By Amanda Finch
[email protected]

Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part.

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Barrister's Bar and Billiards
8:45 PM

The nightmare had an opposite pole, a dry hiss of static and interference
that ran just underneath and obscured the frequency.

Scully came through, devastatingly clear from the blue of her eyes to the
hiss of the snake that sought her, but Samantha -

Or Madeline.

Or whatever her damned name was. Samantha didn't exist without Madeline. Not
anymore. No sooner did I envision her disappearing into a haze that could be
light or lies, I saw her turning. Firing. McGrath dropped from the frame, so
scared and unbelieving.

We'd stayed at the hospital until the dark had shown through the windows.
Lori's husband demanded to know what was happening. I was the FBI, so of
course, I would know. We waited for her to suddenly drop into the world as we
knew it, coherent and possessing of the answers. To think there was a chance
she'd been close enough to Scully to touch her, to see her alive... I felt
like I should be able to lift Scully's prints from her skin.

Was it possible that innocence could be processed, numbed away and
obliterated from the memory so easily?

I heard Scully's argument in my head. The memory wasn't someone's badly
secured computer hard drive. Files could not be deleted at will. "Mulder, the
only way to destroy memory is to mount a full-scale assault against the brain
itself. After that, you're not going to be left with a person capable of much
more than urinating on themselves." What about brainwashing? That was only
suggestion and conditioning. What about post-traumatic stress situations?
Disassociation and selective recall.

I held my drink at half-mast. The world was preserved in amber for seconds at
a time by the bourbon. I think it was bourbon. Scotch? The world swung into
color as I drained half of it. Scotch. It was a recreational drink, diluted
with cubes of ice. I didn't drink recreationally. Probably not the best
follow-up to nerve gas damage, but screw it. Drake stared at me through the
glass, destroying the image of a world that was malleable and still by
speaking.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I drained the remainder of the liquid as if considering my answer carefully.
"No."

(You're wrong, Scully. The memory is negotiable and indecisive. It sees what
it wants to see until what it wants changes. I saw my sister rising out of a
bed and disappearing until it became more tolerable, more *plausible*, to use
a word you love so much, to envision myself diving for a gun, throwing myself
in front of her like a fort. In the first image, I am paralyzed. In the
second, not quick enough. Never mind the possibility that neither is the
truth.)

Raising his arm, Drake summoned another round. The empty glass in my hand was
weighted once more. The alcohol was kicking in, dulling the pain. Creedence
Clearwater Revival buzzed and howled over the bar's sound system, loud enough
to vibrate the table under my palm. It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no
fortunate son. I sung it under my breath, trying to imagine the details of
each life as just an elemental breakdown of chemical composition, branches of
the composition pulled away. Mothers, fathers, brothers - gone. The
initiative to find them - gone.

Lori Maciver could've shot someone in the back, had she been armed and the
situation presented itself. But to admit that, I also had to admit, for all
intents and purposes, that my sister had fallen hard off this mortal coil.
Who she had been, what she was now... the two couldn't be confused.

I'd found what shone at the end of the tunnel vision like a searchlight. Six
years of being blinded and lead by that one light, never even suspecting that
it came from a fire.

"Agent Mulder," Drake said, as if it were maybe the fourth or fifth time he'd
said it. "That kind of look on your face... doesn't make me comfortable about
you having a weapon to go home with."

I didn't ask why. Didn't have to. "You wanna try to take it?"

He sighed. "This was a bad idea."

I couldn't even remember whose idea it was. No matter. Nor did I remember
saying goodbye to him as I found my way outside. The rain pooled at the edge
of the awning, falling in a sheet. I walked through it. Drake stood several
feet away, glint of metal in his hand remind me that my coat pocket felt
lighter. "Hope your gun isn't as easy to steal as your keys."

Bastard, I though undiplomatically, resenting being lead, resenting even
momentary uselessness. I followed him to his car.

x

Georgetown, W.V.
9:47 PM

It wasn't until Drake's tires had spun through the slush left by the rain
that it registered with me that I was standing in front of Scully's (ours, I
kept having to remind myself) apartment, key in the lock, knob turning. As if
I'd drunkenly requested he take me to the last place I wanted to go and he'd
promptly delivered me here.

(Serves you right for drinking.)

I nodded at no one in particular, and braced myself for the onslaught - the
questions, the accusations, the demand for some kind of progress. Like a room
full of angry Assistant Directors. I deserved this much, but having my little
finger snapped back again would've been more tantalizing.

And that would have been a hell of a lot better.

My inebriated mind first assumed that Charlie's kids had gone off their
Ritalin and destroyed the place. Until I opened the door a little more, that
seemed vaguely rational.

A wastebasket was upended across the doorway, its contents stretched out in a
line as if to bar the way. I absently kicked the can upright, toed at the
trash. My eyes followed the end of it to the empty bookshelf, and the
hundreds of books that had been disgorged from it. They were piled in stacks,
or had been. Most of the stacks had toppled over like a child's blocks. I
bent at the knees and retrieved the leather-bound book, gilt-edged. It was
one of Scully's medical encyclopedias, and part of her favorite set. In my
hands, I tried to right the snapped spine, tried to smooth the now-dogeared
corners and flatten the back cover. It had been cut with a knife, the leather
ripped away from the thick cardboard, cardboard harshly yanked back. It
wouldn't close in my hands unless I held it tight.

Little shards of glass crunched under my shoes. All her glass things, all her
ceramic things... I'd never paid any attention to them. I couldn't
reconstruct them from memory, or think of their proper place on her shelves
and tables. They were all beyond repair -- red pieces, blue pieces, clear
bits and white bits all swam in front of my eyes. Book still in my hands, I
sat on a couch that didn't have any cushions, feeling the springs dig in.
Drawers protruded from cabinets and tables, papers stuck out of files,
photographs spilled from scrapbooks like something obscene, something that
needed to be covered up.

I got up, tried to find a pattern in those papers that had yielded enough
worth to be among those spread out on her small dinette. No, too random to
have a motif, too vague to be a signaling threat. I turned to the kitchen.

The cabinets all stood open. Pots and pans and utensils gleamed dully among
the shattered plates and saucers. Unknown hands had reached in, simply
sweeping the closed spaces clean. In my memory, Mrs. Scully's coffee cup hit
the floor, shattering again, and all the other cups followed it. And then the
plates and the dishes made of some dark blue and iridescent etched glass,
left to Scully by a grandmother whose name I couldn't recall, only brought
out for special occasions.

Her garbage compactor had been gutted, turned wrong side out. Coffee grounds
and empty yogurt containers stained a saturated copy of The Post. I turned to
the broken teapot in the sink. Teapot? Who hid anything in a fucking teapot?

The mail was on the opposite counter, or what had been delivered in my
absence. It was where I always left it for Scully to inspect and file away.
It wasn't strange that it would be there, but that it was all opened. The
books, the mail, the folders and files, and anything else that might hold
something like a piece of folded paper.

I closed my eyes hard. No, this wasn't happening.

There were footfalls at the door, the rattle of keys. Whoever had them didn't
know which one to use. I drew my gun, and waited. No use in meeting them at
the door. No use in moving from behind the open counter.

The third key Bill Scully used was the charm. When he spoke, it was just my
name, voice deadened with ice for effect. "Mulder."

I was all too slow with returning my gun to the holster. He had his effects,
I had mine.

I watched his face carefully among the destruction. "You don't look
surprised."

He laughed, and the sound echoed in my head like sacrilege. "They evacuated
us when they showed up this afternoon to search it. Besides, I can't really
be surprised at the sheer volume of shit you cause."

Hadn't even seen the bedroom, I thought, imagining the books spilled across
the stripped mattress, their hands touching, imprinting and engraving what
had been our one shell, our one neutral space. From the pages flipping
through their fingers, bindings snapping in their hands, plunging into
drawers of our clothes.

"What were they looking for?"

I tuned him back in for half a moment. "What?"

He flung his hand in exasperation at the empty shelves, the cleared surfaces.
If I didn't look at the floor, it looked okay -- it looked like a person who
had no books, but lots of shelves, with a messy dinette. But my eyes rolled
down again. I thought of Scully bristling at her brother's command. Maggie
and Charlie had a certain complacency to their faces, a calm. Melissa had it
once, too. But Scully was her father's daughter. Thanksgiving. Bill Junior
had sat at the end of the table, had knighted who would say the prayer, who
would dispense with the drinks. I just remembered her creaking like barbed
wire at this acquired leadership. My own signals were probably as amiable.

Whatever he had asked me, I'd forgotten it now. But he was still staring at
me, as if he'd found what was wrong with the cryptic picture. "Did you find
her?"

(Sure, she's out in the car. She'll be right in. Stupid bastard.)

I wasn't sure I told him no or if I even had to say it. He took a step
closer. "So why are you here?"

"Because I'm still looking." I opened the book now, as if I would read to him
about... about Harvey William Cushing and his breakthroughs with...
intercranial tumors. It was as good a story as any, more useful than my sad
trudge through Sheehan, through Minot, then back again with Jonson. A box
with a bit of skin in it up in the Nebraska hills, a letter that bled more
extravagantly than the wounds apparent on her clothes.

He nodded almost imperceptibly. "In other words, you don't have a goddamned
clue what to do next."

Clearing a place for the book, I curled my fingers under the counter's edge,
my knuckles white. Here we go. When my words finally strung themselves
together, I spoke them like I was negotiating for hostages. Whether I was the
hostage or on the cusp of taking one was another matter. "If you think you
have to convince me to feel more like hell, you're wrong. If you want to hit
me, take a shot: no one'll be able to tell. You want to let it off your
chest, do it. I - don't - care."

It neutralized him somehow, as if by wanting me to give him a reason to hit
me, I'd taken away the urgency in him doing so. He stepped back, out of fist
range. "She trusts you with her life. That's what she keeps saying."

The modulation of his voice was like a fair warning alarm. I didn't respond.

"I'm starting to question her judgement on that one," he continued. "I'm sure
you'd understand why."

Yes, but damned if I'd give him the satisfaction.

"You see, you don't know Dana as well as you might think. You didn't see her
ten years ago in med school. It almost confuses me to hear from her now,
because she never, *never* would've put up with your sorry ass back then. She
was top of her class, and the other students tried to use her, tried to milk
her success and take a little of it. She was pretty, and those professors and
doctors tried to use her too. She knew users. She could spot them from a mile
away from the first words out of their mouths."

I shook my head at the medical encyclopedia, still holding it together. How
many of those Scotches had I had, anyway? "Nice act. Nice act you got going."

He stopped, froze dead. "What act is that?"

"Just wondering how many dates Dana's brought home for the holidays, for the
weekend, only to have you screen them like a father would, like they'd
brought her home past curfew with her shirt on backwards."

"No, oh no - " He stepped closer to the other side of the counter. "I'm going
to treat you like the bad date who didn't bring her home at all."

I moved out from behind the protection of the counter, stepping with purposed
through the broken pieces and the trash. (I'm going to hit him, Scully. I'm
going to pound his ass into the next - )

"Bill?"

I raised my head at Maggie Scully's voice as she stood at the door of the
office, pulling at the sash of her robe. The expression of chagrin that he
wore told me that he hadn't known she was there. It was the face of the
caught.

"I thought you got a hotel room," she said accusingly, not looking at me as
she stood her ground between us. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Mom, I - " His glare over her shoulder told me to leave the room. I answered
silently that it was my damn apartment. "I just wanted to - "

"Leave, Bill. Nothing good can come from this."

"Why aren't *you* getting a hotel room?" He asked angrily.

"Because I need to be here." Her concerned glance in my direction was a
magnetic push away, a negative repelling a negative. "Because I'm not trying
to pick a fight with anyone. Leave."

He gave me one last look before he turned to go, a shot of pure hate. He'd
always practiced stealth with the few conversations we shared, out of his
mother's earshot and sight. Now she had seen him being something besides
cordial, something besides the dutiful son.

The minute the door slammed behind him, I realized what this meant for me,
how badly she wanted to talk. She replaced the couch cushions, stopping
mid-way on the third one. "Wait. Do I need to leave this the way it is right
now?"

In better times, I would've laughed. Yes, leave the scene intact so the
police can investigate the FBI. I just shook my head, and she dropped it into
place. The scrapbooks came next. She scooped up photographs and newspaper
clippings without looking at them. "I thought they trained you how to search
so things like this wouldn't happen."

"They do." I put books haphazardly on the shelf, just to return the room to
some normalcy. "I don't think this was a search as much as it was a sign."

She wedged the scrapbook onto the end of the shelf, in lieu of the lost
bookends. "A sign? You mean a threat?"

I took more books from the floor, keeping my back to her. My voice was raw
and unguarded to my own ears. "Something like that."

"I remember when this happened five years ago. Melissa said she had to
practically drag you out of your apartment to get you to even sit with Dana,
to talk to her." Books were shelved absently in her hands, two by two.
"Sometimes I feel like I have to do the same to get you to sit down and talk
to me."

The books in my hands hit the rest of the pile with a hollow thump, a little
louder than I'd intended. "What am I supposed to talk about?"

She hugged a book to her stomach. "I know that the person you're use to...
listening to is not here right now, but what do you think she'd want you to
do?"

"Scully would - " Whatever harsh words I had planned were lost in the
immediate blinding rush to my head.

(what would she say what would she say what would she - ) Like a heated point
spearing through layers, the white light bleached all vision, disabled all
senses. Pulling away her voice, until playful became edgy became angry became
scared. Screaming scared. The scream was so scattered and frantic that I
almost didn't pull all the sounds together into a word. Just the one word.
Help, over and over -

"Fox?"

I snapped out. Falling out of the vision was more painful than beginning it.
I stood there, waiting to fall, hands out to catch myself.

But I was just standing there. I wasn't falling, wasn't crashing. Like the
dream on the plane, it had simply shot its way into the foreground. The pain
came with it, but stayed behind long after the image was gone, just like
before.

"Fox?"

Maggie Scully again. That worried look... could a look of concern be
hereditary? I squinted my eyes at her, blurring the room around the edges. "I
think she would tell me to go lie down, get some rest."

Those words sounded like her. I couldn't put them in her voice right now
though, not without seeing her face. And that wasn't a clear picture to me
anymore. The dreams had deadened her eyes.

Maggie Scully nodded. I forgot what she was approving, or answering. "You
should."

Right. Laying down. I felt like I no longer had a choice in the matter. Some
poorly transmitted version of my voice said goodnight.

"Fox?"

(I'm changing my name.)

My vision cleared. She looked stricken, premeditatively sorry for what she
was about to say. "I haven't had a dream in three days."

I couldn't move. I wanted to run.

"I was having them before then," she said. The tears were thick in her voice.
"That's when you said to worry, right?"

Words that had been said to calm her five years before came back to bite me
in the ass, like I should've known. I opened my mouth, willing the
consolation to come out.

"Don't apologize," she told me. I didn't find the insincerity or anger in the
words, but I was looking for it. She pulled her robe tight, pulled the sash
like a rip chord. "Try to get some sleep."

The bedroom was in ruins. I turned off the light before I walked in, trying
to ignore it. All effects of alcohol were obsolete. I wasn't assured of that
being a good thing. Even in the darkness, the streetlights spilled through
the slats in the blinds. I swept the slats away with my hands, but not before
I saw the destruction here. My nightmares were tied here, even if they had
spread beyond. Walking back in, I realized the nightmare was always in
progress. Everywhere.

(Profile the search. Like a murder.)

It *was* a murder. The murder of a sense of stability, of having an axis to
blame for the spinning. Like any other murder, I grouped it under
disorganized. Like any murderer, the Bureau had gone into overkill when they
hadn't found what they were looking for. The chronology was as apparent as
sifting through the layers of broken pieces in the kitchen. The mail had come
first. It was the most obvious place. Then came the books, the files. The
books had been shaken out, twisted, and cast to the floor to be stepped on
and crushed as the hunt escalated into nothing more than a beatdown.

I picked up the phone next to the bed and dialed Skinner's number.

"Hello?"

It wasn't Skinner's voice. My mind fought to place it. "Who is this?"

The breath on the other end of the line bristled at the question. "You called
here. Who are you?"

A. D. Kersh. Had I gotten the numbers mixed up? No, of course not. I'd never
had Kersh's phone number on any kind of mental Rolodex. "What are you doing
there?"

"Why are *you* calling Assistant Director Skinner?" He paused, as if he
expecting me to answer. "You're right, you don't have to answer that right
now. You do have to answer it tomorrow however, at an OPR meeting set for ten
a.m. Can I expect you there?"

I said nothing.

"Because if transportation is a problem, Agent Mulder, I'm sure I could
arrange something."

"Where is Skinner?"

"He'll be there, too, Agent. I am looking forward to hearing about your
supposed investigation. Ten a.m. Fifth floor, east conference room C. I dare
say you remember where it is."

Sleep didn't come.

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