Title: Subcutaneous
Author: Maria Nicole
E-mail: marianicole29@yahoo.com 
Distribution: Anywhere that this goes to automatically is
fine. Anyone else, I'd appreciate if you let me know where it's
going. Thanks :)
Spoilers: Season six up through Field Trip. This *really* won't make 
sense if you haven't seen One Father/Two Sons, Fight the Future, 
Patient X/The Red and the Black, SR 819, Memento Mori, Redux I and II,
or Zero Sum. 
Rating: PG-13
Classification: XA
Keywords: Skinner/Mulder/Scully friendship, Mulder/Scully UST
Summary: Lies, threats, drugs, implants, warehouses,
nanotechnology, and spackling: just a usual day in the mytharc
neighborhood. 

Author's Notes: Sometime in March, I started to think of some
of the issues that I wanted CC and 1013 to explore in the season six
finale/season seven premiere. Eventually, I started to write out a 
series of scenes and piece them together. When I was about 70K into 
it, I saw Biogenesis...and found that my version was completely off. 
I decided to finish it anyway, my own personal alternate version of 
the end of season six. There are, unfortunately, no spinning, flying, 
Bible-bisecting, telepathy-inducing, artifacts in here. 

On the other hand, this is one hundred percent Fowley-free.

Disclaimer: They aren't mine; they belong to Fox and 1013. 

Thanks to Lisa O., who put up with getting random, out-of-sequence 
parts of this in her e-mail.


Subcutaneous
Maria Nicole

Part I--April 18-25--Skinner
April 18

"Blood from *what*?" Skinner said into the phone, trying
to restrain his impatience, his concern.

"She had a nosebleed."

***

He drove to Mulder's apartment quickly, changing lanes
and passing cars often, only to be stalled by red lights.
At the lights, his brain would stall too, and focus in
on the traffic. But when he accelerated, his thoughts would
switch from the traffic to the speech he was rehearsing
in his mind.

<Mulder, I was at the office when Mrs. Scully called. She
said she'd tried to reach you but you weren't answering
your cell or your home phone, and Scully had her
call me instead to see if you were in the bureau
somewhere.>

But that was wrong, because Mulder would have stopped
him when he first said Mrs. Scully's name.

<Mulder, this case you and Scully were last working on,
this woman you claim could put people on sensory overload...
would she have any reason to bear a grudge against you
or Scully? Could this woman want to hurt either of you?>

Mulder would be puzzled, maybe a little suspicious. <Why
are you asking? Did she make threats or something?>

<I'm asking because Mrs. Scully called me this morning
at the office. She was trying to get in touch with you.
This woman, could she have...>

But he never would have gotten past Mrs. Scully's name.

<Mulder, Mrs. Scully called me this morning, looking
for you. No, hear me out. Hear me out! She said that 
she found Dana, Scully, in her apartment this morning, 
in a lot of pain from a headache, and she had...>

<I went to pick her up for Sunday Mass and she wasn't
answering the door, so I let myself in. Mr. Skinner, she 
was curled in a ball on her bathroom floor, she couldn't 
stop shaking and there was blood all over the place. She 
was in so much pain, she couldn't even move she was in so 
much pain and there was so much blood>

"Blood from *what?*" he had said into the phone.

<Mulder, Mrs. Scully called me when she couldn't reach
you. We have to go to the hospital.>

<Why do we have to go to the hospital?> Mulder would
say. <What's wrong with Scully?>

"She had a nosebleed."

***

He picked the lock at Mulder's apartment when there was 
no answer, and quickly toured his apartment, praying
silently to any power who would listen.

Please, please, please let Mulder be in the same condition
as Scully. Let this be some woman with a grudge and a 
paranormal gift, one woman who can be stopped.

But Mulder wasn't there. The red light on his answering
machine was blinking, several times. Skinner paced 
restlessly around the living room, noting the cell phone
lying on the coffee table.

He didn't see Mulder's gun, though; at least the other man
was smart enough to always carry that.

Twenty minutes later, he was still pacing when he heard
the footsteps, and the key turn in the lock. The door swung 
open, and Mulder entered, balancing a laundry basket, a 
bottle of Cheer, and two plastic bags in his arms.

"Mulder," he began, and the other man gave a start of 
surprise, losing his grip on everything. The bottle of Cheer 
thudded and bounced slightly, and something in one of 
the bags clinked together. Neatly folded t-shirts and 
sweatpants and bed sheets came tumbling out as the laundry 
basket fell to the floor. Mulder reached back for his gun, 
processed that it was Skinner, stopped, and did a double 
take.

"It's just me," Skinner finished, and the phone rang.

Mulder looked at him, at the clothes on the floor, over
at the ringing phone. "Dammit," he said mildly, giving 
the bottom of the laundry basket a small kick. "I knew I was 
gonna drop something at some point; I just didn't think 
it was going to be because my boss broke into my 
apartment. What the hell?" 

"You've been doing laundry?" said Skinner, irrationally
furious. How could Mulder not have known, not have 
sensed, that something was wrong with Scully? Behind him, 
the phone rang again, and he heard the machine click to 
pick it up.

"I like for my clothes to have that Downy fresh feeling."
Mulder looked over at the machine, and they both paused
to listen to his voice saying that he wasn't home and to
leave a message.

"Mulder, where the hell are you? Call us back now. We need
to talk to you." Skinner thought he recognized the voice
as being that of one of the men he'd met when Mulder had
been in the hospital. The short one.

"Weird," said Mulder, as the machine clicked off. "They
usually tell me to erase their messages immediately. Is
everything okay, sir?" Concern came into his eyes, and
Skinner prepared for the barrage of questions about 
Scully, but he had misread Mulder. "The infection...the
nanotechnology...are you feeling okay?"

"It's not me," he said. "Mulder, Mrs. Scully called me
this morning." He waited, for the interruption, but 
Mulder surprised him again by saying nothing, only 
drawing in a breath and turning pale. "Scully's at the
hospital. She was in a lot of pain--a headache." He
rushed into one explanation, the one he wanted to
believe himself, to forestall what he saw growing in 
Mulder's face. "This woman you just investigated, could 
she have done something like this?"

Mulder nodded, slowly. "She could, I guess. I don't know
why she would though. To me, maybe, but I thought she
liked Scully." He shook his head a little, as if 
confused. "You think that's what's happening? She got 
pissed off at us for some reason and did something to 
make Scully feel pain? But she'll be okay now, if it
was Elizabeth Wendell. She could only inflict a physical
feeling for a pretty limited time."

He was looking at Skinner, bewildered, half-pleading, and
Skinner told him the rest. "It wasn't just a headache,
Mulder. She had a nosebleed."

***

He caught up with Mulder in the hallway, grabbing hold
of his shoulder. "Hold on. Hold on. It doesn't have to
be the cancer."

Mulder looked past him, through him, which didn't
surprise Skinner: he understood that he had ceased to 
exist as soon as he had used the word nosebleed. Mulder 
had spun around and left the room without even asking 
what hospital Scully was at.

"What else could it be? Let go of me."

"You're not going to do her or yourself any good if you
walk in there in a panic. You don't even know where you're
going."

"Are you gonna tell me or just stand in my way?"

"St. Joseph's. But Mulder, at least let me drive you, 
you shouldn't be driving a car. Come on, let's get
whatever you need from your apartment and then I'll
drive you over."

"It shouldn't be the cancer," said Mulder, giving in
abruptly and letting Skinner walk him back to his 
apartment. He walked over his spilled clothes, moving
to the center of his apartment and scanning. "She just
had a check up a month ago. She was fine."

"So, maybe it's this Wendell woman."

"Maybe." Mulder grabbed his cell phone and patted down
his pockets, presumably checking for keys. "Let's go."

***

They flashed their badges to get past the emergency room
personnel, who pointed them to a drawn curtain in the
back of the emergency room. Scully was propped up in a bed
behind it, face very pale and arm hooked up to an IV. Her 
mother had been sitting on the bed, but she stood when
they entered.

"Mrs. Scully," Mulder said, and moved past her to stand
by the bed. His voice when he spoke to Scully was soft and
gentle. "There are easier ways of getting out of going to
church, Scully. If your priest's homilies are that boring..."

Her hand reached up to grasp his briefly. "It wasn't the
homily, Mulder. I have a pretty high tolerance for men who
drone on and on, you know." Her tone was equally tender, but
it sharpened as she looked past Mulder to Skinner. "Hello,
sir. I'm sorry to have disturbed you today."

Skinner shook his head. "It wasn't a disturbance. How are
you feeling?"

"My head's better. The pain's died down. They took some 
X-Rays. We should know in a little while what...if..."

"It could be Elizabeth Wendell," Mulder said.

"It could be. Although I'm not sure that the evidence
points to her having that ability. And even if we assume
for the sake of argument that she *can* trigger sensory
feelings, I don't know why she would."

"Maybe she was upset that you doubted her ability."

"Maybe. Even if it's not her, that doesn't mean that it's...
I never had a headache like that before I went into
remission. The nosebleed could be something entirely
different."

"Like what, Dana?" asked Mrs. Scully, standing with her
arms tightly wrapped around herself. For the first time,
Skinner noticed that she was wearing hospital issue scrubs
instead of her own shirt. He could only guess that she
had gotten Scully's blood on her.

Scully shook her head wearily and closed her eyes. "I don't
know, Mom, let's wait and see."

"I thought this chip in the back of your neck was supposed
to keep you safe."

"It has, Mom. I don't know what happened this morning. We'll
have to wait and see." That, more than anything, told Skinner
how tired she was; the Scully he knew would be able to whip
off several possible interpretations for any medical event.

"You said they took X-Rays? When is the doctor coming back?"
he asked.

"I'm not sure. They took them pretty recently. By the time
we got to the hospital, the bleeding had pretty much stopped
and the headache had died down, and there were victims from
a car accident coming in...it took them a while to get to 
me."

When a cell phone trilled, Skinner automatically reached for
his. "Mine," said Mulder, and answered it. "Mulder." His
forehead wrinkled. "What the hell is your problem? I was 
doing laundry. Listen, Frohike, I don't have time for this
now, Scully's..." Abruptly, he stopped, and his face went
grey. "What?" He looked around at them and then abruptly
turned his back, moving towards the end of the curtained
area. "What are you talking about?...Mmm hmm...Mmm hmm...Yeah,
I know that...Well, did they try...what's the progression....
how many women are we talking about?" They watched as he 
reached his hand out and clutched at the curtain, knuckles
white. Skinner could see the muscles in his arm, his shoulder,
contract. "What's the progression of it? How much time do we have?"
There was a very long pause, during which all of them kept
very still. Whatever answer Mulder was getting ran through him
like a shock wave. "Yes, I understand. We're at St. Joseph's.
I think you'd better get your butts over here." He clicked off
the phone, but didn't turn to face them, only held on to the 
pale blue curtain.

"It's not Elizabeth Wendell, is it?" asked Scully from the 
bed.

"No, no, it's not," said Mulder, subdued, turning around. 
"Mrs. Scully, maybe you should sit down."

"What? What's going on?"

"Mom, come and sit down." Scully shifted a little in
the bed, patting the place next to her. Mrs. Scully 
sat down next to her, and reached out for her 
daughter's hand. Mulder sat down at the foot of the
bed, facing them. He placed his hand on the lump of
Scully's feet, under the blue blanket.

"That was Frohike. He's...a friend of mine, Mrs. Scully."

"Of ours," said Scully.

"Of ours. He and some of my other friends are in touch with
a lot of the MUFON women. MUFON, that's the--"

"Mutual UFO network. I know. Dana's told me some of this."

Mulder nodded. "Then you probably know, after we put the
chip back into Scully's neck, we informed a lot of the
other women, purported abductees, what we'd done. We told
them that if they still had the implant, that putting it
back in might help them if they were diagnosed with 
cancer." Mulder gestured to the back of his own neck. "It
seemed to work, for a lot of them. Some took the implants
back out, after the incidents on Skyland Mountain and the bridge, 
but many left them in, or had never taken them out in
the first place."

"Why wouldn't they do that?" asked Skinner. "You're not
telling me some of them knew that taking it out would
harm them?"

"No, actually, some of them wanted it there," Mulder
said, turning around to look at him. Skinner shook his
head in puzzlement, as a question. "You've seen Cassandra 
Spender, sir," said Mulder, his eyes very dark. "After 
what's happened to them...not all of these women are 
what we'd call sane."

"Some of them seem to have seen the alien interference in
their lives as a positive force," said Scully. Her face
was chalk white under the harsh light of the hospital.
"Psychologically speaking, it's possible that many of
them feel the need to give some meaning to the trauma that
they've endured by seeing themselves as servants to 
great god-like beings."

"What does this have to do with Dana?" Mrs. Scully's
face had the same pallor as her daughter's, and Mulder
turned back to face her and Scully.

"Frohike and Langly and Byers have been keeping tabs
on them, sort of sporadically. They went to a convention
today and a lot of the women who would be there weren't.
So they started checking into the others. Scully, a lot 
of them are..."

"Just tell me."

"Over the past month or two, a number of these women have
had severe headaches, as well as nosebleeds."

"The cancer goes out of remission."

"Yes. But it's...it's different somehow. It's...um, 
very aggressive. This started about two month ago, the
earliest cases, and..."

"How much time?"

"It varies a little, but...the average time from when
the headaches and nosebleeds start is...two weeks."

Mrs. Scully gasped. Scully blinked. 

"Has anyone tried to take the chip out?" Skinner asked
desperately, feeling his stomach plummet. 

"That doesn't seem to make a difference, although it's
possible that no one took it out soon enough. Whatever signals
the chip is sending to trigger the cancer seem to be irreversible
even after the chip is taken out. Or maybe it stopped sending some
sort of signal that it was supposed to be sending. We've never 
really understood the mechanism."

"What's the progression of the cancer, Mulder?" Scully asked.

Skinner had to admire Mulder; he gave it to her straight
and honestly, even though his voice cracked on words. 
"Intermittent headaches and nosebleeds. As the tumor grows, it 
presses into the optic nerve and starts to interfere with visual 
function. Then, um, motor function, and then...mental function."

Scully closed her eyes and Skinner could see her chest rise
and fall quickly. Her eyes opened and focused on Mulder.
"Pain, blindness, loss of movement, and delusions. When does
the visual impairment start?" 

"After about ten days. It's...um, after that, it's
pretty fast," said Mulder, and Mrs. Scully let loose a breath
that sounded like a sob. Scully patted her hand absently and
kept her eyes focused on Mulder.

"I'll try taking the chip out immediately. And--you have your
cell phone--good, I'll call my oncologist. And the Lone Gunmen 
are coming over? I'll want to see the autopsy reports on the 
victims. If we can get hold of any of the implants, maybe we
can see..." and then her voice faltered and broke, and her
eyes closed again. "*Mulder*," she whispered.

He jogged her foot, until she opened her eyes and looked
at him again. "This cancer was *given* to you, Scully. That 
implant was found in a government facility. Someone has the 
information on how it was designed, how it was triggered, 
and that person has the information on how it can be cured."

"We don't know who that person was. It might have been one
of the ones who died in that airport hangar."

"Even so, some traces must have been left, somewhere. And 
we'll find them."

He was only touching her foot, but the way their eyes clung
together made Skinner and Mrs. Scully extraneous. Scully 
nodded, very slowly. "Then let's get to work."

End 1 of 8

Subcutaneous, 2 of 8
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1

"So this Scanlon just disappeared?" said Skinner. "Let's
put out a description of him to all the hospitals and
police stations we can reach. If he knew how to make
the cancer worse, he may know how to make it better. I'll
take care of that."

Byers nodded approvingly. "Mulder and Scully had the 
people in Allentown work with a sketch artist. If their
copies were burned in the office, we still have one."

"Let's get it out as soon as possible," said Skinner. "He
might still be working in some capacity as a doctor 
somewhere."

To anyone walking down the hospital corridor, the group
in the lounge near room 319 would have seemed
like any other group of concerned family members. Most
concerned family members, however, had not brought
at least three different laptop computers with them.

Scully was in a private room in the oncology ward, having 
spent most of the day talking with her doctor. The floor's 
lounge, fortuitously, was across from her room. Skinner could 
glance up, every so often, and see her in bed, diligently
reading through a stack of faxed information about the 
other women. Her mother was sitting in one of the
chairs near her bedside. Mulder was in the other, peering
through his glasses at the screen of his own laptop.

In the lounge, Skinner worked with the odd collection of
men whom he had met twice before, when Mulder had been in
the hospital. They had been wary of him when Mulder had
been shot and Scully had disappeared post bee-sting; they had 
been a little warmer in the hospital after Mulder's near-
drowning in Bermuda. This time, they had actually told him their
names, and he was at least reasonably certain that they were 
telling the truth.

"We think that the Cigarette Man walked away from the
hangar. He's disappeared since, but we've been trying to
track what organizations he and Diana Fowley were involved
in. What companies they payrolled. Roush has dried up,
but there might be others," said Frohike. "And we might
be able to work with what we know of him to figure out
where he might be now."

"You're the one who came up with his history, O Great One,"
said Langly. "Such as it was."

"Shut up, you freak. It's better than *your* latest theory on 
the Kennedy Assassination. Extraterrestrial Biological Entities,
my ass. And Johnson's wife was not..."

"You're saying LBJ didn't seem like a droid put into power
by greater forces? And who would be standing by his side,
with access to him at all times? And don't tell me that
any *human* would choose to name their child Ladybird."

"I never thought any human would name their child Ringo."

"You got a problem with my name, *Mel*vin?"

"They're always like that. Pay no attention," said Mulder
quietly from beside him, and Skinner pulled his attention
away from them. The door to Scully's room was closed.

"She go to sleep?"

"Yeah, the nurse shooed us out. They're starting to send
nasty looks this way, too."

"We'd better get going. I'm going to send something to the hospitals
about Scanlon. Is there anything else I can do at the Bureau?"

Mulder shook his head. "Scully and I discussed that. We'd like to 
keep this quiet for now. We don't want news of where our 
investigation is going circulating just yet. They'll just clean up 
their tracks."

Skinner nodded grimly. "I'll come by tomorrow after work."

"She took the implant out," said Mulder.

"Maybe that will make a difference."

"Maybe. Maybe it's what triggered the cancer."

Skinner looked at the other man sharply, assessing the expression of
guilt and fear on his face. "If nothing else, putting the chip 
in gave her a year longer than she would have had."

Mulder scowled. "Maybe there was another way then. Instead of putting
something under her skin that did God knows what, that could be doing
anything to her. I should never have trusted that smoking bastard."

"It was the only way then."

"Well, we'd better find another way, now."

***
April 19

"None of this makes sense," said Mulder, taking off his glasses to
rub his eyes and speaking directly to them for the first time
in an hour.

"It's not surprising that a lot of leads haven't panned out," 
Skinner told him. "You know as well as I do that that happens in
any investigation. You only found out about this yesterday."

Mulder replaced his glasses and looked at Skinner oddly. "You leave
your pompons at home today?"

Skinner raised his eyebrows. 

"You sound like you're a cheerleader giving a pep talk. Not that I
can imagine you in a little skirt--"

Scully, who had not looked up from her own work during this exchange, 
whacked Mulder on the top of the head. "Behave," she said absently.

The three of them were sitting in Scully's room. He had come from
work to find that Mrs. Scully had left shortly before he had
arrived and that the Lone Gunmen were gone, making a visit to another 
of the women whose cancer had gone out of remission. They had settled 
into a companionable silence as they had pored over reports, broken 
every so often by the sounds of one of them tracking down a lead on a 
cell phone.

Leads were few and far between, and had led to nothing so far.
It was the predictable end to what had been a frustrating day at
work. Skinner had been jumpy, half-expecting the cigarette man
to walk in at any moment to taunt them.

"No, seriously," said Mulder, standing up suddenly as if energized,
or as if he wanted to be out of range of Scully's hand. "This doesn't
make sense. Not that any of our leads vanish before our eyes--
that's business as usual--but we haven't asked why this happened
at all. Why now? It doesn't make sense."

Scully did look up, finally. "What doesn't make sense about it,
Mulder? These women were given cancer before, and now they're being 
given it again. All along, they've--we've--been lab rats for some 
purpose, either of the government, or of..well. Why would this 
surprise you?"

"It made sense *before.* Taking out the implants somehow triggered
the cancer. Because the women who took out the implants had 
evidence; they had proof in their hands. The truth that was in them,
in their bodies, suddenly became accessible to them. Killing them off 
made sense. But this is the opposite, Scully. The women going out of
remission are taking out the implants. And that means that that
evidence is accessible again."

"Evidence of nothing. They're destroyed when we look at them."

"Still a pretty big risk to take, that we won't find out something
from them. All to give cancer to these women? Why would they want 
that?"

"So what are you saying, that the chips somehow malfunctioned? They
were supposed to keep working but didn't? That this isn't intentional
on the part of the remnants of the Consortium at all?"

"Maybe they didn't spring for the extended warranty."

Scully nodded cautiously. "Or maybe someone who died in that 
hangar--maybe he was responsible for whatever messages were
being sent through the implant. In his absence, things might
have gone wrong."

"Or someone else gained control over the implants," said Skinner.

"What?" asked Mulder.

"The Rebels," said Scully. "That's what he means."

"Yeah," breathed Mulder in comprehension. "They tried to kill 
the abductees before, to keep the Colonists from experimenting
on them. Maybe they found another way. Maybe someone who was
in the Consortium--Krycek or someone--sold the information to
the Resistance. Maybe..."

"Of course, that assumes that there even is such a thing as
an alien resistance, which assumes that there is such a thing
as aliens, which we never have actually...oh...oh, damn." Her 
hand went up to her nose. "Mulder, get me a kleenex, okay?"

She had stopped work twice while Skinner was there, once for
a nosebleed and once for a headache that had twisted her
face into a mask of pain. They had her on mild pain killers, which
didn't seem to work for those headaches. Mulder had held a wet
washcloth to her forehead, speaking to her in a low voice, and
Skinner, feeling like a voyeur, had fled the room to drink some
coffee. 

"Another nosebleed, Miss Scully?" chirped a nurse from the 
doorway. "I'm afraid you gentlemen are going to have to leave. It's
8:00 already, and Dana needs her rest, doesn't she?"

Scully glared at the nurse over the tissue she was holding, but
there was no denying the dark circles under her eyes. Skinner
said goodbye and fled again.

***
April 20

On the third day (he had found himself numbering the days, counting out
the span of her life), he went to the hospital again after work. 
Mulder and the Lone Gunmen had taken over the waiting room today, all 
of them busily tapping away at laptops or reading computer printouts. 
Mulder waved at him distractedly when he walked in, and the others 
looked up and followed suit, Frohike blinking like an owl behind his 
glasses. There were two pizza boxes and what looked like several cartons 
of half-eaten Chinese food littered around the room, and Langly was 
surrounded by at least eight different cans of Mountain Dew. Skinner's 
stomach turned as he looked at the debris. Mrs. Scully was sitting on 
a couch, staring blankly at the pattern on the wallpaper. She 
was holding a section of yarn in her hands, but her fingers 
had stilled on the knitting needles. He went over to sit by her.

"Mrs. Scully? How are you doing?"

She pulled herself out of her distraction. "Oh. Mr. Skinner.
How was your day?"

"Fine, thank you. How are you doing?"

"Oh, fine. Dana was tired, today."

"Is there a doctor in there with her now?" Skinner asked,
eyeing the closed door.

"No, she's talking with Bill. She's been...she's in there
talking with Bill, now. Her brother. He got a flight to
come in today. Have you met him?"

"When she went into remission the first time," Skinner said.

He remembered Bill. After he had talked to Scully in her
hospital room, Bill had walked him out. "You're her boss?" he had 
asked. 

"Hers and Mulder's," Skinner had answered. 

"You're her boss and you're visiting in the middle of the night?" 
Bill had asked, incredulously. "What is my sister to you?" Skinner 
hadn't been able to answer the question.

"Her other brother is coming in later this week. Have you eaten 
dinner yet? I know they ordered some food. There might still
be some left."

"No, I stopped for something to eat on the way here. Have you
eaten yet?"

"Yes, earlier." She gave him a quick smile. "They keep 
ordering food, and Byers keeps trying to make me eat more. 
He's quite a mother hen, really."

"Do you know if they've found anything?"

"Not as far as I know. They've been trying to track down
where this C.G.B Spender might be, I think, but he's 
vanished without a trace."

"Scully--Dana--has she been able to figure out any sort
of treatment from looking at the medical records of the other
women? Any sort of reason or method to this cancer?"

"She and her doctor spent part of today discussing a 
treatment, I think, but her doctor's reluctant to try it,
and I think Dana is also. I...you'd have to check with
her on the details. I don't know all the medical terms."
She seemed very troubled by that, and he reached over
and touched her hands where they clenched on the knitting
needles.

"I'm not sure I'd understand either," he told her. "I'll
trust her opinion on the medical side of things."

She smiled at him. "Thank you. You're being very kind. It's
difficult, you know, not to be able to do anything. I don't
understand the medicine, and I can't do anything about the
other side of things, the investigative side."

"I'm sure that it's a comfort to Dana that you're here," he
said, remembering to say Dana instead of Scully this time.

She shook her head a little. "It's strange, when...do you
have children, Mr. Skinner?"

"No. Um, no." At her quizzical look, he added, reluctantly,
"We...our baby was stillborn."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago. I didn't mean to bring it up. What
were you going to say?"

"Oh, that it's strange, when your children grow up, when
they become the adults. I was talking with Dana for a 
long time today, and it seemed that she was comforting me
rather than the other way around." She laughed a little.
"She seems to be dealing with this better than I am,
better than the rest of us."

"I'm sure that..." The door to Scully's room opened and
Skinner broke off whatever platitude he had been going to
voice. 

Bill came out and scanned the room before turning back.
"Yeah, Dana, he's here. You want to talk to him?" Scully 
said something, and then Bill turned towards him. "Dana
wants to talk to you." Skinner frowned, puzzled, and 
looked around the room. Mrs. Scully had resumed her knitting,
and no one would meet his eyes.

Bill's eyes as he passed him to go into Scully's room were
red-rimmed. "Don't tire her out," he growled.

***

"How are you feeling?" he asked awkwardly, standing in
the doorway.

"Not badly, all things considered." Her face was grave and
tear-stained, but her eyes were calmer than he'd seen them 
in a long time as she gestured for him to sit in the chair
that was pulled up near her bed.

"Sir, I wanted to talk with you. I wanted you to know 
that..."

Her eyes were calm and peaceful, as peaceful as a thick
jungle he had once visited and been drawn back from... 

"Scully," he interrupted, softly, harshly. "*Don't.*"

Her eyes sparked fire. "I'm not accepting death. I'm going
to fight this." 

"Then don't..."

She caught his hand in hers, a gesture that he was sure
cost her. It occurred to him that she had only touched
him before when he was sick or injured, in the role of 
doctor or comforter. Her grip was amazingly strong. "But I 
don't know that I'm going to win," she said, just as 
softly, just as harshly.

"Jesus," he said explosively, and pulled away from her,
standing up to walk over by the window. People were walking
to and from their cars outside. Those walking to the 
hospital carried bouquets or teddy bears or balloons; those
walking away had only themselves.

He could almost feel her waiting behind him, patiently. She
would have had to develop patience, working with Mulder.
It was unfair of him, he knew, to make her wait. She shouldn't
have to be the strong one here.

He remembered when she had stood by his bedside as his
vascular system had slowly shut down; she hadn't refused to 
listen to his deathbed confession, only reached out to hold 
his hand.

It still took all his strength to turn around and return
to the chair. "I'm sorry," he said. "What is it that you
wanted to tell me?"

Tears came to her eyes, at that. "Sir, this isn't a goodbye.
At least, I don't intend it to be. But...do you remember, a
few months ago, the bank robbery attempt? At first, I didn't
believe what Mulder said, that that day had happened a 
hundred times before. Who would believe that?"

"Mulder," he said wryly, and for a moment they shared a 
glance of understanding that was partly exasperation but
mostly affection.

"I didn't argue with Mulder about it, because...it wasn't
the job, and there wasn't any need to argue over it. But I 
didn't believe it, either." Her forehead wrinkled, the fine
vertical lines between her eyebrows creasing. "The next day, 
I realized that I had a memory of being in that bank. I 
don't know, it could have just been my imagination, but it 
was...stronger than deja vu, stronger than anything, and whether 
or not it was real, it made me realize something."

"It was real," he told her quietly. "I remembered too, the 
next day. I was sitting in a budget meeting and I knew that
I'd talked to that woman before, outside the bank."

"I remember sitting there on the floor, trying to keep Mulder
from bleeding to death, and seeing Bernard's hand go to
trigger the bomb. And I *knew,* in that instant, that I was
going to die, and that I'd left too many things unfinished.
Sir, I will fight this as hard as I can, but if I do die, I
don't want my last thoughts to be of my regrets, of things
left unsaid. And I need to do this now, before..." Her voice
trailed away. Before weakness, before blindness, before
insanity, before death.

"I'm sorry, Scully." He reached for her hand. "Tell me 
whatever it is you want to."

"I wanted to thank you, for all you've done for us, for me,
over the years. For not giving up on the investigation after
my sister's death. For not...God, there were so many times
that you could have shut the X-Files down, and no one would
have blamed you."

"I didn't do what I could have. I didn't..." he stopped, remembering
how he had cut them off from investigating the nanotechnology that
had threatened him.

"You did what you did. It was enough. I may not always have
agree with the choices you made, but...I'm still grateful for so
many of them. And...I wanted to say I was sorry."

"Sorry?"

"When I had the cancer, last time...I would have named you
as the mole in the FBI. I would have...I look back at that,
and I'm ashamed of myself." 

"It's okay," he said, although he couldn't deny that the
memory of her voice saying 'you' as she'd crumpled to 
the floor still stung.

"No, it's not okay. I told myself I was following evidence,
but the evidence was shaky. It was...a bad time for me, and
I was being paranoid, but that's no excuse for what I
almost did."

"Well." He coughed. "It turned out all right. It's not
something you should worry about, not now."

"I wanted you to know that I did regret that. And I wanted
you to know that I've been honored that you've been our
ally. And, I hope, our--my--friend."

"Of course," he said. "I've been equally honored. Scully, 
you've always been one of the finest agents I've ever worked 
with." He paused, wondering how to tell her what she was 
to him. There was no easy slot that this woman fit into: 
not a lover, or mother, or daughter, or sister. "What is 
my sister to you?" he heard Bill say again, not antagonistic,
but not comprehending either. 

What he felt for her, though, he had felt before: something
born out of fire, and loss, and pain, and trust. "You've 
been a fellow soldier," he finished quietly, and (impossibly, 
for she had only been a child when he had gone to war) saw 
that she understood.

***

He found Mulder in the men's bathroom, sitting against the wall,
arms curled around his pulled-up knees. 

"Scully wants to see you," Skinner said, standing inside
the door. "To talk to you." She had asked him, with eyes that had
suddenly gone bleak and determined, to summon Mulder for this
reckoning. 

"I can't do this," Mulder said flatly. 

"Yes, you can. This is what she needs right now."

"I can't. Not like this. Not a goodbye."

"You have to. Mulder, don't disappoint her on this one."

"Why not? Because she's a dying woman?"

"Because she's *Scully.*" 

Mulder didn't answer, but he did get up and start to move
to the door, holding Skinner's eyes. The anger in his own
were clear, and Skinner braced himself for a swing, but
Mulder only said, "fuck you," as he walked past Skinner
and out the door. 

***

Two hours later, Skinner looked up from the printouts
that he was reading and rubbed his eyes. The Lone Gunmen
were diligently reading the medical information on the
women who had contacted them. Skinner, lacking a medical
background, had been reading about their interactions with
their local police departments. Reactions to their tales
about alien abductions had ranged from mirth to pity to
frustration to an uneasy denial that bordered on belief. 

"I'm going to head home," he said to Byers. "It's almost
8, anyway, and visiting hours will be over. I'm taking off 
work tomorrow, so I'll be in here around...I don't know, 10?"

"We'll be here," said Langly. "Oops. Here comes the big
brother."

"Asshole," muttered Frohike under his breath, causing Skinner
to wonder just what Bill might have said to him.

"It's a stressful time for him," said Skinner. "I doubt he's
at his best."

"It's always a stressful time for him," said Langly. 

Bill came to a halt before them. "Is he still in there with her?"

"Yeah," said Frohike belligerently. 

"It's been two hours." 

"You in a hurry or something?" asked Langly.

"I want to say good night to my sister," said Bill, bristling
and heading for the door. Frohike and Skinner both moved to
stop him, but didn't reach him in time. He pushed open the
door without knocking and halted. Standing behind him, Skinner
saw how his shoulder and back muscles went rigid. Past him,
he could see Scully and Mulder, sitting on the bed. Her arms
were wrapped around his back, fingers clutching his shoulders; 
his face was buried in her shoulder. They weren't talking.

"I came to say good night to my sister," said Bill stiffly,
in a gravelly voice.

"Give them a moment," ordered Skinner in his most authoritative
voice, and Bill, responding to that, began to turn and obey.

"No, I was just leaving," said Mulder, untangling himself from
Scully and standing. He reached out and slid his hand along
Scully's face. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

She caught his hand and held it for a moment. When she spoke,
her voice was low but clear, and Skinner could hear each word
distinctly even from the doorway. "I still have the strength of
your beliefs. I always have."

"I'll see you tomorrow," Mulder repeated. His face as he walked
past Skinner was downcast and tired; whatever they had spoken of,
it hadn't brought him peace.

End 2 of 8