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Chapter Text

 The elevator car dinged as it reached the nethermost level of the hospital. Mulder stepped into the hallway and felt the chill that differentiated the basement from the rest of the building. Orange paint in large block letters announced “MORGUE” with an arrow pointed to his intended direction on the white cinder block walls. Nothing in the basement of a hospital was dressed the way it was upstairs where the living and their families needed the comfort of taupe paint and friendly murals sprouting off pastel paints for different departments. The purpose of the hospital basement was for cadaver storage and disposal with the viewing room as the exception. It was in the opposite direction from where he was headed.

Temperatures in the basement of hospitals ran about five to ten degrees cooler than the rest of the building, that were warm and a virtual petrie dish for germs to cultivate. The frigid air added to the finality of the floor. There was no hum of machines working to keep bodies alive, it was only the buzz of overhead lights, striker saws or drains working to process bodily fluids. The cement floor is painted the same medical green that seems to be common among aesculapian facilities with circular drains every four or five feet.

He followed the directional line around the hall, past the large freezer and through the double doors to the autopsy bay. Scully was sitting up, perfectly straight as though she was expecting someone other than him, transferring observations from her notebook to the chart in front of her. Mulder set the paper cup of coffee next to her notes and perched himself on the edge of the worn white laminate table. He set down a chocolate croissant next to it on a grease-stained paper napkin.

“Pastry for your thoughts?” Mulder prompted.

Scully set her pen down and looked slowly up at him. The pallor in her cheeks and the sadness in her blue eyes hit him like a tonne of bricks, and he swallowed slowly. This case had not been easy on either of them. Four women, all died before their time and the cause was escaping everything she had hypothosized adamantly just two days ago.

“It wasn’t in intracranial lesion as I thought,” Scully reported and took a sip from her coffee. “I did a biopsy on each of the brain tissues I had sampled on the last two victims.”

“What was the cause of death?” Mulder asked.

“Cancer,” she reported and looked into his eyes.

“But your preliminary findings on the said that it wasn’t cancer when you first examined Mary Boyle,” Mulder argued and popped a sunflower seed in his mouth. “Are you saying the cancer arrived in her body after her death?”

“Mary Boyle, Virginia Leslie, Caroline Hawkins all died from a metastasized cancer that continued to attack the bodies after time of death,” Scully reported. “I know it sounds crazy Mulder but this isn’t like any cancer I’ve seen.”

Mulder nodded. “These women all reported to be missing time of two to three months.”

“Mulder...”

“Did you also find a metallic chip implant in the base of the neck?” Mulder asked.

“No,” her voice wavered. “But a small scar on each of them.”

“I’m sorry I brought you here,” he atoned, referencing the case at hand.

The apology wasn’t just for that, it was a blanket statement for everything that was happening to her. He might not ever express his deepest regrets for getting Scully involved in what was had been afflicted upon her life since they met but he wanted to.

He pulled the sunflower shell from his mouth and tossed it into the trash next to the table. His aim was pretty accurate for such a small scrap of garbage.  Occasionally he missed and she was picking the dried shells off the floor of her hotel rooms, the car, the office.

“But if we can find some answers, if we can find another woman and save her before-”

“Before what?” Scully stood up from the desk and slammed her hands on the desk. The paper cup wobbled slightly on the table from the force of her hands. “Before she dies like Mary Boyle? Like Virginia Leslie? Like I will?”

“We’re going to find out how to cure this,” Mulder said, standing up and reaching out to her.

Scully threw her hands up in the air, trying to release herself from his grip and Mulder pulled his hands back.

“Don’t.” Scully folded her arms under her breasts, closing herself off from him even more.

“Why?” he challenged and she scowled at him. “Because if I comfort you and God forbid you let me it might actually mean you need me?”

Her jaw was set tight but her chin clenched as though it might waver.

“You can let me pick you up from chemo therapy when your mother has a cold but you can’t let me hug you when we’re facing something here that could be about more than the X-Files? About you?” Mulder’s voice was tight and his anger was boiling up inside of him. He was tired of being pushed away by her. “Aren’t you tired of being so strong?”

“I’m dying, Mulder!” she shouted back at him and his face winced at the reality they were both facing. “And when I die, they’ll cut me open in a place just like this to determine exactly how far the cancer spread through my body, how far it destroyed my cells and took over before I’m gone.”

“You’re not going to die!” he yelled. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her slightly as though if he could just make her believe in the truth, she might be cured. It took more science and less whole-hearted belief in aliens. “Not because of this. Not because of me and this cause.”

“I am going to die, Mulder,” she repeated and her resolve broke, her chin wavered again. “Soon . We don’t have much time left and we both know right now, I’m barely living as it is.”

She pulled her arms out from his grasp and walked towards the locker room around the corner from the desk. Mulder followed her, his care for personal boundaries and propriety gone.

Scully was kicking off the white shoes and about to pull down her scrubs. “I need to change.”

“I’m not stopping you,” he replied.

“You don’t need to watch me like that,” she spat back at him. “I’m aware of my death from this cancer, I’m not suicidal.”

“I’m worried about you,” he told her, his jaw clenched.

“I just need something life affirming, Mulder,” she snapped. “I don’t need your pity.”

She found a towel from the rack on the wall and a fresh bar of soap that smelled like cedarwood, rosemary and orange. It was a standard soap they supplied in hospital showers for pathologists to fight the smell of bodily fluids, formaldehyde and burnt flesh. It was a smell that usually Scully chose to combat in the privacy of a hotel room or at home. She found the bottles of similar scented shampoo and conditioner that looked as though they were meant for hotels, single serving toiletries but they each had a caduceus on the label

“You’re showering here?” Mulder asked obviously as she started to organize her things in the shower stall.

“It’s over an hour drive back to the hotel from here to Charleston,” she reminded him and sat on the bench to take off her socks.

Women around the West Virginia city were dying and Mulder had decided if they centrally located themselves in Charleston it might mean more car time but less packing and moving between cities. The hour commute between different towns they had investigated wasn’t terrible for them however it meant that if she was to perform an autopsy in Parkersburg, she had the option of driving back to their base smelling like the autopsy bay or she could shower there.

She stood up and looked at Mulder and he stood in his rumpled black suit with his hands on his hips.

“I don’t need an audience,” she repeated.

Mulder turned around slowly, turning his back to her and further proving he wasn’t going to leave her alone.

“Fine,” she spat and undressed behind him, tossing her scrubs into the soiled laundry bin and turned on the shower.

The sharp sound of the curtain rings pulling across the slightly rusted metal echoed through the locker room and Mulder turned around to see her shadow behind the opaque blue curtain.

“Do you need a vacation?” he called to her and he could hear her scoff.

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice was tight as though it could break and she would collapse in that shower.

He didn’t have answers. He didn’t have a cure. All he had to provide for her was his friendship and support. She didn’t seem to want any of that right now.

Mulder slowly loosened his tie further, pulling it out from under his collar and hanging it in the open locker next to her suit. His shoes went inside next to hers, his socks folded into a ball. He then hung his jacket, shirt and hung his pants by one of the belt loops. His underwear joined her undergarments on the bench and he pulled a towel from the pile near the showers.

When he pulled open the shower she looked at him with animosity and disbelief.

“What are you doing?” she asked angrily as he closed the curtain behind him.

“I’m-”

“Mulder!” she held her forearms across her breasts but not for modesty but as a way to close her body off from his. “What are you doing?”

His posture was tense in front of her, his fists were clenched. She could see the small scar that puckered on his shoulder from where she shot him, the chest hair that trailed across his pecks and down his stomach to his groin. His body was starting to show its want for her, and Scully glanced down quickly at his half swollen cock before looking back up to his face.

She shouldn’t be shy about looking at him since he came in there naked but it still gave her a rush to have looked.

Everything about their height difference was now out in the open. Mulder’s 6’1” stature was not smaller when he was unclothed but bigger. All seven and a half inches, Scully estimated, of his manhood also felt intimidating if it was ever going to go inside her body. Her medical training reminded her that the female form was designed to expand for a man’s but it might take some getting used to.

“Doing something life-affirming,” he growled and crushed her mouth under hers.

Scully’s eyes flew open and against her better judgement, her lips parted and she kissed him back with fervour and desire. The scalding hot water sliced down from above them, the water pressure in the basement being ten time stronger than the rest of the hospital showers. It felt like he was being cut with a thousand tiny needles and the calefaction Scully chose hurt his skin. He didn’t care.

There was nothing tender about what Mulder was doing to her. Her nails dug into the skin on his shoulders as he grabbed at the skin and muscles on her back. The pain from his large hands was acute and keen. It felt good in all the ways it hurt. She could feel him growing hard against her belly and while she wanted him, her body needed more than a bruising kiss. She wasn’t sure what they were doing but she was certain this was a bad idea.

The rebellious side of Dana Scully liked bad ideas. It talked to men in tattoo parlours and fucked them in barely furnished Philadelphia apartments after too many gin and tonics. Of course, this is the side of her that takes an impulsive trip to that same parlour for her own permanent lapse of judgement.

The fractious side of her would choose to fuck her partner in a hospital morgue pathologists locker room and sweep any feelings of a second thought to the side. She wouldn’t think again about why or why not.

Her tongue slid past his lips to taste sunflower seeds, coffee and something masculine and earthy. He tasted different from Ed Jerse. His tongue slid against hers and his teeth nipped at her lips like a lover who knew how she liked to kiss. Ed, with a few drinks under his belt, kissed her hastily and softly.

The kisses grew more frantic and passionate, their hands grabbing at flesh and touching each other intimately. His hands grabbed at her breasts, pinching at her nipples before kneading the flesh of her ass, pinching the skin on her back.

They were way past a moment of impulsive recklessness. He had followed her in there with the intent something was going to happen and she needed it. She needed his body, his reassurance of what she was living then, now, in that moment.

Mulder broke the kiss and turned her around to face the small white tiles of the shower wall. A thick thumb traced over her lower back, usually where his hand rested but a little to the right. He was studying her tattoo, committing it to his eidetic memory, burning this into his brain.

Scully looked back over his shoulder to see him staring wildly at her and she glanced down at the tattoo like she had those years before, when she needed him to confirm whether what she had was the sign of an abduction to come. How little she knew, standing practically nude in his motel room, then that her life would change forever from that one evening. He then laid everything on the table, explained to her why he needed answers and she vowed to always tell him the truth, to not be part of any government agenda.

She became a piece they used against him and him against her even while those that assigned them together didn’t know they would be more powerful together than apart. They didn’t count on her being the thing that made him better. They didn’t count on her being the thing that validated him to his peers and superiors. She made him a whole person and if he couldn’t save her, he would be left fragmented and lacking.

Their mouths met again in a heated kiss. Mulder wanted to see all of her, to study the lines and curves of her body while she remained with him. A hand moved from the bones of her hip to the flat plains of her stomach. The cancer had stripped about ten pounds from her recently and while she could hide under thick trenchcoats, sweaters and suits, he could see it here.

Mulder’s other hand dove between her legs to feel her wet for him and he pushed his cock inside her, fiercely and without benevolence. If she wanted to feel alive she could feel the pain and anguish that came with it. The ecstasy and fervor of this while he claimed her body back from this disease.

Scully cried out as he pushed his way all the way inside her and her body stretched to fit him. The head of his cock nudged at her cervix and she let out a hiss at the sharp twinge inside her belly. Mulder rocked against her and she cried out again.

“Do you feel me in there?” Mulder growled in her ear. He pulled out and shoved himself back into her. “Does this feel like living?”

Scully gripped the handle on the wall and looked back at him. “Yes.”

Mulder thrust a few more times into her while gripping her hips tightly. He leaned his body over hers and nipped at the skin along her shoulders, marking her before soothing the skin with his tongue.

He moved one of her hands to her centre and she looked back at him again before closing her eyes to touch herself. If they were doing this for life affirmation, at least one orgasm would need to be reached while he was moving inside of her. She spread the moisture from her lips to spread around her clitoris and Mulder grunted. Of all the times he fantasized about this, she was underneath him in a bed, spread out in front of him like a feast for him to taste everything. He was supposed to be gluttonous about her body, devouring her until she begged for him to stop.

When they got back to the hotel in Charleston, he would make good on that. One hour was more than enough to recover and he would prove his mettle on every surface of that room.

His large hand closed over her breasts and he continued to fuck her. His orgasm was approaching but he didn’t want to meet it before her. He couldn’t tolerate that.

“Come on, Scully,” he panted.

“I’m...” she shook her head. Her build had started but sometimes it took longer.

“Come on,” he urged her again. Mulder gripped her hips harder and fucked her with more callousness and force. He was able to stave off his orgasm with the desire to not fail her on this one last thing.

Maybe in his mind, he thought if he fucked her hard enough the cancer might leave her body. That the euphoria of mindblowing orgasms could be the link to curing cancer, had anyone with a medical license tried that yet?

The pain seemed to be enough to get her to the edge while the internal explosion of nerves firing and release expanded through her. Her tight walls massaged his cock, milking his own orgasm from inside him as it shot out of him like a bullet. He emptied his seed inside of her, his body searching for an egg they both knew it wouldn’t find.

They panted under the steam of the water and Mulder regretfully pulled out. He looked down at the smear of blood on his cock and then slowly up at her.

“Are you okay?” he asked stupidly, washing the semen and fluids from his crotch.

Scully allowed his seed to flow down her legs, tinged pink from her own blood and she nodded. “It happens sometimes.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Necessary roughness to achieve an orgasm,” she muttered and took the soap from him to wash herself. “It’s okay. I wanted you, too, if you were concerned.”

“Thanks for the clarification,” he quipped with a grin.

Mulder took the soap back from her and watched her as she washed her body. Her skin was red from the hot water and his hands grabbing and gripping her moments ago.

The aftermath of what they had just done was somehow disconnected to this other very terribly intimate act. As though fucking in a shower would followed by this kind of low discussion.

After she washed the shampoo and conditioner out of her hair, while Mulder stood quietly, observing her and studying, imagining her doing this alone before she saw him at work. Her meticulous nature, scrubbing at her scalp and ensuring her hair was rid of any residue. She squirted a small handful of shampoo into her palm, set the small bottle back on the shelf before holding her hands out to wash his hair. He bent his knees slightly and allowed her skilled fingers to rub the shampoo into his scalp. Mulder closed his eyes and breathed in the scent he had grown accustomed to on her that he had secretly appreciated all these years.

“Do you like that smell?” she asked quietly. She turned him towards the shower to allow him to rinse and he nodded, his eyes still closed. “Why?”

“I like everything on you,” he whispered and closed his mouth around her coral nipple.

She gasped and her fingers stopped working to rinse his hair but to clutch his head closer to her breast. His hand slipped down their bodies and he tenderly worked his hand between her legs. The fluid of their union, his own seed and her wetness allowed his finger to move around her clit with ease. She was still swollen and her jaw dropped as he pushed her back into the wall, and he played her body like a skilled musician would pluck at the strings of a cello.

Mulder kissed along her jaw and watched her face contort in rapture and exhaltion. He would do this all night if he could, to stand under water that was just too hot and feel something with her.

Her moans filled the locker room and Mulder whispered into her ear to let him hear her. Two long fingers moved inside her then back out to circle her clit and she moved one hand to cover his, encouraging him silently.

“Say it,” he urged.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered.

Her voice carried out from the locker room as she came, shouting his name as her orgasm washed over her again. Her body was limp against his and she rested her head on his shoulder.

While her skin felt hot to touch she shook and he kissed her cheek. “Do you need to get out?”

Scully nodded and Mulder shut the water off before handing her one of the threadbare towels. He muttered something about needing another one and left with the towel around his waist to grab another one for each of them. When he found her again she was using her towel to wipe away the blood from her legs and he rubbed a hand across his face.

“I can’t even do this-” he waved between them. “I hurt you no matter what we’re doing.”

Scully took the extra towel from him and wrapped it around her body. Her collarbones and neck were red from marks from his mouth.

“Mulder I wish you would let me assure you this was not hurtful,” she replied.

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her hair, the water transferring to his mouth and he licked it away. “I won’t lose you over this disease, Scully. I promise you I’m going to find a cure.”

Her arms embraced his body and she nodded into his chest. She knew he meant it and she hoped she would live long enough to see him fulfill it.

Chapter Text

They drove from Parkersburg to Charleston in silence, neither of them willing to discuss what just transpired in the shower and eventually the only sound in the car was Scully’s soft breathing as she slept in the passenger seat and the radio playing soft rock hits. Traffic on the I-77 South was slow for a Thursday evening so the hour and thirteen minute drive was reduced to just over fifty eight minutes.

In a typical guy fashion of reflection and introspection, Mulder had ample time to go over his recent performance in the shower and dissect the minutia of each sound and movement. What he remembered and would try to keep alive in the depths of his memory banks was the sight of his button-down partner, standing wet in front of him and moaning as he slid in and out of her.

What he knew from their encounter was that the sex wasn’t that of first time lovers, it was skilled and practiced, it was patient and considerate.

Mulder second guessed that thought. It wasn’t practiced but at least, it wasn’t hurried and rushed or fumbling and bad. They were both able to finish and he thought that counted for something.

It had been so long since he’d been with anyone he was starting to worry that he might have forgotten certain things about women but with her it all felt like it was supposed to. It felt new and exciting yet familiar and rehearsed. Her body was everything he had been desiring since she walked into his office four years ago and he wanted her again. He couldn’t concentrate on the fact that she was slowly losing her battle with this disease that his involvement in her life brought her.

For about fifteen minutes as they drove, he wondered if Scully had faked it just to be nice. Did she know how to fake it that well though? The next ten minutes he spent chastising himself for even doubting her.

It was all too spontaneous, he recalled and reminded himself how she reacted to him. He felt it. Her walls clenching down, the massage from her orgasm, the way it burst from her centre and moved all through her body.

Fifteen minutes after entering the city limits, they arrived at the at the Motel 6 off the I-64.

Her back was upright, shoulders squared against her seat with hands folded in her lap and her chin nodding towards her right shoulder. Even in sleep, her posture remained nearly perfect.

He wondered if that was a correction she received from Captain Scully as a child or one she assumed so often it became habit.

Mulder touched her hands lightly and her head jerked to look at him.

“We’re back at the hotel,” he said quietly.

Scully covered her mouth with the back of her hand as she yawned and unbuckled her seatbelt to stretch a little, letting out a quick moan before exiting the car. Mulder followed her through the parking lot and to her motel room door.

She looked at him in confusion and then slowly understood what he was intending. “Oh.”

“You want to be alone?” he asked, his voice even.

To anyone else his face would say nothing but she saw the panic and worry of rejection. Mulder would never tell her that this guessing game they were playing was half the reason men behaved the way they did. He didn’t like going out on emotional limbs for Scully, only to be rejected when she closed down from him time and time again.

“No, it’s fine,” she replied quickly. “I mean, I’m fine. I just thought... Since we’re on a case...”

Mulder tightened his mouth and shook his head. “Okay, Scully. Whatever you want.”

He marched ten feet down the small enclosure and pulled his key out to open his room. The light on his phone was flashing and he quickly closed the door behind him. Avoiding looking through the adjoining room door, that was slightly ajar, he sat on the bed and dialed the number to check his room messages.

“Agent Mulder, it’s Marita Covarrubias. Please call me back at the Embassy Suites. I’m in room 604,” the familiar voice filled him with dread.

What would she, the Special Representative to the Secretary General of the United Nations, be doing in West Virginia? Nothing international and Mulder deduced it had to be related to their case.

He shot a quick glance at the door that separated their rooms then decided whatever Marita wanted to talk to him about couldn’t wait until the morning. He left his tie on the desk next to a note for Scully if she decided to wander over to check on him. She probably wouldn’t.

Checking out a lead, I have my phone, M.

That was more than he usually left for her for clues to his whereabouts so he shrugged off any remaining feelings of guilt and headed over to the Embassy Suites. Mulder was embarrassed it took him longer than it should have because he didn’t have Scully to help him navigate, however he wouldn’t tell her that.

He parked their rental car at the back end of the lot and made his way through the cool night air. His hair had dried but he could still smell the shampoo and soap he and Scully shared on his body. He wondered if Marita would notice the change in his regular brand or if she was immune to such observations.

He used the lobby phone to call up to her room and tell her he was downstairs. Eventually he wandered over to the hotel bar where he waited paitently for her for over twenty minutes. When she joined him she was in jeans and an oversized t-shirt that did not appear as though it belonged to her. She buttoned her blazer in front of her and sat at the cushioned bar stool next to him.

“I was surprised to see you on my messages,” Mulder greeted her.

“I was in the area,” she stated as though he wasn’t welcome to any other information. “I have some intelligence that would be useful to you.”

Mulder nodded for her to continue.

“I have the name of a doctor in the Charleston area that has been experimenting with the usage of nano technology with subdermal embedding,” Marita replied and then smiled tightly at the bartender. “Merlot, please.”

The bartender, a portly man with a well groomed mustache and rolled up white shirt sleeves, looked at Mulder with a silent question of his preference of a late night beverage.

“Uh, I’ll have the same.”

Two large glasses were placed on white napkins in front of them and Mulder turned to Marita. “The doctor?”

“He’s working with a lab in Huntington. There’s a processing plant for microchips,” she replied. “The subdermal implants were working with an oncology department to help some women you might recognize the names of.”

“Subdermal as in under the skin?” he asked and she took a long sip from her glass. “What do the chips do?”

“Look for a patient Anne Creston,” Marita said as she slid a twenty dollar bill across the counter. “She’s in Madison.”

Mulder stood up from the bar and left his glass, full on the counter. “Take it up to your guest.”

“I might suggest you do something likewise,” Marita quipped and gave Mulder a half smile. “Don’t contact me here again, Agent Mulder. I won’t be here after tomorrow.”

“Why didn’t you just call me?” Mulder asked as she picked up the wine from the counter.

“I told you, I was in the area,”she replied, her voice giving nothing away of the nature of her visit. 

He couldn’t help but wonder if this was exactly the type of place she had men like Krycek or some other sap to meet with her on a week night when it wouldn’t interrupt her stops between visiting the syndicate and dealing with diplomats. In all the times that he had met with her, nothing indicated towards wanting the mess of a romantic entanglement but preferring her solitary existence and the occasional tryst.

“What’s the name of the doctor?” Mulder asked.

“Doctor Phillip Franklin,” Marita replied and left the bar.

The drive back to the motel was stalled a few times by unlucky traffic signals and he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel at every stop light. The longer the drive took, the more wired Mulder felt from this possible lead. He was feeling anxious and his body was strung tight like a drum. He was caught between wanting to tell Scully everything and not wanting to waste her time.

If this had been any other time in their partnership he would have rushed in there, woken her up and told her everything while urging her to get dressed in that hushed way he did as they stood at doorways after 10 pm. He would have asked her to skip sleeping in her comfortable bed to break into Doctor Franklin’s office, gather information before they went back to talk to him in the morning or at least sleep in the car while they waited for his office to open. The sooner they got there, the sooner they could find the answers. The sooner he could get her the cure he wanted so desperately to find.

The debate was still going on in his head about what to do as he approached the motel. After not seeing any lights on in her room, he decided to try to sleep instead, for once.

The tan Berber carpet was worn thin under his feet as he slipped his shoes off by the bathroom, hung his suit jacket on one of the few hangers in the closet by the sink outside the bathroom door and made an effort to salvage his pants by hanging them properly for the following day.

When he exited the bathroom in just his pale blue boxer shorts, after draining his bladder and his toothbrush hanging from his mouth, he was surprised to see Scully standing next to his bed, holding the note he had left for her.

To his surprise, she was in a pale blue nightgown that reached her knees. The cap sleeves and square neckline showcased the marks his mouth had left on her earlier but she didn’t seem to mind her state of dress or undress at this point. It was so unlike Scully not to even have a housecoat on, her need for material barriers between them always apparent.

“You went out,” she accused as if by doing so was meant to offend her.

Mulder felt a little annoyed at her tone. She had all but told him she didn’t want to share his bed after, what he thought, were two amazing orgasms. Would it have killed her to invite him into her room and let him comfort her after her emotional breakdown?

He shook his head at himself. He was acting entitled to her because that’s how he felt but he knew it was wrong. But to him, Scully would always be his. He felt that way for longer than he didn’t. She was his partner. She was his friend and his partner. She was his... Scully. It might be possessive and juvenile but he didn’t care at this point. Once he penetrated her, the selfish, controlling and dominating part of himself took over.

Mulder spit into the sink and grabbed his sweats from the drawer next to where she was standing.

“I had a lead, I got some information and I’m back,” he replied as he pulled on the grey pants.

“What if something had happened?” she asked, tense. Her eyes were searching for his but she glanced down at his bare chest and she took a steadying breath.

“Then I guess you wouldn’t need to worry about me trying to share a bed with you again,” he spat back.

“Is that why you took off on your own?” she snapped, shaking her head. She crossed her arms in front of her. “You can’t be that petty.”

“Hey, I was good for a few orgasms in the shower but when all is said and done, who the hell needs Mulder around?” he snapped. “God forbid you let me in!”

“I’m not worried about letting you in and how I would feel,” she retorted. “I’m worried about you.”

Mulder shook his head as though she had just explained time travel could work as long as you held onto a red balloon, wore yellow socks and chewed a specifically flavoured gum. No mechanics involved, just happenstance.

“What?”

“If I let you in more than I have...” Scully’s voice caught in her throat and she wiped away an offending tear. “When I go, you’ll just feel this more. You’ll feel more guilty, a deeper cut. The ramifications of what we’ve done already I worry... You’ve already lost your sister.”

“Hey!”

“I’m dying, Mulder!” she shouted again. She wiped away another tear and she took a calming breath. “I’m dying and we know it’s happening sooner than either of us were ready for. You need to face the facts that if you get everything you want from me, when I’m really gone, it will only hurt more.”

He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to think of her finality and how he would feel afterwards because he knew it wouldn’t come. Not for years. Not now, not soon.

“You’re not going to die, Scully!” he shouted back at her. “I won’t stop until I can find a way to cure you! Just admit that letting me in would scare you and has nothing to do with your goddamn cancer! Admit it!”

Scully shook her head and turned away from him for a beat. “I’m not afraid for myself. I’m afraid for you, Mulder.”

Mulder grabbed her shoulders spun her back around to him. She tried to push off his hands from her but he only gripped harder. “You see any emotional attachment as unnecessary so I’m honoured you’ve even shared anything with me. Scully, I see you needing to be an island but you can’t push me away forever. If you really think you’re going to die soon, then you’ll die with regrets.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“I see how deeply you feel everything,” she told him and he scoffed. “Come on, Mulder. The pain of losing what’s important to you can only hurt more.”

“I know you love me,” he stated and her eyes widened in shock. “As my friend, I see that. You’re a terrible liar and you might think you’ve got everyone fooled that you don’t need them, but I know you love me. You care about me. And guess what? I know I love you. So stop pushing me out to save me from some inevitable heartache.”

She stared at him for a beat. The stubborn nature of Dana Scully wanted to free herself from his grasp and tell him to fuck off. She wanted to tell him he knew nothing at all but she couldn’t keep lying. He was right.

There was love and affection between them. It became physical tonight and she didn’t feel worse for what they did in the morgue. It felt wrong because of everything they still needed to prove, to do fight against and to finish. If this wasn’t their time to be together, when would it finally happen for them?

Yet what would happen when she did leave her body and his broken heart behind? Would they see one another soon in the afterlife? One of them needed to survive this and she didn’t know if she could take it if he went first out of some misplaced guilt over her cancer.

“I should go back to bed,” she suggested and made no move to leave.

“You should stay here,” he countered and she raised her eyebrows at the implication. “Just to sleep.”

“Sure,” she nodded.

If she didn’t come in here to argue with Mulder she might not be in this predicament but when she heard his door close and she found his note, her blood boiled. She felt livid. The least he could do was give her more than “checking a lead” in a hurried note. She deserved more than that whether or not they were going to be sleeping together. She couldn’t do this without him, mostly because she knew she wouldn’t have the time.

Now, with the suggestion of a shared bed, she was facing what she attempted to prevent earlier that evening. Something intimate as sharing a bed after sex was never Scully’s preference. She didn’t long to be held in the arms of past lovers. She craved her space away from the noise and mess that relationships often brought. Jack, Ethan and Daniel all accused her of keeping them at arms length and holding back. It didn’t matter how many times she went to bed with them, when it was over, she closed off again. What would be the point of getting close to them if things were only going to end? As much as she tried, she never saw any of her serious boyfriends becoming anything more than that.

The internal debate going on within her was apparent to Mulder and he reached out and took her hand gently.

“Come to bed, Scully,” he invited. “I’ll be a gentleman.”

Scully nodded. To no surprise, their habit was not to sleep on the same side and so there would be no awkward ‘but that’s my side’ conversation. Scully took the right and he went to the left where his notes, a pack of seeds and his reading glasses sat.

Ceremonially, they pulled back the covers and climbed into bed together. Mulder patted his chest and held an arm out to invite her to him. When she didn’t move he pulled on her body and laid her down, bringing her head to meet the skin on his chest.

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “We can do this.”

She could hear his heart beating in her ear and she willed her own to slow down. “I trust you.”

Chapter Text

It was nearly six am when Scully jerked awake. There was a brief moment of panic that rushed through her until she heard Mulder’s familiar snoring.

While it rarely happened that they had to share a room on a case, she had woken up near him enough to know the sound of his soft palate quietly echoing out of his mouth.

Part of her had wished she left the room as he fell asleep the night before but the sound of his breathing, the warmth from his body and the frustration of the day had worn her down. He had remained a gentleman, holding her as a friend and lover would trying to keep the darkness at bay. They survived sleeping in the same bed under the notion of comfort. He held her as she fell asleep as his body slowly surrendered to slumber.

The sky beyond the drapes and outside the cocoon of their motel room was grey and overcast. The world beckoned, the day would begin but Mulder wanted to stave off reality as long as he could. The only reason being that today they might get more bad news about the case, these women and what was really happening to Scully.

He woke slightly to feel a stir in the bed near him, and he threw his arm around her narrow waist and pulled her body to his. Mulder opened one eye and he smiled. “Relax.”

She closed her eyes. “I forgot where I was for a second.”

Mulder wedged his top leg between hers and slid his arm under the down pillow her head rested on. With his face buried into her hair, the short stubble on his cheeks caught on her copper tresses. He took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of the shampoo and lavender lotion she used last night.

Scully pat his arm but it turned into more of a caress and he moved his over hers, trapping her hand between her belly and his embrace. He laced his fingers through hers and kissed the back of her neck at the slope where it curved down to her shoulders.

“Mulder, we need to get going soon,” she said as his hand dove under the covers and down her side. For six am he was surprisingly limber and alert. “If we want to be...”

Her voice trailed off as his busy fingers slipped under the edge of her panties while his mouth found the nerves on her neck that connected to her center.

“You were saying?” Mulder whispered in her ear and she arched her back against him.

She gasped and covered his hand with hers, stilling his deft fingers as they slipped between the lips of her sex. “We were going to meet Dr. Franklin.”

“Yeah.” Mulder stretched his hand and pushed himself into her backside.

She moaned out of frustration and want. “You said you had a lead...”

Mulder pulled his hand away and rolled onto his back. “I know.”

Scully pushed her palms into the mattress to sit up in the bed and moved her hair back from her face. Her eyes slowly drifted over to Mulder’s form under the sheets, his half-erection tenting the material before meeting his eyes.

“We need to get going,” she repeated, more for herself than for him and looked down at the hands in her lap. “Mulder-”

“Sorry,” he interrupted and he rubbed his hands across his face.

“It’s fine...” she shook her head and waved her hand between them. “I don’t mind that.”

Mulder sat up in the bed, against the cheap pressed wood headboard and adjusted a pillow behind him. “Okay.... So what?”

“Too much too soon isn’t...” Scully put her hand to her flushed cheek. “I’m a little sore.”

Mulder grinned in delight. “Oh.”

“Don’t be too pleased with yourself,” she admonished, throwing back the covers.

Mulder held his hands up in defense as she walked toward the adjoining door. “Okay, I won’t feel too pleased.”

Discussing the reality of her nonexistent sex life, prior to a tryst in Philadelphia, and the lack of which her body was accustomed to the intrusion of a man and exertion of intercourse was less than idyllic. Typically when a new relationship began, there was usually an informative discussion about past sexual partners, maybe some exchanges of what was preferred and not and also some war stories of bad break ups. Mulder had known her so long and so completely that somehow the very thought of him not knowing something that intimate was a relief.

If she thought back to her past relationships, there wasn’t passion and frenzied love-making in shower stalls or public places. It was tender, gentle and always in respectable locations like a bed or a couch. If she imagined what a romantic or sexual relationship with Mulder would be like it would be the same as working with him. Frantic, passionate and overpowering above everything else. She knew if she submitted to those desires as she did to her curiosity she would be consumed. Maybe she wanted to be consumed by it.

Maybe if she allowed herself to be consumed she could concentrate on that instead of the darkness that threatened to take her. Avoiding reality, facts and the science of her disease wasn’t really her style, that was Mulder’s. If she took a page from his book, maybe ignorance was bliss. Or perhaps it was his hope for her that kept her going, even after chemotherapy, hospital visits and the threat of losing her hair.

What she worried about now was the reality that came with dying of cancer and how Mulder would have no one to talk him down if she didn’t survive.

She stopped at the doorway. “I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”

******

Rain pelted against the windows of the car and Mulder turned the wipers up another level. The rubber squealed as it tore across the glass in front of them and Scully rubbed her temples and took another sip from the bottled water she had tucked between her legs.

“Are you feeling sick? Headache?” Mulder asked and she nodded her head. “Do you need to stop at a pharmacy?”

“I’m fine.” Scully reached into her bag and pulled out a small bottle of extra strength Tylenol, shook it twice before popping open the bottle and nodding toward the exit sign to their right. “That’s us.”

Mulder reached under the seat and produced the file he had been holding onto since he met her in the parking lot that morning. “Someone left this in the car.”

“When?” Scully asked as she took the thick file from him.

“I found it in there this morning,” he replied.

“Why didn’t you show this to me at breakfast?” Scully asked as she read over the preliminary file of Anne Creston.

There was little information there that Scully couldn’t have easily deduced from reading a chart or asking questions but there was a notation on the file that wouldn’t have been included in any medical questionnaire, health services form or preliminary cancer screening.

“This woman is living with the same cancer that I have,” Scully read from the file.

Mulder already knew that.

“There’s an attached psychological evaluation from September 1990,” Scully reported as she continued to flip through the file. “She applied to work for the FBI.”

“Where?”

“Just clerical, not an agent,” Scully replied. “She actually applied to work for several government agencies. Why would that be in here?”

“To discredit Anne before we ever meet her,” Mulder assumed. “Or if we went public with any information about her and her circumstances she won’t be believed. Except me, you know I’ll believe just about anything.”

“Who would send us this?” Scully asked, reading through the file.

“What’s Dr Franklin’s address, again? Four sixty seven or four seventy six?” he asked, ignoring her question as he pulled onto Main Street.

“He isn’t expecting us for another thirty minutes,” Scully reminded him as she checked her watch.

“We could surprise him.” Mulder suggested as he parked near the medical office. “Prevent him from getting his ducks in a row.”

Scully sighed disapprovingly and looked down at the file again.

Mulder turned off the car and turned towards her. “I didn’t want to tell you about this until we got here but he’s not just Anne Creston’s doctor. He’s working with subdermal implants.”

“Working with as in developing that technology?” Scully asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “She was diagnosed early in 1995 and has been getting treatments from Dr. Franklin for the last two years and that file suggests-”

“It suggests she hasn’t been receiving chemotherapy but frequent check ups to Dr. Franklin and the hospital,” Scully read off the page. “Her chart here says she receives regular blood screens, CT Scans, and MRI’s.”

“So her cancer was being monitored?” Mulder asked.

“The chart here showed it hadn’t metastasized since her diagnosis,” Scully noted.

“Anne Creston lives on Nathan Avenue,” Mulder said. “According to our lovely waitress Tracey, it’s near Spruce Fork and Little Coal River.”

Scully fought to roll her eyes at the mention of the blonde, thirty-something waitress that was pleased as pie to help Mulder with directions when Scully pulled out the map of Madison.

The jealous streak in the Scully’s ran deep, an inherited trait she wished away on more than one occasion. While she knew it went against everything she worked for to belittle another woman, it didn’t help either when one degraded herself with flashy make up, puffy hair and obvious cleavage for tips. She worked as a waitress in summers during medical school and managed to do it without wearing revealing uniforms or flirting unnecessarily. Scully always felt if sex wasn’t on the menu, the serving staff shouldn’t dress as though it were. But that was a debate for another time.

“Mulder? What are you hoping to find from Dr. Franklin?” Scully asked.

“What if we can find a better way to treat you? What if we find a way to treat all the women that have had this done to them?” Mulder asked as he turned to open his door.

“But what if we don’t?” she asked, reaching for his coat.

He looked down at her hand on his forearm and she pulled away slightly but he covered her hand with his. The heat from his palm was contradictory to the coolness from her own and she closed her eyes for a moment.

“Mulder?” she asked, looking back into his eyes. “What if we don’t?”

He took his hand off hers and rubbed his hand along his jaw near his ear. “I don't think the group of men we’ve been investigating, the government's who support them or the lies we’ve been told would ring a bell they couldn’t unring or create a labyrinth there was no way out from. I don’t think they would be able to do this to these women or to you without some contrary measure to protect them from prosecution.”

“I hope you’re right, Mulder,” she sighed. “But everything we’ve seen and been told has lead me to believe that these men are above that.”

“No one is beyond the law or the truth, Scully. Whatever they call themselves... The syndicate,” Mulder shook his head at the mention of the global group. “This organization that my father was a part of and the men that did this to you have to pay for what they’ve done.”

Mulder lead the way to Dr Franklin’s office. The plain glass storefronts advertising their contents of pharmaceuticals, stationery supplies, literature, art or music. The main strip of Madison was like the streets of any mid-sized town they visited over the last four years. What they appeared to be was unassuming while hiding of the dangerous dark underbelly that societies like this one disguised with oak and maple tree lined streets, churches and friendly faces.

Doctor Phillip Franklin was an unassuming man, five foot eight with salt and peppered hair he cut short to combat his receding hairline. His gold wire-rimmed glasses and kind face made him appear reserved however if he was an associate to Dr. Scanlan, a man who killed Penny Northern the rest of the MUFON group, he would be no friend to Mulder and Scully.

“Thank you for meeting with us,” Scully began as they sat down in his office. The walls were covered with family photos, diplomas and clipping of his work mentioned in medical journals.

“I’m happy to discuss my work however you understand I cannot disclose any private medical information regarding my patients.” Dr. Franklin had a slight lilt to his speech that Mulder guessed was German.

“We just have a few questions about the treatments you’re giving Anne Creston,” Scully replied.

“And the work you’ve been doing with subdermal implants,” Mulder continued.

Dr Franklin folded his hands on top of his desk and looked from Mulder to Scully. “It’s not conventional but we’ve had some success with Anne.”

“When did you first begin to treat Anne?” Scully asked.

“I treated her mother when she was diagnosed with breast cancer fifteen years ago,” he answered. “Cancer runs in their family and she came in for a screening.”

“What was your method of treatment?” Scully asked.

“The usual round of chemo therapy before we did a double mastectomy,” he replied.

“Where is Anne’s cancer localized?” Mulder asked, knowing the answer. It was the same nasopharyngeal mass on her superior conchae and sphenoidalis sinus. The file they were given had the exact same x-rays that Scully stood and morbidly discussed her own terminal illness.

“There’s a lot of medical jargon I wouldn’t want to bore you with,” Franklin averted.

“We can keep up,” Mulder retorted.

“Are you sure about that?” Franklin asked smugly.

There was the education and elitist attitude some in the medical profession had, showing its ugly face.

“Did you determine her diagnosis with a CBC and EBV or was it strictly an MRI and CT scan? Was she diagnosed at Stage 2 or were you able to conclude her diagnosis prior to the cancer metastasizing?” Scully asked. “Have you discounted the usage of Bevacizumab for her vascular endothelial growth factor?”

Dr. Franklin narrowed his eyes at Scully and Mulder smirked.

“I’m a medical doctor,” Scully explained. “I can assure you that whatever you disclose to my partner and I will be held with the strictest confidence.”

Dr Franklin looked beyond the agents to the wall behind them before studying the pair in front of him. He seemed to be deciding something internally while holding them in his office with pleasantries and bad coffee.

“She has a nasopharyngeal mass,” Dr. Franklin confirmed. “I cannot discuss it much further with you without consulting my patient however I can tell you generalities. You probably know this type of cancer isn’t treatable.”

“I am aware of that,” Scully replied.

“And yet Anne is living beyond the usual life expectancy of someone with this type of cancer,” Mulder spoke up. “What can you tell us about the treatment you’re giving her?”

“We have an epidemic in this country of heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases yet our conventional medical treatments are failing us,” Franklin replied. “If we look to other methods of treatment we might find new doors opening to cures we never thought possible.”

“You don’t have to give us some sales pitch on what you’re doing, Doctor. We are investigating the deaths of Mary Boyle, Virginia Leslie and Caroline Hawkin,” Mulder told him. “We’re trying to determine if these deaths were preventable and if they were, who is responsible for their deaths.”

“I can assure you I don’t know those other women,” Franklin claimed. “If they were receiving treatment for their disease it wasn’t from me. They would be alive if they were.”

“How can you guarantee that?” Mulder asked.

“I know my abilities and what my treatments can do,” Franklin puffed his chest a little before glancing down at his watch. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I do have patients to see today.”

Mulder stood up and held his hand out to Scully, ushering her out the door. “We’ll be in touch.”

“Looking forward to it,” Dr. Franklin replied, not moving from his desk.

Mulder could hear Franklin picking up his phone as they closed the door and dialing a number quickly. Mulder would be subpoenaing the doctor’s home and office telephone records before lunch.

“Ready to meet Anne?” Mulder asked as they made it back to the car.

“I feel like I need another shower,” Scully sighed.

Mulder’s face lit up as he unlocked her door for her. “A shower?”

“Not that kind,” she said, catching his expression. Mulder stuck his lower lip out in an obvious pout and Scully ignored it as she opened her door.

Mulder climbed in his side and turned to her. “I’m sorry I brought you here.”

“Don’t apologize again,” she admonished and closed her eyes. “It makes me feel guilty.”

“Why?” he asked, turning on the car.

“Because you’re not doing this,” she told him simply. She looked at him and smiled at him in the reluctant way she did when she gave him bad news. “I don’t think we should have anymore showers like that.”

“I think you should let me take you to bed,” he retorted before he could stop himself. “I mean...”

“Yes, a bed in a private room without the possibility of an audience would probably be preferable,” she said, shaking her head. “Come on, we’re late.”

Mulder did up his seatbelt, watching her. “But a bed is in the cards?”

“If I was a betting person I might put some money on it,” Scully teased.

“Well all right then.”

Chapter Text

The suburban streets of Madison leading up to Nathan Avenue were lined with birch and black cherry trees while the smell of the muddy river banks wafted up into the car. They passed a Long John Silver’s, Foodland and the Boone Memorial Park before turning onto the affluent neighborhood of Nathan Avenue.

Mulder had rolled the window down and could smell the chlorine of the backyard pools that he assumed would all be below ground. The familiar clicking of the sprinklers as they pushed water onto lush lawns and and a young woman pushed a child in a pram and she waved to Mulder as they drove past her.

Mulder waved back and turned to look at Scully. “Friendly place.”

“Maybe so but I couldn’t picture you in a neighborhood like this,” Scully admitted as she waved at the young woman.

“Why not?” Mulder asked out of curiosity.

He was delighted to know Scully pictured him as more than just the crazy-theoried man who dragged her out of bed to look at lights in the sky and call it the confirmation of alien life. If she thought about him at all on their down time or she did everything she could to distract herself from the reality of her professional life.

“I just thought if you bought a house you might find one on a large property, less likely to have neighbors listening in on your business, maybe on the edge of town along a stretch of road you could run on,” she suggested as they pulled into Anne Creston’s driveway. “But still close enough for the good take out places to deliver.”

Mulder smiled softly. “Yeah that does sound pretty good. A big yard for the goldfish to play in.”

“Maybe a wrap around porch to watch for UFO’s,” she mused. “Wooden club chairs with thick cushions.”

“A lot of bookshelves for medical journals and UFO doomsday literature.” He mused. “And a big kitchen we wouldn’t use for more than coffee and-”

“We?” Scully interrupted. “Who is we?”

Mulder’s face reddened and he laughed at his misstep. Of course it would be them, the “we” he mentioned. Who else would it be? Even if they were non-sexual, plantonic roommates until they were ninety on their deathbeds he would want it.

Co-habiting with Scully wasn’t abhorred to him and not just because he thought he might lose her. He didn’t think that was a possibility because it simply couldn’t be true. He thought of their future on the terms that she would outlive him because that was the only life he could live in.

When he thought of her and spending time with her he always wished and wanted for more. She was usually pushing him away from her hotel room door or leaving his room as they looked over case notes until the wee hours. She drew every boundary they ever had in their professional and private relationship. If she ever decided to let him in again he would take it and every inch of space she gave him.

He needed her no matter what the state of their relationship and the events of the last twenty four hours only confirmed that.

Mulder scratched the back of his head and let out a long breath. “Well, if I’m being honest...”

“Hello!” a voice interrupted and Mulder didn’t know whether to curse Anne Creston’s timing or praise it.

Mulder turned to see her approaching their car with a smile on her face.

“You must be the FBI agents,” Anne started as they got out of the car. “Dr. Franklin just called and told me you’d be on your way over.”

“I’m Special Agent Fox Mulder and this is my partner Dana Scully,” Mulder introduced, opening his badge to her in the ceremonial fashion with each encounter. “Thank you for meeting with us.”

“Come inside,” Anne invited. Her short brown hair was pulled back from her face with a blue ribbon and her fit five foot seven frame didn’t show the usual loss of radiance that most cancer patients displayed. There was a shining in her brown eyes and her olive skin almost glowed. “I’ve got some pumpkin spiced bread fresh out of the oven.”

Mulder looked over the car and raised his eyebrows at Scully and he could see in her eyes they were thinking the same thing. On her best days, Scully had the energy to clean her apartment and maybe hit the grocery store but on her worst days she was in bed as soon as she got home from work or went home at lunch to nap, not to return until the following morning. She was a good soldier and pushed on when she could but her body liked to remind her of its limitations, especially now in its infested and battling state.

Inside Anne’s home was immaculate. The hardwood floors looked recently mopped and there was not a speck of dust on the edges of the mahogany stained pieces throughout her home.

“Please have a seat,” Anne invited as she gestured toward the living room. “I’ll be right out with the coffee and bread.”

Scully sat down at the edge of the couch and she tumbled toward Mulder where his weight curved the cushions in the middle of the sofa. She caught her hand on his knee and Anne came out as Mulder was helping his partner move further away from him.

“Sorry, I should have mentioned that couch is finicky. It’s the first thing I wanted to burn after my divorce and the only thing still left from my ex,” Anne explained cheerfully. “The coffee will be another minute.”

Mulder struggled as he pushed himself to the opposite end of the couch. “Well used on Sundays?”

“Any game he was planted there, watching the tv and drinking beer after beer,” Anne said, looking to the empty spot between the agents. “Good riddance.”

“I don’t mean to pry-” Scully started.

“The bastard had an affair with the next door neighbour’s babysitter when he found out I was infertile,” Anne explained as though she was giving a history about the house and not her private life. There was a frankness to the way she obviously felt about her ex husband but Scully couldn’t tell if it was a matter of self preservation or a lack of care on her part anymore. “A man that age running around with a twenty-two-year-old is pathetic.”

“When did you find out about your infertility?” Scully asked, hoping to talk a little less about Mr Creston’s infidelity and more about the case at hand.

There was a beeping from the kitchen and Anne held up her hand. “One second.”

“She has more energy than most women, cancer or not,” Mulder murmered when Anne was out of ear shot.

“I would have to agree with you Mulder, she doesn’t seem sick,” Scully acknowledged.

“Whatever Dr. Franklin is doing for her is more effective than what we’ve seen in the past but that doesn’t explain the how or why,” Mulder said.

Anne returned with a tray of coffee, cream, sugar and sliced pumpkin loaf. “I had this baking this morning as I ran my six miles this morning.”

Anne poured them each a coffee and handed it to the agents. Mulder handed Scully the cream and she poured a little into each of theirs while he put two spoonfuls of sugar into his and then stirred hers.

“You two have that down to a science,” Anne noted.

“Ms Creston-” Scully started.

“Anne, please,” she interrupted with a smile.

“Anne, I’m curious about your illness, your diagnosis and how it came about,” Scully started. “When were you diagnosed?”

“About six months after my disappearance,” Anne explained. “Two years ago. I was... taken for lack of a better word.”

“Were you abducted?” Mulder asked.

“I don’t like that word,” Anne said bitterly. “There wasn’t some alien invasion and I was selected because of some pre-genetic markers they detected flying overhead. This is the kind of bullshit my ex used to say.”

“You were missing for a period of time?” Scully asked. That piece of information certainly was missing from her file.

“I was driving home from the grocery store,” Anne explained. “I got a flat tire, I got out to look at the damn thing and the next thing I knew I woke up in the hospital and three months had gone by.”

“Do you have any memories of this experience?” Scully asked.

“White walls, doctors, the sound of drilling like a dentist drill but not...” Anne recalled. She closed her eyes as if to avoid the memory from resurfacing. “I know it sounds crazy. I know what it sounds like and I know there are groups out there that like to say it’s some kind of conspiracy.”

“But?” Mulder prompted.

“I don’t know whether to think it was that or my ex trying to make me disappear before he had his affair or what,” Anne shrugged. She sounded oddly at peace for what had happened to her and that stuck with Scully. “I had a PI look into his potential involvement but he came up clean. Anyway, it was after that happening I was having some blurred vision and nosebleeds so I went in for a few tests we found out it was cancer.”

“What kind of treatments have you undergone?” Scully asked. “Your health seems better than satisfactory now.”

“My tests say that I have cancer,” Anne said and touched the bridge of her nose. “Here... but every screening, every test comes back that it’s not a threat. It’s localized and under control. It’s slowly shrinking. I’m getting better. And I managed to do it without losing my hair and feeling like I was dying from the chemo.”

“Have you found and removed metallic implants in your body prior to your cancer diagnosis?” Mulder asked glancing over to Scully, recalling the day she told him about the chip she found in her body.

The fear and anger that welled up inside him that day was powerful and motivating and pushes him to this day to keep searching. The idea that this was more than just his life, his quest and they were targeting her was frightening but not enough to scare him into stopping.

“Not before my cancer but I was in a coma for two weeks and my ex approved pretty much every test they offered to do on me,” she said with disdain. “When I woke up I had forty thousand in medical bills and some weird scars.”

“Where?” Mulder asked, leaning forward on his elbows.

Anne touched the base of her neck. “Here. And on my hip. The nurse doing my preliminary exam during my cancer screening said it looked like buckshot but, honey, I don’t hunt.”

Scully clenched her fists in her lap. She almost scoffed but quelled the urge.

“How does Dr Franklin treat your cancer now?” Scully asked.

Anne took a long sip from the steaming mug of coffee in her hand and set it down on a glass coaster on the side table. “It sounds crazy when I tell people.”

“Is he putting implants in your body?” Scully asked and she nodded.

“Would you be willing to sign an affidavit to release your records from Doctor Franklin?” Mulder asked.

“Of course,” Anne agreed. “I want to say this because... Look, he isn’t someone you should be worried about. I know there are doctors who use their patients to do horrible things to them but he’s been amazing. When I was diagnosed, the cancer was in stage two but since my last round of treatments it’s shrunk. He was heartbroken himself when my mother passed away. He kept saying there has to be better ways to treat patients. I’m not in danger from it metastasizing further, getting into my bloodstream.”

“Anne, I’m a medical doctor. Would you be willing to come down to the hospital for me to examine you?” Scully requested.

Anne nodded. “I don’t see why it would be a problem.”

“I’ll try to schedule something for this afternoon,” Scully told her as Mulder shoved a piece of the pumpkin loaf into his mouth. She glanced over at him and he nodded, thumbs up. She frowned slightly before looking back to Anne. “If the hospital won’t make an allowance for us to use their facilities we can try for early tomorrow morning.”

“Whatever you need,” Anne agreed. “Please try some of this pumpkin loaf.”

Scully held up her hand. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“My partner isn’t much of a baked goods person,” Mulder explained after swallowing a mouthful of the spiced bread. It was warm and the cream cheese icing was sweet and velvety. He took another large bite.

Anne narrowed her eyes at Scully. “Are you sick? Do you have it too?”

Scully hated that she appeared to be sick, that a woman handling her disease for longer could spot the symptoms and that she was discussing this with a stranger. But maybe they had something in common after all. If she was a fellow abductee and they were victim to the same men who took Scully.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Maybe Doctor Franklin can help you too,” Anne said.

Scully didn’t know if she believe in maybes and chance anymore.

*****

Mulder called into the Madison precinct again as they were leaving to check on local usage details or LUD’s. He had called for them to be ready when they were on their way to Anne Creston’s and surprisingly, they were when they finished interviewing her over an hour and a half later.

When he made the request for Franklin’s office at Boone Memorial, Mulder was told that even though the hospital kept all records on file of outgoing calls, due to their antiquated system, it was hard to decipher who called from which extension.

Mulder asked for the phone records anyway and would decide what was what. He always liked a puzzle and a challenge and finding any connections between Dr. Franklin and Dr. Scanlon was his first priority. If he could rule out they were connected, he could then decide if he was able to be trusted to help Scully.

And he need to find out why the women who brought them out here weren’t being treated for the very same cancer. What did their doctors miss? What secret treatment did Dr. Franklin have access to?

“Mulder, would you mind if we went back to the hotel for a couple of hours?” Scully asked as they left Anne’s neighborhood.

Mulder glanced over to her as she rubbed her temples as if to massage away the invading cells from spreading. Sometimes when she did that it was a sign she was going to be sick. Sometimes it was just a sign she had a headache and needed an hour or two to recharge.

“Are you okay, Scully?”

“I’m fine,” she replied, tiredly. “Just a little fatigued. Late night and early morning.”

“I can drop you off there and pick you up after looking over the LUD’s from Dr Franklin at the precinct,” he offered.

“We should get them on the way back to the hotel,” she suggested and Mulder nodded in agreement.

There were too many questions from local officers about her absences and occasionally, to appear as though she wasn’t anything less than capable, Mulder allowed her an hour to nap while he poured over notes or files in the privacy of their hotel. It was a courtesy he extended toward her on more than one occurence and he never made her feel as though what she needed was slowing down an investigation. It probably went part and parcel with the guilt he felt over what was being done to her.

Mulder pulled into the precinct parking lot and left the car idlying as he ran inside for his information. While he was inside she tried to will away the feelings of exhaustion but she knew her body was calling for sleep. She knew that when she reached these limitations, if she pushed it, she needed extra time off. That was time she didn’t think they had.

“How did you get the LUD’s so quickly?” she asked when he returned.

“I had the Gunmen hack West Virginia Phone Tech and send them from an anonymous email account,” Mulder said with a great deal of sastisfaction.

“I shouldn’t ask these things if I don’t want the answer,” Scully sighed to herself and took the envelope from Mulder.

“You really shouldn’t,” he agreed as he put the car into drive.

Scully slept on the car ride back to the hotel, her body yielding to the repose of the car as they made their way to the motel. While he knew she would never say anything besides a simple thank you and she would insist that she didn’t need Mulder’s protection or help, he also knew what it meant for her to admit she did.

Forty five minutes later he was stretched on his bed in the hotel while Scully took a rest in her room. He had the LUDs in front of him, a highlighter and a pack of sunflower seeds to his left with a paper cup from that morning’s coffee for discarded shells. With his sleeves rolled up and glasses on his face, he was ever the picture of a rumpled FBI agent.

Mulder had quickly found a pattern in the calling records and compared those to Dr. Franklin’s hospital office hours that his secretary had provided for them with a wink, a charming “please” and smile from Mulder.

As the afternoon wore on he had a list of telephone numbers he wanted the his three friends to check out.

“The Lone Gunmen, what’s your theory?” Frohike answered.

“Turn off the tape Frohike,” Mulder instructed.

Frohike shuffled around for a second. “It’s off.”

“No really,” Mulder insisted.

“Okay, okay,” Frohike conceded and Mulder heard him grunt on the other end of the line. “What’s up, compadre?”

“I need you to look into some numbers for me,” Mulder asked. “Dr. Franklin has been taking calls frequently from a number in Allentown, Pennsylvania.”

“What do you need?” Frohike offered.

“The usual, name and address, business background and who they really work for,” Mulder asked. “Did you dig up anything on Franklin?”

“He’s cleaner than a GCP Biotech employee,” Frohike reported, referring to a recent investigation the Gunmen were doing into BigPharm companies. Mostly they were coming up with ‘bubkiss’ but they were determined something was there. “Married in 1980, four kids, no police calls for domestic disturbances, and not one patient has filed a malpractice suit against him.”

Mulder wrote down everything Frohike was saying. “So he’s Mr Perfect.”

“He immigrated to the United States in 1968 from Hamburg, single and with a medical degree. Looks like he got certified by lady liberty and started his practice in West Virginia,” Frohike reported. “You’ll love what comes next.”

“Don’t leave me hanging, Frohike,” Mulder said.

“He has co-authored four articles for the New England Journal of Medicine with Dr. Shiro Zama,” Frohike reported.

“Mulder, get this,” Langly came on the line. “Dr. Zama and Dr. Franklin were receiving payments from Lombard Research facility in 1995. Big deposits.”

“Why do I know that name?” Mulder asked.

“They’re also the company where Kurt Crawford was working,” Langly reminded him. “They’re partners with a company based on the west coast called Prangen Pharmaceuticals.”

“They couldn’t possibly be so obvious,” Mulder thought outloud.

“You might be if you think no one is looking,” Langly pointed out. There was a muffled voice in the background on Langly’s end. “What? Oh yeah. Frohike wants you to tell Scully he’s been working out.”

“I’m buff,” Frohike said as he grabbed the phone back from Langly.

Mulder heard a cry through the door from Scully’s room.

“Gotta go,” he told the Gunmen and hung up the phone before running across to her bedside.

Scully was sitting up in her bed, dressed in her nightgown and breathing heavily. Her body was shaking and tears were falling down her cheeks.

“Scully?” Mulder sat down on the bed next to her. “Are you feeling sick? Do I need to take you to a doctor?”

She shook her head and wiped her hands away at the tears on her cheeks as she sucked in a breath to calm herself. “No.”

“What happened?” Mulder asked, his head dipping down to try to see her eyes as he rubbed his hands from her shoulders to her elbows. “Can you talk to me?”

She took a few calming breaths and she put her hands on his forearms. “Bad dream.”

“What did you see?” he asked.

While she had spoken with Penny Northern about what happened during her abduction, she had yet to tell Mulder what, if anything, she remembered. The attempts at hypnotherapy had scared her into denial and repression while she refused to delve into these memories with Mulder. It worried her she would look more weak, more vulnerable or more of a liability.
“Scully?” he urged. “Please...”

“I was in a room... It was white and I saw Dr Zama,” Scully shook her head and swallowed. “I don’t want this.”

Mulder started to pull away but she gripped his arms tighter.

“No, Mulder,” she said. “I don’t want these memories in my mind. I need to forget this right now.”

“Scully if you remember anything, it might help us,” he pointed out.

She slipped her hand up his arm and to the base of his neck and her eyes flickered down to his mouth. “I need this.”

Their mouths met in the middle with hot breath and tongues slipping against one another as she gripped at his shirt. She needed something that was real, something that was basic and raw. She wanted him again, soreness from last night or not.

He broke the kiss to shed his tie while she worked on the buttons of his dress shirt. He pulled the shirt over his head and discarded it on the floor next to the bed. She ran the back of her fingers up his torso and down before reaching for his belt. Mulder felt himself go from half mast to fully erect at the feeling of her tugging on his pants.

In an attempt to prevent an embarrassing situation of trying to maneuver his pants off while being above her, he stood up to kick off his dress pants and added them to the pile of his clothes on the floor. His white undershirt added to it and he stood in front of her in his boxer shorts and socks. The impressive seven and a half inches of him tenting the material on his hips and she fought the urge to lick her lips.

Scully reached for the waist of his underwear and pulled him a little closer to the edge of the bed before releasing the material with a snap against his waist.

“Hey now,” he teased and she smirked up at him.

Scully pulled on the band again and pulled them down his thighs and Mulder gulped at the position of her face in direction to his groin.

“Uh, Scu-” his voice caught as she reached her cool hand out to stroke his length, her fingers not quite reaching around his girth.

“Yes?” she prompted.

“Nevermind,” he gulped and closed his eyes.

He urged himself to open them again, just to be able to watch what she was doing but his mind knew the visual of seeing her face next to his cock might finish things before they started. If he hadn’t spent five minutes in the shower that morning satisfying his morning urge it wouldn’t have lasted this long. Not that Mulder had a problem with premature ejaculation but Scully raised the bar to another level and his excitement and desire for her was bigger than anything he had ever experienced. He worried, now that he finally had her in a bed, he would forget what to do. Last night his instinct took over and he followed his desires. Today, he was responding to her need and he wanted to ensure he could satisfy each and every yearning she expressed to him.

What was apparent was that she needed to be in control right now, to help herself forget and do what she needed to push the memories of those missing months from her mind.

When he opened his eyes to look down at Scully it was just as she was closing her mouth around the head of his cock.

“Jesus,” he whispered.

Her tongue swirled around the head and she sunk her mouth further down on his member. Mulder watched her head bob up and down, increasing the suction with each stroke of her mouth.

“Oh god, you’re too good at this,” he praised as he tentatively touched her head then clenched his fists as his side.

She continued her movements, swirling her tongue at the head with each up-stroke and Mulder reached his hand out to the wall for support. Each flourish of her mouth caused him to grunt and groan.

“Scully...” he warned after a few minutes. “I don’t want to come yet.”

She released his member and stroked it with a firm but not too strong grip. A pink tongue traced the edges of her mouth and she nodded at him with ravenous eyes.

Mulder pushed gently on her shoulders for her to lie back and he knelt down next to the pile of his business attire. With tender hands, he pushed her knees apart and pulled her hips forward on the bed. His fingers climbed under the hem of her nightgown and towards her panties, elated to find wet material at his fingertips. One finger snuck under the edge of her panties and he found the slippery nub between the lips of her sex.

A sound between a squeak and a moan exited her mouth. Her body was ready for him so quickly and she cursed the need to have him again while craving it for a necessary distraction.

“You really are too good at that,” Mulder said again as he kissed along her thighs. “I love this nightgown by the way.”

“Thank you,” she said and sighed as he pulled off her panties. “I don’t...”

Mulder kissed down her knees, along her thighs and toward her sex and she thread her fingers through is hair.

“I don’t normally wear them,” she tried again.

Mulder pushed the hem of the gown up further around her waist and he shook his head. “That’s a damned shame.”

“I wouldn’t ever know with you when you’d be bursting into my room. Pants and a shirt felt more appropriate with a partner like you who liked to visit my room in the middle of the night,” she explained.

“Sometimes I called you over. And it wasn’t just me, Scully,” he reminded her. “Sometimes it was Army Intelligence.”

“You’re right,” she said and let her back fall against the bed as he placed a kiss above the trimmed stretch of hair on her lips.

“Oh, Scully say it again,” he whispered against her skin.

“You’re right,” she sighed.

Mulder lingered a kiss on her mound and then again on each lip of her sex. A tongue traced her lips before delving between them, tasting the juices of her desire.

“Oh God,” she moaned.

Mulder repeated the action, going up one lip of her labia and then the other before sliding is tongue up and down the centre. He found the bundle of nerves and she spread her legs further for him.

“Oh my god,” he murmured.

“What?” Scully asked.

“Just... I just love looking at you like this, Scully,” he said, looking up at the sight of her sex to her flushed face. “You’re so beautiful and full of life.”

Before she could reply, he cut off the possibility of coherent thought as the tip of his tongue circled the bundle of nerves and swiped across the sensitve area below it.

“Oh my god,” she moaned.

Mulder held back a smart ass remark about his name being a different three letter word as he continued to circle his tongue around her clitoris. His hand slid up her leg and he inserted one long digit into her sex. It was tight and hot, and he wanted to slip inside there and never leave. First he wanted to distract her further from the monsters that lived inside the subconscious of her mind. He pulled her further towards him and put each of her thighs over his shoulders.

He felt her labia surge and he rubbed the flat of his tongue across the swollen flesh and she dug her heels into the muscles on his back, pulling his face closer as her orgasm approached.

“Oh god... I’m gonna come,” she moaned and her fingers tightened their grip on his hair as he kept his pace of his mouth.

Suddenly her body went taut and she felt the internal surrender to the explosive waves of her release. Scully grabbed the pillow next to her face as her back arched against the bed, stretching her body like a kitten after its first taste of catnip. When her body finally levelled out she pushed his face away and covered her sex with her hand.

“I need a second,” she mumbled and he nodded.

Mulder sat back on his haunches and kissed each of her knees before closing them together. He sat on the bed next to her and looked down at her panting, her flushed skin and nightgown bunched around her abdomen.

“That’s a good look for you,” he smirked.

“Always with the jokes,” she retorted and sat up to pull the nightgown over her head.

“Oh that’s much better,” he said approvingly. Scully swung her leg over his lap and straddled him. “No I spoke to soon. I like this best.”

“I thought you might,” she said.

Mulder thread his hands into her hair and pulled her mouth to his, kissing her for all she was worth. He tasted like her and a hint of the spiced bread from earlier. Scully rubbed her lips across his hardened flesh and he reached between them to position himself at her entrance.

Scully looked into his eyes as she began to sink down on him, impaling her body with his turgid member. The blue of her eyes sparkled and she smiled at him in rapture.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she rotated her hips once. “For helping me forget.”

Mulder held her hip with one strong hand and kept his other in her hair. “Is this enough?”

Scully nodded as she moved her body up and down, her walls squeezing him better than anything he had ever felt before. “I think so.”

Mulder grabbed her ass and flipped them over before pushing into her forcefully.

Scully cried out at the sensation and nodded. “Again.”

Mulder pulled back and drove into her again as he began pounding into her, driving her across the matress and she held onto his shoulders, holding on for dear life. He gripped her shoulders to prevent her from moving and he kissed her as he continued to pump in and out of her. When he pulled away he saw a smear of blood across her lip and she noticed it on his.

She pulled him in for a kiss again and the mixture of her blood and her sex were now all they could taste. It wasn’t enough that this cancer invaded every part of their lives that it was now interrupting their sex. Mulder pushed into her harder and she gripped his skin harder, feeling the skin break under her nails.

“I’m taking you to the doctor after this,” Mulder grunted as he bit down on her shoulder, suckling on the skin. He grabbed at her breast roughly with his hand and pinched at her nipple.

Scully clutched at the bedding and grunted. “I’m fine.”

He sped up his rhythm and increased his force of which he was moving in and out of her. “You’re not going to die, Scully. You’re too alive to die. I can feel it all around me.”

She released the starch white sheets and wiped at the blood on his mouth and hers. “I’m not going to die.”

He continued to pound into her and he felt her walls tightening once more.

“I can feel you. You’re going to come again.”

Scully nodded and gripped at the muscles on his back. “Yes.”

As his balls began to tighten and he felt the surge of his own release approaching, he continued to push into her and hitting her cervix with each thrust. Scully felt the familiar twinge of pain that accompanied an orgasm from this angle with this force. He did it to her last night and he was doing it to her again.

As he pushed into her one final time and his cock emptied inside of her walls clamped down. He dug his fingers into the bones of her shoulders and she cried out as she came again, her voice cracking as she called out his name.

Mulder panted on top of her and he started to push off but she pulled him down closer.

“Don’t go yet,” she whispered.

He nodded and settled down further on her. “I don’t want to crush you.”

“Just stay here,” she urged.

Mulder placed a soft kiss on her cheek and stayed there as long as she needed him. Which turned out to be longer than it took for him to slip out and spill their juices on the bed, for her to cry a little and for him to shed a few tears also.

Chapter Text

For a city with over fifty thousand people, Charleston had become the hamlet of services to the Kanawha county. The city is known as a center for government, commerce and industry with salt, coal and natural gas being early enterprises. Today the predominant monopolies lied in government, education and medicine. What sickened Mulder was the high demand for the health care industry and who might be profiting from it. The offices for oncology at CAMC Memorial Hospital housed ten skilled and renowned oncologists, a full nursing staff and state of the art equipment.

Scully had tried to argue that she could wait to get her latest nosebleed examined when they wrapped up the case. However, like most debates, Mulder’s counter-arguments were stronger and convincing for her to concede his point and humour him. It took only a few minutes on the phone with the nursing station, a discussion of Scully’s credentials and condition and the doctors were happy to accommodate her at the end of the day.

Prior to Scully’s appointment, Mulder insisted on lunch at the diner near their motel to refuel. He ordered them each a turkey club, easy mayonaise for both with fries for him and a salad for her. When Mulder polished off his sandwich and made a move for the half of hers that sat untouched she pushed her plate towards him. He took a healthy bite and asked why everything she had tasted better. She flushed a little before she rubbed the top of her foot along his calf muscle under the table. The public flirting was a huge milestone for both of them.

Reality brought them out of their reverie when Mulder’s cell phone rang and their contact at the Charleston police department asked for them to come in that afternoon.

The investigation into the deaths of Virginia Leslie and Caroline Hawkins began two weeks ago. The local ME had little to offer in way of answers and Charleston PD quickly called the FBI when they found Mary Boyle in the same state as they found the other two victims.

Young, otherwise healthy females dying suddenly without explanation with the same history of disappearances for two to three months was an easy call for the Police Chief to make. If they didn’t have the case on their books, they weren’t responsible when the FBI’s investigation came up lacking and Mulder was wondering if someone was banking on that.

As they walked into the precinct after they checked in with the desk sergeant Detective Kefenick, their first contact with the case, descended the stairs.

“Ah, my Special FBI agents. I was just looking for you,” he greeted.

Detective Henry Kenefick was a man who didn’t believe in affirmative action, he felt women belonged at home with children and male nurses and female doctors were an abomination to history. What made it worse was he was in his late thirties. Young enough to know better but, in his mind, too old to change.

When they first met Kenefick, he called Scully “Honey,” “Little Lady” and “Sweetheart.” He believed the boys club of the FBI shouldn’t have a place for females with a badge beyond the secretarial pool. If he only knew how few and far between women were in the field were, especially with Dana Scully’s credentials. It might give a man like Kenefick the slap upside the head to give respect where it was due instead of looking at Scully like a slice of pie with melting ice cream.

Aside the sexual encounters of the last twenty four hours, Mulder knew Scully was more than just a woman. He saw her mind and her integrity and had always treated her as an equal. Unfortunately for those in local law enforcement, they didn’t have the global conspiracy and family tragedy to help them see beyond the immediate reaction to Scully’s beauty. Mulder was attracted to Scully as a man is to a woman yet his body was used to the abstinence and solitude his work provided him.

To a man like Kenefick, Scully had to earn his respect which she did in spades after reporting the first autopsy. She caught him by surprise and impressed him by explaining in layman’s terms the exact method the cancer had killed Virginia Leslie while wearing scrubs stained with blood and the open corpse laid behind her.

“How are you doing today, Detective?” Scully asked as she signed her name on the roster check in before giving a polite smile to the desk sergaent.

“I’m a little confused to your notes on Mary Boyle,” Kenefick explained and ran a hand through his thick chestnut hair.

He was a tall man, standing at the same height as Mulder but had maybe forty pounds on her partner. His size alone was intimidating let alone his booming voice and Mulder had imagined Kenefick’s successful case closing rate came from intimidating more suspects than figuring out the puzzles in front of him. The how and why of drug related crimes didn’t addle the brain as much as homicide or global conspiracies.

“Why don’t you give me the monkey’s run down while I top this up?” Kenefick nodded to the mug of coffee in his hand and they followed the detective through the armed gate and up the stairs.

The agents went straight to the small conference room off the squad room where they had met with Detective Kenefick over the last few days. Mulder shed his suit jacket quickly and loosened his tie while Scully held her arms firmly across her chest. Where he ran hot, she was cold.

Mulder allowed his eyes to wander over Scully’s small frame and remind himself that while her presence in his life made her feel substantial in size, she wasn’t a large woman. At five foot three inches, she wasn’t usually the first spotted in a crowd and often stood straight in her thick three inch heels as to appear taller. He also knew it wasn’t a matter of passion or lack thereof that she originally found the nickname “Ice Queen” given to her. It was based on the fact that her core temperature ran cool and her hands were often cold since moving to the east coast. Her person missed the sun and warmer temperatures of San Diego and now seemed to absorb all chilled air around her. By the time she broke it off with Jack, the moniker had followed her back to Quantico for the wrong reasons. A not so clever prank gift of dry ice was left in her office more than once before her students realized she was an excellent teacher and a well deserving agent of their respect.

Mulder had heard that much about her when he was told she was being assigned to the X-Files and deduced it was probably the same level of intelligence that titled him Spooky. Juvenile and delinquent nicknames for agents they couldn’t compete with in the same way Kenefick felt intimidated by Scully being a woman, a doctor and an agent with the FBI all at the same time.

“So, what’s going on with the investigation?” Kenefick asked as he joined them in the conference room. He sat himself down across from the agents at the long table and took a tentative sip of his coffee.

“We have a lead on Doctor Phillip Franklin in Madison and his patient, Anne Creston,” Mulder said as he sat down and handed over a small file he had put together.

The information he was inclined to share with the police detective was not as generous as what he was eager to share with Scully. The file was a few pages of information he was anonymously slipped and the phone records he had collected through the Lone Gunmen.

“He has some connection to a pharmaceutical group in San Diego and one we’ve dealt with before in Allentown, Pennsylvania,” Scully reported as she folded her hands on the table. “Lombard Research has some connections to patients we met earlier this year. They’ve all passed on.”

“What would be the reason for them to be working together?” Kenefick asked as he flipped through the file. “You’re telling me all these women disappeared for 2-3 months and were diagnosed with cancer six to twelve months afterward? Why would these men be involved in this? What’s the point?”

Mulder glanced over at Scully. “Madison is by no means a large city but houses one of the best cancer facilities in the tri-state area. There’s a business of making people sick, killing them slowly while making a lot of other people money and no one is paying attention to the fact that there’s a bigger issue at stake here.”

“What’s that, Agent Mulder?” Kenefick asked, his dull hazel eyes confused at to what Mulder could possibly be referring to.

“Dr Franklin is now the subject of our investigation, his connection to Prangen Pharmaceuticals,the Lombard Research Company and the deaths of these women,” Mulder stated.

“These women weren’t patients of his,” Kenefick pointed out.

“Why not? How did each doctor miss their signs and symptoms of the exact same cancer? In a one hundred mile radius, you might think that there would be the resources to direct these women to find this miracle doctor,” Mulder challenged. He stood up from his chair, leaning his hands on the table toward Kenefick and his voice was tense. “Over a dozen women have passed on and now three more. How many women have to die before you see that there’s something going on here?”

Scully put her hand on Mulder’s forearm and she held his gaze in a warning. He nodded and rubbed his hands across his face.

“Detective, would you agree that twelve women dying at the hand of the same doctor is suspect? With no family history of this disease and and the same missing time?” Scully asked in hopes to pull the conversation back to a neutral point.

“I agree it’s suspect,” Kenefick conceded. “But I don’t see how missing time means you get cancer.”

“It’s what was done to them during their missing time and the removal of a chip from implanted during the abduction,” Mulder stated as he sat back down.

“A chip?” Kefenick repeated.

“A sub-dermal implant, at the base of the neck,” Scully explained. “It’s a microchip that could be used for more than keeping track of a persons whereabouts. The technology is unlike anything we’ve seen.”

“This is the kind of far out, hokus pokus mumbo jumbo they warned me about when they told me you were coming in,” Kefenick muttered as he pushed the file back towards the agents. “I thought they were joking.”

“Sorry to fulfill the notoriety of our office,” Mulder retorted with a roll of his eyes and took the file back in his possession.

“Detective Kefenick, do you think that it’s questionable in this county, with the resources to the state of the art cancer facilities here, that these women were misdiagnosed?” Scully asked. “Or that it’s possible that the missing time, the implants taken from their necks and the cancer that develops develops from a string of foreign DNA left behind from that implant?”

“I don’t get it,” Kenefick shook his head and held up his hands. “But I mean, I guess I get it.”

“You called us out here to look into these deaths, we’re just drawing conclusions from the evidence at hand,” Scully reminded him.

Kenefick nodded. “Fine. Tell me about Dr Franklin and Anne Creston.”

“She’s in perfect health otherwise except for her diagnosis of a tumor on the wall between her sinus and cerebrum,” Scully explained. “The tumor is inoperable and her doctor has yet to use conventional treatments. Mary Boyle had yet to receive so much of a diagnosis for her tumor. Her doctors prescribed her almotriptan malate.”

“What’s that?” Kenefick asked.

“It’s prescribed to migraine sufferers, commonly known as Axert,” Scully described.

“So, Anne is healthy but she has a cancer diagnosis. Other women are dying and someone’s making money off of it. Where do you want to go next with this?” Kenefick asked.

“We need to find out what his methods of treatment are and see if they can be duplicated in other patients,” Mulder explained. “We need a warrant for his patient list and we need to meet with the doctor’s that treated the other women. Why haven’t we been able to get a hold of them in the last few days?”

Kefenick dropped his notebook on the table and flipped open to a page that Mulder assumed was all in code or the detective possibly had worse handwriting than he did.

“Virginia Leslie’s doctor won’t be back from Mexico until Friday...” Kefenick flipped another page. “Mary Boyle’s doctor is MIA at the hospital and his office. His patients have been referred to another doctor in the interim. We have no leads on where he’s been or what’s going on with him. He’s unmarried, not from the area and not a guy with a lot of friends. That investigation is still ongoing.”

Mulder looked over to Scully and worried for the fate of other doctors. “What about Caroline Hawkins?”

“He is also out of the country,” Kefenick read off his notebook. “He travels to India three times a year.”

“India,” Mulder repeated.

“India. As in 1 billion people and very hot,” Kefenick said.

“Why.... What is he doing there?” Mulder asked. “His timing is a little suspect since his patient just died.”

“This trip was on his itinerary for months,” Kefenick explained.

“So this is just a round of coincidences we’re supposed to believe are happening around the deaths of these women?” Mulder asked Kefenick.

“I hear hooves I think horses not zebras, Agent Mulder,” Kefenick replied. “But I can tell you think giraffes or caribou.”

“I think if you have the lack of imagination to believe the simplest answer is the most obvious one then you deserve to be cut by the literal Occam’s razor,” Mulder muttered.

“Excuse me?” the detective stood up.

“You’re not even trying to investigate this case,” Mulder argued.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Kefenick retorted.

“We need to look into any other patients Franklin is working with,” Scully reminded them as a way of moving past the posturing and chest puffing. “Agent Mulder can accompany you to the District Attorney’s office while I run an errand.”

Mulder glanced over toward Scully then back to Kefenick. “Ready to get a warrant, Detective?”

“After you, Special Agent FBI.”

****

Scully looked around the Charleston hospital waiting area for the oncology department with nurses chatting behind the station and telephones ringing. She glanced back down at her form, the display of the human body drawn out in front of her.

“Where is your cancer located?” the questionnaire asked.

Scully drew a small circle around the sinus area with her black inked pen and stared at the drawing. Such a small space for cancer to invade and yet the most deadly since it was inoperable. She could receive chemotherapy, blood transfusions and pray at church but she knew that her mortality was no longer a far off idea. She had a few months, maybe a year left to live.

The news from her last visit to her oncologist was deafening. But what took the lives of these women was a cancer that had been undiagnosed and continued to spread throughout their bodies after death. Would that happen to her too? When they laid her rest would her body turn from that of it’s form into a shell that held only a tumour?

“Dana Scully?” a woman’s voice interrupted her morbid thoughts.

She looked up to see a young nurse in pink scrubs standing in front of her. She had the smile on her face that usually accompanied visits to the oncology department. Kind, sad and sorry for you. She hated that face.

“I’m your nurse, Leah. Do you want to follow me? We’ll get you into a gown and then the doctor will be right with you.”

Scully deduced the nurse was possibly twenty seven at the most and chose oncology because of some macabre fascination with people on the precipice of the end of their lives.

“First we’ll get you into a gown. I’ll be back in a minute to go over your form,” Leah said.

Scully picked up the one-size-fits-all gown that waited for her. Slowly she unbuttoned her jacket, blouse and hung up her clothing on the back of the door with the hangers that were thoughtfully provided. Sometimes they expect her to leave her clothing in a pile on one of the chairs in the room and, no matter how she folded them, they would always fall to the floor. Her nylons got tucked into her pants pocket and she felt grateful she had the presence of mind to leave her gun with Mulder when she left the precinct. There wasn’t anywhere secure to lock up a gun at a hospital. While she chose to thumb her nose at certain FBI regulations, including sleeping with her partner, gun handling wasn’t exactly one she felt comfortable ignoring.

There was a soft knock at the door and Leah returned and gestured to Scully to sit up on the examination table.

“So I see here you have a tumour between your sinus and cerebrum,” Leah read off the chart. “What were the symptoms that brought you in today?”

“My doctor has been monitoring my cancer and I feel fine but usually during bouts of stress I suffer nose bleeds,” Scully explained. “I had one earlier today and wanted to ensure everything was all right.”

“What were you doing when you got the nosebleed?” Leah asked, taking notes on her chart.

Scully stared at Leah blankly. She wasn’t going to explain she was having particularly rough intercourse with her partner because that wasn’t helpful to her diagnosis.

“I was with my partner,” Scully told her and Leah opened her mouth to ask another question. “I’m an FBI agent.”

Was that a half truth or mostly a lie?

“I see,” Leah wrote something down and then studied Scully for a moment. “And the marks on your neck and shoulders?”

The gaping neckline of the hospital gown betrayed their secret and Mulder’s tendency to play at the sensitive skin along her collarbone. Scully pulled at the neckline and straightened her shoulders.

“From my duty vest,” she lied.

Leah nodded and wrote something else down. She tapped her pen on her chart for a moment then looked at Scully with a very grim expression. “Partaking in life-threatening and risky behaviour is common among cancer patients. Especially when the tumours are inoperable and we are subject to relying on chemo therapy. But you might want to reconsider any sexual activity that hurts you or puts you at risk if your end game is just to feel something.”

“Excuse me?” Scully crossed her arms in front of her. She fought back the flush in her cheeks however that was beyond her control. She might be able to steer the conversation away from a few hickeys.

“We see this all the time. Patients allow themselves to be abused or hurt as a way of feeling something because it reminds you that you’re still alive. But if someone is doing something to you that you don’t want, you need to let someone know,” Leah put her hand on Scully’s with what she assumed was a reassuring smile. “You don’t need to stay in an abusive relationship just because your future might not look hopeful.”

“I’m not being abused,” Scully replied tightly.

Leah took Scully’s hand and held up her wrist. “This looks like someone’s grabbed you.”

“We do defense training regularly with the FBI,” Scully replied as she pulled her hand away.

Leah shook her head in disapproval and Scully was about to open her mouth to let this nurse, who knew nothing of her life and what she was going through, have what for when Dr Franklin walked in.

“Agent Scully,” he greeted.

“Hello Doctor Franklin,” she replied, crossing her arms in front of her.

“I didn’t know you were in need of treatment,” he stated as he took Scully’s chart from Leah. “I see you have the same kind of cancer that Anne has.”

“Yes. I was diagnosed a few months ago,” Scully confirmed. “I had a nosebleed earlier today and my partner wanted me to get checked out. I feel fine.”

“Well his concern is warranted. I can run a few tests, we’ll draw some blood and try to have you out of here by dinner,” he said and smiled at her kindly. “If your blood work tells me what I think it might, we may be able to help you the way we helped Anne.”

Scully felt unsure that the very doctor they were investigating was now helping her. Yet she saw Anne earlier that day and there was no sign that she was sick. If it bought her more time, even something resembling a cure, could she trust it? There was no dignity in desperation and if she was going to leave this world by something that had been done to her, she would at least die with honour and her decorum about her. It was the same thing that kept her from crawling back to the church in some forlorn hope that her soul or her life could be saved.

Yet, if they could find something beyond conventional treatment, she might be willing to chance it. If it could help her.

“Leah will take your blood, we’ll take you down to get a CT scan,” Dr Franklin said. Leah nodded and left the room. Scully assumed it was to retrieve a kit to draw her blood. He took out his pen light and flashed it across her eyes. “Any blurred vision? Fatigue?”

Scully shook her head. “Well... I needed a nap this afternoon but I was up late doing an autopsy last night. Otherwise my energy levels are fine.”

Dr Franklin stood up straight and tucked his penlight back in his pocket. “Any pain? Headaches?”

“None,” she answered.

“Your file hasn’t arrived from Washington so I’m going on a lot of what you tell me, Dana,” he reminded her and she nodded.

At doctor’s offices, church, and family events she adjusted to hearing her given name. It was usually only around Mulder that she was just Scully and she felt the most like herself but when they laid her to rest, it would be Dana in the coffin. It would be the daughter, sister and friend they knew but not the woman who searched for answers and fought for the truth.

“I was just feeling run down today,” she answered as Leah reentered the room with some tubes and kit. “Normally my energy levels are fine.”

“Is fine a four letter word to your partner?” Dr Franklin asked as he stepped aside a little to let the nurse in Scully’s space.

Leah tightened the tourniquet around Scully’s arm and swabbed the raised vein with alcohol. Scully nodded at the doctor.

“I would imagine so,” he said. “You’ve used it three times since you’ve been in this room. It’s okay to admit you feel sick.”

Scully tucked her chin toward her and looked down at the blood flowing through the tube into the vials. “I feel fine. Or I’ve become accustomed to how I feel now and that’s my new basis for normal.”

“If I can do for you what I did for Anne, I might be able to raise the bar on what’s fine,” Dr Franklin said as he took her hand.

Scully felt as though he really meant it. At this point she had nothing else to lose but the small amount of hope there was a cure.

Chapter Text

After a trip to the District Attorney’s office to obtain a warrant for Dr. Franklin’s office, Mulder’s insisted he and Detective Kefenick visit Mary Boyle’s physician Dr. Tobias Richards in Parkersberg.

When they arrived to the storefront location, they discovered his offices had been emptied out and all that remained were a few pieces of furniture. There was a notice on the door from his staff saying the office had been closed and all patients would be contacted by a new physician. Above that was a notice for leasing the office space.

Mulder pressed the sides of his hands into the dusty window and peered into the abandoned office with the phone number ripped off the board inside.

“What now?” Kefenick asked as he took another sip from his paper cup.

“I don’t know,” Mulder replied as he studied inside the building with a furrowed brow. “Strange to pack up and leave like that.”

“Strange or he got a better offer in another city,” Kefenick walked four feet away from Mulder and tossed his empty cup in a city supplied bin.

Mulder brushed the dust off his hands and looked up and down the street. Parkersburg wasn’t a busy metropolis by any means, however the streets were bustling with shoppers and city employees on lunch breaks. The rest of the block was active with flourishing businesses and he started to wonder how one brick and mortar location had managed to remain empty.

“We should find out who owns this property, see if we can take a look-see inside,” Kefenick suggested.

Mulder reached into his suit pocket and pulled out his lock-picking kit. “I think I have a better idea.”

As quickly as Kefenick could launch his protest of: “Agent Mulder I don’t think that’s a good idea” Mulder had entered the storefront.

“Agent Mulder,” Kefenick repeated.

“I think I heard a baby crying inside,” he lied and opened the door for the detective.

A few moments of hesitation ticked by but then he subjected himself to peer pressure and walked in.

“This is wrong,” Kefenick stated.

“I’ll be sure to include that in my report,” Mulder replied as he closed the door behind them.

The air inside was stale and there was a layer of dust covering the counter tops and filing cabinets still lining the hallways. Curious for so much of the furniture and office supplies to be left behind. It appeared as though the staff left the office on a Friday and no one showed up the following Monday to resume work. The medical files were gone from behind the front desk, no longer organized by alphabetical order.

Mulder looked down at the computer systems that remained and wondered if he asked the Gunmen to hack into this system, if anything could be retrieved.

Kefenick opened a filing cabinet drawer and whistled. “I don’t think everything was sent on to other doctor’s offices.”

Mulder came around the corner to the hallway, flashlight drawn and looked down to the drawer Kefenick held open. “What is this?”

The detective pulled out a random file. “This seems to be forms for insurance.” He stuffed the file back in the drawer and pulled out another one. “This looks like another medical form.”

Mulder walked down the hallway to open another drawer. “These have patient files in them.”

Kefenick took out his flashlight and began to walk around the abandoned office. He called to Mulder, “All the rooms look ready for business.”

Mulder left his search to find Kefenick. The paper was pulled down on the examination tables, the jars on the countertops still held tongue depressors and cotton swabs. If there was ever a red flag to be raised, Mulder saw it.

“Something definitely is off here,” he noted.

Kefenick ran his finger along the laminate and brushed off the dust. “You’d think other offices would have taken this up. Or a free clinic would move in here. Someone.”

“This might be America, Kefenick, but nothing is really free here,” Mulder retorted in that way he did that usually made people dislike him. 

“You know what I mean,” the detective replied.

Mulder nodded in agreement and continued to move through the office. He knew with the history of their cases that taking anything to court and arguing fruit of the poisonous tree would be obsolete. Rarely did anyone find justice in their line of work. They disappeared, they were killed or the paperwork was filed but scarcely did Mulder and Scully have to testify in court.

“Yes prosecutor, that is the giant alligator we saw terrorizing the lake. He ate my partner's dog.”

He found Dr. Tobias Richards’ office looked as though he’d left in a hurry. Scattered papers, a prescription pad, charts and notes. What would be so urgent to leave this all behind?

The file open on the desk was that of a Liza Imitacja with a recent diagnosis of cancer. Mulder’s heart sunk. Age 25, unmarried, otherwise good health prior to her disappearance two years ago. The medical file noted she was missing for three months, discovered in a hospital south of Parkersburg and in a coma for another two weeks before she woke up with no recollection. Mulder flipped up the stiff pages of her file to see hurried handwriting and a note from Richards that said “F/U SZ”.

Mulder tucked the file under his arm and found Kefenick standing in front of a heavy metal door that said “Basement Access”.

A padlock and keyed doorknob kept them standing the hallway. Mulder brushed the bottom of the padlock with his fingers and noticed the newness to the mechanism. There was wear and tear from repeated use but not a trace of dust like the rest of the facility.

“We could get a forensics team out here to take a look at this,” Mulder noted.

“I have a guy I can call. He won’t say anything about getting in here,” Kefenick offered and took out his cell phone.

Granted, the building was abandoned yet, they had not contacted anyone for a search warrant. Mulder took out his own phone to call Scully, unsure if he would get an answer or not. The phone picked up after the fourth ring.

“Dana Scully’s phone,” a young voice greeted.

“This is Agent Fox Mulder. I’m Agent Scully’s partner. Where is she?” he asked as he walked up the empty hallway.

“She’s just in with Doctor Franklin,” the woman replied cheerily and Mulder’s felt his stomach flipped. “She’ll be out in a minute. I can tell her you called.”

“Thank you,” he said through a clenched jaw and hung up the phone.

Kefenick found Mulder and noted the change in his demeanor. “What’s wrong?”

“Scully is with Doctor Franklin,” he said without thinking as he looked at his phone for possible reasons why.

“Why?” Kefenick asked.

Mulder looked up at Kefenick and wondered if this was something he could trust him with or if it would burn them in the end. “Scully has... She has cancer and she suffered some... She is just getting something checked out.”

Kefenick reached out to touch Mulder’s arm but pulled it away. There were certain boundaries heterosexual male law enforcement officers didn’t cross and Kefenick didn’t seem like the kind of man who would offer more than a handshake at good news.

“I’m sorry.”

“She’s really private and I, uh, I don’t think she would want you to know,” he said as he studied his shoes. “I just don’t understand why she’s subjecting herself to seeing him.”

“Do you want to go see her? I can wait here for my buddy Paul in forensics to come by and print the place if you need to check up on her,” the detective offered with a surprising amount of sympathy.

Mulder sniffed. He wasn’t crying but his eyes felt the fragments from being inside a dusty office begin to cause a nuisance. “I’ll wait until we’re done here. She wouldn’t put herself into harms way.”

Kefenick nodded and pointed over his shoulder. “I’m going to wait out front for Paul.”

Mulder tried calling Scully’s phone again but got no answer so he began to look through the files further. There was a list of companies involved in Liza Imitacja’s file for follow up reports on her diagnosis. Prangen Pharmeceuticals, Lombard Research Company, CAMC Health Group were all named for “contact after each appointment.”

Mulder soon worried he was going to be finding another dead body to showcase to Scully as a reminder of what was coming for them versus a miracle patient.

****

Scully dressed herself slowly and called a cab to take her back to the precinct to wait for Mulder. The appointment with Dr. Franklin proved to be revealing on all fronts.

He explained quite openly that the technology for the cancer treatment he had developed was not quite sanctioned by his colleagues however Anne Creston was proof it worked. Their plan was to start a DNA work up on Scully and biopsy her cancer to create a chip specific to her.

Her logical mind wondered if he was playing on her heart and desperation not to die but her instinct told her this could be for real. If there was ever a more crazy idea beyond a chip curing her cancer it was that the very removal of one could give it to her.

As she was exiting the hospital, Mulder was approaching with a look in his eyes and his jaw was locked tight. Her throat tightened as she realized what he knew.

Scully held her hands up to Mulder to try to stop him. “Mulder wait-”

“Where is he?” Mulder asked with his voice and body obviously tense.

Scully had witnessed this tension in him before. When he felt like someone had threatened her, his instinct would be to react violently. Mulder was already clenching his fists in preparation to punch Franklin.

“Mulder, I’m fine!” Scully said as she pulled on his jacket sleeves. The air around them was cold and she felt a shiver run through her body. “Mulder!”

Mulder grabbed onto her arm and pulled them inside the hospital. She glanced over her shoulder to see Kefenick lingering by the parked car uncomfortably.

“Where is he?” Mulder repeated.

“Would you stop!” she cried out as she tried to pull her arm from his grasp. She didn’t want to be manhandled in front of anyone but especially another cop.

“Scully, don’t fucking make me throw you over my shoulder,” he growled.

She wanted to kick him and yell at him for being over protective. She wanted to slap him across the face for embarrassing her but the tension in his voice told her not to argue. This was his one-track mind she could never derail no matter what efforts and pleading. How many times had she asked him not to get on the train, enter into a building or open the door to some unknown truths for him to charge ahead at full steam. It was any wonder the man was still alive.

Scully sighed. This could be a mistake and possibly put Mulder in jail for assault if Franklin was litigious. Mulder was probably betting not.

“He’s in his office,” she told him as she tried to keep up. “Let go!”

“No,” he grumbled.

His voice was tight and he was obviously angry. She knew he would be but he had to understand she didn't seek out Dr. Franklin. 

They were barreling through the reception area. He held onto her wrist as they waited at the elevator banks.

“Why did you see him?” Mulder asked quietly. The doors opened for several people to get off. They were the only two to get onto the car for its ascension. She wondered if that was good or bad luck. “Why?”

“I didn’t know he was the doctor,” Scully answered as she tried to tug her wrist free. “I didn’t know. Honestly Mulder, I’m fine. He didn't do anything to me.”

Mulder hit the emergency stop and pushed her body into the wall. He held her by the coat and pressed his frame into hers. “I’m not going to lose you.”

His mouth was inches from hers and she realized all the advances they made physically had been a mistake. He was far too invested now and if she lived, he would react this way to every single threat.

“This isn’t because of some misplaced guilt over what’s happened to you or what we’ve done, Scully,” Mulder told her as his mouth inches from hers. It was frustrating when someone knew how your mind worked and could counter-argue your point before you made it. Sometimes it angered her and sometimes it aroused her. At this moment it was both. “I would want you safe no matter how many times you let me in.”

“I don’t think-”

“I do,” he cut her off. His lips brushed against hers. “I told the judge to throw the switch on Pfaster but you argued for life. If I had showed up at his place alone he would have met the same fate as Gerald Schnauz. This is more than us finally having sex.”

“Finally?” she repeated.

She pushed on his chest out of anger but not out of the lack of wanting him. The frustration she felt in this dichotomy of feelings was almost as overwhelming as the longing building to have him again.

“How would you feel if I had paraded in my underwear in front of you on our first case?” he quipped and kissed her once.

“You did,” she reminded him as his hands gripped into her backside. “That morning after the fire in the hotel with Phoebe.”

“And you didn’t want to jump my bones?” he asked with a mock pout and kissed her again.

This was wrong on so many counts. She needed to get his mind off of visiting Dr. Franklin’s office and following through on his original idea to punch the man especially after he offered to work on an implant for Scully.

She broke the kiss and closed her eyes as he kissed her neck.

Mulder pressed his growing desire into her again. “Scully.”

Eventually they would need to exit the elevator and deal with Mulder storming into the hospital.

“Please... oh God..." Her mind wandered as he touched and tasted her. "Mulder, I’m fine. He can help me.”

“What if it puts you in more danger?” Mulder asked. His hands were sliding up between her jacket and above her blouse.

“What if it doesn’t?” she countered as she stopped his hands from covering her breasts.

His mouth closed over hers and she gave into halting the argument for the sake of a kiss. Just one more kiss. Except his hands were now in her hair and she wanted his comfort again. The feeling of his body invading hers made her forget what else was inside of her and slowly killing her.

Scully pushed on his chest and his mouth pulled away from hers. “Mulder, stop. He said he might be able to develop a chip for me.”

That got his attention. He studied her face for clues but she only showed honesty.

“At what cost?” he asked.

He wasn’t talking monetary. He was talking about the group of men who organized these dealings and asked for a life service in the underground as repayment.

“Would they ask you to leave the FBI?”

“He didn’t talk about that,” she explained and Mulder pushed his face into her neck. Amazing how they could hold this conversation while he touched her like that. “I don’t believe this would cost us anything. He said it would be a trial basis but he’s confident.”

“What was he doing there? I thought he worked out of Boone Memorial?” Mulder asked as he rubbed his face along the skin of her neck.

“He’s also got an office at a lab in Huntington,” Scully reminded him. “I think even though he has his fingers in a lot of honey pots, there’s more to him and his motives than we think. He might be one of the good guys.”

Mulder pulled away and kissed her forehead. He sighed as she straightened her clothing. “I don’t know if there are any good guys, Scully.”

“Isn’t that my line?” she asked as he hit his hand against the STOP button, making the elevator car jerk as it started again.

“I’m willing to put my faith in what you believe, Scully,” he told her as he turned to her. She looked up at him as she willed her body to cool from their recent kisses but it was proving difficult. “But if anything looks hinky we’re pulling out. I’ll do whatever I can to save you Scully and I mean that.”

“Hinky?” she asked.

“It’s a word,” he said confidently as they arrived at the oncology floor.

“Whatever you say,” Scully replied with a roll of her eyes.

****

Dr. Franklin was more than surprised to see Mulder knocking on his office door. The look of surprise turned to fear and shock when Mulder pushed him inside and slammed the door behind them after Scully entered.

“Mulder!” Scully called as he pushed Franklin into the wall. “Stop!”

He grabbed the doctor by the lapels of his lab coat. “If you are jerking us around, if you are working with some cigarette smoking son of a bitch-”

“I’m not!” Franklin vowed.

“Stop leading us on and giving us bullshit for answers!” Mulder growled. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense and I don’t for one second buy that you’re working alone!”

“I can’t tell you!” Franklin said with hysteria out of fear of being hit.

Most men of scientific minds handled the probability of physical violence and Mulder would bet on Dr. Franklin being one of them. Mulder slammed him against the wall once.

“Okay!”

Scully crossed her arms and changed the balance under her feet. These tactics never made her feel comfortable but she found they were useful when it came to finding answers in these matters. It was an ugly side to an even more hideous business of murdering women with a slow cancer and taking their unborn children.

Mulder let go of Dr. Franklin and they held a look of understanding. If Franklin jerked them around Mulder would come back and probably punch his lights out. It wasn’t admirable of Mulder but when it came to Scully his desperation towards answers bordered on violent and became completely irrational.

“I can tell you that she was selected by a group of my associates with the CAMC Health Group,” Franklin reported. “Prangen Pharmaceuticals and the Lombard Research company are partners in health to battle this epidemic. Most of our patients have no family history, no prior signs and symptoms as well as good health prior to illness but Anne was selected because of her mother’s prior history. The women we’ve all treated were specific cases.”

“Mary Boyle, Virginia Leslie and Caroline Hawkins are all former patients?” Mulder asked.

“They were but they weren’t willing to try the implant,” Franklin explained. “We wanted to save them all, we did!”

“We?” Mulder asked.

“We know what’s going on but we don’t know why,” Franklin said. Scully could see him visibly moved at the idea of what was happening. “They’ve done it to her too.”

Mulder’s jaw clenched and he stepped in front of Franklin’s eyeline of Scully. “Don’t go there.”

“I knew about your partner before you came to interview me this morning,” Franklin said. “These men know everything and we learn very little.”

“What about your oath as a doctor?” Scully asked from behind Mulder.

“Don’t you see?” Franklin asked as Mulder stepped aside. “This is why I’m trying to make these implants work.”

“How did you develop them?” Mulder asked.

“The lab I’m working with in Huntington created them. Our organization doesn’t know. This is all very experimental but with Anne... You’ve seen what can happen!” Franklin told them. “We didn’t expect it to work but you have to think of it like a computer virus. We decided to look at the immune system like a healthy computer and removing the chip leaving behind the false virus to ignite when taken out.”

“And the implant is a way of counteracting that virus?” Scully continued and Franklin nodded. “I suppose... There are medical theories that could support this...”

“If we develop an implant for you, Miss Scully,” Franklin started.

“If?” Mulder interrupted.

“It isn’t fast,” Franklin explained. “It takes longer than you think. We have to work with the cancer and trick it into thinking it’s growing when it’s not.”

“I hope you realize what you’re promising,” Mulder threatened.

Franklin nodded. “I’ll get to work right away.”

Scully pulled on Mulder’s arm and they made their way to the elevator banks. The car dinged in front of them and Detective Kefenick was waiting to exit.

“Agents,” he greeted and looked between the pair standing opposite him. Mulder put his hand on Scully’s lower back and Kefenick’s eyes flickered down to Mulder’s arm.

Scully glanced up at Mulder in frustration and didn’t mind whether Kefenick caught the daggers she was throwing to her partner’s direction.

“We can go, Detective,” Scully said as she hit the M button.

There was a silence weighing heavily on the elevator car. Mulder and Kefenick both cleared their throats as they waited for Scully to speak. She didn’t.

“What’s going on with Franklin?” Kefenick asked as the car stopped at the main floor.

“He might not be dirty,” Mulder said as Scully walked off the car first.

Mulder and Kefenick held a look for a moment before trying to catch up with Scully as she made her way through the lobby.

“I need a little more to go on,” Kefenick expressed.

Mulder nodded but looked to Scully for a prompt of what to share.

Scully stood at the vestibule and looked from Mulder to Kefenick. “He’s taking a biopsy of my cancer tomorrow morning to create a chip to help fight the cancer I have. It’s the same strain Anne Creston has but is living with. The same cancer Mary Boyle, Virgina Leslie and Caroline Hawkins died from.”

“I thought we liked him for failing to treat Boyle, Leslie and Hawkins,” Kefenick asked.

“He seems to genuinely want to help these women,” Mulder explained.

“Or do you want to try to save your partner?” Kefenick retorted and Mulder stepped toward him. Kefenick held his hands up in defense. “It’s a valid question.”

“What are you suggesting?” he asked.

“We wouldn’t subvert the law and justice for my life, Detective,” Scully said as she moved toward Kefenick as she caused Mulder to step back.

“I would,” Mulder piped up. Kefenick and Scully both looked at Mulder in surprise. “Don’t look at me like that, Scully. You know I would.”

Kefenick chuffed a laugh. “I’m not surprised.”

“Our goal is to help Scully while uncovering if anyone could have been saved,” Mulder stated and Scully nodded. “Franklin has interested parties helping him but I think he’s the real deal.”

“Then let’s get to work,” Kefenick stated. “We have a basement to look into.”

Chapter Text

The basement of Dr. Richard’s office held more surprises and left Mulder and Scully with too many questions. Down the stairs and through a long corridor was another set of doors that were at the back of the building. The cinder-block walls and green tile flooring reminded her of a prison and not the hallway where science and medicine were helping people. Those environments, as cold and isolating as they could be with the smells of chemicals lingering in the air, always made Scully feel good about the work being done there.

Any scientific breakthrough that could change the lives of millions should be done in a room filled with light, soft wood cabinets and the promise of it’s employees to alter or discover how nature works. Laboratories these days had electronic key card access to protect information and specimens from escaping while keeping unwanted eyes out. Unfortunately, the door to this laboratory did not have such an electronic access and therefore there would be no record of the comings and goings of employees.

Inside the heavy door, they discovered a state-of-the-art laboratory full of equipment every scientist had on their dream list. Dust did not have a chance to collect on any surfaces in this lab and by the smell of bleach and lemon, Scully suspected there was a company hired out to keep this place ready for business. She named the equipment in the way that Mulder named infamous UFO abductees and monsters of urban legends. Her fascination and surprise at what was around them confused Mulder.

As Scully discussed this, Mulder gave her a look. “Mulder, none of these pieces are cheap or easy to come by. They all are tagged with serial numbers from their manufacturers.”

Kefenick and Mulder nodded in unison as their light bulbs switched on. The detective approached Scully and pointed the pen in his hand to the machine she was standing next to.

“I can write down the serial numbers and find buyers through that,” Kefenick offered. He reached into his suit jacket to pull his notebook from his pocket but the latex glove caught on the material. “Damn thing.”

Scully watched him struggle for a moment before she reached her hand in to grab the notebook for him.

“Thanks,” he said and smiled awkwardly at her.

Scully glanced over to Mulder who was watching the encounter with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. When she looked up at Kefenick, she cleared her throat and pointed to the serial number on the side of the white machine. It looked like a printer to Mulder.

“These run in the tens of thousands to purchase used,” Scully said as she placed a gloved hand on the machine. “This is new.”

Mulder nodded. “Okay. We’ll follow the money.”

“I’m merely suggesting it might lead us somewhere,” Scully explained.

“What about back there?” Mulder asked as he nodded toward the plastic curtains that lead into a refrigerated area.

What they were looking at was human tissue that had been flash frozen in liquid nitrogen then held at -80 degrees in freezers at the back of the refrigerated area. Also, ten or so samples of unidentifiable tissue with numbered labels sat in yellow solution. Scully assumed it was a holding solution that wouldn’t degrade the samples.

“The samples look to be human tissue but I would rather we run samples of what I’m looking at,” Scully stated. “My guess would be samples from patients but we don’t know anything. This lab could not be related to anyone we’ve met. This could be rented space for someone else.”

Mulder rolled his eyes at her reluctance to draw the connection. He would jump to the next conclusion that everything was connected in this dark labyrinth of conspiracies and lies. There was no other explanation that satisfied him.

“And Liza Imitacja?” Kefenick asked as the CSU team worked around them. “I had my guys run that name through our systems and that woman doesn’t exist.”

Mulder held the file he found in Richards’ office. “This is someone.”

“Show me where she exists because her apartment address was actually an empty lot, her social security number belongs to a dead woman and we can’t seem to put a face to this name in any database,” Kefenick argued.

“This woman is a patient,” Mulder repeated as he tapped the file. “Aren’t you at all interested in discovering if she’s alive?”

“Of course I am,” Kefenick replied tensely. “I just don’t know how to find a woman who doesn’t exist.”

“We might,” Scully said and looked over to Mulder.

She was inferring they contact the Lone Gunmen for assistance but she could see he wanted to contact another source. It was probably the same source who gave him the file on Anne Creston.

“Okay then you find her. Who is S/Z?” Kefenick asked.

“Doctor Shiro Zama,” Mulder explained. “He’s someone we encountered last year.”

“Who is he working with?” Kefenick asked as he took a look around the laboratory.

Scully noted how out of place he seemed among the equipment. It was reminiscent of Mulder when they first began their partnership and he held his hands flexed at his sides in fear of touching something he shouldn’t.

“Everyone we’ve investigated so far. Prangen Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Franklin and possibly these other doctors,” Mulder replied and Kefenick shook his head. “You don’t believe me?”

“I just don’t understand the end game,” Kefenick replied.

“Do you even want to?” Mulder snapped.

“What the hell am I doing here otherwise?” Kefenick snapped.

Mulder shook his head. “These women, women like Scully, have been abducted. I’m not going to stop until she’s cured-”

“Mulder-” Scully tried to stop him from confessing his willingness to go to the ends of the earth for her.

It wouldn’t motivate Kefenick to see his fanaticism to reaching the end goal. Also, this was wildly embarrassing for her to be discussed this way.

“No, Scully!” he cut her off and the CSU teams around them stopped working. Her embarrassment became evident at the flush on her cheeks and she clenched her jaw. “This isn’t just me being the spooky guy in the basement yelling about aliens. This is about saving your life! They have to see how important you are.”

One of the women near Scully made a noise and smiled at her and Mulder. Scully shook her head disapprovingly at the young woman and she ducked her head to go back to work.

“I’m here, Agent Mulder,” Kefenick said tersely. “Ask your source to help you, keep me in the dark but I’m here to help.”

Scully felt thoroughly abashed at Mulder’s outburst but she understood his desperation. A few months ago she felt that too. Part of her was wondering if she was in the acceptance stage of mourning her own death, but she hadn’t given up total hope. She was waiting on Franklin and his cure. There was a glimmer of light and she had to remind herself as she felt the weakness of her soul under the bright neon lights of this laboratory, she might survive what was slowly killing her.

His expression to the entire team had also frustrated her and made her feel like the victim again. She could control the investigation as long as she wasn’t a part of it and he was making this too personal. She would have to deal with that later and as she did, she pushed down what attempted to well up inside of her.

They agreed that Liza Imitacja was next on their list to track down. Mulder wanted to follow up on Dr. Franklin with Scully and she had asked the CSU team to run tests on every sample in that office. The crime lab would have their hands full over the next two days. As she explained to the team leader very politely but forcefully she wanted every item expedited and she had a list of demands a mile long but no one argued with why. Everyone in that room in the basement all knew that finding answers could save her.

***

Kefenick stayed at the lab with the CSU team to handle the rest of the forensic details. Scully began to argue she would be best served looking into the science but she also knew that Mulder, being on edge as he was, shouldn’t be left alone with Dr. Franklin.

She felt her emotions get away from her at times but it was rare that she reacted violently. Mulder, however, felt his emotions bubble up when it came to her and lashed out. They were the dichotomy of their genders when it came to handling their emotions. While she was stagnant and quiet, he was her perfect other in being resolute and passionate. It could remind them when something should be the other however at times, it made him frustrated and left her overwhelmed.

Mulder glanced over to Scully as they drove to Huntington to check up on Dr. Franklin’s progress. She could feel him wavering to begin his discussion and if he was smart, he would let it lie. She wanted to yell at him or freeze him out. She wanted to tell him that her death wasn’t happening directly to him. It was happening to her and he needed to stop taking ownership over all the bad things that happened to her.

“Mulder-” Scully started.

“Don’t,” he cut her off and her anger grew.

“Me don’t?” she asked. “Me? Me don’t?”

“Don’t, Scully,” he repeated. “Just really.... Fucking don’t.”

What was he livid about?

“After what you pulled back there you should be apologizing to me!”

Mulder scoffed. “Maybe you’ll thank me instead when I’ve saved your life because I had the presence of mind to push everyone to get their shit together.”

“If this works and Dr. Franklin is on the level, I’ll be thanking him,” she said angrily.

“I brought us here!” he yelled.

“Pull the car over,” Scully snapped. She could walk back to Charleston and she expressed that intent to him.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

“Pull the fucking car over,” she said slowly.

Mulder silently pulled off onto the shoulder of the I-64 and locked the doors. Scully turned around and smacked him before she tried to open the lever on the car. He launched his body across hers, pulled it shut and locking the mechanism again.

“Fuck off,” she growled as she pushed on his chest. He grabbed at her wrist and pushed it down into her lap. “Ugh! Mulder let go!”

“No!” he yelled in her face. He took a slow calming breath and shook his head. He continued tensely, “You don’t get to decide to give up when we’re close.”

“Stop,” she said.

“No, Scully! You don’t get to decide to give up,” he repeated more gently. “You push forward. You keep going.”

She was angry at him for manhandling her again. She was fuming at his outburst in the laboratory in front of fellow law enforcement officers, not to mention she was livid at the fact that he had embarrassed her so thoroughly in front of Kefenick at the hospital. They had made a mistake by going to bed together. That was clear. If they continued on this path, if she lived-

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said interrupting her thoughts and she squared her eyes at him. “I do. You think going to bed together was a mistake.”

His lips brushed against hers as he held her in her seat and his hands held her wrists in her lap. This wasn’t the time for that and she scowled at him.

“Get off of me Mulder,” she said as she struggled under his grip but the protests were empty at best. She meant none of it and he could tell. He could read her mind these days and he knew every inch of her. She hated him for that and she told him so.

“I hate you too,” he admitted strongly. “I hate that you came into my life and turned it upside down with your science and logic. I hate that you trusted me so well after knowing me a day and asked me to look at some damn mosquito bites in your underwear. I hate that you got abducted because of me. I can’t stand that this disease is happening to you because you asked to be reassigned back to the X-Files. I hate how you wanted to keep working after your sister got shot in your fucking apartment and all you would let me do is hold you. I hate that you won’t quit this job but you’re ready to quit on us because you think you don’t deserve to be happy for five god damned seconds before you die. You’re not going to die. ”

His confession sat in the air between them for a moment and her heart ached at his outpouring of emotion. She felt that way for him. The man had blinding passion toward the truth and getting justice for those who deserved it. He cared for everyone except himself and he was stubborn beyond all belief. He could accept the eye witness accounts of lights in the sky that they would call an alien space craft when the very definition of an unidentified flying object could mean it was an aircraft unrecognized by the human eye. He could risk himself in pursuit of answers that were not meant for him to discover but if it exposed a lie he felt it was worth it. And she admired all of these qualities and her heart ached to be there when he made each and every discovery that lead them closer to the truth.

“I don’t hate you,” she whispered.

“I know,” he replied quietly. “I think you just can’t say the other thing. Even now.”

“Why?” she asked. If he knew her so well, she’d love to hear an answer.

“I think you can face the reality of your own demise before you’ll admit you need someone,” he told her as he moved his hand from the car door to her leg. His hand felt hot against her thigh and his thumb was moving in a figure eight. “You want me around but you can’t admit it to yourself or me. And you might just want me even though how we came together wasn’t the circumstances you might have imagined.”

“I didn’t imagine it,” she lied and he called her on it. “I didn’t.”

“Liar,” he repeated as his face moved closer to hers. “You’re a terrible liar. Just admit that you need me as much as I need you. Admit you’ve wanted me for the last four and a half years and you’ve been hoping something like this would have happened between us. Just tell me that’s the truth, Scully.”

“No, Mulder,” she whispered. “It’s not. I haven’t.”

“Admit it,” he urged her. “I need you too.”

Her chin was quivering and she pulled her hands from his grip to wrap her arms around his neck. The tears started to fall as traffic rushed past them in the middle of nowhere. The quiet solitude of the car provided a safe space with the radio crackling softly in the background. She pulled on his jacket material and he reached for the buckle on her seat belt.

“You don’t need to go through this alone,” he said gently.

The well of emotion broke and he let her cry in the car. He allowed her to break down and be completely vulnerable in that moment. She sobbed and gripped at his clothing while his hands soothed her. Her body shook as the tears poured out of her and he was grounded in his comfort for her.

“Mulder,” she hiccuped and looked into his eyes. She saw his pain for her and she felt guilt wash over her that her death might ruin him. Might? It would.

He took her face in his hands and pulled her lips to his. She could taste the salt of her tears and the coffee he drank on the ride over. He pushed her body into the door of the car and she tried to maneuver herself underneath him. He was hard against her thigh already and she felt the rush of desire inside of herself.

“What are we doing?” she asked as he kissed along her jaw and his fingers pulled on the zipper of her trousers.

It was a rhetorical question since her body felt as though it was on fire and he was adding kindling to the flame. She wanted to burn.

“Did you forget?” he teased as his hand moved past her underwear and brushed against the lips of her sex. She felt a shiver run through her as she felt the wetness transfer to his fingers. “It doesn’t feel like you forgot.”

His finger slipped inside of her and she bit her lip as she closed her eyes. Why did every touch of his hands on her body feel so good?

The sound of the highway outside of the car pulled her out of her hormonal haze and she pushed on his chest. “Mulder, stop.”

He stilled his fingers inside of her but his hand stayed at her sex. “What’s wrong?”

She gave him a look and he withdrew his fingers from inside of her. She sighed at the loss of contact but she knew this was wrong. It was inappropriate to fuck on the side of the road while on your way to follow up on a suspect and their hormones almost took over. This among other reasons was a sound argument to why they couldn’t be together. In her dying days, she wanted love and the comfort he provided but they had to keep their wits about them.

She kissed his face and hugged his body to hers. “I shouldn’t have kissed you just then.”

Mulder pressed himself into her and grunted slightly. “We got carried away Scully. Life affirming moments can be like that.”

He relocated himself back into his seat and she pulled herself to sit up. She could see his erection tenting in his pants and she had to remind herself what had just happened. A cancer ridden Scully seemed to have the same sex drive as one riddled with alcohol and she likened the feeling of lost control over hormones to being about the same. Desperation, wantonness and lust was better than the depression she battled in the mornings each weekend. At times, she woke up and wondered how this disease hadn’t taken her overnight in her sleep. Other times she woke up feeling grateful for more time with her family and Mulder.

“Dr. Franklin should have something for us,” he said as he cleared his throat.

He said us because her survival was so closely linked to his. She feared just how much.

***

They drove toward the industrial part of Huntington, off the main highway and to the edge of the city there were laboratories and buildings suited for secret work. As they made their way down Pine Crest Lane, Mulder commented they should have renamed the street “I’m Up To No Good Avenue”. He got a quiet laugh from Scully and he nodded at himself proudly.

As they entered the parking lot of the lab in Huntingon where Dr. Franklin was scheduled to be working, it looked abandoned. In the middle of the week this place should be busy with employees and a rent-a-cop. Only one car remained in the parking lot and she looked over to see his face full of panic.

Red flags started to warn them of eminent danger and he looked over to her wiping at her face. She held a Kleenex to her nose and her chin quivered.

Not now. Not another nosebleed.

Her eyes caught something in the distance and Mulder saw it too. Smoke billowing out of the top floor window.

“I’ll call the fire department,” Scully said as she pulled out her phone.

“Are you feeling light headed or sick?” he asked as he reached out to touch her forehead with the back of his fingers. It was a hollow gesture since he was sure she didn’t get a fever while she had a nosebleed but it calmed his emotions regardless. Scully shook her head. “Are you going to be okay if I go in there?”

“Mulder, I’m on the phone with 911,” she replied.

Mulder kept the car running and he parked in front of the building and charged inside. Scully was left holding her phone to her ear and a bloody Kleenex to her face.

The main entry to the building had a broken front door handle and he swore under his breath. The building inside looked like every other laboratory and processing plant they had visited over the last four years. The reception was abandoned, the security guard station inactive with snow on the monitors and the index for offices had a hole punched through the glass. Letters from names and office numbers littered the floor.

The smoke was coming from the second floor of the building and he had to head to the top west wing. Through the foyer and up the stairs, Mulder found himself where smoke filled the halls and he held his jacket to his face.

Either dumb luck or excellent timing, the fire alarm sounded around him and a sprinkler system burst into action above his head. The floor became slippery and difficult to walk on and he fell to the ground after a few steps. A sharp pain shot through from his hip up his back and he cursed loudly.

As he pushed himself off the ground he looked up to see someone he didn’t expect. Through the downpour of water there was a distorted and tall figure looming in the background. His face was distorted through the water but the stranger’s gait was distinctive.

The shape-shifting Alien Bounty Hunter. Mulder and Scully had a few expletives that they called him in the quiet of the basement of the J Edgar Hoover Building. That shape shifting mother fucker, as he called him to Scully usually after he was out of ear shot and danger from being killed by him was not longer eminent.

“Agent Mulder,” the Bounty Hunter greeted with a smug droll.

“What are you doing here?” Mulder asked as he grabbed onto the wall. “Where’s Doctor Franklin?”

“He’s been eliminated,” the Bounty Hunter replied. “He created what shouldn’t be.”

Scully’s chip.

“No, I need him to save Scully,” Mulder protested. “I need that chip! What did you do with him?”

The Bounty Hunter grabbed Mulder by the collar of his jacket and began to drag him down the hallway. “Your partner cannot live, Agent Mulder. She’s too threatening to our project.”

“What does that mean you, mother fucker?” Mulder cursed as he tried to regain some footing but the water beating down on the floor was making it nearly impossible to walk on his own.

“An invasion is coming,” he said ominously. “She’s a threat.”

“How?” Mulder asked. “A threat to what?”

“An unexpected side effect to the project. She holds the key,” the Bounty Hunter replied.

“To exposing it?”

“To preventing it,” he said ominously and threw Mulder inside the stairwell.

His body hit the wall and he wiped the water off his face. “How? You don’t understand, I can’t let her die!”

The Bounty Hunter punched Mulder in the face as a conversation closer and another in the stomach. He left Mulder holding his face in the hallway with an eye that was swelling shut and the wind knocked out of Mulder. He couldn’t just wait for emergency teams to arrive.

He pushed himself off the ground and hobbled down to the smoke. Whatever was on fire wasn’t being tampered by the cold water forcing itself out of the overhead system.

He had to find out for himself if there was a cure for Scully. Even if the Bounty Hunter took the chip the technology could still be in there.

The heat from a dwindling fire hit his face first and he held his hand up to block the embers. The air was thick and Mulder coughed through the water and smoke. Dark clouds billowed out into the hallway and he saw Dr. Franklin’s body laying on the floor near a cabinet and row of microscopes. There was equipment on the counter where the fire was originating and Mulder tried to drag his body out of the lab.

Franklin moaned as Mulder pulled him and Mulder scrambled to look at his face as the life drained out of him.

“I did it,” Franklin whispered as he held up his hand with a small vial.

Mulder took his hand to grab the silver tube from him when a crew from the fire department barged in to take Mulder and Dr. Franklin out.

“He’s got a pulse!” The first fireman called as a flame burst above their heads despite the water. “Sir, are you all right?”

Mulder felt his eyes go foggy and everything went dark as he blacked out.

Chapter Text

Smoke inhalation damages the body by simple asphyxiation due to lack of oxygen, chemical irritation and chemical asphyxiation or a combination of all of these. Fox Mulder knew this because every time he had survived such an event, his medical doctor partner would lecture him on the long-term effects he would suffer if he continued to risk himself by running into buildings that were on fire.

He could hear her voice in his head as the monitor’s beeped at each beating of his heart.

“Mulder, combustion can simply use up the oxygen near the fire and lead to death when there’s nothing for a person to breathe,” she would say as she ruffled his hair and looked into his eyes for any sign of recognition.

When he opened his eyes, he was waiting for that speech but what he got was a nurse standing over him checking his blood pressure.

“Hello Agent Mulder,” the nurse greeted. He was a tall man with furry arms that challenged Skinner’s. He had a sparkling white smile but it was definitely not the face he was expecting.

“Where’s Scully?” Mulder asked as he tried to sit up. His windpipe felt like someone had stuck a BBQ brush down it and he put a hand to his throat.

“We need to get your blood pressure regulated,” the nurse said gently and pushed on his shoulder to lay him flat. “She said you’d be anxious when you woke up if she wasn’t here and I was instructed to keep you here until your vitals came back to normal.”

“They sent the big guy,” Mulder noted.

“I’m Jim,” he introduced. “And it’s not about size, Agent Mulder. It’s how you use it.”

Mulder rolled his eyes but he appreciated the innuendo all the same. “I should introduce you to my friend Melvin. I think he lives by that motto.”

“Does Melvin date men?” Jim asked with a raise of his eyebrows.

“He’s actually got a penchant for small red-haired FBI doctors,” Mulder said as he winced when the blood pressure cuff went around his arm. “That one hurts.”

“You’re lucky you just have a mild concussion and minor smoke inhalation,” Jim warned. “Is that red-haired FBI doctor your partner?”

Mulder nodded as he watched the cuff fill with air.

“You feel the same way?” Jim asked as he looked at the numbers on his watch.

Something about medical practitioners always made Mulder feel confessional like he was supposed to give his life story or personal details when asked. Half the time, they were just being nosy and Mulder had the habit of oversharing. Never usually about Scully or his feelings about her but he didn’t understand the point of hiding anymore.

“I’ve been known to carry a torch,” Mulder admitted.

“You were mumbling her name in your sleep,” the nurse said dryly as he ripped the cuff of Mulder’s arm. “At first I thought you were referring to Vin Scully but you said some other things that probably don’t apply to a baseball announcer.”

“Are you the only audience I had for that?” Mulder asked.

“She walked in as you mumbled something about loving her,” Jim replied with reference to Scully and Mulder wanted to slap his hand against his forehead. “You’re fine. She blushed, read your chart and told me where you could find her when you’re ready to get out of here. I might suggest you stay clear of burning buildings in the future.”

“Sounds right,” Mulder replied.

“Did she know before today?” Jim asked quietly.

Mulder shrugged. “I assumed she did but I think right now she’s more concerned with finding answers than reassuring me she feels the same way.”

“What happens if she finds answers?” Jim asked.

“She lives,” Mulder replied and rubbed his hand down his face. “When can I get out of here?”

“You two are a barrel of laughs, you know?” Jim said as he made a note on Mulder’s chart. “I’ll send the doctor in.”

“Great,” Mulder said. “Was Scully all right? She got a nosebleed before I went into the building.”

“I wasn’t there for that exam,” Jim replied.

“Can you page Scully? Or find out where she is?”

“Anything else Agent Mulder?” Jim asked. “Warm nuts? Fresh linens?”

“No need to get sassy,” Mulder chided and Jim held up his hands. “I can’t call her from the room can I?”

“I’ll page her,” Jim offered and left the room for Mulder to wait for the doctor.

*****

It was seven thirty at night when Mulder was released by the doctor. He was frustrated and worried. Scully hadn’t returned any of the messages he had left for her which was out of character for her. His first action was to look for her in the morgue.

Mulder arrived at the basement floor with an iced tea in hand from the cafeteria and the hopes it would be taken symbolically and as an olive branch for failing to get the chip from Dr. Franklin.

He found another pathologist performing an autopsy on a young female and he turned his back to the doctor when he saw the body exposed on the table.
“Have you seen Agent Scully?”

“She left an hour ago when she got a call. She had just sent some samples off to the lab and had me finish the wrapping of Franklin,” the pathologist replied.

Mulder thought of who could have called her. Kefenick? He didn’t come by the hospital to check on Mulder so maybe he got a lead about Liza Imitacja.

He took out his phone and the pathologist reminded Mulder he wouldn’t get good reception down there. Mulder crossed the lab to the desk to call Scully from there. He punched her cell number into the phone but the dial went straight to voicemail.

“Shit!” Mulder cursed. He looked over his shoulder to the pathologist who was watching him. “Sorry.”

"I don’t need to remind you this is a place of science. These people deserve respect,” the pathologist said in a knowing tone.

Mulder’s eyes flicked over to the doctor’s face and thought about telling him he had defiled their showers and made another strict scientist come more than once only a few meters from where he stood but he thought against it.

He reached into his pocket to find Kefenick’s number.

Kefenick picked up on the first ring. “Yeah?”

“It’s Mulder,” he introduced himself with an attempt at calmness but he really wanted to shout into the phone.

“We’re still processing the basement,” Kefenick offered. “I got a call you two found Franklin and the office is now in ashes. I got a team out there looking for signs of arson.”

“They’ll find it,” Mulder replied. “Have you heard from Agent Scully?”

Kefenick paused. “I sent a patrol officer to take her to Liza Imitacja’s place. We found her.”

“You found her? Where is she?” Mulder demanded.

He half meant Scully but Kefenick didn’t need to assuage his fears about his partner not answering her phone. If she was with a patrol officer, she had adequate back up. Kefenick wasn’t an idiot.

“She’s living at a halfway house in Charleston,” Kefenick replied. “They should be interviewing her right now with her social worker.”

“There was nothing in there about a social worker,” Mulder said as he recalled the facts from her file.

“Liza Imitacja was arrested for public indecency among a few other minor charges. She lost her job and spent two months in jail,” Kefenick replied.

Mulder could hear the rustle of his notebook and he pictured the large man reading his tightly scrawled notes as the Crime Scene Unit worked around him.

“She wasn’t in the system because she was in the system.”

“What would be the point of that?” Mulder wondered out loud.

“Would anyone be looking for a woman who was supposed to die from cancer in jail?” Kefenick pointed out.

“I think you’ve been spending too much time with me, Henry,” Mulder said with a huff of laughter.

“Oh you’re using my first name. You must have really had a scare there, Mulder,” Kenefick replied and they both laughed. “Look, I’ll give you the address and you can meet them there. The patrol officer just checked in with me. Need me to send a patrol officer?”

"Maybe,” he said absently.

"Someone will be there within the hour,” Kefenick said. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

Mulder wrote down the address and waited in the hospital foyer for a patrol car to take him to meet with Scully. He had to find her. He needed to know why she wasn’t there waiting for him and why she wouldn’t answer his phone calls. The anxiety he was feeling tampered down when a police car arrived within minutes to take him to the half-way house.

"Can you get the officer Agent Scully is with on the radio?” Mulder asked as he climbed inside the car.

"I can have radio dispatch to them,” the young officer offered.

Mulder read his name tag. Officer W MacLeod. He was young, fit, early twenties and looked about as green as the grass along the Patomac.

“Have you been to this house before?”

"Sometimes we have to pick up residents if they break the rules of the house too many times,” MacLeod said. He shifted in his seat. “The men and women at this house aren’t well. They are on medications and the least we can do is try to see the side of them that is trying to function within society.”

"Does it work?” Mulder asked.

He thought about people like Max Fenig and his ‘sister’ Sharon. The general attitude towards people like Max and Mulder were the same, however Mulder achieved some sort of respect due to his job and the fact that he wore a tie. If it weren’t for Scully, he would be looked at by his peers and society as an outcast.

"These are good people, Agent,” MacLeod stated. “Most of them made a mistake or had a tragedy that spurred a break down. They’re not doing a lot of these things on purpose.”

MacLeod used the radio on his shoulder to call into dispatch. They rang back that the officer with Scully had just called for an ambulance. Mulder’s heart began to sink.

"You think you can turn on those lights, maybe get us there a little faster?” Mulder quipped.

Officer MacLeod reached between them on the dashboard and hit the lights. “You got it.”

***

The Charleston Hopeful House was located twenty minutes from the hospital. It was close to specific amenities residents could utilize without the temptations of certain downfalls they might have fallen to in the past. Officer MacLeod assured Mulder that while this was a mixed gender house, it was generally safe. Coincidentally, he had met with Liza Imitacja twice in the past and reported to Mulder as he took them through an intersection with the traffic waiting that she wasn’t the typical person found at CHH but, nevertheless, stayed on there as she tried to get her life back in order.

"It’s a shame,” MacLeod said as he swerved them around a bus. “She had all these things going for her until she was abducted.”

"How do you know she was abducted?” Mulder asked. “By whom?”

"I’m the one who found her on the side of the road half naked and delirious,” MacLeod reported. “We don’t know who did it. I picked her up when she was reported for disorderly conduct. She didn’t have much left at that point and went into the system. For people like Liza who don’t have a support system when she gets out, there isn’t much for her.”

Mulder realized that while he probably had little life experience before joining the police department, MacLeod had lived ten lives in the last few years on the job. “I’m surprised they didn’t send you with Agent Scully.”

"My partner has a better rapport with her than I do,” MacLeod said with a shrug as they pulled onto Exiter Street where CHH was located. With the siren on and the streets clearing for them, they were able to make it to CHH in fifteen minutes. “Whatever you do when you talk to Liza, just keep ten feet between you and her. She’s jumpy with men in suits even after her therapy and the assurance the government isn’t out to get her.”

"Good to know,” Mulder replied.

MacLeod was probably wrong on that one but he didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.

The front door to the halfway house had a buzzer and camera watching the entrance. Mulder and Officer MacLeod showed their badges to the camera and they were permitted to gain entry.

"Tight security,” Mulder noted.

"A lot of the people here want to get back to society, out of an underbelly and function. It’s hard to do that with drug dealers, ex-spouses and old friends stopping by with temptations that can land you back in jail,” MacLeod replied. “This place has been robbed, vandalized and almost set on fire once or twice.”

"Any suspects?” Mulder asked as they signed the visitor’s log. Mulder’s first thought was the person of interest could be the Bounty Hunter making attempts on Liza’s safety. He was hoping they at least had a suspect in mind.

"Just some local kids trying to get their hands on some of the things kept in here. Minor infractions,” MacLeod replied and signed his name under Mulder’s.

They looked at the young woman behind the desk with an eyebrow ring and a bored expression. She was thumbing her fingers quickly at a GameBoy and Mulder recognized the theme song to Cutthroat Island.

“Where’s Liza?”

"In the upstairs common room with another cop and that agent lady,” the young woman replied quietly.

"Thanks Frankie,” MacLeod said. He pointed down the hallway. “We wanna head up that way.”

”After you,” Mulder said and gave a glance back to Frankie. She snapped her gum at Mulder and smiled tightly. “Thanks.”

"Right,” Frankie mumbled and snapped her gum again.

"Nice girl,” Mulder muttered as they approached the stairwell.

"Usually when we show up we’re taking someone out of here in handcuffs,” MacLeod replied. “The staff want to like us but the residents can make that difficult.”

"She works here?”

"She’s great at connecting with people with certain disorders,” MacLeod replied. “People like us, not so much. For anyone who has had a rough time, she’s great.”

Mulder could hear the television blasting the news and Scully’s voice vibrated down the hall as she spoke slowly and carefully. He felt a relief wash over him again but there was an underlying feeling of anger. She should have called him.

MacLeod knocked on the doorway to the open room. “Hey Liza.”

"Why did you bring a spook?” Liza snapped.

She was petite like Scully with mousy brown hair that a bad blonde dye job was slowly washing out of and a sour looking face. Her wide green eyes and frail body shook under the over-sized sweater she wore. At first glance, Mulder thought she was an odd looking child but she was not that. She was a woman in her late twenties with an unpleasant expression. She looked skittish as a cat with a disdain for the male gender.

"They actually call me Spooky Mulder,” Mulder quipped.

"Oh great, this one has a sense of humour,” Liza retorted and rolled her eyes. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a half ponytail and the front tendrils refused to stay back. She tucked the stubborn pieces behind her ears and shifted in her seat. She might be in her late twenties but she was acting like a child. “What do you want Wade?”

"We’re just here to listen,” MacLeod explained gently.

Liza relaxed slightly but not by much. “Have a seat.”

Mulder sat gingerly next to Scully and looked down at her notebook. Liza’s missing time coincided with hers. Instead of being returned to a hospital in Bethesda, she was left on the side of the road, half-dressed and drugged. He saw Scully underline: rape kit came back negative/no tests for ova removal. He wondered how that conversation came up.

He made an attempt or two to make eye contact with Scully and her female counterpart but they were both sitting with open expressions to Liza. Mulder knew if they exchanged a glance it might come off as conspiratorial. They had been accused of that more than once. He just wanted to see her eyes to confirm they were okay.

"I was just telling Red about my trials and tribulations,” Liza scoffed. “You know Imitacja means fake in Polish? Or imitation?”

"I did not,” Mulder lied. Let her teach you something. Let her feel like she has the upper hand and she might confess more than if she feels the positions of power are different. “Has that been a source of contention for you?”

"Yeah,” Liza scoffed. “You might say that. My name might as well have legally been Jane Doe.”

"Liza was just telling us about the treatments with Dr. Phillips,” Scully offered in an attempt to get them back on topic.

Mulder shifted in his chair and leaned back. He looked over to Scully to catch her expression but she was more or less prompting Liza.

"When I was found, there was a chip in the back of my neck,” Liza said and waited for their questions. “A computer chip! Like they’re going to record my thoughts and whereabouts for what?”

"I’m familiar with them,” Scully replied quietly.

"Oh really?” Liza spat.

"Why did you agree to another chip if you’re suspicious of the intent?” Mulder asked gently.

"Look spook, if I wanted to die before I was forty from cancer, then I would have accepted my fate but I don’t smoke,” Liza retorted. “I don’t deserve to die because of whatever these assholes did to me.”

Scully took a visible breath and Mulder resisted reaching under the table to give her a reassuring pat on her leg.

"Why did Dr. Phillips choose you?”

"He was the doctor on call when I was found by Wade,” Liza answered and sat back in her chair. “I wouldn’t have agreed to it but I can’t afford any other fucking treatments.”

"Language please,” a man in his mid-forties called from the couch.

"I’ll say whatever the fuck I want Daniel!” Liza shouted as she stood up.

"Liza,” MacLeod warned.

"What are you going to do, Wade?” Liza yelled. “Are you going to lock me up again? Put me in the box overnight?”

"Liza,” Mulder started.

"Not you!” Liza shouted. “You don’t get to tell me shit, you spook!”

"We want to help you,” Scully said as she stood up. “Please, Liza.”

"How are you going to help me? I’m here.” Liza shook her head. “You guys don’t get it. I’m in here and I can’t get back to some kind of life I had before!”

"You could-” Scully started.

Liza pointed a long slender finger towards Scully. “Don’t!”

Liza pushed the table toward Mulder and Scully and ran from the room. MacLeod and the patrol officer that arrived with Scully were on their feet first and ran after her. Scully gave Mulder a look before they both took off down the hallway, to the stairwell and into the road.

Mulder’s adrenaline kicked in as he raced through CHH. He made it to the door before Scully and the two patrol cops. He watched Liza burst through the front door and down the stairs of the house. Her legs carried her quickly into the street at the exact moment to see a large Mac truck hit her square on.

The macabre image struck Mulder and he stood in shock as the truck kept moving and her body dragged along the ground for another few feet before the remnants of what used to be a woman spit onto the ground.

Scully came out behind Mulder and pushed her face into his arm after her eyes connected with the scene. “Oh my god.”

"She ran into the road,” Mulder said distantly. “She just ran out into the road. She didn’t look.”

Scully looked up to the window of the halfway house where the officer she arrived with was standing at the window. She had her hand covering her mouth in horror.

"Mulder she saw the whole thing, she can testify you didn’t push her,” Scully replied. “You didn’t cause this.”

"I know,” he said quietly.

"Do you?” she asked as she took his hand.

The contact felt great after being apart. He wanted to pull away from her but on instinct, he squeezed her fingers. He was hers if she wanted him or not.

"Scully look,” Mulder instructed and pointed down the road.

A tall figure emerged out of the brush and they knew immediately who it was.

"Back away from her you son of a bitch!” Mulder shouted down the street. He took a few steps towards the Bounty Hunter and Scully grabbed his arm. “He’s going to take her chip, Scully. We need that for you. We need that technology!”

"Mulder, no!” Scully protested and gripped his arm tighter. “It’s not worth it.”

Mulder pulled his arm from her grasp and ran down the street after the Bounty Hunter but his lungs felt tired. He pushed through to make it in time to see him ripping the small chip from her neck. Mulder stepped back and pushed his sleeve into his mouth and closed his eyes.

"I told you, some truths are not for you,” the Bounty Hunter repeated ominously.

"Give me the chip!” Mulder yelled. “Give it to me!”

"You’re not going to save her with this,” the Bounty Hunter repeated and turned his back to Mulder.

"You turn your back on a man that knows how to kill you?” Mulder panted. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip.

The Bounty Hunter looked over his shoulder in that way he did that imitated some kind of western movie’s mysterious stranger. Mulder wanted to tell him he was behaving like a cliche but that comment wouldn’t be appreciated and might get him an ice pick in the back of the neck.

Scully ran up to Mulder to pull him away from the Bounty Hunter and Liza’s body. “MacLeod called for back up.”

The Bounty Hunter changed his appearance in front of them to a younger man and held the chip between his fingers in front of them. “You’re never going to get me into a prison.”

"Fuck you, you son of a bitch!” Mulder yelled and started to cough. His throat was sore and he felt the recent push on his system was too soon. It probably was.

"She’s dead, move on,” the Bounty Hunter replied. “Don’t make yourself a bigger problem than you already are. I could kill you both with no consequence.”

He glanced down at Liza’s body one last time before leaving their presence and Mulder bit back a comment about his dramatic exit. Scully wiped at her nose and Mulder looked for signs of blood. He caught her gaze and she shook her head.

"Just checking,” she said. “I’m fine.”

Another lie.

"Why did you stop me?” he asked.

"You don’t carry an ice pick on your other ankle do you?” she asked with a referral to the second gun he started carrying last year. Mulder shrugged. They looked down at Liza’s body and she took his hand. “I’ll call for a coroner.”

"Are you going to do the autopsy?” Mulder asked.

"Tomorrow morning,” she replied. “I need a break.”

Normally Mulder would protest and tell her they needed answers now. In any other scenario he would push them to keep working until they found what they needed but their saving grace to this case walked off in the hands of the alien bounty hunter. All they had left was five dead women and the knowledge that what could have saved Scully slipped through their fingers again. He felt the defeat of this case too and what had just transpired with their shape-shifting nemesis.

***

After a long conversation with MacLeod and Officer Pierce, Scully’s escort to visit to interview Liza, they were excused by Kefenick for a night’s rest. It was eleven forty five by the time they arrived back at their motel. Scully unbuckled her belt before they had managed to park the car and slammed the door to her room before Mulder had exited the driver’s side.

She looked around her empty room and began to shed her clothing. She was angry and frustrated. She was tired and feeling defeated from this case. If there was a cure it wasn’t within their grasp. If Mulder could get to it, there was a chance it could cost him his life. She didn’t want to live knowing he died for her. She also knew he would willingly risk himself for her and that wouldn’t be a choice she could live with.

A soft knock sounded on the connecting door and she closed her eyes in regretful anticipation. Her door was still slightly ajar and he poked his head through.

"Okay?” His tone was curious but acerbic.

"I need time,” she said and shook her head at herself with a deprecating face. She didn’t have that but she needed space or some breathing room. “I just...”

"You’re pushing me away right now?” Mulder clarified.

He hadn’t necessarily come to her room for a night cap of sexual activity but she could see he needed her. Yet she was exhausted. If she was being honest, she didn’t know how much energy she had for Mulder’s emotional turmoil. She needed to be selfish sometimes.

“There’s no such thing as justice with this. This case has been a useless exercise to show me there’s nothing left for us to do but wait.”

She meant wait for her death and that wasn’t possible for him to do. He couldn’t accept her fate too easily. His passion had driven them this far but it would be too much if she wasn’t there for him. She worried that he couldn’t handle a reality without her. Part of her understood that he couldn’t sit idly by and watch her die.

"No!” he yelled and she stepped back. Mulder grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him and she futilely pushed against his grip. “Stop fighting me, Scully!”

"This isn’t how I’m going to die, Mulder,” she said with a sob of her reality playing on her voice. “I’m not going to fight you as I fight this cancer. You have to accept it or you have to leave.”

Mulder shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

"This self-destructive path... Mulder I’ve seen this with you before. As if you could try to prevent seeing the end of something you didn’t want to witness by meeting your own too soon,” she said regretfully.

They should be honest at almost midnight with a long day under their belts and a vibrating tension between them that was fueled by bad timing and circumstance.

"Fuck you,” he spat at her.

"I see this pattern and I just can’t be party to another self-destruction,” she said tiredly.

"Are you talking about us?” he asked quietly.

"I’ll keep working until-” her voice cut her off. “Until I can’t. But you and I can’t do this anymore.”

Mulder’s jaw dropped. “Why?”

"I’m trying to give you some distance so when-”

"Stop it!” he yelled at her. His strong hands gripped her upper arms and he shook her once. “You don’t get to die on me to get out of an emotional revelation that you love me too!”

Scully shoved on his chest. “Fuck you, Mulder!”

"Say you love me, Scully,” he urged her.

It was the same tone he used when pushing his body into her and hoping she would find release. He was trying to get something. It was his motive to uncover her feelings but instead of the sexual release, he wanted her exposed emotionally.

"Mulder,” she said.

Her tone was warning and hurt. She wanted nothing to do with his game tonight. She needed her walls up now.

"What are you telling me, Scully? You need us to stop this side of us while you roll over and give up?” Mulder challenged.

"Stop,” she snapped.

"You’re not going to give up!” he yelled. “Why are you quitting? You’ve never let me quit anything in the last four damn years I’ve known you. Do you think I’d let you give up?”

"I let myself get wrapped up in the idea that science was able to fix me,” Scully said and wiped at a tear she hadn’t realized had fallen. “I didn’t expect to get misled by these possibilities.”

"If one man can make this chip,” Mulder started. “Another man can make it too. The technology is within our grasp.”

"If it’s not, Mulder, I have to be willing to face the reality otherwise,” she replied and he pulled his hands down his face in frustration. “It would be easier on you if we had never done any of this.”

"Stop saying that,” he said with a sigh. He was becoming defeated to the reality also. “I can’t keep listening to you tell me this was a bad idea.”

"Everything is muddled,” she tried.

"I don’t like anything cut and dry and I’m sorry you need that,” he told her. “Scully, I’m not pushing for you to survive this because of the guilt I have over you getting this disease or how you make me feel. I love you, fine. But no matter what, no one should die because of these men.”

She hated him for tearing down every barrier she was trying to put up. “What are you expecting if there’s a cure?”

"I can be your friend,” he said but she could see he was lying. “I can.”

"You want to be my friend after all this?” she clarified.

He shrugged. “I can’t take losing you. I need you with me on the X-Files. I’ll do whatever I can to make this work.”

"This?”

"Our working relationship,” he replied.

More lies between them.

"I don’t want anything from you tonight,” he said and she saw the truth there. “Just let me sleep here. As your friend.”

Scully nodded. “Okay. I trust you.”

She repeated the words she told him after sex in a shower when she knew they were making more mistakes but she didn't care. The lies she would tell herself was that she would let him in these times because she saw he needed her. She wouldn’t admit she needed him to. More subversion to the truth instead of admission to the fact she longed for his touch, craved his body and yearned to taste him again. She would have made it count if the last time was going to be the last time.

Chapter Text

The morning came too soon and Scully left the warm cocoon of the bed that she and Mulder shared the night before reluctantly. They couldn’t fall into these patterns in the future and she was working hard to build up some kind of emotional and physical barrier between them.

She sat on the edge of the bed and looked behind her toward where Mulder lay. His hand was draped across his chest as he breathed slowly during his slumber. Normally an early riser, Mulder was resting comfortably in her bed, swaddled in her sheets and taking up her space.

She felt drawn to him and wanted to lay with him longer but she knew they couldn’t. Logically she would need to move on with the day, head to the morgue where their tryst began and dissect the latest victim to the dark conspiracy that seemed to plague more of the populace than they realized.

As she ran her fingers up her scalp in the shower, she thought about the scene that awaited her. The best line of defense to a gruesome autopsy was a good offence. If she prepared herself for the macabre of Liza’s torn apart body, she could prevent the automatic response that threatened to arise.

A knock on the bathroom door pulled her out of her mental preparation. “Scully I’m going to get the coffee. You need breakfast?”

“That would be nice, thank you,” she said quietly.

“What?”

Mulder’s voice grew louder and she wondered if he was going to open the curtain and join her again. She half hoped they would repeat their past mistakes but dreaded the aftermath of another encounter.

She shut off the faucet and wiped the water off her face with her hands. They still felt cold to her even under the scalding temperature she had turned the shower onto.

“I said I’d like that,” she repeated. She could see him through the flimsy shower curtain and he was looking at the floor. “Could you hand me a towel?”

Mulder grabbed one of the large bath towels off the rack and handed it to her extended arm. She felt some guilt about wanting privacy but some trepidation about what being exposed in front of him would do to both of them physically.

When she had the towel secured, she pulled back the curtain and saw Mulder studying his feet rather than catching her gaze. He looked half asleep as he stood in his boxers with his hair sticking up at the back. She resisted the urge to run her fingers through his thick strands and push it down.

She couldn’t touch him. If she touched a neutral place on his arm she would want to find his fingers and put them inside her.

The awkward and clumsy air between them rested a beat. If Mulder had been wearing his suit, he would have shoved his hands in his pockets in search of a seed.

“I’ll just go get that coffee then,” Mulder mumbled and turned to leave the bathroom.

Scully reached for his arm and his eyes watched her fingers wrap around his wrist.

“Maybe don’t do that,” he warned.

His voice was laden with cautionary undertones. She knew he wouldn’t lash out at her in anger. His desire was close to the surface as he clenched his jaw and tried to avoid eye contact.

“I just want to see your face Mulder,” she told him. “I want to know that we’re okay.”

Mulder pulled away from her. “You’re breaking my heart, Scully. How okay do you expect me to be?”

He left her in the bathroom to feel the weight of his words and retrieve something of sustenance to start their day. It took her usual twenty minutes to brush her teeth, blow out her hair and slather her body in cocoa butter lotion. The last clean suit she had available was her lavender skirt and jacket. It was one of the few pieces of work attire that still fit her. She found her cream tank top to wear underneath and stared at herself in the mirror.

The pallor of her skin contrasted against her red hair and worried eyes. She put on her rouge lipstick in her last act of trying to fix her face from one of a cancer patient to a woman ready to work.

The morning air was cold and the streets were wet from a recent rain. She pulled her dark coat over her shoulders and walked five feet down to Mulder’s hotel room door. He answered it with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth and his dress shirt undone.

“Two minutes,” he mumbled.

Scully nodded and spotted the coffee and bagels on the table of his room. “Which one is mine?”

Mulder pointed to the one on the left. “Full fat cream for your caffeinated delight.”

“Bless you,” she whispered and took a hesitant sip of the Seattle based drip coffee.

When Mulder returned, he was buttoning his pressed white shirt and carrying a rather offensive looking tie. His belt buckle remained undone as he swung his tie over the back of his neck to begin tie ritual of looping it within itself. Scully took a healthy bite of her cinnamon raisin bagel with the real cream cheese spread and set it down to help him with the final adjustments to his tie.

Mulder lifted his chin ever so slightly as she pushed the creases of his collar into more defined points and when he met her gaze she saw it there. His thumb brushed the edge of her lips and he showed her the cream cheese remnants from her mouthful. Scully paused mid-chew to watch him lick the pad of his thumb clean.

She tightened his tie a little more and stepped back. As her tongue swiped at the spot he had just touched, Mulder watched her closely. This was torturous. She should have just continued the mistake of them going to bed together until she died from this cancer and not worried about how he would handle his new solitary status.

Why would she think it would be easier to lose a friend over a lover? They were neither of those things exclusively.

Scully adjusted his tie once more and ran the flat of her palm down his chest before pulling away. His hand caught her wrist this time and she understood what he meant. It felt too charged right now to touch.

“What time is your autopsy scheduled on Liza?” Mulder asked quietly as he turned her hand over in his palm. His other hand drew a line up her palm and she felt a shiver run through her.

“In half an hour,” she replied.

She was trying to find reasons within herself at this moment not to kiss him. She used to search for other reasons within herself to keep him at a distance emotionally, to shut herself off or hide when she felt hurt or angry. Mulder was like a stimulant she had used for the first time after wanting it for ages and decided then cold turkey would be the best method of detox.

Mulder was the pill she was never supposed to swallow or the forbidden fruit she shouldn’t have tasted. He might describe her as the same. They had each sampled the sweet nectar of what four years of longing had built up and now they were hooked on the delicacy of what indulging in each other could satisfy.

Once she convinced herself that a item food was off limits, she only craved it more. She had to oblige from time to time to keep the urges at bay and satisfy a craving with little tastes. Mulder was something she needed to nibble on from time to time rather than cut herself off from completely.

Her gut feeling told her he wouldn’t go for that unless he was itching for a fix too.

The look in his eyes told her he might be but he was more emotionally raw from all of this than she was. She was trying to think logically and not with her heart or her hormones. Mulder usually did the opposite.

She wasn’t sure if he would go against instinct and dive into another sexual encounter with her, one that could end with her pushing him away again, or if he would know it was a mistake before they made it.

“Mulder?” she asked with the intent of knowing what he was thinking. Just saying his name could prompt so much.

The look in his eyes said he was ready for another mistake. His face leaned into her and his mouth found hers quickly. Lips parted and tongues slid against each other in a long French kiss. Her lipstick smeared against his cheek as he moved his mouth down her jawline and she tilted her head back.

This had to be the last time, she told herself as she reached for the tie she just helped straighten. They had to stop after this, her mind screamed as his hands worked on the buttons of her suit jacket. She could lie to herself about the needs and desires she would be giving into again after this if it just meant she could feel his flesh throbbing in her mouth or his tongue on the crease near her thigh.

He must have been reading her mind because he pulled away from her long enough to undo his belt, pull himself out of his trousers and push her toward the bed. They weren’t going to make this one count as if it would be their last. It was going to be quick and dirty.

Scully shed her jacket and pulled the material of her skirt up her thighs.

“Thigh highs,” Mulder commented with a smirk on the lacy trim along her milky thighs. “Convenient.”

Mulder stroked himself as she pulled down the white bikini panties off her bottom. He pulled his tie over his head with his free hand and climbed on top of her as she scooted toward the middle of the bed that had remained vacant most nights since they arrived.

He kissed her again and stroked himself as she pushed a finger between her legs. She felt the moisture of her own desire coat her fingers and she reached between their mouths to put her finger to his lips. He cleaned the juices off her finger as he had with the cream cheese.

“You taste like-”

“Don’t say ambrosia,” Scully cut him off. “I’ve read that in too many bad romance novels.”

“You, Scully?” he asked with a grin as he pushed the head of his cock against her swollen folds.

“I can’t always read JAMA,” she replied playfully with a sigh.

The first few pushes inside felt invading and slightly pained. He continued slowly until he was buried to the hilt. The head of his cock grooved against her cervix and they moaned in unison.

“I want to do this every day, Scully,” he said as he rocked his hips into hers.

His eyes closed and when he opened them she saw it all there. On his face he was showing her he loved her. With his body he was telling her how much he lusted after her. She didn’t deserve this kind of affection from him when she couldn’t return it for much longer.

She might die before he was able to satisfy every urge he had for her. The last thing she wanted to be to Mulder was another woman who disappointed him or let him down.

Mulder pulled back and pumped into her once and she arched her back under him. Her hand went between their bodies and her finger brushed against his cock as she worked her bundle of nerves. The other hand pushed into her breast. Leaving their clothes on for this was a mistake. She wanted to feel all of his skin and his.

“God you’re beautiful,” he said as he pumped again.

Her walls began to swell and stretch as he kept his strokes hard and fast. He was fucking her at the same time he was making her feel his love. How could this be a mistake for them when it felt so good? As per usual, Mulder was swaying her arguments to see his side and all she could do was give into her instinct.

“Kiss me,” she whispered and Mulder obliged.

He still tasted like her and his toothpaste. A mix of spice and feminine desire.

Her tongue worked his as his cock moved in and out of her with voracity. This overload of sensations aided her climax to approach. The unexpected moment of this union would ensure this would be a long and powerful one.

His mouth pulled away from hers as he moaned into her neck and she felt herself begin to quake.

“Oh god, Scully I can feel you,” he growled.

Her mind ran through the scenarios in which she wanted him again. Thinking about sex with Mulder while she was being fucked by Mulder was the ultimate aphrodisiac.

His hips continued to pump against her. His pants were brushing against the skin on her legs and the sound of his belt buckle was clinking in unison to each stroke. They didn’t seem to care about afterwards or mess. They were only in this time and space of his hotel room as their coffee cooled on the table four feet away.

She would spend the rest of the day with small remnants of him inside of her and she knew this couldn’t be the last time since she was craving him in her mouth but the look on his face told her they didn’t have time for that right now.

“I’m gonna-” Mulder started and his eyes closed shut as he slammed into her.

She felt the small pulses against her cervix and it was exactly what she needed to fall over the edge. He was vibrating inside of her as he continued to push his hips in three more shallow thrusts.

“Oh fuck!” he cried out. “Fuck you’re tight. You’re sucking it right out of me.”

Her back arched again as her climax rode out with his and his visual statement played out between them.

Scully shuddered as she felt him continue to pulse inside of her. She pressed the backs of her fingers into her lips as she felt her body start to cool down.

Mulder pulled her chin towards him and he kissed her softly. “I gotta pull out and I don’t want to mess your skirt.”

“Or your pants,” she pointed out and he nodded in agreement.

There was the awkward fumbling among them as he reached between to pull out and she felt a hint of pain as he left her. No matter how many times they did this, there was an ache and a pang to the act.

As Scully was finishing in the bathroom, Mulder returned to her with her panties. “If I were anyone else, I might ask if I could keep these.”

“You are that guy,” she teased.

“I just need to pee and we can get out of here,” Mulder told her.

A shrill ringing of a cell phone sounded from the bedroom and she held up her finger. “I’ll get it.”

“If it’s Kefenick, tell him I’ll meet him after I take you to the morgue,” Mulder called.

“Hello?” Scully answered.

“Yes, is Agent Mulder there?” the sultry voice of Marita Covarrubias requested.

Scully pulled the phone away from her ear to see a local hotel number show up on his caller ID. “He is.”

“May I speak with him, Agent Scully?” she requested.

Mulder came out from the bathroom as he retucked his shirt and Scully handed him his phone and tie. “Who is it?”

“Your contact from the other night,” she snapped.

It all made sense why he was keeping things from her. Mulder wasn’t a man of straight out lies but liked to hold back with omissions. He felt like he was protecting her by keeping her in the dark when she really wanted to see everything for what it was.

“Scully-”

“You could have just told me you were working with her on this,” she said as she dropped the items on his bed. “You could tell me anything and yet you continue to do this double talk and lie to me after all we’ve just been through. This is my illness and working with someone so covertly behind my back-”

“Scully!” Mulder cut her off. He snatched up the phone and covered the receiver with his palm. “Take the keys. I’ll meet you at the morgue in a few hours.”

“Yeah, go find your answers without me, Mulder,” she snapped.

She gathered her jacket and purse, coffee and bagel before taking the car keys to drive into the morgue where Liza Imitacja’s body waited for her. She didn’t know if it hurt more to find out he was looking for answers where she didn’t trust the source or that he didn’t bother to call after her as she stormed out of the hotel room where they had just shared another intimate moment.

The sting of both acts was ringing in her ears as she drove thirty minutes to the hospital.

****

What a complete and thorough autopsy on Liza Imitacja’s body revealed was the cancer that had been invading her body after her abudction was completely in remission.

The cancer in Mary Boyle, Caroline Hawkins, and Virginia Leslie was not evident in Liza’s body at all. The files on Liza two years ago documented that her cancer had metastasized to a point beyond what Scully’s had. This chip and not conventional medicine had saved Liza until their discovery had become a liability.

How many more people were going to die because of their quest for the truth while Mulder served his desire to save her? He had to be okay in spite of her death and keep looking for truths without the costs of other lives.

Anne Creston was the last living person who had this cure working for her and yet they couldn’t replictate it for the masses and furthermore, selfishly Scully deduced, for herself. The technology was possible yet the didn’t have the means to duplicate it.

At the moment, Scully had treatments working against the cancer but for how much longer? She saw the possibility of her death with Harold Spuller’s ‘fetch’ or wraith in the backseat of her car. She had to accept that she might not have more than a few weeks or months left.

She felt frustrated and anxious about Mulder meeting with Marita behind her back for this case. There wasn’t much she had control over with this illness and her death. He should involve her to help give her some semblance of power. These decisions should involve her. The meetings with cloaked inviduals when it came to her future shouldn’t be secret to her. If she didn’t have control over her the number of her remaining time she would at least want to decide how she spent it.

It was just so typical of Mulder to ask for everything from her emotionally and yet still keep her in the dark with respect to his quest. And for what?

Scully set down her pen from her notes and looked across the morgue to Liza’s wrapped body. Mulder hadn’t called and she had spent the last three hours stewing in the rejected feelings of a flawed relationship.

Now more than ever she was convinced that sex, for as mind blowing as it had been, was a mistake. Sexual compatibility couldn’t be the only conduit to success and if one person in the relationship was about to leave this mortal coil, it seemed to be doomed. Everything dies and while the passion they held for each other might be burning, it needed to quell before she made her peace with her life ending.

This repetitive internal debate and discussion about their misstep into this relationship was growing tired in her mind.

“Knock knock,” a voice at the double doors to the exam room brought her out of her reverie.

“How was your meeting, Mulder?” she asked. Her tone was flat but there was an underlying tension to her question.

“She took me to see Anne Creston,” Mulder offered.

He looked tired but still fresh pressed from that morning. She could still see Mulder stroking himself through the fly of his suit pants and she looked down at her notes to fight the images of their morning encounter from her mind.

“Is she still alive?” Scully asked as she signed her autopsy notes and closed the file.

There was a flush she could feel burning on her cheeks and she hoped Mulder thought it was unbridled jealousy and not a desire to repeat their activities from that morning.

“She is,” Mulder stated and Scully snapped her head to see his face. “The chip is still there. She’s alive.”

“What was the point of going to see her and your secret meeting?” Scully asked.

“Marita might know how to duplicate this technology,” Mulder said and he looked down at his fingers. He shoved a hand in his pocket to retrieve a seed and popped it in his mouth. He pulled the shell from his lips and looked over to Liza’s body. “I think we can use it to save you.”

“Really?” She sounded more unimpressed than she did hopeful.

“What do you want from me, Scully?” Mulder asked as he crossed the morgue to discard his shell. “We have some hope.”

“You do,” she replied. “I don’t.”

Mulder’s jaw clenched. “What is the issue here?”

“The issue is that you’re not even considering if I’d be willing to have another chip implanted in my neck again for the possibility of a cure without knowing the side effects,” she said. This was partly true. “The issue is that you’re making these decisions for me when I don’t know-”

“Don’t say whether or not you’re wanting to keep living Scully,” he interrupted. “Just don’t.”

“Mulder, I still have the treatments I’m undergoing,” she argued.

“You were willing to take this chance when it came from Doctor Franklin,” Mulder reminded her. “Why not now? Because of Marita’s involvement? You’ve never had a problem with me utilizing these channels in the past.”

“That’s not true,” she disagreed.

“It is,” he argued. He shook his head and ran his hands down his face.

“I’m not getting my hopes up for any of this Mulder,” she said. “I can’t face my death thinking there was more I could have done.”

“There is always more we can do,” he said as he approached her. His hands wrapped around her biceps again and she wondered if he was about to shake her. “You can’t give up hope.”

“You can’t give up hope, Mulder,” she corrected him. “You can’t quit now. You can keep searching and pushing for these truths and you have to be able to do it alone without me.”

“Scully-”

“No, Mulder,” she cut him off. “If you quit now, they win. And you can’t let them win. For everything that’s happened to me. Just promise if I don’t-”

“Fuck!” he yelled. “Stop talking like that!”

“Marita won’t be able to fix me,” she said quietly and unfazed by his outburst. Her chin wavered as her next statement floated through her mind. “Just promise me you won’t risk your own life anymore.”

Mulder’s hands dropped to his sides and he looked up at the ceiling. “I can’t do that.”

“Then I guess we have nothing else to talk about,” she said quietly.

“You’re just giving up?” Mulder asked.

“I’m not giving up on our work. I just know we have to stop what we’re doing,” she said regretfully with a motion of her hand between them.

“Really?” he said with an acerbic disgust. “You just give up on what we’ve started together-”

“Mulder it was never going to work unless you were being honest with me,” she countered. “And you haven’t always been forthcoming with sources. I can’t be with someone who doesn’t trust me enough with the information that could save my life.”

“So what am I supposed to say? Good luck then?” he asked with his hands on his hips. He took a step towards her and she held her hands up to stop him from touching her. “We still work together. I can’t touch you at all?”

“Not if it has an undertone to what we did this morning,” she replied.

“If I had known this morning was the last time, I would have made it count more,” he admitted with a shake of his head. He looked down at her. “I would have-”

“Same here,” she interrupted.

She couldn’t listen to his comments about what he could have done or what he wanted. That wasn’t going to help them right now to detach from their emotional and physical involvement.

“What do I do now?” he asked.

“You keep being my friend,” she replied but her voice caught in her throat. “I need a friend.”

She could see he wanted to touch her again in the ways that excited her but he wouldn’t upon her request. Mulder would respect her physical boundaries even if he misconstrued what it meant to involve her in the decisions about her future. Sometimes Scully made allowances for Mulder’s altered perception of love and full disclosure when she knew he didn’t have the best examples growing up. His mother and father hid so much from him and each other. However, the last four years together told her that she should have gotten a better version of Mulder.

Mulder ran a hand down his face. “I still love you.”

“I love you too,” she replied.

That was it. That was the nail in the coffin between them. His stubbornness to let go of her and her lack of belief in the idea a cure was out there. If he could find it and hand it to her now, she might believe but he didn’t have that. Marita would falter in her promise to Mulder by making an excuse of self preservation.

They left Henry Kefenick with their contact information and more questions than answers in their complete report. Mulder would look at her with longing and desire as they traveled back in silence to D.C. It drove her crazy.

As they made their way to the baggage claim, Mulder received a call that he stepped away from her to answer. He didn’t offer to tell her who was on the phone and she didn’t ask.

Mulder called her that evening to see how she was feeling. They talked casually about the case report and she tried to feel okay about how they had left things.

When she heard from him again, it was Sunday afternoon and Mulder was at a hotel in Providence Rhode Island with no recollection of the weekend and he had attempted to have holes drilled into his head.

He called her at 4:50 on Sunday morning frantic there was blood all over him that didn’t belong to him.

The motel room door was unlocked and she found him in the shower under scalding temperatures unable to get warm. Upon an initial examination, he wasn’t suffering from any head trauma but his symptoms ofshort-term memory loss hinted at just that.

After every attempt to get him to a hospital failed and scientific arguments about what an aneurysm could do if left untreated washed over him, he became completely aware of a case that needed to be solved. Mulder’s mind latched onto the puzzle like it always did and the complete disregard for himself was painfully obvious.

“You are taking a big risk Mulder,” she explained emphatically. “I feel strongly about this.”

“I know you do,” he replied. “But it’s my risk.”

Her FBI partner and former lover was on a downward spiral as her health declined. She didn’t know who would be facing the end of their life first, her or Mulder. What kind of man reacts so poorly to the possibility of being alone that he drills holes in his head to try to find answers to his childhood?

Dr. Goldstein had been attempting to unlock memories for him as some kind of therapy but what he was really doing was putting Mulder in danger. In every scientific profession there were those who lead the way by doing something drastic but a man like Charles Goldstein could have anticipated that his methods were not going to be blazing any trails.

She made apologies to everyone she could on his behalf because that’s what she did for him. She argued with Detective Curtis while he locked Mulder up that his actions over the last few days were a side effect to Dr. Goldstein. She showed contention to his mother for his outbursts. Mulder ditched her there while he tried to find more answers.

There was only so much more saving she had in her before the end. But with her dying breath, she knew she would risk her reputation for him if it meant he could get some peace.

“Mulder it’s me,” she introduced.

“Scully leave me alone,” he warned.

She could see his flashbacks haunting him.

“It’s all falling into place,” he said from his knees in an old house that should have burned down with its secrets.

“Mulder put down the gun,” she pleaded.

“No,” he argued. “Don’t try to stop me.”

“Please, Mulder...”

“Get away!” he said as he pulled his gun on her.

“Are you going to shoot me, Mulder?” she asked. He nodded as he held the gun straight on her and she saw the boy at twelve who lost his family. “Is that how much this means to you? Mulder, listen to me. You have been given a powerful hallucinogen. You don’t know that these memories are yours.”

He was covered in sweat and he was teetering on the verge.

“This is not the way to the truth, Mulder,” she argued. “You’ve got to trust me.”

“Just shut up!” he yelled.

“Put down the gun,” she pleaded. “Let it go.”

He spun around and fired. She could see he was firing at the ghosts that haunted him and this house. The smoking man, his parents and a sister he lost before she had a chance to live a full life.

She was going to leave him too soon as well. He laid his head down on his arms on the floor and she saw his unfathomable pain of being left behind once more. She crouched down behind him and put her head on his back. This was her apology to him that he had to keep on going alone, again.

Chapter Text

i.
“Keep going FBI woman,” he said as she began to undress in front of him.

“Mulder? What are you doing? Why are you sitting in my bedroom in the dark?”

“It was too crowded in my apartment,” he quipped. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’m not kidding Mulder,” she warned.

If he was there for other intentions, this wasn’t the time. Her cancer had metastasized and there was little left in time for her. She didn’t want to spend it in bed with Mulder committing sins that she would need to repent later to Father McCue.

But he was there to confess his own sins and ask for her help.

Of course, she would lie to the board convened to discover the truth about Mulder’s ‘death’ since lying for him to the men who lead them down that path was the least she could do.

Her deathbed was literally where found herself when she was ready to name the man who had been behind the lies and deception. She learned later from her doctors that Mulder had nearly collapsed at the sight of her, he yelled at everyone on staff and almost got into a fist fight with Skinner. He ran around D.C. looking for answers and went to the wrong people to find a cure.

He wouldn’t let her take the fall for shooting Ostlehoff and he wouldn’t let her life end with the accusation that she took the life of a man sent to spy on Mulder. Right to the end they were going to have a counter argument to each other.

How proud did he feel when he arrived at the hospital with a chip in hand and the answers to save her. She saw the look of hope on his face and she listened to Mulder argue with Bill over her shaking body as she fingered the vial.

It was the chip they had been searching for and she held it in her hands.

“I think that everybody here has their heart in the right place, but I need it to be my decision,” she stated after the doctor, Bill, Mulder and her mom had voiced how they felt about this option.

“Dana...” Bill started.

“I know you’re only looking out for me, Bill. But I don’t think you have all the facts,” Scully stated.

She had seen this work on Anne and Liza. The least she could do was actually try this. Against science and convention, the miracle chip worked and her remission began before it was too late. Fox Mulder would be known among her family as ‘the last minute man’ but to Bill he would always be known as a sorry son of a bitch.

ii.

“Maybe if it rains sleeping bags you’ll get lucky,” Scully quipped and she could feel a flush rise up on her cheeks as the comment left her lips.

She could also feel Mulder’s eyes on her. He would comment about that small moment later on the flight back to D.C. as she helped him change into a shirt she purchased for him at the gift shop.

“That wasn’t very fair of you,” Mulder noted.

“Of me?” she asked knowing full well what he was talking about.

He sat on a chair in the family washroom of the Tallahassee domestic terminal with his shirt off and his wounded arm against his chest protectively.

“You ran away from wine and cheese,” she pointed out. “You’re the one who brought up naked sleeping bags.”

“I can’t drink around you yet, Scully,” he replied honestly.

The look in his eyes told her exactly why not.

“What if I said I was hoping for that?” she asked as she looked over the bandages on his shoulder.

Mulder’s eyes studied her face. “Were you?”

Scully pulled his shirt over his head and helped him loop his long arm through the sleeve. “Maybe.”

He stood up as he pulled his uninjured arm through the shirt. “You need help getting into that?”

He pointed at the Florida slogan shirt she had bought for herself. At least his innuendo never skipped a beat.

“I’ll be fine,” she replied.

“At least let me watch,” he teased.

“Okay, get out,” she sighed and ushered him to the door.

“I’ll go scavenge for coffee and food,” Mulder replied as the door shut behind him.

“Great!” she called through the door and willed her body to settle.

iii.

The music of Cher was actually moving them to a wonderful beat and she felt herself getting lost in the moment. His hand pulled her body flush against his and her heart admittedly beat a little faster.

This was the romantic and fun side of Mulder she liked. The side that did better than Apollo 11 key chains but had no clue how to get her from this Point A to Point B of the bed. This was a good start but definitely not the time.

When the music ended and the lights came up, they still had a rapist to take to jail. The actual reason they were with Mutato was because he had invaded the homes of Shaineh Berkowitz and Elizabeth Pollidori and done something without consent. No matter how much those babies would or could mean to them, they had not entered into their pregnancies willingly.

“You don’t think that we could sent the Mutato on the road with Cher as a punishment, could we?” Mulder asked as their bodies still swayed to music that was no longer playing.

“I think we should probably check the exits that he hasn’t run into one of the tour vans to try to do exactly that,” Scully replied as she stepped away from him. Her body felt cool without his wrapped around hers. “And to him, that wouldn’t be a punishment.”

“Right, that’s me I’m thinking of,” Mulder said with a nod. He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a seed. “Let’s go get our man before Cher decides to do an encore.”

Scully pointed across the room. “I think the Sheriff was worried about the same thing.”

His fingers brushed at some lint she couldn’t see on her jacket. “Okay. Well...”

“Yeah. Back to reality.”

“If we had a song, Scully-”

“I wouldn’t make it this one,” she replied. “Maybe something with a more sultry beat.”

Mulder nodded. “I’ll try to think of something good.”

“Nothing 80s dance either,” she replied as they crossed the small venue to meet up with the Mutato.

“She blinded me with science is out too then I guess,” he quipped and she laughed.

iv.

The news of her infertility had come at a great shock to her but the fact that Mulder had known for some time before her had questioning so much between them.

He never wondered if they needed a condom during their encounters. She assumed it was because he had overheard her discussing with her doctor about how ovulation could be halted during rounds of chemotherapy or if he was as reckless at the idea of a baby as he was at having sex in the change room off a morgue.

It made her question so much between them and she felt jilted by him once more.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Mulder?” she asked as they sat on the couch of her brother’s naval base home.

She felt exposed and raw from this recent trip and emotionally vulnerable in front of him. The knowledge of a child she was never meant to know would do that to anyone.

“I never expected this. I thought I was protecting you,” he replied.

Was he trying to protect her from the knowledge she had been medically raped? Or from information that the beautiful babies she should be able to have were being used for the nefarious intent of making children for the sake of more experiments?

“Why would they do this to me?” she asked.

“I only knew that genetic experiments were being done,” Mulder explained. “That children were being created.”

“Children being created for who?” she asked with defeat.

“For who? For What?” Mulder asked. “I don’t know.”

These were babies she never got to hold or love. Her heart broke for more Emily’s and the children created from Penny Northern or Betsy Hagopean’s ova.

Mulder was more than territorial around Scully and Detective Kresge. She sensed it a few times since he arrived in San Diego but especially after Mulder had spent some time working with Kresge.

After the funeral, Kresge was waited outside the church with a cigarette in his mouth and a bouquet of flowers in hand.

“John,” Scully greeted and took the flowers awkwardly from him. “How are you feeling?”

“Scully-FBI, I’m feeling better, thank you,” John replied and took a drag from his cigarette. He shook his head. “I’m sorry about this, Dana.”

“Thank you for coming,” Scully replied and glanced over her shoulder to Mulder. There was no burial afterwards since Scully had opted to cremate Emily so there was only a wake at Bill’s home in an hour. “Are you coming-”

“I’m on the job today. I just wanted to pay my respects,” John Kresge replied. He looked past Scully’s shoulder to Mulder. “Take care.”

John leaned in and gave Scully a kiss on the cheek before heading down the rest of the steps to the church and back into his car.

“John?” Mulder prompted to Scully as they got in the car.

“Don’t start with me,” she said tersely. “He was just someone I was working with here.”

Ironic that he would feel territorial about a man she never slept with but would find no reason to quell her worries when Diana Fowely reappeared in his life.

v.

Just when she felt like they were getting on the same page to start something again, former lovers and the fire in the X-Files office that closed down their department wedged them apart.

He flirted with her shamelessly while they worked on scut detail for SAC Michaud, he took her words of quitting and threw them back at her about not being able to go on this journey alone and he took her head in his hands to attempt to kiss her again.

If it weren’t for that bee she might have gone to bed with him again, even with the unanswered questions lingering in the air.

vi.

It just always came down to the same argument with them. Science over his beliefs. After six years he had grown tired of being second guessed. He would tell Diana he liked that she made him work for every truth they uncovered but to her face he was distant and argumentative.

The continual rejections of misfires and bad timing had worn on them both.

“I guess the world might end if we tried this again,” Mulder quipped as he stood in the file recovery room.

Scully had just given him scientific proof that Gibson Praise’s DNA was more than what they thought and she could sense his delight in her working to help him.

“I think we have to rethink our timing,” Scully replied.

She squeezed his hand and left him standing there with her case report. They had a new boss that didn’t find their absences from work to be nearly as charming as Skinner did.