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Scully walked, all by herself, into the living room today. Charlie was closest. He had jumped up first, to grab her arm. She crankily shook him off. In fact, I'd go so far as to say she pushed him. It looked like a practiced move, like she'd done it before. He sheepishly caught himself right before he staggered over the back of the couch, remarking that his Navy training had really been too thorough to be rendered useless by a five-foot-two redhead half-doped on Morphine and wearing a camisole of bandages under her bathrobe.

"Just wait until I've fully recuperated," she said, mock-threateningly. "I'll save my bandages so *you* can use them."

"Awww," Charlie teased. "Beat up Bill instead."

Sounded good to me. I wondered sometimes though if there was a chromosome for big brothers with little sisters. If Samantha and I had been given the chance to grow up together, maybe *I'd* be a big asshole like Bill.

Nah.

I trailed Scully into the kitchen, wrapping my arms loosely around her.

"Mulder!" She woozily ducked out of the embrace. "I don't need to be helped!"

"I wasn't holding you *up*," I said. When she doesn't tell me to go away, I'm all over her again, offering food, trying to work the espresso machine, though I'm not exactly sure what's supposed to go into it. The Folger's up in the cabinet?

"Don't put that in there!" She grabbed the jar from me and put it back, steadying herself with the other hand. "You think I can't dump lettuce leaves in a bowl and pour Ranch dressing on it?"

"I'm just...I'm..." I stood back, hands to myself. "I'm just happy to see you up and around, that's all."

She softened at that, smiling. I had to strain to not reach out, not correct things, not question her movements. There in my living room, in front of that window, that I was holding her together, that I was keeping the blood and life in. The feeling hadn't left me. She was up walking around, sure, but she was just as pale as she'd been that first night.

"Put the pizza in," she instructed.

I did as I was told. "You must really be hungry. That's good."

She crunched her salad. "Actually, I wanted you to be busy somehow so you're not hovering over me, waiting for me to break."

I turned to her silently. God, what was I *suppose* to do?

"Oh, Mulder." She closed the distance between us and wrapped around me as if it were me with all the bandages, prone to start bleeding at any moment.

I had no idea of where to touch her, so I just put my hands on her head, bringing her forehead to my mouth. I can't think of anything to say, so I don't.

"I should be okay in three days," she said, letting go of me. "As long as I'm up walking, exerting myself, getting my energy levels up and just relying on the painkillers to help me get a good night's sleep, I shouldn't have any problem. I'm going to have to take it slow, but I can return to work if you don't mind not having someone to run around with for a few days."

I held her face in my hands. "Take it slow. For me?"

"I'll take all the time I need, Mulder." She covered my fingers with her own before stepping back. "What did Skinner want?"

"A puppy and a pogo stick." I smiled. "And his hair back, but I'm no miracle worker."

Eyebrows raised, she smirked at me. God, I never thought I'd be overjoyed to see that expression again. "I'm not too weak to kick your ass," she said, only half-playfully. "Answer the question."

It wasn't the easiest of questions, wasn't even one I'd thought to ask myself. "I guess he wanted to help. He gave me a list of eight addresses." I pulled the list out of my back pocket, where it had been folded and unfolded, taken out and put back several times.

She unfolded the paper. She wasn't surprised. "Mulder, you've named each address after a reindeer."

"I got bored while you were asleep. Besides, it's easier to say, `I'm going to kill Comet.'"

Handing it back, she asked me bluntly, "Are you?"

I shook my head, not saying no, but that I didn't know.

The look of disappointment on her face made me want to re-write the entire scenario in my mind, made me want to die right there. Wrong answer, it said. Which wrong answer? She walked past me out of the kitchen and sat down in the living room with her mom and Charlie. There was an easy familiarity between the three of them that I couldn't keep myself from coveting. Families were like that, I guessed. Even Bill, with the chip on his shoulder a mile wide, would've fallen more comfortably into these confines than I ever could.

When I'd taken Scully to see mom, for Thanksgiving, we were up there for an hour at the most. I thought maybe mom didn't like the fact that I brought Scully, didn't approve of the decision I'd made. I figured out later that she simply didn't care one way or the other. Her general befuddlement of life had given way to a bitterness that rivaled dad's. Maybe if I'd brought Samantha to dinner, I might've mattered to her, but not now.

As she told me she planned on spending Christmas alone, I just sat there thinking, She needs a drink in her hand. Her metamorphosis into dad would've been complete.

Right out of a Hallmark commercial, huh?

The scene in Scully's living room was. All they needed was a full-size tree and some mugs of hot cocoa, maybe Bing Crosby crooning in the background.

I didn't belong here.

Hell, I didn't belong in Scully's life.

I don't think anyone noticed when I walked out.

****

My apartment still smelled like blood. That was what I expected to smell. It didn't let me down. I walked around my living room a dozen times before I could bring myself to stare at the stain on the carpet. I looked out the window, at the window directly across. Bits of glass still crunched under my shoes.

Here I am, I called out silently, spreading my arms. Target practice. Come on. Blow me wide open. Deck the halls with me.

I knelt down by the stain. I guessed I could rent one of those steamer things, though I'm not sure how well things come out of shag carpeting. An area rug, maybe. New carpeting.

A brand new fucking apartment. I wondered what Arlington had available in windowless cinder block. Hey, a Christmas gift idea for Scully. Here's the keys to your cell, Mulder. Here's your full-body flak leotard from Danskin, Scully. Merry fucking Christmas. Every year, our private prisons upped the security. Every year, the bastards found a new way to get to us.

Right there, she'd stood, falling for days and days, blood matting her hair to her face as she laid in the growing pool of it.

Oh god. Wake up.

I was so startled by the hand on my shoulder that I nearly knocked her down. But I caught her, steadied her at the knees before she stumbled. For once.

>From far away, to the untrained eye, no one would ever guess she'd been shot, twice. Her steps were tentative, secretly shaky. She had no color in her face save for the small amount she'd applied with a make-up brush.

"You have no business out running around." I tried walking over to the couch with her. I found myself walking alone.

"Am I running, Mulder?" She stood over the blood stain, trying to autopsy the scene. Documenting the last steps of the dead woman she had been. I could swear she'd aged since the shooting. It couldn't be measured in years, but just in a part of her that I had known, a part that had been switched off. It came out with the bullets, maybe. She caught me looking at her. "I'm completely aware of what I can and can't do, Mulder."

"You think you are."

She didn't need a second opinion, especially mine. "Tell me what happened."

Questioning the witness, I thought, incredulous. Like on a case. "What?"

"Tell me how it happened."

At some point, my explanation of events turned into a dry sobbing. How could she sit there and watch that? I wouldn't look her in the eye.

"Mulder." She knelt down next to me, wincing as she kept her sides stiff, twisting her fingers into the stained carpet. I didn't think she realized she was doing it. "I hope you're not naive enough to think that killing those eight addresses, even if you had the -- the nerve to do it -- is going to solve anything." She put her hand on my face, guiding my eyes to hers. "For any one of these men you kill, Mulder, three more are waiting to assume their role, if not more. If one of their own killed them, we'd never hear about it. But you? A federal agent? They'd give each of those men a name, a life history, a family and grandkids, some hard-luck bullshit coming-to-America story, just so they could publicly crucify you."

With each words, the bloodstain seems to grow under my feet.

"Don't you see that, Mulder?"

"I killed Scott Ostelhoff."

"Multiply that feeling by eight and see what you get."

I flinched as she stood up. I raised my eyes to her gaze. "What *do* I get?"

"A foolish idea," she said. I could feel her holding her anger back. "You're no better than they are if you have these juvenile murder fantasies and start emptying rounds into men who are willing to die. If you're capable of doing that, you're not the man I thought you were. Don't believe for a minute that I'd think you were more of one if you had a list of eight dead men and blood on your hands."

The voices in my head, the ones I bargained with, show me her lying there again. Only this time -- this time...

I must've made a sound or something, because she pulled me away. I couldn't see the tears in her eyes for my own.

Damn. She deserved so much more than I could be.

"Mulder, you have to promise me that before you do *anything*, before you make a decision, you confide in me first. You have to give me a chance to talk you out of it or be there for you, either way." She grasped my arm tightly. I couldn't tell if she was leaning into me or if I was using her for an anchor. I just nodded.

"I'm serious, Mulder. Don't ditch me on this one."

I saw myself through her eyes for a split second. At this rate, I'd have to bind my new year's resolutions in book form.

"I promise," I said.

"I'll hold you to it," she replied.

I turned away so she couldn't see my face. My two sworn promises now seemed to cancel each other out. When I turned to find her in the room, she and the man standing in my doorway were staring at one another.

Like a reflex motion, I stood in front of her.

"We're going to see the Senator," said the man, matter-of-factly.

"Not the wizard?" I joked feebly. "Which senator?"

The man rubbed his hand over his bald head, amused. "Just how many senators come calling for you, mister?"

Not any, in awhile. It was like being three years younger then, but I was surprised at how much older I felt when the deja vu was over.

Eyes flitting to Scully, the man said, "You have to come alone."

I was ready to tell him and the Senator both where they could cram it when Scully said, in a tone closed to negotiation, "Go." She touched her side to show me where her holster stuck out. "Just walk me back to the car. I told Charlie to wait."

You know damn good and well I can walk myself, her eyes told me. I took her arm anyway.

****

"Nice," I said, standing at the window facing his expansive, painstakingly landscaped and tarped swimming pool. I gestured with my drink at the Ray- Banned man perched like a hawk in a deer stand beyond the tree line. "The sniper's a nice touch, too."

"You can see him?" Senator Matheson asked, eyes wide.

"Yeah," I answered. "But I was looking for him. That's probably why."

He absently stirred the top of his drink with his finger. "I'm sorry about what happened to Agent Scully."

I shrugged, but the words hit me. "I heard about your wife passing. My condolences."

He laughed; it was an empty sound. "It won me the election. I got the sympathy vote."

I didn't even try to disguise my revulsion.

And he didn't apologize. "She would've appreciated the irony." Draining his bourbon, he rose from his seat. "I'm still a politician, Fox. I was born with a platform."

"Must've been painful for your mother." I decided that enough introductory bullshit and catching up had passed. "I was told years ago that you could no longer help me. I haven't tried to contact you. So what's changed now?"

"Things change with time," he replied, solemnity giving the trite words a darkness that made me uncomfortable. "My wife is gone. My son is at Berkeley, denouncing my entire life as an exercise in fascism. I've gotten my last burst of competition out of my system. I've knighted my desired replacement in the event of my death. Now, I'm just waiting. It's grown tedious. I can't bear to put up the tree."

I frowned at his back, sinking into the armchair he'd just deserted. "Do you have gas appliances?"

"No," he said smiling. "But I have a car with an enthusiastic V-8 engine and a well-insulated garage. Oh, get that look off your face. If they want me gone, I have a house made of windows and a long walk to the mailbox."

I needed another drink. "So why the hired snipers?"

"It's the holidays, Fox. I'm not going to *fire* them." He pretended to balk. "They're all family men."

I tried, but couldn't imagine it. (Honey, how was your day at work? Soundlessly nailed an assassin from 100 yards away, sweetums. You?) It only made me think of the faceless trigger man who'd taken the shots at Scully. I couldn't though, not here. I had to think clearly. "So, how can you help me? Or do you solicit all your personal visits this way?"

"The list you've been given isn't the one you need, Fox."

"List?" I asked darkly.

"I gave Walter one of those addresses." He stood impassively at his fireplace, pensively studying the framed photographs over the mantlepiece. "I didn't have to ask who he was gathering those names for. I gave him what he wanted, but he hasn't given you what you need."

"I don't know what it is I need." I closed my eyes, sitting back in the chair. "I know why Skinner gave me the list. He knew I'd come asking for it. He wants me out of his hair. No pun intended. I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"I hope you're not entertaining some grand illusion where you rampage Washington like an avenging death angel, shooting those men execution-style." He handed me another drink. "Of course, as much as you might like the idea, you'd never go through with it. You're angry though, I worry. You don't usually have the heart."

So they kept telling me.

"What Skinner gave you," he continued. "Is useless. You wouldn't get within a quarter mile of one of those addresses alive. I want you to understand that."

"I *do* understand that." I leaned forward, eyes wide open now. "What I don't understand is, why now? We were sitting in my living room. We were looking at files for fraud cases, money laundering, extortion. We're not their headache, temporarily at least."

"Why is that?" I heard the slightest twinge of chagrin in his words. "They removed you from the X-Files. In fact, they primarily issued a restraining order."

"I have to remain 500 feet from all things paranormal."

"And you disregarded that. But then you decide to behave?"

I swallowed. "I learned what was at stake."

He chuckled then. "Only *you* could put falling in love in such vague, fatalistic terms."

"I'm that obvious?" I didn't wait for an answer. "That's why I stepped back. I thought stepping away was the only way to save her. So I quit hunting. I let my guard down. And she almost died because of it. I don't know why she stays. No matter what I do, one way or another, she steps into the path of my bullet, or they use her to make their point, to send their message to me."

"You can't blame yourse -- "

"Tell me another one," I said, feeling my rage rise, hearing my heartbeat in my ears. "She almost *died*. She did die. 89 seconds, until they got her breathing again. She reads her own chart, can you believe that? There's nothing I can do for her. I can't even promise her protection. I can guarantee her nothing. What in the hell good am I?"

"I don't think she chose you because you'd be a good bodyguard, Fox."

"I need to do *something*."

He took the chair opposite me. "Three years ago, if someone had given you that list of names, you'd load your weapon, hail a cab and give the driver the first address on that list. You would've either shot one of them or died trying. It's a lesson in futility. No offense, but someone's good sense has rubbed off on you. I can only assume it's hers."

I suppressed simultaneous urges to smile and hit him. "So why am I here? A reality check? Hers are better. More subtle, too."

"Fox, you know what your problem is?"

"Pick one," I said bleakly.

"When you're encountered with a problem, like this one, you immediately see the big picture. You get a case, and you try to fit it into the *rest* of the conspiracy. A body falls, and all you can think of is the Smoking Man. Someone fires two rounds at your partner and your first question is, `Who can I kill?'" His stare wouldn't let my eyes wander elsewhere, didn't give me the luxury of being distracted. "The devil's in the details, Fox."

"If you start describing my David Complex towards my personal Goliath, Senator, I'm going to be the one to spare you from the holidays."

He held his hands up in mock surprise. "You said it, not me."

"We stopped our work. They tried to kill her. And now we're up to our necks in the very things they wanted us to leave alone." I pressed my palms to my eyes. "I don't know who's more incompetent, them or us."

"Right now, it's you."

"Oh, stop it," I dead panned, lifting my face. "You're making me sentimental for Christmases with my father."

"I'm sure you know who Agent Jeffrey Spender is."

I groaned. "Tell me one of those addresses are his. I can rent the heart for it."

"Agent Spender is withholding forensic evidence."

I snorted, rolling my eyes. "This is your shocking information? Of course he is. That's why he's on the X-Files and we're not. What did he do? Scoop some goo into a jelly jar and conveniently forget to turn it in?"

"He's withholding evidence on the investigation into the attempt on Agent Scully's life."

For just a second, my heart stopped. "They attached Spender to *our* case? To the Violent Crimes Section?"

He shook his head.

"He's on his own?"

"Hmmm," Senator Matheson mumbled ominously. "I wouldn't say *that*."

My hands were white-knuckled on my knees. A million words were coming at once, and my tongue felt too thick to utter even one of them.

"You can't give up now," he warned. "You quest was what kept them at bay, even as it endangered you. Your good behavior placated them, but it also made them realize that there wasn't a good reason *not* to kill you if you weren't out there, looking for the truth. Find out what Spender's hiding, and you and Agent Scully are both back in the game. The louder you are, the higher your profile. The higher your profile, the harder you'll fall if they choose to kill you."

He was right. We'd been far too quiet.

I was standing at the door before I'd even realized I'd gotten up.

"One Goliath at a time," said Matheson, in lieu of good-bye.

Not Goliath, but Spender.

I wouldn't even need that big of a rock, and I had a mean pitching arm.

****

It was in the paper a week later.

Senator Richard Matheson was dead.

I'd blame the powers that be, but the garage door open shoved down the garbage disposal convinced me otherwise, along with the e-mail I received the next morning.

*Tired of waiting,* it said. *There's no time for sympathy or regrets. What has happened is unalterable. You can't fight them unless you run out of sorrow.*

Attached is a soundfile of Bach Brandenburg Concerto, number two.

And the _Washington Post_ article that Woodward and Bernstein had used to break the Watergate scandal.

"So," asked Scully, sitting across from me at the kitchen table, looking better now, getting her color back. "Am I Bob, or Carl?"

"The shorter one," I said.

For a recovering woman, she can kick fairly well.

It was Scully who went to Skinner, alone, and expressed concerns that bullets VCS had tagged as the ones removed from her body were now mysteriously missing. A couple who lived in the apartment complex across from me had expressed *their* concerns to local police about the men they'd seen in their hall just prior to the shooting. Spender's expense report showed a Bureau-paid one-way trip to Paris. It had been offered to the couple in exchange for their silence.

Tres deep shit.

Whoever fronted Spender his power just *had* to be smacking themselves in the head right now.

A sniper man was charged. Not in relation to anyone else, not detected as part of a greater conspiracy, of course. No one cared about the motive once the conviction had been made.

Not to anyone but us, anyway.

We hadn't won.

But we certainly hadn't lost.

It would've been nice to make Spender our Christmas pinata and swing a lead pipe into his paper-thin facade until he came open. The very whim brought a smile.

Instead, I gave two of Matheson's sniper-wielders a job. He left each of them a nice bonus, but some guys just really love their work. One of then, and ex- D.C. tactical squad officer, trailed us wherever we went.

("Wave hi to Mike, Scully.")

("You're not supposed to wave to them, Mulder. I think that means `Fire.'")

The other one, a military sharpshooter, shadowed Spender. Frohike, just for shits and giggles, liked to take pictures of Spender seeing his own personal sniper following him around. What a *face*. It would be a nice insert for the Christmas card I planned on sending him.

All I knew was, one drop of Scully's blood was worth every ounce of life in that scrawny asshole's body.

This probably made me a player.

With Scully on my team? Hell yeah.

Let the games begin.

End

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PART ONE === PART TWO

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