Subcutaneous 7 of 8
Disclaimers, etc., in part 1

The pillow under her head was softer than the one at the hotel had
been, but she didn't snuggle into it. Instead, she twisted and 
turned, trying to find a comfortable position in which to sleep.

She was restless.

In the end, she went downstairs to where Mulder was, supposedly,
sleeping on the couch. They'd all ended up at her mother's house,
since her mother had already cleared many of Dana's possessions out
of her own apartment (she gritted her teeth), and by the time that
they'd finished talking it had been too late for Mulder to leave.

She suspected that they would have had to pry him from this house
from a crowbar, anyway. Bill had blustered, but he had also looked
relieved that someone with a gun was there to protect his little
sister.

There was part of her that was glad as well, but it hadn't let
her sleep.

Mulder wasn't sleeping, of course; she saw the gleam of open eyes
as she neared the sofa, and then he sat up to make room for her,
the blanket falling away from his chest.

"How're you doing?" he asked softly.

"Couldn't sleep. You?"

"No. It's been a busy week...I'm still pretty wired."

"It has been that."

She didn't elaborate, and after a moment Mulder reached for the 
remote and clicked the TV on, flipping past psychic friend ads and
infomercials to the cartoon network. "How about some Scooby Doo?"

She swung her legs onto the coffee table. "Just what we need...
cavemen restored mysteriously to life."

"I'd think you'd like Scooby Doo. There's always a rational
explanation, at the end. The ghosts and goblins get their
masks ripped off."

"Mulder, four people running around solving mysteries with a 
talking *dog*--there isn't a rational explanation for that."

"At least they manage to solve their mysteries," Mulder said, his
voice sounding sour.

The last time she had gone into remission, Mulder had been overjoyed,
his eyes shiny and bright. This time, he had smiled, but the 
darkness and the frustration in his eyes had lingered.

In hers, as well.

"Do you know, a week ago," she said to the screen, "all I wanted in
life was a cure for the cancer. I wanted to be healthy, and I wanted
that damn chip out from under my neck. When I took it out, I was
so relieved that I could do so, even if it was because of the cancer.
I should be tremendously happy now."

"And you're not."

"Are you?"

He shook his head. "That you're healthy, yes. That you don't have
an implant under your skin, yes. But..."

"It was too easy."

He swung his head to look at her in disbelief. "Scully, the one thing
I wouldn't call this last week is easy."

"Easy for them, not for me. I saw Penny Northern die, Mulder. I sat
with her, a woman I never expected to like, let alone feel close
to. But I did like her, and I watched her die in pain and confusion.
And they could have cured her. It makes me...angry." Furious, in fact.
She had been irreversibly changed by the cancer, had shaped her life
around it for the last few years, had fought it with every bit of
strength she had in her. And then, that shapeshifter had placed his
hand on her forehead, touching her skin ever so lightly, and taken 
away from her what she had struggled with for so long. "That they can 
do this so quickly, and yet the other women are still dying. Even if 
we find answers for what caused the cancer, we may not find them in 
time for these women. That's not just."

"No, it's not. Scully."

"What?"

"If those women do die...it wouldn't be unusual for you to feel
survivor's guilt."

"I'm not feeling guilty."

"Hush, hear me out. It's not uncommon, you know--"

"Mulder, I know perfectly well where to place the blame for those
women's deaths."

"Do you? Listen, I'm not trying to make you angrier, okay? I'm just
saying...in situations where one person lives and another dies, it's
not uncommon for the other to feel guilty for it. I mean..." he
shrugged again, and his voice took on a tone of careful nonchalance,
"take me as an obvious example. Logically, I couldn't have done 
anything to prevent what happened to my sister. That doesn't mean
that every single day, I don't wish that I had done something to
protect her, to wish that I'd been taken instead."

"But I don't wish..." she stopped abruptly, and he reached over and 
smoothed her cheek lightly, as lightly as the shapeshifter had, and 
then curved his hand around to the back of her neck, where the 
implant had been. It distracted her, made the words tumble out. 
"I want to be alive, Mulder. I'm glad I am. Even if...I just..."

"Yeah, I know."

"I want the others to live, too."

***
April 27th

She did manage to sleep for a few hours, although she rose again
at dawn. Mulder didn't wake up when she went downstairs this time,
his face pressed against the side of the couch as if he would burrow
into it to keep himself away from the morning light.

She smiled a little at his bare feet, which had kicked the blanket
away. His arm rested on the blanket, and she fought the impulse to
turn it over so that she could feel the pulse at his wrist, the lines
of his palm, underneath her fingers. She went to the kitchen instead.

Charlie was already there, and she inhaled the scent of coffee with 
pleasure. "What're you making?" she asked, because Charlie
was occupied with stirring what looked like a large bowl of batter.

"Muffins. Chocolate chip. Want to help?"

"Sure." She reached out and scooped out a lump of batter,
eating it slowly off her finger.

Her mother would have frowned at her, but Charlie grinned. "Don't
eat it all, Red. Why don't you start scrambling some eggs or
something? Time this family was out of bed."

"It's 6:00, Charlie."

"And we're Navy brats. Start the eggs."

"Yes, sir." She saluted. "Did you sleep okay?"

"Billy Boy snores. I could hear it even in the room across the hall.
Don't know how Tara stands it."

They worked in companionable silence for awhile, him spooning the 
batter into the muffin tins and her cracking eggs into a bowl. He
put the tins into the oven and stood there, and she looked up in
puzzlement. "Charlie?"

He lifted a hand and surreptitiously wiped at his face, and she
realized that he was crying.

"Charlie," she said in surprise, and moved over to him. He didn't
turn around, and after a moment she reached over to hug him from
behind, pressing her cheek against the cotton of his T-shirt. 
Charlie, like Dana, had rarely cried when Bill or Melissa had 
teased him. It was him who had told her to react as little as possible
when the older ones teased them, a bit of advice that had placed them
in a conspiracy that had lasted over the years. 

He wiped his face again, and then turned around and gave her a quick
hug before releasing her. "Sorry, Red. Didn't mean to freak you out."

"You didn't freak me out. What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? Jeez. You almost died. You did die. I didn't think
I was ever going to be able to see you again, and here we are, making
breakfast. It's just weird. You know?"

"Oh, yeah."

"I mean, it's a second chance. I was...I was furious with myself. 
That I hadn't gotten an immediate flight, that I had decided
that the end of the week would be okay. I came here, and it was 
too late. Mom and Bill said that you'd had long talks with them,
and I realized I'd missed that. And then at the wake, your boss,
your friends from the FBI, they'd come up and talk to me about this
woman they knew, a woman that I'd lost touch with, and would never 
have the chance to know. I don't want to lose you, Dana."

"Oh, I don't want to lose you either, Charlie. I've missed you when
you've been away."

They both paused, smiled a little at each other, and then lapsed
into silence. Charlie laughed. "So what do we talk about, huh?"

She punched him lightly in the shoulder. "Whatever we want to. Tell
me how Julie and the kids are doing."

"Fine. I wish they could've come up, but with Julie being pregnant..."

"No, I understand."

"We'll come up soon, after the baby's born, how about? Or you come
and visit us. I don't want to lose touch with you, Red."

"Are you going to need help when the baby's born? I could come up
that week, if you wanted, help take care of the other kids." She
half-regretted the offer once it came out of her mouth. What was
she doing, volunteering to spend time around a newborn? But she
hadn't seen her two young nephews for quite some time, and...could
she handle being reminded of Emily?

Surprisingly, the answer was yes.

"Yeah, that'd be good. Julie's mom was going to come, but then her
father had a stroke. You going to be able to get the time off of
work?"

"Yes. I've got vacation days built up."

"Great. But don't feel you have to. Jase and Pat are little terrors."

"I'll look forward to it." And that was only partly a lie.

"So, tell me what had been going on in your life, huh? Before this
whole thing?"

Before this whole thing. Oh God, that covered a lot of ground. She
told him about her and Mulder's experience getting stuck in a giant
mushroom, playing down the dangerous parts and playing up the weird,
LSD type flashbacks that she had had in quarantine while the
drug had worked its way out of her system.

Predictably, he found it hilarious.

"Your partner isn't what I expected," he said at one point. 

"What were you expecting?" she asked, somewhat defensively.

"Someone less...subdued. From your story, from what else I've
heard about him, he sounds pretty impulsive. Intense. Not this quiet 
man who calls Mom 'Mrs. Scully' and keeps his patience when Bill
insults him."

"He's not usually this quiet, no."

"Yesterday, he was more what I was expecting. At your...uh, wake,
though. When I first met him. I didn't think he'd be as...polite as
he was."

"You were expecting someone rude? Whatever Bill may have told you--"

"Not rude. He was...oh, never mind. I think I was just expecting
someone a lot more intense, someone who was a lot more honest. Not
that he wasn't honest, but he was also very...veiled. I don't know.
Forget it."

"He's a good man. He's...an honorable man." Unaccountably, she
blushed.

Charlie looked speculatively at her for a moment. "You don't have 
to convince me, dork. Anyone who's put up with you for the last six 
years..."

***

The warehouse had been nearly empty when the FBI had gone there. The 
first floor still contained boxes full of pharmaceutical products, 
perfectly legal, but the second floor was entirely empty.

The FBI agents in charge had not been happy. Scully herself was
equally unhappy, standing in the room that she had been held captive
in, listening to a Jenkins executive tell them that no one from
his company had been to their warehouse in the last four days, and
that if Scully had been held captive there, it hadn't been by anyone 
in his company.

If she and Mulder had called the police immediately, maybe they
would have caught those men. Yes, they might have been only lower-
level functionaries, but they might have led them to people who
were higher up on the Consortium food chain. To Cancerman himself.
(C.G.B Spender, she told herself, but that was probably an alias,
too).

And she had traded that, knowing what she was doing, for information
that might or might not do them any good.

She called the Lone Gunmen around noon, and found that six more women
had died since she had last seen them. An oncologist who was treating
four of the remaining women at a cancer research facility ("We ran a 
check; he seems all right," Langly had said, anticipating her) had
spent time with some members of his team and devised a treatment that
he had sent out to the oncologists of the other women. ("His name's
Dr. Wolf. He says he's been on the verge of something for months now, 
and this clinches it. The problem is time, though. Many of these 
women are too weak to undergo the treatment.")

Mulder nodded coolly at the news, and then frowned at her in sympathy;
he seemed to be going through as many mood swings as she was.

The warehouse floor looked bigger without the computers or medical
gurneys crowded into it, and she bit her lip remembering how they
would restrain her on the gurney. There were still bruises on her
upper arms, on her wrists, on her ankles, on her stomach, on her back, 
from the times when she had tried to fight them. She had had to stand 
still while they were photographed, yesterday. Mulder must have seen 
the photographs, but he hadn't mentioned them. Actually, he had asked 
relatively few questions about what her captors had done to her 
specifically, although he had been endlessly curious about what they 
had spoken about in her presence, what they had looked like, what 
they had revealed about themselves and their superiors. He was trying 
to give her space, she knew, to let her be an investigator instead of 
the victim, and for that she was grateful.

The room that they had kept her in when they weren't testing her
seemed smaller. She'd been asleep, under light sedation, much of the 
time that she'd been in here, and her memories of the room were mixed 
with the memories of nightmares, the walls turning into snakes or 
spiders.

They hadn't given her any sedatives on the last day, as they'd said
they wanted her system clear. And they'd placed the table full of
scalpels close to her, and left the restraints somewhat loose. 
Their mistake. That, and they hadn't counted on Mulder.

The investigating officers, dusting for fingerprints, looked at her
with pity in their eyes.

***

"Are you coming back to Mom's?" she asked him at about 5:00.

"Um...do you want me to?" he asked, pulling his mind away from 
whatever he had been thinking about.

"If you'd like dinner, you can come."

He frowned.

"You don't have to, of course," she said, started to get exasperated.

"I was thinking about stopping by Skinner's."

"For dinner?" she asked, now completely confused, and his eyes 
snapped back into focus.

"Huh? No, of course not. No, he's just been acting stranger than 
usual."

"He doesn't usually act strange at all."

"Exactly."

"Do you know what Kersh most disliked about you?" she asked, when it
appeared that he wasn't going to explain.

Ah, that rattled him. "Kersh?"

"Obliqueness, Mulder. Kersh disliked obliqueness. He was not
impressed when you acted all mysterious. And, although I don't
like to align myself with Kersh--"

"Perish the thought."

"I'm beginning to understand him. Now why are you dropping by 
Skinner's apartment, exactly?"

"You could have just asked, Scully. You didn't need to bring Kersh
into it."

"I'm asking."

"Right. It doesn't surprise you that Skinner wasn't here today? He 
didn't even talk to us. I mean, this is a man who came by the 
hospital every day to visit you, who kept checking with the Lone 
Gunmen to make sure that I wasn't in imminent danger of offing 
myself. And then it's like, poof, he starts ignoring us. Doesn't want 
to meet us at the hotel because he's afraid of bugs, doesn't talk 
much yesterday, doesn't talk at *all* today..."

"Okay, so let's visit Skinner."

"Us? You don't have to, you know. You can head back to your mom's,
if you want. 

She frowned at him. "I'll go with you."

He shrugged. "Okay."

She took one last look around, a look that lasted a long time, until
Mulder said, "Come on, don't Dana-dally."

Past and present merged, and she whipped her head around. "What?"

He was smiling at her, apparently pleased with himself and his 
discovery. "Charlie was saying that that was what they used to say 
in your family when someone was the last one ready, usually you 
because you had your nose in a book."

She hadn't heard that phrase in years, and she stared at Mulder,
feeling disoriented at hearing it now, in this place. She shook her 
head.

"Scully? Is something--"

"Let's go."

***

They could hear the raised voices from the hallway, when they were
close enough to the door, and halted instinctively, eavesdropping
instead of knocking.

"I won't leave them at your mercy," Skinner said.

"What, you think you have a choice?"

Mulder's hand came down hard on her wrist, and she heard his indrawn
breath, even as she tried to pull away. "That's..."

"Let *go,*" she hissed, and saw the awareness of the bruises that
the restraints had left flood his memory as he dropped her wrist.

"Krycek," he said softly, even as the guilt came into his face.

"What makes you think I don't?" Skinner said from inside the door,
and Scully turned her attention back that way.

"Have you forgotten this little gadget? Two choices. One, all the 
little robots in your blood stream start having fun again, and you
die. I prefer that choice, myself, but you might not. Two, you set up
a meeting with Mulder and Scully so that I can talk to them, in a
place where we won't be seen."

"Third choice, Krycek." There was the sound of something clattering
on a hard surface. 

"What's this?"

"It's a copy of a tape. I'm assuming it was you that left a voice-
activated tape recorder in my apartment? Just to see if I'd do what
you told me too?"

"So you found it. So what?"

"So this is a copy. If I die, the original makes its way to C.G.B.
Spender. Including the conversation we had two days ago. The one where
you made it pretty clear that you're working for the other side."

There was a very long silence.

"You took a hell of a risk, Skinner. How'd you know I'd come back so
you could tell me this?"

"I figured you for the type who likes to watch while he kills."

"I've escaped from Spender before."

"Caused a lot of trouble for you, though. And would again. It's 
pretty simple. You kill me, they'll be hunting you down, too. Now
get the hell out of my apartment."

"This tape only protects you until I officially break with Spender.
Don't count on being alive if circumstances change. Unless it's an
advantage for me...I don't mean any harm to them. Just a meeting."

Scully reached back, touching Mulder's arm with one hand, and then
placed her other hand on the doorknob. She saw him nod in her
peripheral vision.

The door opened easily.

End 7 of 8

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

"You wanted to see us?" growled Mulder. The other two men had 
expressions of surprise on their faces; Skinner also seemed 
irritated. Scully moved to her left as she walked in the door,
Mulder a few paces to the right.

"What are the two of you doing here?" he asked.

"We thought we should report," Scully said, and the two men turned
their faces to her.

"Thought you might be slightly interested. Of course, now it seems
like Krycek might be as well," Mulder said, causing the two men
to look back at him instead. She and Mulder did this often enough
in interrogation rooms, making the suspect look back and forth,
trying to keep him or her off balance. "So," Mulder said, after a beat
of silence where Krycek and Skinner had turned their eyes to Scully,
expecting the next statement to be from her, "what was it you wanted 
to see us about?"

"Why don't we all sit down?" asked Krycek, who after all was trained
in the game of interrogation as well.

Scully glanced at the chairs and the sofa in Skinner's living room,
all very well-stuffed, easy to sink into, hard to get out of. "I 
don't think so. Why don't you tell us what you want?"

"If that's the way you want it...I've been authorized to offer you
a job opportunity. Both of you."

"No." Their voices came out in a chorus.

"You don't want to even hear what I'm offering?" Krycek shrugged, one-
shouldered, and then sat down in the one hard-backed chair in the
room, a move that Scully briefly admired.

"It seems like you're planning on telling us whether we want to hear
or not," said Mulder.

"Oh, I am. Wouldn't want you to start working for the other side
instead."

"That wouldn't happen," said Mulder.

"It nearly did. You're sure you wouldn't like to sit?"

"What do you mean, it nearly did?" asked Skinner.

"What, you haven't grasped the point of that little exercise in
death? And you're supposed to be the brightest kids on the block.
I'm disappointed."

"If you're referring to them taking Scully, it was to do tests on
her blood. To see the results of the vaccine," said Mulder.

"That was a nice side benefit, I'm sure. But if they'd wanted blood
samples, they just had to take them from the hospital. Or, hell, they
could have just taken her again. You wouldn't have found her. There
was a reason why the cover story was that she was dead."

"You didn't say anything about this two days ago," growled Skinner,
and Scully's eyes flicked to him briefly, fitting together puzzle
pieces.

"I didn't know then," said Krycek. Maybe a lie, maybe not.

"What are you getting at?" said Mulder, and Scully could hear the 
frustration in his voice, which meant that Krycek could probably hear
it as well. A mistake on Mulder's part.

"Hypothetical situation, *Agent* Scully. Say that instead of Mulder
rescuing you, you have to stay there. After a few weeks, a month,
they give you a choice. Help them with the work they're doing, or
keep on as you have been, a test subject who's drugged just enough
to keep her sluggish but not enough so that she doesn't know what's
going on. They offer you a chance to be a scientist again, to know
what's happening with your own body, to the other abductees. Which
do you choose?"

"I would not choose to work for them," said Scully grimly, erasing
all doubt from her voice.

"Maybe not the first month. But after two months? After three? After
six? You'd be furthering their agenda either way; wouldn't you rather
have control over it?"

Scully half expected Mulder to break in, and hoped that he wouldn't.
If he did speak for her, even to give her breathing space before she
had to respond, Krycek would pick up on that indication of weakness.
But Mulder didn't. Instead, the voice that broke in was Skinner's:
"What does this have to do with your offer?"

Krycek ignored him. "Agent Scully, which would you choose, after all
that time?" He grinned a little when she didn't respond, and then
abruptly shifted direction. "And what would you choose, Mulder?"

"In the same situation? I don't know, what would you, you rat
bastard?" asked Mulder, very, very calmly.

"But it's Scully who would be the laboratory rat. Let's say that
after six months of that, she does choose a spot of collaboration
instead. What if they came to you one night, and asked you to join 
them as well? What would you choose, to be reunited with Scully, to 
be given all the answers that you've been searching for? Maybe you 
could try to convince others that she was alive, but what chance would 
you have of that? Most people would just assume that you'd have gone 
insane from grief. Which would it be for you, Scully or a padded 
cell?"

"Very interesting hypothesis, but it didn't happen. And after this,
they'd be idiots to try something again so soon," said Mulder.

"So you'll gamble on safety for a few months? And then what?"

"What are you offering?" asked Scully.

"Resistance. Work with us. Make a difference instead of piddling
around in the basement."

"The Resistance tried to kill me on that bridge. As far as I know,
they may have triggered the cancer in the other women. Why would
working with them bring me safety?"

"All the Resistance did was trigger the implants that the Consortium
had planted. The Consortium could have healed those women any time...
you know that. They didn't. They stole away your body because they
wanted your science. They stole away a few other women who were the
best test subjects. And they're letting the rest die, since they've
outlived their usefulness. Wouldn't you want to help bring them down?" 

"It was the Resistance who caused these women's deaths. Who nearly
caused mine."

"Work with us and you can find out why. Work with us and you can be
a scientist. Work with us and find out what the bigger stakes are.
Work with us and make a difference."

"Make a difference?" said Mulder, and Krycek's eyes moved from hers.
She felt a brief moment of disorientation, as if she'd been let go
from a spell. "You sound like a damn public service announcement.
All you need is a multicolored shooting star logo."

"We could help you, too, Mulder. Tell you what happened to your 
sister. Keep Scully safe from the other side. And think about it: no 
more going through the FBI bureaucracy. You'd be a player."

Mulder shook his head, although he looked almost dazed, and Krycek 
returned to her. "What about you, Scully? What reason could you 
possibly have to retain an allegiance to an institution that's done 
nothing for you?"

"My allegiance isn't to an institution," Scully said, making every
word as distinct as she could. "My allegiance is to myself, and to
the other women who have been taken, and used, and discarded. And I 
will *not* ally myself with those who would harm them. Harm *us.*"

"But if you could--"

"You've heard their answers," said Skinner. "You've heard mine. Unless
you have something else to say, get out of here."

Krycek regarded them all for a moment, and then stood up, without
hurry. "The stakes are getting higher as we stand here. Sooner or 
later, we'll all be working for one side or another. You should 
choose carefully, or someone will make the choice for you." He ambled
to the doorway, and then turned around in it. "Your answer wasn't
real strong, Mulder. How about you?"

But whatever doubt had been in Mulder's face had left. "My allegiance
is to her," he said quietly, and for a moment, some fleeting emotion
crossed Krycek's face that looked almost like shame.

It passed quickly. "I'll look forward to working with all of you."

***

"Why didn't you tell us it was Krycek putting the screws on you?"
demanded Mulder angrily.

"That'd be a dangerous move, Mulder. For all of us. You yourself 
said that they wanted to see who I might turn to, and turning to
the two of you would have been putting both of you at risk. I chose 
instead to wait and see what he wanted."

"Which almost didn't work."

"It did," snapped Skinner. 

"But you kept this from us..." 

Skinner almost seemed amused, at that. "And the two of you haven't
done your share of keeping things from me? Let it go, Mulder."

"You're taking a very big risk," said Scully. "Circumstances can
change very quickly, and that tape might not be a lever for much
longer."

But she could see that something had changed in Skinner's face, a
lightening, as if the concentration that he'd used for playing a 
game had scattered at game's end. "And the two of you aren't taking
risks? Tell me, Scully, are you coming back to the X-Files?"

"Of course," she said automatically.

He shook his head. "There have been times when you wouldn't have been
so sure. But you've become more and more committed, the deeper you've
gotten into this search."

"You still have options, though," said Mulder. "You could close us
down, or transfer us under Kersh again, or...you don't have to be
in this."

Skinner looked at him tolerantly. "You think that's an option? I'm
in this whole mess now."

"Yeah, well, you could have told us about Krycek," said Mulder 
sulkily, crossing his arms, apparently hoping to win this argument 
by repetition.

"It was my problem. Mine to deal with," said Skinner, and for a moment
his eyes met Scully's in perfect understanding of what it was to have
something in your own body that could be turned against you, what it
was to know that you were in the search not because of what you'd
gotten into, but because of what had been forced into you.

"He's right, Mulder," she said. "Although I hope you know, sir,
that we'd always be glad to help you."

Mulder, who didn't understand (and oh, God, Scully prayed, please
keep that knowledge far away from him), threw up his hands in 
disgust.

***
April 28th

She spent the morning moving back into her apartment with the help
of her brothers. Bill still acted prickly, angry with himself for
what had been done to him, maybe angry with her for putting him in
the whole situation. But she and Charlie had time to talk, and it
was good; she had forgotten how much she liked her brother. Her 
mother and Tara came for a late lunch, and they all ate together, as 
much of her family as would probably ever be in one place again. And
even then, her sister-in-law was missing, and Charlie's kids, and
Matthew, back in California under the care of Tara's mom.

The Lone Gunmen came by afterward to, as Frohike put it, "keep the
lovely Agent Scully safe from creepy-crawlies." Byers gravely passed
on the news that eight more women had died.

When they left, she spent an hour or so rearranging her shelves,
putting the pictures at the correct angles, until it almost looked
like it had before.

She had been yearning for a bubble bath all day, all week in fact,
but she found herself too restless. She paced around her living
room and kitchen and bedroom.

She imagined that Mulder would say that she was feeling the need
to make her territory her own again. Of course, then he would say
that animals did the same thing by peeing, if she'd like to try that.

"I don't think so," she said out loud in her living room, and 
stretched her arms wide, turning around in a half circle, relishing
the knowledge that no one was watching her. Arms still out, she 
turned, faster and faster, as she had when she was a child, until
she was spinning and dizzy and had to lie down on the floor with
her arms and legs sprawled out. The whirling, multi-colored
shapes gradually become solid again, turning into the familiar
walls and objects of her own apartment. Pain and grief caught at her
as she lay there, and she curled up her arms and legs, fighting tears
without success until the spell of crying ended and she could let
her arms and legs stretch out again. The dampness dried slowly on
her cheeks.

***
April 29

She went back to work. Well, of course she did. What else was there
to do?

She'd spent time in front of the mirror this morning, applying 
make-up carefully and blow-drying her hair more slowly than usual.
Choosing clothes required thought, as she found herself suddenly 
sick of the color black. Unfortunately, black constituted the major
part of her wardrobe.

Instead, she went with a dark blue pantsuit that covered the fading
bruises on her legs better than pantyhose would, and fastened on
small gold earrings and the gold cross that her mother had returned
to her yesterday.

Mulder's eyes fell to the cross when she entered the office, and then
he gave her a smile of such sweetness that it almost took her breath
away.

"Have a good day at home yesterday?" he asked.

"Yes, yes, I did. I was able to have a long talk with Charlie, and
that was good."

His face darkened, and he glanced down at his desk. "Well, I guess
that's good, since you weren't able to talk to him at the hospital
like you did with everyone else."

"No, I wasn't." Mulder was fiddling with pencils on his desk, as if
embarrassed. "And I'm glad my talk with him wasn't done under the 
shadow of death...and I'm glad that ours wasn't either."

He looked up warily. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, Mulder, I had a speech all planned, a million and one things 
that I wanted to say to you that I hadn't yet said, and then--"

"And then you took pity on me and realized that I wouldn't get 
through that?" interrupted Mulder, and she realized he was ashamed.

"And then..." And then Mulder had walked through the door, and she
had realized that she couldn't say any of them. Instead, she'd 
opened her arms to him speechlessly, and they'd held each other 
tightly until Bill had come, letting their hands and arms and nearness
speak for them. "Do you think you were the only one who couldn't get
through that? I didn't intend for those to be my deathbed farewells,
but because of when and where they took place, they became that,
and I realized...I can't say goodbye to you. I won't. Not under any
circumstance."

His face held enough wonder, enough light, enough energy to move 
the stars in their paths...or to keep her standing where she
was against all her inclination to run, to hide, to close in on
herself.

"So these million and one things, Scully..."

"What, you want to hear them all *now*?"

"I'd probably keel over from shock. Maybe you'd better tell me them
in small doses. One a day for a million and one days or so."

She smiled at him. "A million and two things, since I need to thank
you for rescuing me again."

"Well, you were halfway there, yourself."

"But it might not have succeeded. And I almost certainly wouldn't
have had time to download those files. I know that it was a 
longshot, but..." she saw the light in his face dim, and knew that
her own face had become somber as well. "I don't know if it will do
any good, but at least we tried."

"Yeah."

"So..."

"So, you just going to stand there?"

She moved from the doorway. "What do you have lined up for us today?"

"I thought we'd try to catch Skinner while he's in a generous mood,
so I'm trying to find a case that he wouldn't normally accept..."
He bounced out of his chair and moved to the filing cabinet, and she
rolled her eyes and sat in his chair.

"I'm going to check my e-mail."

"Mmm hmm," he murmured, already flipping through files.

The third message got her, and she felt tears begin to run silently
down her face. She stared at the computer screen for a long time,
long enough that Mulder turned around.

His hand came down on her shoulder. "Scully?"

She gestured towards the screen, and felt his hand move to rub 
reassuringly over the back of her neck, over the scar from where the
implant had been, over the clasp of the gold chain, as he bent 
to read.

Dear Dr. Scully--

As you know, I've been coordinating the treatment of several women
who are afflicted with the same sort of nasalpharangyeal cancer as
you yourself suffered from. From the information you provided, I
and several other doctors have put together a treatment program for
those afflicted with this or a similar type of cancer. 
Sadly, this comes too late to help many women, as the cancer has
been very aggressive. However, for at least twelve women that I 
know of, the treatment has put a stop to the cancer's progress. While
it is clearly too early to speculate about their recovery, I thought
that you would at least like to know: initial results are promising.

Sincerely,

Dr. Steven Wolf.


End


Author's final note: As I said at the beginning of the story (lo, so
many kilobytes ago), this story grew out of some issues that I wanted
to see CC and co. address in the season finale. Most importantly, I
wanted them to address the issue of the implant in Scully's neck,
and, ideally, to get it out of there. I think it must be a tremendous
strain to live under, and we haven't seen the possible consequences
since Patient X/The Red and the Black. Also, I wanted to explore 
the conflict in Scully's feelings towards other abductees. On the one
hand, she seems to feel a solidarity with Penny Northern or 
Cassandra Spender, but on the other, she doesn't want to see herself
as an abductee. And finally, I thought I wanted them to address 
the nanotechnology in Skinner's blood. Of course, they did that, but
not in a way I particularly liked (I like Skinner being a good guy,
not Krycek's pawn). Incidentally, the whole story was originally
supposed to be Skinner's POV, since I like outside POVs of Mulder 
and Scully, but the events of the season finale left a bad taste in
my mouth and prompted the change to Mulder's POV, and then to
Scully's.

Anyway, feedback on what worked or what didn't, or general X-Files
comments, are always welcome at marianicole29@yahoo.com. And thanks for
reading :)