her show up at the square? What had made him? Skinner took the glass again, put it to his lips and nearly choked. It was the kind of irony only Mulder could fully appreciate--that he'd come to a decision based on the advice of a pregnant psychic runaway who claimed to know him.

He swirled the glass gently.

There was no way of knowing what Krycek would do if he refused the request, but did that mean he was giving him the number just to save his own ass, or to prove something? Was it My Tho all over again?

He set the glass on the counter and felt the corner of his mouth draw up. He pictured the girl again, at the bus stop. She had looked different from the time he'd met her by the map store. The insecurity had been replaced by a certain sureness, a strength. She was better-dressed. There was the obvious explanation--that she was Krycek's lover, that the child she was carrying was his. But who--sympathetic or not--could say they had what they needed because of him? And why would Krycek saddle himself with baggage? It wasn't his style. There was more to it somehow.

Skinner sighed, reached for the glass, stopped and pushed it away. He walked back to the coffee table and leaned over the laptop's keyboard. The cursor hovered above the 'send' button.

He pressed 'enter' and watched his mail upload.

Krycek gripped the gritty ledge in front of him.

She was coming; he'd known her footsteps the second she came off the elevator. She was hurrying now, up the stairs.

"Alex..."

His heart pounded; he fought the sudden surge and turned around.

"Alex..."

"Yeah..." His best husky, unaffected voice.

She emerged from the stairs, flushed, coming toward him.

"I was..." She stopped to catch her breath and continued to the wall. "I was on the bus. I didn't want you to worry. I..." She hesitated, still breathing hard. He watched her fingers curl as if searching for something.

"Didn't know if..." If you'd come back. He looked down. If he were a magnet he would've felt like this. "If you..." She knew the drill already--do what's best for you, don't hang around and get yourself hurt if that's what it does. Don't blame yourself, it's not...

You.

Beyond pretenses. Just two people, arms hard around each other, not alone on the roof of an aging D.C. apartment building.

Will padded bleary-eyed toward the living room. Only one lamp was on; it cast a deep yellowy glow onto the carpet. Rita was sitting curled up on one end of the couch, a book in her hand, asleep. He stopped and let out a sigh.

He could feel the weakness in his legs already; he started toward the couch again. A tickle in his chest; he grabbed at the wall and leaned against it. It was like getting pulled under a wave, all noise and battering. Finally the coughing was past, his chest aching, legs weak, body covered with a thin sheen of cooling sweat. Rita was watching him with that mother-look, the one that said she'd been going through it with him so he wouldn't be there alone. Will raised an eyebrow and shook a finger at her weakly.

"You shouldn't do that, Mother J. Bad enough it's happening to me."

He sat down on the opposite end of the couch and let his head down onto the middle cushion. The tartan came down around him.

"Thanks. I...was just so damn tired of lying there in one place..."

"You just got to hang in there now, Will. It's going to get better. It'll take a few days, but you'll see."

"I know." He nodded against the cushion. "I keep telling myself that. Too bad time seems to move at a snail's pace."

"It'll pass, Will. In the end, when you look back at it, it won't seem like any time at all."

"Yeah, I've been..." He stared into the blackness beyond the window. "...looking back already. It seems...bearable...when you know the outcome--when you know you're going to make it through..." He paused and tried to moisten his mouth. "But in the process, when you don't know how it'll play out...I'm not sure I was ready to make that sacrifice, Mother J, you know what I'm saying? I...went scrambling up that ladder to the high dive and...I think I just fell off up there, or got pushed off. I'm not sure...

"Sometimes I think about Mama...what she would've thought..."

"If she would've been proud of you?"

"I guess. And I'm not sure...if I'd had to make the decision to jump...being up there and seeing it, looking down..."

"I imagine your mother knew, Will. She'd have known..."

"Known what?" He turned his head to look at her.

"That being heroic's a lot more complicated than it looks..."

"Alex..."

"Mmm..."

"If I..."

Quiet; only her breathing against his shoulder.

"If I knew something...about this...all of this...something that wouldn't make much difference if you knew it or not, but...something that might hurt somebody if...if he could pull it out of you, if he..."

His eyes opened. He turned to look at her.

"Don't tell me, Tracy. Don't ever tell me."

Her hair shone in the moonlight, silver and smooth. He made himself turn away and look over the wall, out onto the horizon. He could picture them coming, hundreds of ships hovering in the early dawn, already in place with the rising light, waiting.

"Tell me about it, Alex--the future, what you see..."

"Uh-uh." He shook his head. "Don't even look. Just...don't."

She shifted, head leaving his shoulder and then resettling, warm breath against his neck this time. He caught his shiver before it happened, pressed it down, pushed it away.

"You can take the car," he said. "If you need to go--home. If you're ready. Go when he's not here, so there's no way..." He took a breath. "If you want to. If you're ready..." His eyes closed. "If you need to take off from there, then go. Just leave the car somewhere and...Don't come back for my sake, don't...put yourself in danger for..."

"A life is what it holds, Alex, not how long it goes on..."

"Tracy, don't..."

He focused on the knot inside him and forced it to loosen. Her breath was warm and steady against his shirt. Neither of them was moving, going anywhere.

What he'd give for two arms.

Mulder rolled to find the bed beside him empty. He opened one eye and squinted at the rectangle of bright light above the desk. She was in the chair, face illumined by the laptop screen.

"You okay?" He pushed up on one elbow and pulled himself to the near side of the bed.

She nodded. "I just...woke up. I thought I'd check my mail."

He watched her, index finger hovering near the touch pad, mouth and chin firmly set. She was motionless a moment. The screen color changed. Her eyes closed, lips pulled in.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

She pressed the standby button and sat waiting for the screen to go black. A moment later the room was dark again. She remained in the chair.

"Anything I can do?" He pulled up and sat cross-legged.

The chair moved. She came and settled in front of him, took his arms and wrapped them around her. He pulled her closer and felt her fingers knit their way between his. She leaned back against him.

Outside the kitchen window a single upturned leaf held a pool of silver light. He watched it bob gently in the night air.