Acheron
by Aloysia Virgata

Email: aloysia.virgata@yahoo.com
Rating: G

Spoilers: Babylon/Season 10

Summary: Babylon rewrite.

Author's notes:  This fic is based on a really excellent post by
@violethuntress, who kindly gave me permission to use it as a
sort of outline for a fic. I have a strange relationship with this
fic because it has a cowritten feel even though I wrote it
myself. Because I wanted to keep the same narrative structure
as the episode and as much of the dialogue as I dared, there are
parts of it I don't love. I even threw in a songfic/fanvid nod in
the final scene. :)

I never could have done this without the amazing support of
@avocadoave, @contradiction-to-nature, @dashakay,
@leiascully, and @scienceandmysticism. Thank you, lovely
ladies.

Special thanks go to @icedteainthebag for her exceptionally
detailed and expedient beta work. And finally, thank you to the
extraordinary @perplexistan for not only trusting and
encouraging me to tell this story, but for supporting me and
answering my stupid questions the whole way through.



Dawn has begun to cast a pale glow over the edges of the night.
Fareed's alarm goes off, tinkling music to bring him gently into
the day. He opens his gritty eyes, feeling as though they have
only just closed after the call to action five hours ago. It has
been a restless night and this day will be a hard one. He does
not wish to get out of bed.

The alarm grows louder, grows more insistent, and Fareed
sighs before sitting up and turning it off. It is time for *fajr*
and it would not do to sleep in today. He has been trying to be a
better Muslim, trying to be a better man.

The floor is cold beneath his feet as he trudges to the bathroom
for *wudu,* the ablutions before prayer. He shaves first, staring
into his toothpaste-spattered mirror, lost in thoughts of what is
to come. He imagines the forthcoming spectacle as clearly as
he can, as though it might inoculate him against the horror of
actually seeing it.

Fareed dresses quickly, quietly, without turning on the lamp.
He'd laid out his clothing last night and he is always on
autopilot this early. The light would make no difference, and
his partner does not care how he looks.

He unrolls his prayer rug, a gift from his mother when he
moved in. He'd found the *qiblah* with an app, but still takes
him a moment to get oriented. Fareed jams a Broncos cap on to
cover his head and begins to pray.

***

Scully finds out about the bombing on the news, the way most
people do. It's both urgent and unreal, something from a
primetime drama, and she can sense herself dissociating from it
already. One must dissociate to stay sane. She sits in the
basement while emergency meetings are called upstairs, while
phones ring and tires screech and plane tickets are ordered. She
misses her sister in times of crisis, so endlessly empathetic. So
filled with hope in the face of a stark world.

She reaches to call her mother, then remembers. It is strange to
be an orphan, even at fifty-one.

A knock interrupts her thoughts. "Anyone down here?"

"Nobody but the FBI's most unwanted," she replies, glad that
some things never change.

Mulder opens the door, ambles in with something like his
youthful grace. "Cute."

Scully grins. "I've been waiting twenty-three years to say that."

"How'd it feel?"

"Pretty good."

He chuckles, puts a stack of manila folders on the desk. "So
this nightmare in Texas, huh? It's bedlam upstairs, Scully."
Mulder turns his computer on, pops a flash drive in.

She pinches the bridge of her nose, staving off a headache.
She'd skipped coffee in her rush. "Yeah, it's why I got in early.
What the hell, Mulder? What the hell is wrong with people?"
She doesn't know if she means the bombers or the artist or
both. The world is perhaps no madder than it ever has been, but
the madness has begun to feel convergent.

Mulder shakes his head by way of reply, then fiddles with the
TV for a moment. Loud static blares out, startling them both.

"Mulder, stop, you - no. Here, look the HDMI cable is -" Scully
walks over, swats at his hands.

"Cut it out, I've got it, see, you just have to jiggle the thing and-"

The screen crackles, then wavers to life with a loud popping
noise. Mulder smirks.

Scully watches the shaky picture, sees people wandering the
streets of Rome in confusion. Birds 
of all species cover the buildings, the cars, the street benches,
calling and singing to each other. Cats prowl past them,
mewing but harmless. The screen shifts to Moscow, to Istanbul,
to Toronto, to Mogadishu. In each city, birds are gathered. In
each city, predators and prey. A wolf howls at midday in
Beijing.

Scully crouches forward, squinting at howler monkeys gathered
in a Venezuelan elementary school. "Mulder, what am I
looking at here? Is it some kind of....I don't know. Rabies
outbreak?"

He shrugs. "Hell if I know, but footage has been pouring into
my inbox. The animals are showing no aggression and simply
disperse when provoked." He touches the screen, pointing at a
toucan in the school rafters. "It's been calling to the monkeys,
the monkeys have been calling back."

Scully shakes her head in wonder as three small goats and a
dog trot through a supermarket in Jerusalem. "I've never seen
anything like it."

A tentative voice from the hallway interrupts their observation.
"Uh, hello? Agent Mulder? Agent Scully?"

They exchange puzzled glances as Mulder, rubbing his
forehead, goes to open the door.

In the hallway is a tall, dark-eyed man with hair so black it
gleams a Superman blue. Beside him, a short woman with
close-cropped curls and full lips. She has freckles on her nose.

"Hello," the man says, holding out his badge. "I'm Special
Agent Fareed Malik, with Counterterrorism. This is my partner,
Special Agent Willow Weinstein."

"*Einstein*?" Scully repeats, both incredulous and intrigued.

"Weinstein," the woman corrects, arms crossed.

"My partner wrote her thesis on Einstein's Twin Paradox,"
Mulder says. "You'll have to excuse her misunderstanding. But
anyway, Counterterrorism, huh? What are you doing down
here? You must have your hands pretty full right now." He
steps aside to welcome them in.

"Yes," Weinstein says, eyeing the office up with frank
disapproval. "We certainly *do.* We are *also* running late
for a flight to San Antonio."

Agent Malik offers both him and Scully a shy smile. "I won't
take up much of your time, I promise," he assures them. "But I
have a few questions for you, Agent Mulder. Related to the
bombing in Texas, in fact. You heard one of the suspects
survived the explosion?"

"I heard that, yeah."

Weinstein makes a disgusted noise. "He didn't survive, Malik.
His heart just hasn't stopped beating yet."

Scully frowns. "What do you mean?"

"You're a doctor, Agent Scully, like myself. Take a look at this
picture and tell my friend Malik about brain trauma, since he
won't listen to me. Tell him about Broca's and Wernicke's
areas, won't you?" She holds out an iPad for Scully's perusal.

The image she sees is scarcely human, the cranium sunken in
like an aged cantaloupe, mouth a Glasgow smile. She looks up
at Malik. "You're here for Mulder, not me. So I have a
sneaking suspicion I know what you want, Agent."

Malik, well over six feet with a broad chest, looks at the floor.
"I've been fascinated by your work over the years," he says,
sounding apologetic.

"Fascinated?" Weinstein scoffs. "He's obsessed with the
paranormal! He's an X Files fanboy is what he is." Her words
are sharp, but Scully is astute enough to hear the affection in
them. She resists the impulse to ask Malik if he believes in the
existence of extraterrestrials.

Mulder rubs his hands together, unabashedly delighted. "Agent
Malik, a man with a mind obviously open to possibility, would
like to communicate with the dead, or the near-dead, as the
case may be."

Malik nods. "I believe he may have intel on a larger sleeper cell
with an aim to commit more acts of terror. Shiraz Nasir, our
suspect, comes from a pretty secular family and we know he
was radicalized online. If we can get information from him
about who he was talking to, we can find out about other young
people headed for the same fate."

Weinstein throws her hands up. "Which is where our energy
would be better spent trying to stop live terrorists rather than
stopping to try to speak with dead ones."

"I have to say I agree," Scully says. She and Weinstein
exchange tentative smiles.

"I may have some resources for you," Mulder says. "Give me
your email address and I'll send them over."

Agent Malik passes over his card. "I appreciate it. You two are
legendary, you know."

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Mulder tells him, batting
his lashes.

Scully laughs. "As a cautionary tale?"

"No, I mean it," Malik insists, his hand on a file cabinet.
"Thanks for giving me a few minutes."

Scully nods, feeling a tenderness toward him. "Good luck in
Texas, Agents. Stay in touch, won't you?"

Weinstein tugs her partner into the hall by his sleeve.

***

Malik sits in a plastic chair at the airport, half watching the
news, half thinking about what's waiting in Texas. He can
already smell the charred flesh, the reek of explosives and burnt
hair. There will be limbs scattered about, ragged bits of bone.
The odd finger. The odd jaw. He remembers a dozen scenes
like it, and that hurts. The uniformity of it.

The talking heads on the news are arguing about self
expression. "They hate our freedom!" the woman asserts, as
though terrorism is as reductive as a passionate bias against
apple pie and democracy.

The man yells something about the First Amendment while she
screams about the Second and they're off again, acting like
these problems can be solved with their spitting fury.

Malik thinks about the isolation that could drive such despair,
the hopelessness that makes violent despots seem like wise
leaders. He's seen hundreds of kids head down the same road,
though most don't ride it to this bitter end.

"You okay, Malik?" Weinstein's fingertips are at his elbow.

"Huh? Just thinking, I guess. How Shiraz ended up this way."

She nods. "I just...I hate the way people will act because he's
Muslim, like Christian good ol' boys don't shoot up elementary
schools and blow up federal buildings."

He sighs because she's right. Because he'll be called on to
apologize as though it has a single thing to do with him. Being
the Muslim Guy in Counterterrorism ought to have inured him
to it by now, but it's still a bruise if not quite a wound. "He's
just a kid. A kid needs to be taught this hate."

Weinstein squeezes his arm. "Wearing that vest, those last few
steps, knowing you're gonna die, must be so strange. You
wonder who got in his head."

"Mulder's going to follow up with me," he says. "We're going
to find out who got into that young man's head, Weinstein.
And we're going to figure out who else's, and put a stop to it."

Weinstein drops her head back against the chair. "Well, he's
not gonna tell you, Malik. And neither is any necromancer
Agent Mulder can dig up. You think anyone takes the X-Files
seriously? That's why they've got them stuck down in that
basement office."

Malik turns to her. "They still cite some of Mulder's cases at
Quantico and Scully taught there! Twice! They came back after
whatever that thing was in  02. *Somebody* sure as hell takes
the X-Files seriously, Weinstein. They're downstairs because
they want to be."

"I pity that poor Agent Scully," Weinstein mutters. "I've heard
things about her, about him. A kid."

"That's, like, my dream assignment," Malik continues, not
paying much attention to her. He's imagined himself in that
office before, bouncing ideas off of them, pushing the limits of
investigative ability and his profiling skills...

"No self-respecting scientist would spend a career toiling away
in obscure realms of science fiction!" Weinstein asserts.

Malik snorts. "I didn't get the sense Special Agent Dr. Scully
lacks self-respect. Why else would she do it if she didn't want
to?"

Weinstein looks at him with a kind of pitying contempt. "She's
clearly in love with him."

"No shit," Malik says. "They had a baby at one point. But I
don't think that's why she's there."

Weinstein grins. "Well, maybe the real question isn't why she
stays, but why she loves him."

"Maybe he values her open mind," Malik teases. "And she
can't resist it, even with his paranormal pursuits."

Weinstein laughs. "Maybe she challenges his BS and he gets
off on it."

Malik's phone rings before he can reply. "Special Agent Fareed
Malik speaking."

"Agent Malik, this is Agent Mulder. I think I might have an
idea."

***

"You cannot be serious," Scully says, staring at him with the
kind of shock she didn't think he was still capable of eliciting.
"It's unethical, it's illegal, it's I don't think I even need to go
past unethical and illegal, do I?"

He sighs, his face softening. "Scully, we both experienced what
I'm describing in that underground fungal organism in North
Carolina. We had a shared psychic connection, we were able to
communicate on another plane while unconscious. The Marsh
Chapel Experiment, the studies at JHU and NIDA all support
what we experienced."

She gapes. "I've seen research suggesting altered neural states.
I have seen studies linking psilocybin usage to ongoing
heightened euphoria and general satisfaction. I have not seen
anything proving that a cup of shroom tea is the portal to the
astral plane!"

Mulder rolls his chair closer to her, taking her hands in his
own. "Mycelium are thought to function similarly to neural
networks, the way they light up otherwise unconnected parts of
the brain mimics their own pathways. This could be the way to
talk to the suspect, Scully. This could take down the
communication barrier."

"*Thought* to function that way, Mulder. By nutcases like
Derrick Jensen. Bring me proof that fungi are sentient, or at
least heighten it in other organisms and maybe I'll consider it.
Maybe."

"You saw what I saw," he reminds her gently. "We're past the
hypothetical here, and you know it."

She stands, walking around the office with her hands on her
hips. "Psilocybin! It's a Schedule I drug with hepatic
metabolism and renal excretion. And you want to give it -
without consent, mind you - to a man with liver and kidney
failure."

The fact that she's continuing to make excuses means she's
softening and they both know it. It's just a dance now.

"Manner of death, Scully," he prompts.

She stops walking to stare at the ceiling in annoyance.
"Suicide," she sighs. "In a hospital, so they probably won't
autopsy. And even if they do..."

"Even if they do, no one would be shocked to find
psychoactive substances in the body of a man who committed
mass murder."

She covers her face. "I can't."

"I'll do it."

"I'll lose my license, I'll go to prison, why am I even talking
about this with you, my God!" Her voice is muffled by her
fingers.

"Six by six wound, he had his bowels half hanging out. Broken
ribs, damage to every major organ, shrapnel to the spine, and
his arm practically shredded to ribbons. His legs are more bone
than flesh. A quarter of his brain is gone. He's going to die,
Scully," Mulder says. "The question is how many more lives go
down with him."

"That's not fair," she breathes. "You can't lay future deaths on
me."

"Scully, you're not violating your oath. We're doing no harm
here. Weinstein's picture is not of a man who is ever going to
recover. But maybe he can be redeemed."

Scully presses her forehead against the door, wanting to
strangle herself and Mulder. "You can't give it to him orally.
He'll aspirate it."

He walks over and rubs her neck. "It's the right call."

"Get me his weight," she mumbles into the wall, "and I'll see
what I can do."

***

The crime scene was everything Malik had imagined, evening
bags and high-heeled shoes scattered across the floor, trails of
blood ending in puddles. Carbonized things that might have
been human. The floor was blistered and bubbled, warped as
the men who stood in the center of it and unleashed hell.
Arterial spray spattered up the walls where canvases hung in
scorched rags. He'd pried a bone fragment from the sole of his
shoe. Weinstein pointed out an ear to one of the techs.

The astringent smell of the hospital is a balm to him, clean and
safe and soothing. Everything is crisp and fresh and sterile. He
doesn't understand why anyone would ever feel nervous in a
hospital.

Weinstein is staring at the shell of what used to be Shiraz.
"What a waste," she says, scanning his chart. "What a stupid
fucking waste."

Two men walk into the room, sporting nice suits and federal
haircuts.

"Special Agent Weinstein, with the FBI. This is Special Agent
Malik. Can we help you gentlemen?"

"Special Agents Brem and Navarro," the taller one says, and
they flash their Homeland Security badges.

"I don't guess he's woken up," Navarro remarks. "You here in
case he does?"

"The hell is that supposed to mean?" Weinstein snaps.

Navarro holds his hands up, defensive. "I just, I meant, maybe
he could talk to him in Arabic or something."

Weinstein's eyes narrow into slits. "You've got to be kidding
me," she mutters. "Fucking ignorant."

Malik, more even-tempered than his partner, sighs. "First of all,
this man is from South Texas. Any Arabic he knows won't be
half as good as his Spanish. Secondly, my parents are from
Pakistan. I speak Urdu." The fact that he's studied Arabic and
Farsi in addition to learning Urdu as a kid seems beside the
point. No need to encourage these idiots in their belief that all
Muslims speak some secret terrorist mother tongue.

Brem shrugs. "No offense intended, Agent."

"Of course not," he replies.

"Must just come naturally," Weinstein observes. She follows
this with a sweet smile to show they're all good friends here,
good terror-fighting pals.

Navarro glares. "So what's the prognosis on this piece of shit?
Do we get to question his ISIS-loving ass or what?"

"I'm working on it," Malik says. "Two specialists coming in
from DC."

Weinstein gives him a knowing look. "The, uh, 'specialists' we
spoke to earlier, Malik?"

"The very same."

"Oh boy," she says, and returns her attention to the chart.

***

Mulder stares out the window at cloud banks, cities peeping
between. He thinks of the people below him and wonders why
so many want to look up to see such angry gods. He and Scully
might have argued over that, had they raised William. Another
mystery for the list.

Next to him Scully is staring at the medical report Malik had
emailed her. In her bag, injectable psilocybin disguised as a
tiny vial of perfume.

He puts his hand atop hers, squeezing lightly. Scully hates to
fly, she hates to steal, she hates to commit felonies, she hates to
violate the Hippocratic oath. She is not in a good humor.

"We're going to be sav -"

"Don't," she says.

He doesn't.

***

They enter Shiraz's room and find a crowd.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," Mulder says,
holding up his badge.

Brem and Navarro eye him with suspicion but seem charmed
by Scully. She unbuttons her jacket against future difficulty.

"You two the communications specialists?" Navarro asks.

Scully nods. "Agent Mulder is really more of the, ah, specialist.
I'll be overseeing the patient to make sure he remains stable
during our attempts."

"The patient," Brem snorts. "You know, there's a large
unassimilated Muslim community in the area, with one shared
wish."

"Ponies and an Easy Bake Oven?" Mulder inquires. "And the
community is pretty assimilated if you ask me. Shiraz's mother,
for example, is an accountant with Wal-Mart. His father's a
dentist in Austin."

Malik looks away, smirking.

"They wish to wipe you and America off the map," Navarro
says, without a trace of irony. "To honor their hero, Osama bin
Laden, whose picture we find all too frequently on their
refrigerators."

"Right next to Mom," Malik pipes up.

Brem coughs. "Not all Muslims are extremists, certainly."

"No offense intended," Weinstein mimics. "Of course."

Brem adopts a pious expression. "There are other people who
want to see this young man dead. I'm not one of them, Agents.
Last thing I want is for this killer to die and go to paradise or to
his 72 virgins in the sky."

"Sounds like torture to me," Scully sniffs. "Keeping him alive
out of spite."

Navarro squints at her. 

"Look," Mulder interjects. "This boy can hear everything
you're saying, and we're trying to win his trust and talk to
him."

"Keep the killer alive," Brem says, right next to Scully's ear.

She raises her chin and stares him in the eyes. "You do your
job; we'll do ours."

The men from Homeland Security leave, grumbling.

Scully slumps into a chair, shaken by the fear and hate
suffusing the small room.

***

It took them nearly fifteen minutes to talk Weinstein down after
she learned what they had all planned behind her back. Mulder
wondered idly if even Scully could take her in a fight.

"Are you fucking *insane*?" she hisses. "We are federal
agents; Scully and I are *doctors.*" She paces the room with a
hand to her forehead.

"We're going to keep him stable," Scully reassures her once
again. "Monitor his EEG to see if there seems to be any
brainwave change while he and Mulder are, uh, under."

"What if his family shows up?"

Malik shakes his head. "They're still being questioned, and I've
made sure that medical professionals are only going to come in
here if there's an emergency. But we need to hurry, Weinstein.
Are you in?"

She glares. "Am I in? I was *in* the second you opened your
stupid mouth, Fareed. Because I either report you all or I
implicate myself. *FUCK.*"

Scully reaches for the woman's shoulder. "I don't like it either,
okay? I don't. But the toxicity's very low. And Mulder and I
have had an experience that suggests this may not be entirely
farfetched."

She glances at him with twenty-three years of compassion, and
Mulder remembers being drawn from the earth with her,
feeling her hand reaching toward him in the dark.

Weinstein presses her palms to her eyes.

Scully goes in for the kill. "My mother was in a coma recently,
and I wasn't able to communicate with her, either. I wish I'd
had the presence of mind to think of this when she was still
alive. It might've solved a mystery that I may never know." 

Weinstein looks defeated. "Let's do it," she says.

Scully bites her lip, then pulls the vial from her pocket. "Time
for your magical mystery tour, Mulder."

***

The sky is the color of a marble he had as a kid; a blue-gray
one that Samantha avowed contained a thunderstorm. The
clouds are heavy and unbroken, deep-bellied with rain and the
promise of roaring thunder. The air is sour with ozone.

Mulder is in the center of a long highway, walking along the
yellow lines. Far out to either side of the road, steep red stone
walls wind through the desert, beautifully striated and
unbroken. The rock formations feel Martian, otherworldly.
Mulder wonders which of them has conjured this place.

He is barefoot, wearing jeans and a loose white shirt that does
little to shield him from the hot breeze. "Shiraz!" he calls, and
his echo is the only reply. He walks on for another mile or so,
calling. Waiting.

Next to him, a small coyote appears, trotting purposefully. It
looks up with human eyes and Mulder follows it in silence.

The coyote lopes ahead to a green bench and hops up, sitting as
daintily as a house cat.

Mulder sits down next to it.

"You're one of the men in my room," the coyote says, and
Mulder admits this is so.

"Why are you a coyote?"

Shiraz looks down. "I don't want to be in my body right now."

Mulder nods. "You didn't detonate your vest, did you, Shiraz?"

"This is my ride," he replies. "I've got to be going." A long
way down the road, a bus appears.

Mulder fights the wave of panic. He can't lose him, not now.
"Let's talk first. And hey, you can always take the next bus,
huh?"

Shiraz only blinks.

"Tell me about home," Mulder says. "Tell me how a middle-
class kid from a secular upbringing in a small Texan town ends
up in a suicide vest in a San Antonio gallery."

The coyote's hackles rise, his lips curled in a snarl. "They
disrespected the prophet!" he growls.

"Fuck that," Mulder snaps. "You don't believe in that. You tell
me how it happened and you tell me now. You didn't detonate
the vest, Shiraz, so pardon me for not believing this is about
your faith. Who made you so angry?"

The coyote turns to him and he isn't a coyote now. He's a
young man missing chunks of himself, his head uncomfortable
to look at. "Who made me so angry? Walk with me, Agent
Mulder, and I'll show you."

They rise from the bench and head down the road in the
direction from which Mulder came. The bruised sky rumbles,
the clouds slowly swirling into a funnel. The wind stirs his hair.

Mulder hesitates but Shiraz strides purposefully ahead on his
shattered legs and so he does too.

The funnel touches down, widens into mist before dissipating.
Mulder sees a classroom full of six-year- old kids. There's lots
of artwork tacked up on the walls, lots of stick figures in front
of triangle-roof houses. Lots of brown kids too, but not
Shiraz's brown.

Mulder scans the classroom and picks him out, a cute big-eyed
kid in jeans and a Spiderman shirt.

"Okay, class!" the teacher says. "We're going to practice our
letter-writing skills today by writing letters to Santa." She
passes out photocopies of Christmas trees, boxes of crayons.
"Remember your salutation!"

Little Shiraz swings his feet, squirming.

The teacher crouches next to him, sweet-faced and kind.
"What's wrong, honey?"

"He doesn't believe in Christmas!" shouts the little girl next to
him. "Santa doesn't come to his house!" The class howls with
laughter.

Mulder averts his gaze as fat tears appear in the child's eyes.

"Watch," says the ruined mouth of the man next to him. "You
don't get to look away if you want this truth, Agent Mulder."

Shiraz is ten now, listening to his parents fight. His mother
wears a beige suit and thin heels, her hair polished as a
newscaster.

"He doesn't play sports, he doesn't belong to any clubs, he
doesn't do anything!" the boy's father snaps. "It would be one
thing if he were succeeding in school, but he's barely doing
that!"

"Well, what do you expect, you make us live in this shitty town
where the neighbors think we burn American flags in the
basement and wonder where my burqa is!"

The father throws his hands up. "I have to pay back my loans
for dental school, the cost of living is low here. When they're
paid off, when I can sell the practice, we'll move. For now you
have to get Shiraz involved in something, you have to get him
connected, Noora!"

Noora begins to cry.

The mist blurs and Shiraz is older, maybe thirteen. He's with a
motley assortment of other kids behind an abandoned gas
station.

The kids are passing around a joint and taking swigs from a
bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. Mulder grins in spite of himself.
Fucking kids.

"Thought you couldn't drink booze," says a tall boy with sandy
hair. "I thought you'd go to Muslim hell or some shit."

Shiraz snatches the bottle from his hand. "Gimme that!" He
closes his eyes and takes a swig, then wipes his mouth with the
back of his hand. "Fuck you, Trip."

"No 72 virgins for you, bro!" Trip crows.

The boys laugh. "Hey Shiraz, I heard Muslim porn's just a
bunch of girls with their hair uncovered."

Next to Mulder, the adult Shiraz clenches and unclenches a fist,
blinks his burned eyes.

The moments continue. Shiraz on the fringes of the high school
social scene, his parents' divorce, his dad's move to Austin.
Shiraz graduates high school, flunks out of community college
after three semesters.

His mother takes up with a guy in her office who calls Shiraz
"sport."

"Now look."

Mulder watches a Shiraz close in age to the one now. He's thin
and old for his age. His skin looks greasy and has a grayish cast
underneath. Dark shadows ring his eyes. He's in his basement
bedroom, frantically texting. His eyes are feverish and he
smiles.

Daytime, different clothes. Shiraz prays, mumbling to himself.
He's Skyping with other hooded men, kneeling on prayer rugs.

Mulder shakes his head in confusion. "But your family was
never religious. You were never religious. So if you found an
interest in your faith suddenly, why this? This isn't worship,
and you know it. These guys aren't in it for Allah, Shiraz."

Shiraz shrugs his charred shoulders. "Why the Knicks? We all
want to be a part of something greater, don't we? My voice
wasn't loud by itself, but it was joined by so many others it
became powerful. And, honestly, because they wanted me.
Religion was just a starting point."

In the mist, Shiraz wears a rubber horse mask and Skypes with
a man who also wears one. 
There's a lot of laughter between the violent rhetoric.

"Social identity model of de-individuation effect," Mulder says.

"I just know he became my friend, Agent Mulder. He became
my family."

"Give me his name," Mulder says. "Let me stop this."

The burned man disappears and the coyote returns. "There's a
lot of lonely people. A lot of voices with no one to understand
them. It's a deep river with a lot of feeders."

Mulder hears the bus in the background, feels his chest tighten.
"Come on, Shiraz. This is not what you want. This is not how
you want to go down. You showed me this for a reason, and I
think that reason is because you wanted to stop this tributary at
least."

The coyote lays down, rests his nose on his paws. "So I die a
traitor twice over, huh?"

Mulder fights to stay calm. "You didn't detonate your vest."

Whimpering at his feet as thunder shakes the world. Lightning
strikes the road ahead.

"Shiraz, please. You have a chance to make this okay."

The coyote paws the ground, keening. "I want my mother," he
cries. "Please, my mother."

"Give me the name, Shiraz, and I'll get your mother, I swear."

"The bus..." Lightning again, this time closer. It splits a
scrubby tree.

"Give me the *name!*" Mulder shouts over the searing wind.

At last the coyote gets back to his feet. He howls a name as the
bus roars past them both.

The world goes black.

***

"Mulder?"

Scully's cool hands on his face, the scent of her perfume in his
nose. He gasps, awakening in the hospital chair. 

"Mulder, are you okay?"

"I promised we'd get his mom," Mulder says, still disoriented.
"I swore."

"On her way," Scully tells him. "She's being escorted by some
US marshals. Dad's still being interviewed but Noora, his
mom, should be here in a few."

He turns to stare at the prone form in the bed. "Is he okay?
Things got bad at the end."

Weinstein is staring at the monitor. "Unreal," she says.
"Absolutely unreal. He's in low-voltage delta coma -"

"Very bad," Scully clarifies for Mulder and Malik.

Weinstein waves her hand. "But the whole time you two
were...tripping, I guess, he showed beta waves, and even some
gamma patterns just at the end. But the second you awoke, it
was gone. Low delta again, he's back to being a vegetable."

Malik looks smug. "Looks like you owe me a burger," he says.

"I'll take one if you're buying," Mulder says. "And a Coke. My
mouth's all weird."

"The implications of this are huge," Weinstein continues.
"Tremendous. And I can't say a thing about it unless I want to
be stripped of every accomplishment I've made. I really hate
you two."

Scully wears a knowing smile. "So, Mulder, welcome back to
Earth. How was it?"

"I'll give you the details later, but Malik, I have a name for
you." Mulder writes it down on the back of his business card,
then passes it over.

Malik stares at the card, holds it like a talisman. "You really
got information from him?"

They all turn to the bed again, watch the rhythmic movements
of Shiraz's chest. The respirator pumps life into him like it
pumped it into Margaret Scully, into her daughter, keeping
them bound in the mortal coil. Mulder has an inkling now of
what dreams may come.

"I got a lot," Mulder says slowly. "A whole lot."

Two US marshals enter the room, half carrying a woman in her
late forties, her face puffy and pale with grief. The sound that
comes from her when she sees Shiraz is raw, animal.

Mulder thinks of the coyote that was Shiraz, howling for her.

Noora slumps over her son, sobbing. Her thick hair is spread
over his ruined face, her arms cradling him to her chest. She
rocks him, wailing, asking him why.

"We didn't raise him like this, we never, we never..." she trails
off into guttural noises that are nothing human.

The agents file quietly out, and Mulder wonders when Shiraz
will catch his bus.

***

Malik sits in the airport again, Weinstein sprawled across three
chairs with her head on her carry-on.

"You're not staying for the attaboys?" she asks, grinning.

He shrugs, examining his hands. "I didn't really do anything."

"Ah. Nothing but provide the name of an ISIS recruiter ready to
kill untold numbers and radicalize disenfranchised youth."
Weinstein winks and he is pleased that she is proud of him.

"That was all Agent Mulder, although I'm at a loss in
explaining it. Maybe some things are unexplainable, Agent
Weinstein."

She looks at him with mock horror. "What an appalling
suggestion! Although perhaps the most beautiful thing we can
experience is the mysterious, the source of all true art and
science."

He regards his partner with surprise. She is not of a poetic
temperament. "That's... beautiful, Weinstein."

"Like you, I take no credit. As Agent Scully would undoubtedly
tell you, Albert Einstein said it, Malik."

"Agent Scully," Malik says with a smile. "She isn't quite what
I expected."

Weinstein tosses a crumpled napkin at him. "She's taken,
champ. And not quite what I expected either, given what I'd
heard about her background. Although I confess, something is
clearer to me now, as a result of the experience."

"The value of an open mind?"

"The value of being proven wrong on occasion. But don't tell
anyone or I'll hurt you."

Malik laughs. "I won't let it go to my head," he promises.

***

Six deer, a mother black bear, two cubs. They have been
skirting the edge of the woods for hours, disappearing in and
out of the foliage. The cubs tumble heavily, like puppies. The
deer flick their ears, unperturbed. Sometimes the small herd
makes bleating sounds and the bears answer by grumbling
softly. Mulder's been watching them from the porch, enchanted
by their fairy tale complacency.

An SUV bumps along the road, kicking up dust. The animals
tense, but lose interest when the car parks and presents no
threat. Mulder smiles at the sight of it, at her too-big, gas-
guzzling monstrosity that she handles like an F1 driver.

Through his earbuds, Warren Zevon assures him that the storm
will never find them here. He ends the music on that sentiment,
puts his phone way.

Scully emerges, her foxy hair bright against the treeline, against
the dried stalks of grass in the meadow. She is dressed down -
for Scully, anyway - and as she walks up the steps he catches a
glimpse of the woman she might have been in another life.

"Talk to me, Mulder," she says, and he thinks, *Oh, Scully,
there's nothing on this Earth I love doing more.*

"Oh... where to begin?"

She smiles. "Tell me where you went through the looking
glass, Alice."

He frowns, considering. "I saw things, Scully. Powerful things.
I saw how much we crave deep and unconditional love."

Scully nods. There is sadness her eyes. "I witnessed unqualified
hate that appears to have no end. That boy was a killer, Mulder,
or at least an accomplice to mass murder. But that was only
part of why they hated him, wasn't it?"

He sees the pain it causes her and adores it, adores her for it. If
she knew the pedestal he keeps her on, she'd leave the porch in
an instant; she'd drive away and never return. "Yeah," he says.
"But how to reconcile the two? The extremes of our nature."

She smiles sadly. "That's the question, isn't it? But hate is just
love disappointed, I think. Love thwarted and turned against
itself."

He considers this. "We hate that which rejects us. We hate the
objects of our unrequited affections."

"Good thing you finally got me in bed, then," she quips.

Mulder smiles, gets to his feet. He holds his hand out to her and
she takes it, her cool little paws in his palms. "Walk with me,
Scully."

She follows him as she always has. They head down into the
meadow, into the golden grass where he'd made love to her on
a plaid blanket after they looked up the names of constellations.
Those days seem like a long time behind them and yet he
senses they may not be far into the future. Something is
ripening.

"This whole thing has got me thinking. Thinking about God,"
he confesses, starting small.

Her face is impish, hair like the ghost of autumn. "You,
Mulder, thinking about God? Shall I confess to recent musings
on Giorgio Tsoukalos and Elvis?"

"Haha, my clever maid. The archetype of an angry god, I mean.
Old Testament-style vengeance."

Scully looks up at him, her eyes no harder than the day he met
her, despite the things they've seen. "Why do humans have
Daddy issues, you mean?" She laughs at her own joke.

"When you put it like that, Scully, you may be exactly the
expert I need."

She smacks his arm.

They continue walking, Mulder pacing himself to her stride. "I
don't know what I mean exactly. I was just...hmm. I was
thinking about the Tower of Babel, scattering people violently,
so they're never to speak a common language. Seems like a
rigged game, doesn't it?"

Scully rests her head against his bicep, their arms snugged
together. "Well, if you want to be a biblical literalist, we
brought it on ourselves. The animals were at peace and
everything was peachy until we showed up on the scene and
broke the rules."

"It seems pretty lousy to punish the clock for the clockmaker's
poor design."

"Goodness knows I'm not defending it; I went through
childbirth. I'm just addressing your current source material."

"It's *your* book," he points out.

Scully rolls her eyes. "It's got some nice ideas, but I think
we're overdue for a remastered edition by the author instead of
the publisher."

"Fair. But until then, I just struggle with the question of what
exactly is this god saying? Worship me and my great anger?
It's not a lot to go on." He wraps his arm around her shoulders,
twirling the ends of her hair.

"I guess that's what Jesus is supposed to represent, right? Like
if God is your strict dad, then Jesus is his friend who calms him
down and wants to be your gentle mentor."

Mulder looks down at her. "Does this end in a pitch for guitar
Mass?"

She laughs, kisses the back of his hand and holds it again. Her
fingers are so small between his.

Mulder's stomach lurches, the small patch of skin burning with
the heat of her mouth. He forces himself to keep moving
instead of laying her down in the grass. Perhaps in spring, when
the stalks are soft and green again.

"I don't know where I'm going with this, honestly. I just, I feel
like there has to be some reason we invent angry father figures
to please and to disappoint. There has to be some other thing
that satisfies whatever urge that fills."

Scully shrugs, swinging his hand, and he pushes away the
image of them doing this with a small boy between them.

"We want to be loved," she says. "We want to connect and be
understood. We want unconditional love, yes, but we also feel
satisfied when we are accepted by those with high standards
who have rejected others. So there's something else in us that
craves finite approval. It's a strange paradox of the human
condition."

He stops walking then. Scully looks up at him, curious and
expectant. "Scully," he says. "Come home. And your little dog,
too."

She bows her head. "Mulder, don't."

But this time he does. "You left because it was too dark. Well,
shine a light with me, Scully. That's what we've always done,
you and I. We've shined a light."

He takes her by the shoulders, turns her so that he can see her
completely. Behind her are the bears. The deer.

"You have to know I love you," she says, searching his face.
"You must."

"I know," he says, and there is no hesitation. "But it's not
enough."

"It's been so hard," Scully murmurs. "William, my mom, I..."
She shakes her head. "I'm sorry, I'll stop."

"No, no, please. Scully. This is where people fuck up. We don't
communicate, and then we misunderstand. We disconnect." He
grasps both of her hands, tugging her to him with the emphasis
of his words.

Scully gulps in air. "Stop being a psychologist and treating
everything like it's repressed emotion. Sometimes things just
can't be how we want them to."

He touches the fine angles of her cheekbones. "Stop being a
pathologist and treating everything like it's dead."

She laughs at that, then sniffles. "It's safer if it's dead. It can't
die, then."

This woman will likely break his heart again. "Oh, Scully," he
whispers, drawing her close. "Please come home."

She nestles her face against his chest, slipping her hands
beneath his shirt. She stays there for a long time.

Mulder thinks of her in his arms over the years, how many
times he's clutched her this way with dust from the valley of
the shadow still clinging to their feet. But today they are
acutely alive and the world, possibly, is not as terrible as it was
the day before. Perhaps they dammed a small trickle into the
great river. Perhaps they shined a light.

She's his witness, he's her mutineer.

He takes her face in his hands, strokes her temples with his
thumbs. "Come home," he repeats, as vulnerable as he's ever
been.

"I *am* home," she replies, her voice rough. "It's just my
things that are somewhere else."

Mulder tips her chin up then and kisses her beneath the great
upturned bowl of the sky. Above them, a murmuration of
starlings wheels and twists.

In the west, a coyote howls.