Amazing Grace (1/5)
by manderinne

Email: manderinne@gmail.com
Characters: Mulder/Scully
Category: Post-IWTB, written for xf_bigbang
Author's Note:  Huge thanks to all_shine_on for being an
amazingly helpful beta, without whom I would've quit back in
July, and to flashikins for her awesome art here.

Summary:  Is the temptation of Samantha worth more than the
life they have painstakingly eked out in an unremarkable house
somewhere in Virginia? Scully, fresh out of faith, can't see how
it will be worth it in the end. 



***


Neither of the front doors creak as Scully pushes them open
and steps into her living room. She leaves her briefcase beneath
the hall table and drops her keys on top of a stack of butchered
newspapers. Her fingers tap unconsciously against her coat.
The dark wood of the house is warm and glossy like melted
butter in the last of the summer sunlight filtering through the
half-open blinds and Scully moves quietly through the room,
switching on the odd assortment of lamps one by one. The door
in the pumpkin-colored wall remains closed.

She flicks the switch on the bathroom wall, casting an
avalanche of snowy light across the floor. All too easily, she
can imagine herself washing blood from her hands in the
porcelain sink, her surgical tools glinting in neat rows on the
countertop. She catches herself in the medicine cabinet mirror,
strawberry-blonde and cream with smudges for eyes, and turns
away. Anxious to repel the sudden tremor in her hands, Scully
reaches across the tub and twists the hot water tap.

She sheds her dark clothes like snakeskin and steps into the
shower. Hot water pats her back as her mother used to do, years
and years ago.  It is a long moment before she realizes that the
water dripping from her chin is a procession of tears, and as
soon as she becomes aware she is crying, Scully slides to the
floor of the tub, clutches her knees and falls asleep. 

The next thing she knows, her hands are peeled from her legs
and given a gentle but insistent tug. Her eyes refuse to open,
but she allows herself to be led from the warmth. The roaring
in her ears ends without warning and just as suddenly, she is
awake and cold and sitting on the edge of the bath. Someone is
rocking her back and forth.

"Scully." Shake, shake. "Scully?"

"Cold," she forces through chattering teeth. A cool flurry raises
the fine hair on her arms as a towel sweeps over her shoulders
and is tucked beneath her chin. She shakes her bowed head,
and wet hair coiled in bronze ropes makes water lick down her
back.  She opens her eyes and looks up just as a wine-red towel
covers her. 

"Looks like you could use a few more towels," Mulder
murmurs, grasping the cloth and guiding her down to the
bathmat. He wraps the towels around her like swaddling and
lifts her onto his lap, cradling her with his knees. Her wet bare
legs leave dark patches on his jeans.

Scully places a hand on his shirt and relishes the warmth that
seeps through from his body. "Mulder, your heart is racing."
The wet handprint bleeds through the fabric like blood when
she draws back. He catches her fingers with one hand and
pushes a strand of clinging hair from her forehead with the
other.

"Well, that's a normal response, at least. You've been up here
for over an hour, and I come in here to find you in something
resembling a catatonic state. You scared me, Scully."

"It wasn't my intention when I came up here. I just wanted to
get warm."

"And are you?"

"Getting there," she says, and presses her cheek against his
chest. 

"It just seems an odd place to go into a catatonic state, you
know?"

"I found you in the shower once," she reminds him. There's a
rumble of amusement in his throat.

"Yeah, but I was awake. Suffering from amnesia, but awake.
There's a difference."

"Potato, po-tah-to," she whispers, feeling her eyes droop as
warmth and fatigue flood over her. He bends to kiss her
forehead and his warm breath makes her eyelashes flutter. All
of a sudden, it seems terribly important that she explain the
reason for her repose at the bottom of the tub.

"Mulder..." The name sighs from her lips.

"Tell me later. Sleep; you're safe now."

As always, her body seems to agree with Mulder. Still, Scully
takes a quick inventory of it, just to check its functionality
before she allows herself to rest again.  Fingers and toes,
throbbing, indicating effective circulation. Eyesight... she
manages to crack an eyelid enough to see, clear as day, her
fingers entwined with Mulder's. Heartbeat, slow but steady.
She is in the process of counting her breaths--one... two...
three when suddenly, without even noticing, she slips into
sleep.

***

The sunlight is different in the morning, like a newly-minted
coin compared to the burnished copper of afternoon. A tumble
of hair on Scully's pillow gleams as she traces a finger along
the soft curl. She pushes the blanket back and places her bare
feet on the floorboards as she attempts to smooth the rest of her
unruly hair. Then, as she pulls on grey sweatpants and an old
maroon t-shirt of Mulder's, she remembers that hair-styling is
unnecessary today, and leaves her hair alone.  She descends the
stairs. 

Mulder sits on the couch, the coffee table nudging his knees as
he stares down a ubiquitous paper. By the look of his
print-blackened fingers and accompanying coffee cup, it is not
his first interrogation of the day. The dry smell of roasted
coffee beans scrapes the back of her throat and she swallows
several times to rid herself of sudden nausea. 

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty," he says, still devouring the last of a
particular article. "How're you feeling?"

"I'm fine, Mulder." Scully pads into the kitchen, following her
usual footprints. She drifts from cupboard to refrigerator to
pantry to coffee maker before she realizes she doesn't need
coffee, so she takes a carton of orange juice from the fridge. 
The coffee cup is there so she doesn't bother with a fresh glass.

"Tried to wake you earlier, Scully, but you were in another faux
coma. You're not working today, I take it."

Her lips curve against the coffee cup in vague amusement, but
she simply replies "No." She watches Mulder manage to locate
his own mug without lifting his nose from the page and take a
sip, all in one practiced movement. He clears his throat and
flips the page before speaking.

"Wanna be my date to the grocery store? There may be a trip to
the library involved." Scully swallows the last of the juice and
opens her mouth to say yes, that sounds like fun.

"Christian Fearon is dead," is what comes out instead, and she
presses her lips together as if to prevent any other unexpected
words from tumbling out. Mulder raises his eyes to her at last
and she finds she can't stand his pity. Her fingernail taps a
crack in the countertop varnish as she tries to hold back a few
unbidden tears.

"Scully."

If only he wouldn't say her name like that, in that voice, laden
with enough weight to pop the fragile bubble she has
constructed around herself. She imagines how she must look to
him, sad, pale, wearing his old t-shirt and crowned with a
tangled mess of hair, and it's more than she can bear. With one
quick movement he stands and his entire body is haloed with
sunlight. Irresistibly drawn into orbit, Scully moves closer, one
hand outstretched, her polished fingernails glinting.

Scully collides with him and presses her forehead against the
usual place. His chin rests on her head while his thumb makes
tiny strokes back and forth against the spot where her
cerebellum resides.

"I'm sorry, Scully," he whispers.

"Oh God, his parents," she chokes out. It all comes spilling out
into his shirt as she races to beat the sob rising in her throat.
"His last surgery was months ago; he'd been doing so well, his
brain was coping with the treatment but his heart was obviously
weaker than I suspected. It just stopped and it was... there was
nothing... I was the last person he ever saw." The back of her
throat aches and the sob catches up with her on the last words
and gets tangled up with the next. "It shouldn't have been me."

Mulder's lips move against her hair as he murmurs small
consolations. "You helped him, Scully. You did your utmost
best to help the poor kid. All those hours you spent poring over
research, studying till you made yourself sick with exhaustion,
that wasn't for nothing. Because of you, a boy got to spend six
extra months with his parents."

Her voice jerks around on marionette strings. "Mulder, that boy
endured more in those six months than any human being
should have to endure in all their years. And for what?" she
asks, beginning to shiver.

Mulder gently pulls her face from his tear-spotted shirt and
studies it, his fingertips lining her jaw. His thumbs brush away
tears angling for freedom and she swallows.

"You gave Christian a spring and a summer," he says. "And I
think that's worth something."

An odd jumbled noise, somewhere between a laugh, a sigh, and
a sob, escapes into the space between them.

"I need to sit down," she mutters, and he picks up both her
hands and leads her to the couch, only letting go long enough to
shove a cushion behind her as she sits. Her forehead creases.

"Oh Mulder, I'm fine," she says in a single exhalation, leaning
back.

"I know you are, Scully," he says as he settles in beside her,
putting his own cushion behind his head. She watches his face
as studies knotholes in the ceiling beams, as though expecting
goblins to crawl from one of them. Then he turns toward her so
that the tips of their noses are only inches apart.

While his face had once been constantly strung tight with
frustration, it is now even and good-humored, and as he tucks a
stray curl behind her ear she wills some of that goodness to
pass from his fingers into her. Mulder gazes at her with the
seemingly endless fascination he holds with her face and she
wonders, not for the first time, what he sees.

"What are you looking at?" she murmurs as his eyes light upon
hers. The corner of his mouth tucks into the hint of a smile.

"You," he replies lightly. "My Scully. Who I love." Each
sentence is punctuated with a small kiss.

"Whom I love," she corrects in a whisper, and kisses him back
as a couple more tears roll down her cheek.

***

Sometime later Scully swims up from the bottom of a black
sleep to find Mulder gone. Her knees are pressed into the back
of the couch and her bare toes are buried in the space between
the armrest and the couch cushions. She lifts her chin from her
chest and squints as sun-warmed hair falls into her eyes.
Judging by the shadows on the floor it's already midday, and
her near-empty stomach interjects to concur with her
assessment. There are scents hovering in the air along with a
million dancing dust motes; cut grass, lemon, fresh bread and
smoky bacon manage to drown out the lingering remnants of
the morning's coffee. In the kitchen a pan clanks against the
stovetop and water splashes into the sink, followed by a
muffled curse. The floorboards creak as she heads to the
bathroom.

The sight of her face in the mirror startles her and she leans
over the sink to peer closer. Mulder's fingers have left quite an
impression; twin trails of newspaper soot curve from ear to
chin, crossed by faint tear streaks. Scully raises an eyebrow at
her reflection and gives the cold tap a firmer twist than is really
necessary.

She holds a towel to her neck as she enters the kitchen and
contemplates Mulder's hunched back as he tends to the spitting
bacon.

"Ow! Son of a bitch!"

"Mulder, why didn't you tell me about my face?" she inquires.

He delivers the bacon to a napkin-covered plate and brings it
over to the kitchen counter. "I thought you'd gotten tired of
hearing it. You, Scully," he says, clasping her shoulders and
bending to her level, "have a lovely face."   

With hmph of amusement, Scully climbs onto a barstool and
watches him assemble sandwiches in an orderly fashion. Thick
bread, lettuce leaf, sliced tomato, heaping of bacon, and a
generous slather of mayonnaise followed by another slice of
bread. Construction begins on the second sandwich and she
opens her mouth to speak, but he waves her words away.

"I know, I know, hold the mayo."

"All right," she says, holding her own hands up in deference.
Before returning to her sandwich, Mulder gives her a look and
she gives him an eyebrow in return.

"I didn't say anything. Go ahead."

He smirks. "Thank you for your permission, Doctor Scully."
The grin lingers as he bends his head again to work, and he
doesn't see her struggle to keep her composure at the reminder
of the hospital, her work, and what she had foolishly come to
call her Christian. Mulder bookends the sandwich and claps his
hands together to rid them of crumbs, looking satisfied at his
triumph over their lunch ingredients.

"Not bad, huh?" 

Scully clears her throat and manages a small smile in reply as
he hands her a plate stacked dangerously high. She compresses
the sandwich with her palm and heads into the living room,
ignoring the round table littered with the detritus of their lives.
The white curtain billows as she pulls the front door open and a
breeze hustles inside. Hair swirls about her shoulders and gets
in her mouth. With a sigh of annoyance, she holds her
sandwich at arm's length and uses her spare hand to force her
rumpled hair into submission.

"Scully?" comes Mulder's muffled voice from inside.

"Outside," she calls and moves to sit on the porch steps. The
air is warm and dry, pleasantly so. They eat in silence, Scully
methodically working through her sandwich one manageable
bite at a time while Mulder shows no qualms in demolishing
his culinary efforts. Reluctant to break the quiet, Scully waits
until her sandwich is three-quarters finished before speaking.

"I do have to go to work today. I need to fill out some
paperwork and get rid of all the paper and clutter in my office.
It actually resembles your office at the moment."

He snorts into his sandwich. A half-smile fades from Scully's
lips as she surveys the sunny field.

"That boy's life will simply be reduced to reports and statistics
and then filed away out of sight."

"But not out of mind."

"No."

He clears his throat and says "Want me to come along?"

Now Scully is unable to hold in a snort. "I suppose even a trip
to the hospital can seem like an adventure after years of solitary
confinement." 

"Solitary?" he asks with a grin.

"Well, you know what I mean." Scully empties the crumbs into
the garden and puts her empty plate beside her.

"Anyway, Scully, I've been out for months."

"Technically. But that book you're writing keeps you locked
away."

He grunts non-committally and she sighs.

Scully leans forward to balance her chin in her hands.
Everything is so green and summery; the grass is both hardy
and tender, the garden is running a little more rampant than it
should, and a lemon-yellow butterfly tumbles about on the air.
It won't last, though. Fall will creep in before long, dragging
winter on its heels.

She doesn't realize that the thought makes her face darken until
Mulder reaches out a finger to unfurrow the place between her
eyebrows. The word *glabella* springs to mind unbidden and
she shoos it away, thinking of the double wrinkles that inhabit
that little smooth thing. The finger, however, she catches and
holds in her lap.

"What are you looking at?" she asks, knowing his eyes are
upon her again.

"I was just thinking about Special Agent Dana Scully, and how
much I liked her." His lips brush her left cheek and cause her
no small thrill as he murmurs the next words. "She saw me
through many a solitary night."

Scully extricates herself and places a hand on his chest.
"Mulder, your fantasies are surprisingly predictable."

"Scully, your responses are so *unsurprisingly* predictable,"
he replies, and she pushes him against the porch steps and
engages him in a thorough kiss just to keep him occupied for a
few precious moments. A lengthy yet pleasant encounter
ensues and Scully grasps him tighter than usual, somewhat
feverish in her quest to ensure her heart is not yet entirely
beyond repair. When at last they part, they are sprawled over
three steps and Scully's knee is aching. She sighs and rests her
chin on his shoulder, silently pronouncing herself temporarily
content. It isn't happiness, but it's enough for now.

"I should go," she says. His protest is caught by her lips, and
the kiss is joined by a decidedly smug smile until she breaks it
off. Before he can recoup, Scully clambers off him and
disappears through the front door.

"Diversionary tactics are unfair!" His voice follows her through
the living room, and makes her smile despite herself. Upstairs,
she ignores the unmade bed and flicks through the closet.
Though she'd rather avoid the pencil skirt and blouse that have
become her uniform, habit is a hard taskmaster. Her hair,
though... after a quick appraisal in the full-length mirror, Scully
locates a clip in her underwear drawer and gathers her hair into
a socially acceptable style.

"Nice hair," says Mulder when she reappears with her leather
briefcase in hand. It sits on the doorstep as she holds onto the
jamb and pulls on black heels, reminding her not of the hospital
but of her very first day at the FBI. It isn't the same bag, but in
Scully's mind it's part of a limited edition set that comes with
plaid suits and proud enthusiasm. She is quite fond of it.

Mulder lounges against the post, smiling at her, and she moves
to stand behind him.  When she runs her fingers through his
still-thick brown hair, he closes his eyes and leans his head on
her thigh.

"I like your hair short, Mulder." Scully lets her hand drop and
clutches her briefcase, making her way down the steps in a
nimble way borne of years of practice. Knowing Mulder as she
does, the lunge he makes for her free hand is easily dodged.

"Hey, doc," he calls as she's unlocking her car, and the sun
pricks her eyes like an insistent memory as she turns to look at
him.

"I like you even better than Agent Scully."

***

Mulder's throwaway comment accompanies her and her
briefcase down the halls of Our Lady of Sorrows, halls she has
come to dislike as much as the name of the hospital. Though
the thought of it still makes her smile, it needles her, nudging
her to investigate its mine-plagued depths. Being a doctor isn't
dissimilar to the work she performed as an agent of the
government; fighting against the unknown, struggling against
time to decipher mysteries, and, in exceptional cases, investing
more than professional interest the fate of those she tries to
save. Really, with one great exception, how is this life any
different to her past one?

The painting on her office wall, with its gold-dipped clouds and
blue skies, never fails to remind her of Hawaii, and her eyes
trace the brushstrokes from corner to corner before the state of
her desk catches their attention. It's in the same condition she
left it, a snapshot of frantic panic and fear. Scully picks up the
nearest sheet and recognizes it as an account of a successful
stem-cell treatment in China. Before each surgery she had gone
over every piece of research yet again, as though by some
miracle an addendum would appear with instructions for curing
Christian. She knows the size, shape and content of every
paragraph by sight, but now she lingers over procedures and
statistics, success stories and failures, trying to see the
information with fresh eyes so that she might find a conclusive
reason for her failure.

The door is thrown open, and her blonde colleague's entrance
causes a fan of loose paper to scatter about Scully's desk.
Scully presses both hands to the mess as the doctor draws up
short, clutching a file to her coat.

"Doctor Scully! I didn't think you'd be in today."

"Well, technically I'm not; I'm just tidying..." She has trouble
ending that sentence and resorts to waving her hand vaguely.

The woman takes a step forward, a dangerously sympathetic
slant to her face. "And how are you--"

"I'm fine," Scully interrupts before there can be any further
discussion of her feelings, and to soften the rather churlish
blow, adds "thank you."

"Sure," says the woman with an untroubled smile.

"I'm fine," Scully repeats, forming a rough stack of random
papers before her, suddenly only interested in getting out of
there as soon as she can. Her fingers tap the edge of her desk
and she forces herself to take a breath. "I'm sorry, I'm being
completely rude. How have you been, Doctor Elliot?"

"I'm well, thank you," says the young woman with a friendly
nod, and Scully believes her. "I've got work to do, so I'll speak
to you later."

"Fine," says Scully, wondering if she can sound any more like a
brainless sycophant with a single-word vocabulary. As the
woman pulls the door between their offices shut, Scully stares
out her slatted window, and also wonders when the word 'fine'
became universally ironic.

After some more hurried sorting, Scully is irritated to realize
that of course, her briefcase cannot hold all her files. She leans
back in her chair and is afforded a view of the deep,
rectangular, file-sized bin beneath her desk.

Out in the hall, Scully uses her two free fingers to close her
office door, the corner of a page tickling her chin, and as she
attempts to consolidate her grip on everything, Father Ybarra
descends the main staircase into the atrium. Scully takes one
look at the man and decides she would rather talk with the
cartoon giraffe outside the pediatric ward than that
sanctimonious prick. Her footsteps find the well-worn path
they have trod each day for the past six months and more. She
nods at barely acquainted colleagues who pass by on her way;
the moon-faced geriatric physician, Dr. Butterman, smiles at
her as usual. Christian's now-vacant bed comes into view,
stripped of its cheerfully cloudy sheets, but before she even has
time to blink a black-clad figure appears from around the
corner.

Scully bites back the "Jesus!" that leaps to her tongue, figuring
that Father Ybarra, of all people, would not appreciate having
the Lord's name spoken in such a manner. The tall man
appraises her with the grating superiority she feels certain he
believes he is entitled to. Scully hefts the trash bin full of
haphazard paper and keeps a tight hold on her bulging briefcase
as she rests her eyes on his left ear, trusting he will not notice
that she avoids his damning eyes. She gives him a brief nod.

"Father Ybarra," she says coolly, and continues on under his
nose, rounding both him and the corner.

"Doctor Scully," he returns with equal impassion as her high
heels echo throughout the hall, putting on an impressive show
of defiance that etiquette prevents herself from doing.

Her shoes are no help to her, though, as she sits in her car and
weeps quietly, fingers still gripping those remnants of
Christian's life that belong to her alone.

***

Mulder is ensconced in his office when she arrives back home.
Scully takes a round trip through the house, with a quick
layover in her own upstairs office to unburden her arms of the
weight of her work, and finds herself outside his dark-stained
door, unsure of why she is pressing her hand against the rich
paneling. The stain is rich and textured, like chocolate. Dark
chocolate, full of healthy antioxidants, she thinks, and a visit to
the treat drawer in the kitchen is required before the thought of
filing can even cross her mind.

It isn't until Scully finds herself on her knees, frost steaming
from the refrigerator as she wipes out the bottom of the
vegetable crisper, that she realizes she is avoiding the painful
but necessary task, and her shins ache a little as she rises off the
floor. A rueful smile crosses her face as she rubs her legs, the
voice in her mind reminding her that she isn't as young as she
once was.  With a sigh, she makes a beeline for her office. Her
mind is already turning inward and creating categories and
sub-sections that she will recreate in the filing cabinet, all
under the master heading 'Christian Fearon'. 

Darkness falls. After hours of tiring work, she goes in search of
sustenance. The lights are blazing throughout the house when
she goes downstairs, banishing the darkness that years of
intimacy have taught her Mulder often prefers. The bones
between her shoulder blades crack and shift when she stretches
and the sudden inrush of air into her cramped lungs makes her
yawn. Not a single lamp is unlit as she follows the scent of
lamb and fresh tomatoes and oregano toward the kitchen, and
she marvels that the man who lives so deeply entrenched in his
own mind can also know the ins and outs of hers.

Mulder stands with his back to her, tending to a simmering pot
on the stove and muttering to himself about tomato paste
quantities and herb measures with the same focus he gives the
Loch Ness monster and telepathy. Scully snakes her arms
around his waist and rests her throbbing forehead against a pair
of vertebrae.

"'Tbsp' is 'tablespoon', 'tsp' is teaspoon," he reminds himself,
and she can picture his narrowed eyes as he forces the words
into his memory where they will sit forever, used or not. A
smile curves her lips against his shirt.

"Don't laugh, Scully. I think this recipe actually contains the
secret formula for solving the black hole information paradox."

"Thank you, Mulder."

"Oh, I'm getting thanks now, am I?" He turns and clasps his
hands loosely around her neck, turning them into thirteen-year
olds at their first high school dance. The Beatles dribble out
from tiny speakers beside the sink and Mulder's hips begin to
move, encouraging her own with small but bold nudges.
"Exactly what form will this thanks take?"

Scully just raises an eyebrow and allows herself to sway in time
with him. *Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces...*

There is laughter and something else in his eyes, languid like a
river of honey. "What am I being thanked for?"

She leans forward to whisper against his cheek, making sure
her lips graze his skin like butterfly wings. "Learning to cook."

Mulder kisses her hard and she responds with equal fervor,
thrilling to the touch of his fingers against the small of her
back. But it isn't enough. Scully advances and he drops the
hands, gripping the edge of the stovetop to give himself some
leverage. 

An emphatic "Jesus Christ!" breaks them apart and Mulder is
whipping his right hand around, gnawing his lip and shooting
furious looks heavenward. Scully tries to catch the scalded
fingers without much luck.

"Here, Mulder, let me see," she says, and he extends his hand
gingerly. She holds his palm with care and flattens his fingers
to see the tips of three already blistered and angry.

"You're lucky; it could've have been a lot worse."

A muscle in his cheek twitches. "Twice in one day, Scully. I'd
say that's pretty much the definition of bad luck."

"No, three times would be bad luck. Twice is just
carelessness." She squeezes his other hand and is rewarded
with a reluctant grin. "Come on."

It isn't the first time Mulder's entered her office, not by a long
shot, yet he still scrutinizes the room as though he's casing the
joint. At first she had chalked it up to long years of training and
habit, to necessary constant vigilance, but it is only a small
room with a single door and a long, high window. Scully
watches him take in the alphabetized bookcases and neat stack
of manila folders on her desk before his eyes light upon the
window seat, and the briefcase spilling out a blur of paper onto
the faded cushion. Their fundamental differences are illustrated
in their respective workspaces, she has often thought, and she
imagines him thinking the same as he takes in her neat rows
and stacks. The walls are papered in blue and cream and there
are cheerful clouds scattered across the ceiling, like the
children's linen at Our Lady Of Sorrows. She allows her eyes
to close for a moment, allows her memory to dwell on a
brown-haired boy with an earnest, goofy smile, but in the end
she puts a clamp on her heart and hopes it holds.

"Sit down," she tells him, shaking him from his own reverie.
He cradles his hand with the other and carefully shuffles the
papers aside, careful not to disturb the natural order of things.

"It's all right, I haven't started on those ones yet," she says,
coming up from her first-aid kit with a tube of aloe gel, cotton
wool and a small rolled bandage. As she doctors his lovely
wounds, he peruses the documents with his free hand, his
mouth tightening at diagrams of spider-like chromosomes. He
lifts his chin in the direction of the chromosomes.

"Is that Christian?"

Scully chooses the simplest answer to a loaded question,
surveying his pinkie finger closely as she bandages the tip in a
tight coil. "Yes."

"So this particular genetic code is the blueprint of an incurable
disease," he muses.

With a sigh, Scully lays her medicine aside and picks up the
paper. "Sandhoff is caused by the differences in the various
mutations of the genome, here in the HEX B gene within
chromosome 5, right there. It's the result of two mutated genes,
one from each of his parents." She can feel him watching her as
she stands and replaces everything in its proper place before
putting the kit back on the top shelf above her desk. Baby
William smiles at her with gummy glee from within a silver
photo frame. Memories of her sweet chubby-cheeked son rattle
around her brain, tangle with thoughts of Christian, and distract
her from Mulder's next words.

"What?" she asks, turning to face him.

He gestures to the papers beside him. "Do you want some
help?"

She almost laughs. "No offense, Mulder, but I'd prefer to keep
my files and your filing system separate."

"Ouch."

"I'm just being honest."

"I'll have you know that my filing system is very accurate.  I
know where everything is off the top of my head."

"And therein lies the problem. I'd like my work to be useful to
somebody in the future, and for that to happen, all this needs to
be organized in a method recognizable to other human beings."

"Fine, but you won't get rid of me that easily."

"Mulder--"

"Hey, Scully, come on. Can't a guy read in peace?" he protests,
waving a sheet of paper at her. She returns to the creaky
computer chair and fixes her eyes on the nearest file, a
half-smile playing on her lips.

It takes longer than she expected, for which she gives him
credit, but Mulder soon finds that mutated DNA and research
performed on mice is not up to his usual standard of weird. He
begins to roam around her office and before she knows it, he's
standing over her shoulder and tapping his fingers on the chair.
She relents and gives him a task to keep him occupied,
requesting that he recite the first few sentences of each
document so she can declare it kept or trash. The work
dwindles slowly with each label and categorization, but
strangely enough, Mulder's inquiries make it easier to bear.
The trash can beside the door begins to overflow with crumpled
balls of paper, and the next one he shoots that way bounces
onto the floor.

He drags himself from the window seat and notices the
file-stuffed trash bin from the hospital, waiting ominously to be
unpacked and sorted. Scully raises an eyebrow without looking
up from the page as he points in its direction.

"Pass me that bin, Scully, the other one's full."

"Those are more files in there, not trash," she says slowly,
labeling a folder 'Experimental Treatments: Unsuccessful'. She
realizes her own failed attempt to cure Christian will reside
here, and grief plucks at her heart and reverberates in her
bones. Her hand casts shadows over the endless lines of black
letters, and the light overhead is making her head ache again.
Mulder snakes his hands beneath her desk and pulls out the bin,
examining the contents as though they come from a Christmas
stocking.

His voice is soft as he thumbs through the pages. "By the sheer
volume of work here alone Scully, how can you doubt that you
did everything possible to save this boy?"

Scully glances out the window at the near-complete darkness,
but her own reflection gets in the way, and she puts her pen
down at last. It takes her a while to answer, and in the back of
her mind she notes the over-enthusiastic bubbling of the
spaghetti sauce in the kitchen.

"It wasn't enough."

"You, of all people, should know that even science has its
limitations. Isn't there a point when you have to step back and
trust a higher power?"

"I thought I was," says Scully, more forcefully than she
intended. "I did what I thought-- what I knew was right, and I
still lost."

"And that is not your fault. You did everything right,
everything you could." Mulder leans forward over his knees
and puts a hand on her forearm, the three white-capped fingers
rough against her skin. "You're not God, Scully."

The ghost of a laugh escapes her as she fiddles with her own
fingers. When the silence grows uncomfortable, she gives a
quick nod and picks up the pen again, dislodging Mulder's
hand from her wrist. He falls back to reading and her work
reels her in until she realizes that she can no longer hear the
rustle of papers from the window seat.

"Scully."

"Hmm?" The sentence she is working on clamors to be
completed.

"Scully," he says, louder.

"What is it, Mulder?" she says, exasperation creeping into her
voice.

"What is this?" He takes a long stride forward to wave the page
in her face. "What is this?"

She does not back away from his raised voice and tries to peer
at the paper. "Keep still, for God's sake," she snaps, and
manages to get a grip on it, though he doesn't relinquish his.
Unlike her research, it's not immediately recognizable, but it is
short and the words burn into her retinas.

"It's nothing."

Mulder scoffs his disbelief and snatches the handwritten page
back.* "'Samantha Mulder, 2475 Virginia Avenue,
Washington D.C. Can you help her? I think she's dying.'*
Signed with a W. That means nothing to you?"

"Mulder, it's someone's idea of a cruel joke," she says, keeping
her voice level. "You can't take it seriously."

"Why not?" he snaps.

"Because your sister is dead, and has been for thirty years." She
swivels around to face him, her heart hurting, wondering how
the hell that particular Pandora's box of a page had gotten
mixed up with her research. "You told me that you knew it
beyond a doubt."

He gnashes his teeth and spins to face the window and the
concealed night beyond, but the sight of his own reflection
makes him turn around again.

"What if I was wrong?"

Scully stares at him. "You don't mean that."

He clenches his fists. "Scully--"     

"Mulder, haven't you had enough of torturing yourself by
questioning what you know to be true?"

"A vision in a meadow in the middle of the night doesn't equal
truth."

"It did eight years ago, and it did yesterday!" she says, temper
ratcheting up despite herself. "You would seriously throw away
a decade of conviction, of peace, for nothing?"

"This isn't nothing!" He shakes the damning evidence in her
face again but Scully stands her ground. 

"If you refuse to believe in your convictions, at least believe in
mine. The person in that letter is not your sister."

"How can you be sure?" he demands, advancing toward her,
looming over her. She remains immovable.

"Because I took it to the FBI when I first received it, and
Skinner had someone investigate it as a personal favor to us."
His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and she hurries on. "This
woman, this Samantha Mulder, was born and raised in a tiny
town in North Carolina and has only lived in Washington since
early 2003. She is no relative of yours and it is pure
coincidence that she and your sister share the same first name
and year of birth."

Throughout her speech Scully watches the old lines of fury and
uncertainty darken his face, and she curses herself for not
throwing the letter in the trash where it belonged a year earlier.

"You went to Skinner with this? Without telling me?" he says,
and Scully's brow crinkles in disbelief.

"Really, that's what you're getting out of what I just told you?
You'll condemn me for protecting you and ignore the facts, the
truth?"

"Right, because the FBI never lied to us to get what they
wanted."

"Mulder, what could the FBI possibly want from you
anymore?" she asks, rubbing her sore eyes.

"My death, for one thing."

Scully's stomach lurches a little at the thought, which has never
been far from her mind. "Maybe six months ago, before you
helped them get that Doctor Frankenstein.  But Skinner proved
himself beyond reproach a long time ago. He's saved us too
many times.

"And if you're right, and that letter is just an excuse for
somebody to bring you down for good, then you're responding
exactly how they'd want you to. There's no proof whatsoever
that this woman is your Samantha, and these people would
count on the fact you don't care about that."

"Right, no proof," says Mulder with a bitter laugh, "other than
her name and age." He gives the wall a sharp kick in his
frustration. A pile of documents on the window seat slither to
the floor and with a heartfelt "goddammit" he drops to his
knees to pick them up. "You should have told me about this,"
he grunts. "You had no right to keep it from me."   

Scully crouches down beside him and gathers loose pages,
trying her best to help him. "What would you have done if I
had?"

"I don't know--"

"A year ago you were still a wanted felon. I didn't show you
the letter because I knew that nothing I could say would
prevent you from following it up. I did it for your sake," she
says, her voice grinding to a guttering halt. Tears burn in her
throat and sinuses and behind her eyes. Mulder stares at her for
a moment before standing up, a page crushed unknowingly in
his hand. 

"A year," he accuses, and Scully feels those soft-hearted
emotions drain away.  She rises to her feet and loses her temper
in a vehement flood.

"God damn it, Mulder, will you listen to reason and for once in
your life look past these imagined personal wrongs? I gladly
kept silent for *my* sake, for *my* peace and personal sanity,
just as much as yours. You've shown over and over your
willingness to die for what you believe, and once upon a time I
followed you without question. I would have given everything
to help you." She steadies herself against the desk. "But not
anymore. Not when we've spent years rebuilding our lives from
nothing. And not for something insignificant like this."

Mulder just stands there, shock and indignation and guilt paling
his features.

"I'm tired of digging up the past," says Scully, the anger
eddying away as quickly as it came. "Can't we just let it be?"

"What if it's different this time?" he challenges.

She takes a shaky breath and swipes her hand across her eyes.
"It never is," she mutters, and his only response is silence.
"You're holding onto ghosts and shadows."

Scully becomes aware of the acrid smell that hangs in the air,
the smell of still-sore truths. She opens her mouth to tell him
the spaghetti sauce is burning but he strides from the room
before she can muster up the necessary breath. Smoke drifts
upstairs as she listens to him slam the lid onto the saucepan to
kill the fire. The pot will be ruined, as will their dinner. Her
fingers clench against her side but she is unable to keep the rest
of her from trembling.

The damned letter lies on her desk, taunting her. The only
reason she has kept it this past year is because it is nothing like
the others, the typewritten memos that have appeared in the
post office box with alarming regularity ever since she bought
the house years ago.  Those ones she has collected and shoved
away in the deepest, darkest recesses of her office and tried to
ignore. She knows where they come from, those ones, knows
what they contain before she even opens them. They bear the
same DC postmark every time. They are identical down each
period and comma. No salutation, no farewell, just a pair of
terrifying sentences, fraught with too many implications and
temptations.

        Your sister is alive.

        We know where she is.

***

Onward to part ii!