Spoilers, disclaimer and other information with first part.

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Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Something like that.

That was what it should've said over my apartment door, right above a biohazard warning, maybe some quarantine tape. Anything else besides that 42 that might've said, Turn your ass around and go home.

Home was Scully's apartment. I had surmised, at first, that for Scully, home could never be a messy, tastelessly furnished apartment where she'd almost died. Understandable. After a few days at her place, I realized I was wrong. Scully knew all the smells, the sounds of traffic as it passed below her window, the titles of the books that neatly lined her shelves, the names of all her neighbors. The bullet could've come through her window; it wouldn't have mattered. She was comfortable there.

I envied her that. I wasn't comfortable anywhere anymore.

But damned if I was going to let a couple of federal officers take an unguided tour through Scully's one safe haven. Those guys shattered things first and apologized later. Scully had glass things, ceramic things, crystal things. Pretty things. Every few days, I almost broke one of them.

I put my key in the lock, and walked right into ground zero.

It wasn't right that my first deep breath of relief would be taken here, the place I had been running from all along, where it had all started. Why was I running *to* it now? To get the files, I told myself. In truth, it was the only time I could let go of the pain, and not have to see her worried reaction to it.

Nighttime was the worst. The dreams came then, when I let myself go, let myself relax a little and fell asleep next to her. Two days ago, I had woke up. Scully said I woke up screaming. I don't know about that. I felt the screams, but I didn't hear myself making them. I just felt this shapeless dread left over from the dream itself. I couldn't even pinpoint what might've frightened me to that extreme. Whatever the phantasm had been, it was nothing in comparison to the look on Scully's face after she'd shaken me back to the real world at 2 a.m. It was a look that said, with resignation: Now I have to take care of both of us.

Since that minute, I had been a vault. The epitome of reserve and composure. A fucking locked box. Unless I was here.

And I hadn't been here for an entire week.

Chalk one up for Spender: he was right. Or someone had passed him their cheat sheet. Whatever the case, I would've filed a family photo album before I let those two folders stay at work. Morbid photo albums I'll admit, but mine, and in my possession.

He didn't have to put the case subjects down.

That was what got under my skin and stayed there. As if the numbers 40253 and 73317 weren't equivalent to being the Numbers of the Beast, in my mind. The Beast was always changing, but the numbers never did.

How *dare* he? I was profiling murderers back when that little fuck was flowering the walls at his high school prom. I was trapped inside the minds of sick, evil bastards, going weeks at a time without sleep and food to solve cases while he was in college, probably failing his ethics courses.

He was making a point. *Look what I can do.* It was a moot point. Those files could be something I collected in shoe boxes, and they would still be the crux of what kept me awake at nights. Whether or not they were closed or declassified within the FBI meant nothing to me. It was the fact that he was using them to yank my chain and it was working. It was the fact that, this time tomorrow, he could be having a good laugh at notes I'd made on each case. It was like he was seizing a personal journal of mine, and had official papers that said he could.

I sank down into the couch and told myself not to look at the stain.

Not that I listened. Not that the stain was still there. I had steamed it out, four or five times to make sure I got it. Not that it mattered. I could still see it. Like a Rorschach blot, it took on a slightly different shape every time I imagined it there.

It was in my nightmares.

In one, Scully fell into it, and it spread under like it had been waiting there, all these years, for her to fall. In the dream, it spread until it was longer and wider than her, and she fell right into it seconds before it closed around her and disappeared.

In the other one, it opened up like a portal straight to hell.

I had another dream, too, where I was standing inches away from Spender, black anger in my shoulders unwinding like a whip, fists so tight my fingers were indistinguishable from the rest of my hands, arms so drawn that my spine threatened to push its way out of my back. I let the punch fly, my entire body bracing behind it. My hardest right connected with his jaw and --

Nothing.

It didn't even change his smug expression, didn't even change his breathing.

I'd wake up with that hatred oozing thickly through my veins, hands sore from being clenched and my teeth aching from grinding.

(Still wonder why I don't sleep, Scully?)

I knew all about dreams. Tell me a scenario and, on the spot, I could provide ten different theories as according to ten different respected psychologists. I didn't need a one of them to tell me that I feared losing Scully, that maybe I had lost her that day. I didn't need to crack the old college textbooks to know that I feared losing myself through that portal.

I didn't need Sigmund fucking Freud to tell me what a punch without impact signified. I couldn't fight worth a damn, sure. It's not that I wasn't strong. It was my timing.

No matter how hard I hit him, no matter how many times, he wouldn't fall. Wouldn't blink an eye.

We'll see, I thought, smiling to myself. We'll see.

I got up from the couch, loosened my tie. I knew right where the files were. The shelves were a mess, but a familiar one. I pulled files out, and a sheaf of papers fell out of Scully's file. Einstein's Twin Paradox. I remembered trying to use those words to build a face and voice for the woman who wrote them. I had failed. I held a small fragment of that memory very close every time I turned around to find her behind me. I had wanted her to walk in hating me six years ago. But she had seemed *happy* to be there, if a bit mystified. Guileless smile, polite introduction, radiating intelligence. Seeing how pretty she was had almost made it too hard for me to be a jackass. Almost. Like most people who could fall into the textbook definition of dysfunctional like they'd been born there, I was confused when things went well. So I had struck out at her, accused her of being a spy, of being one of Them.

I took her thesis and set it aside. It didn't belong in there. Notes. Copies of her medical records from when she'd been returned. I slammed the file shut before I came to the picture of her in Duane Barry's trunk. I was pissed off enough already.

Samantha's file was painfully thin. I webbed my fingers over the picture of her, still shiny wet from getting out of the pool, braids matted on either side of her head. A sound rose up in my throat seconds before the phone rang.

I steeled myself. "Mulder."

"Mulder. McGrath."

"You got something?" I really didn't want to talk to him or anyone else right now.

"Spender was just in your office. Left an envelope on your desk. Walked right back out."

I pushed the two files out of my lap. "What kind of envelope?"

"White. Letter-sized. Not the big manila interoffice kind." He paused and I could hear people passing in the background. "You want me to go over there and get it?"

"Don't bother," I said wearily. "I'll get it in the morning. It's just more of his bureaucratic bullshit anyway. Has Scully left?"

"Yeah, it's...5:30...she left 25 minutes ago, with Jonson following."

"Thanks." I hung up. I couldn't stand hearing another voice besides my own right now.

That little shit, coming into our office and leaving his official paperwork on my desk. I guess he figured attempting to have my partner killed and taking these two files just wasn't enough.

The dream showed that my fist wouldn't knock him off his ass.

There were other ways to knock a man down.

I stood up, trying to let the tension drain out of my muscles.

(I'm gonna knock you down Spender, one way or another.)

The window still wasn't fixed. It had a piece of thick cellophane taped over it. One corner was loose, and the cold air was getting in as the breeze pushed the plastic out.

Shards of glass were still lodged in the frame, sharp knife points jutting out. I could hear it shatter, just looking at it.

A shadow fell across my desk beside mine, and I felt a touch on my arm. I turned to her so violently that she staggered backwards a step or two. The memory of her six years ago was rendered obsolete by her face: now a jaded smile, too tired to be polite, radiating a keen knowledge of pain. The sound had gone out. I only heard half of what she said.

" -- called your name, you didn't hear me." She said, softly defensive.

Hadn't heard her key in the door, hadn't heard her walk in, hadn't heard her say my name. Hell, I was getting worse.

I couldn't look her in the eye. I wouldn't. Part of that anger in me thought of pushing her down on the couch, drowning in her that way. I shook myself in disgust. Disgusted because I would even think about that. Disgusted because I knew she would let me.

"Mulder?"

I was pacing, back and forth. I caught myself, but couldn't stop. She wasn't supposed to be here. This wasn't the plan.

"Mulder -- "

"Where's Jonson?" I asked suddenly.

"He followed me here. He's outside." She was pissed. I turned away. "So you can't tell me where you're going, but you can tell him?"

"Not without him spilling it to you, obviously," I heard myself say.

"He didn't have to tell me." Her eyes followed me back and forth. "Next time, save me the trouble of coming to make sure."

Make sure? She seemed so far away. Make sure of what? I was getting more kinetic as she stood more still, as if I sapped her energy into myself.

"Mulder, what's wrong?"

I heard, and answered, but not out loud.

"Mulder?"

(Why are you here, Scully?)

Whatever it was, boiling up inside of me, she didn't feel it. Thank god. She knew it was there, though. She was looking at the files on the couch.

"I knew you had them," she said, without triumph.

I nodded. It wasn't like I'd ever kept that fact from her, just didn't want her staring at the picture of herself gagged in the trunk the way she froze in front of windows.

I thought maybe I said her name.

"We would be the same age, you know."

What in the hell was she -- ? Oh. Her and Samantha. "Yeah."

"Do you think we'd be friends?"

What in the *fuck* kind of question was that? I swallowed, the muscles in my arms spring loading themselves like rifle chambers. She wasn't supposed to be here, goddammit. "I try not to have wistful theories concerning scenarios that will never happen."

There must've been something in my face. It was in her voice now. "Mulder....you're scaring me."

I stopped pacing.

"Why did you come here?" Her voice was pleading with me.

(I came here to make myself insane enough to do what I'm going to do tomorrow.)

"To think," I answered. I gestured at the files.

(Liar. You've made up your mind.)

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know." I said each word like a separate sentence. "That's what I came here to figure out."

She looked up into my face, holding me still that way. All I saw was blue eyes. "I don't like what this place does to you, Mulder."

(Run, Scully. Oh god, run while you still can.)

"What are you saying?" When I edged away, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me down next to her. I pulled the files from under me.

"Good lord." She held my wrist, eyes wide. "Your pulse is *racing*, Mulder." Lacing her fingers in mine, she circled her thumb under my watchband and massaged at the veins there. After a minute, I let my fingers go slack in hers.

"You need to move out of here," she was saying. "You could pack these things up. I have that guest bedroom. I could take that bed apart and store it in the hallway closet. Your things would fit in there. You could store what didn't. It would make a nice office area, for both of us. Your desk, your books and things. I could move my computer desk in there."

"Sure," I said, and the word sounded so empty. "That would work out."

"Cheaper to just maintain one apartment anyway."

I nodded. But what about work? Could we even share an apartment? I laughed bitterly to myself. No, no, work would love that. Easier to kill two birds with one stone when the two birds happened to be living together. We weren't committing a cardinal Bureau sin, just doing the convenient thing. Patriots, that was us. I took my hand from her.

"Mulder." That pleading tone again. "Talk to me."

I shook my head.

"We could make exact copies of those files at Kinko's," she was saying now. "We could go to an office supply store and put them together. You could keep the originals."

(It's too late, Scully. You're too late. I've already decided what I'm going to do. I want things back the way they were.)

"Come home, Mulder. Leave your car here for now and come home."

"I'm going to stay here and pack up." I could even lie with a pounding headache. Without even trying. "Sooner the better, right?"

"Right." She seemed pleased at that. I wondered if my expression really showed nothing or if she just didn't want to see what was there. I felt like I was in college again, trying to act like I wasn't hung-over or stoned when I was. It was the same with trying to act sane when I was going mad: the more I tried to rein it in, the more it showed.

(Talk me out of it, Scully.)

I opened my mouth to speak, but pulled my jaw in tight. She got up and pulled me with her. My bones accompanied the move noisily. I felt every year of my 38. Until that very moment, I don't think it had occurred to me just how old I was. I snapped back to her now.

"I said `good night'," she told me, slightly annoyed.

"Oh." Dammit. "I'm sorry. Good night."

I could lose her their way indefinitely, or I could risk losing her my way, right? I was a good scout once, a school boy like X said. It hadn't worked. My only choice now was that I had *no* choice.

(Talk me out of it.)

She raised her face to mine, fingers curled around the back of my neck. A soft kiss on the corner of my mouth.

I crushed her to me, stopping the startled sound in her throat with my mouth. A hard kiss on her mouth, tasting the salt from my sunflower seeds on her lips now, tasting the sweetness left over from whatever she'd been drinking on my tongue. Then, closing my eyes tight to remember, softening the emphasis by pulling away. Like I was recording a last kiss so I could play it over again.

(Tell her.)

I wanted to.

There was so much going on in her face that I hoped she wasn't reflecting mine back at me. "Call me if you need me," she said. "Don't worry about waking me up."

I laughed shortly. "Have I ever?"

She smiled back, a smile disturbed just underneath.

(Stay.)

I hung there in the doorway, my back against the frame. She'd moved ten steps when she turned around. "Mulder?"

"Yeah?"

"You'll make the right choice," she told me softly.

The hand she couldn't see curled back into a fist. I just nodded, numb, and watched her walk down the hall until she was out of sight, wanting to volunteer to walk her to the elevator, to the car. But she would've just patted that damn Sig Sauer and walked herself.

I stayed there until I couldn't hear her footfalls anymore. I closed the door and squinted through the plastic until I saw her car pull out onto the road, with Jonson directly behind.

With her gone, in a quiet room, with my eyes closed, I could pretend I wasn't losing my mind.

But I knew better.

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PART ONE === PART TWO === PART THREE === PART FOUR

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