Amazing Grace (2/5) 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. *** The empty space beside Scully on the bed keeps her from sleep that night. She curls against a pillow for warmth, listening for the snick of the front door she expects to hear as Mulder leaves. Her breath keeps catching in her throat on what feels like a lump of dry ice, so cold it burns. She tries to muster up some annoyance at his blindness, his devotion to a lost cause, his insecurity and damnable curiosity. But her heart is worn, and can no longer tell the difference between what is insanely aggravating and what is fondly endearing. Instead, she allows that nervous energy to gnaw at her own insides as she reproaches herself for somehow mixing up the Samantha letter with the other files. No matter how hard she stokes the pathetic heat of her anger and frustration, what keeps her from sleep is cold, slimy fear. She watches the digital clock count down the long minutes until sunrise, and around three in the morning the sound of him making coffee is reassuring enough to send her into a fitful doze. At dawn she hears the front door close and sits bolt upright in bed. She slips from their bedroom like a wraith, pulling her robe around her, and hurries into the living room. Everything looks normal in the grayish light of day; his coffee cup is half-full but cold, his laptop hums on the couch. Nothing is missing as far as she can tell. His wallet lies on the kitchen counter, and she relaxes somewhat at the sight of it. The light is on in the laundry and one look next to the dryer is enough to confirm her suspicions: his sneakers are missing and he has simply gone for a run. Scully switches off the light and goes to refill the coffee pot. Sometime later, dressed in jeans and a blue sweater, Scully places her coffee mug beside a stack of unsorted files and contemplates a course of action. Mulder, so often an open book, has slammed shut, and she has never been especially skilled at reading people even at the best of times. Does he intend to go? Has he comes to his senses? Really, either option is entirely possible. After minutes of staring at hot steam curling from the mug she is unable to force her muddled thoughts into any semblance of order, so she retreats to the much more manageable pages in front of her. Distractions are rife, though; a shard of sunlight glints off the silver photograph frame which sits on the shelf above her computer screen, just at eye level, inviting her to look. William smiles up at her from the photo, lying in his crib, pudgy fingers reaching up to investigate the camera. Scully touches the photo with her index finger, remembering how he would squirm when she stroked the dimple in his cheek, how he would gurgle and turn his head to gum on her finger in an ecstasy of drool. She is separated from her son by a thin layer of glass and one irrevocable decision. The pain of William is dull, an ache she has learned to live with in all that she does, a wide, steady river that erodes the ground beneath her feet inch by inch. The pain of Christian is acute, a thousand tiny sharp teeth gnawing at her heart. After the blood is drained away, in time, the teeth will stop and leave a million tiny scars behind them. But erosion is a force she cannot halt. She merely waits for the day she will fall and drown. That photograph reminds her of who she used to be. The pages in front of her remind her of who she is now. She just isn't sure which one causes the quavering sadness in the dark, quiet part of her. When she hears the quiet open and shut of the front door an hour and a half later, she is irritated to find her subconscious still at a loss to deal with Mulder's situation. Scully stays put in her chair as Mulder strides past her office and rummages around the bedroom. Eventually, he goes to shower and she uncrosses her arms and reaches for the coffee only to find it stone-cold. She makes a face and a decision and pushes her chair back. Before long, Mulder emerges from the fogged-up bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, to find her on the bed, leaning against the headboard. He raises an eyebrow but says nothing as he pulls jeans and a t-shirt from the dresser and throws them down beside her bare feet. Silence stretches between them while he dresses, but when he pulls a sports bag from beneath the bed Scully finally figures out what she wants to say. "You're going to Washington." He stuffs socks into the bag. "I have to be sure." "You can't trust me," she says, looking down at her hands twisted in her lap. "That's not it," he says evenly. "This is something I have to do for my peace and personal sanity, as you so aptly put it." "That's what I'm worried about, Mulder. You're relentless, you don't know when to stop. And these people are counting on that." "Who? Who is left that gives a rat's ass about what I do in my spare time?" "You want a comprehensive list of the people you've pissed off over the years?" she says, her lips quirking in vague amusement despite herself. He searches through the wardrobe for a jacket. "I'm a free man, Scully. I haven't committed any crimes lately; there's not even a parking ticket on my recently-purged record." "Not yet," she mutters, any trace of a smile gone. "Now who doesn't trust who?" he snaps. "I'm not some harebrained idiot going off on a wild-goose chase; I'm calmly and rationally investigating a possible lead." "Someone is toying with you," she asserts, outwardly calm. Her pulse races in her throat. "You'd be walking right into a trap." "A trap?" He sits on a chair to tie his shoelaces. "Scully, that letter proves that these people didn't need to construct an elaborate scheme to lure me out; they already knew where I was. Somehow, they found out I was here. Doesn't the fact they didn't break down our door in the next minute prove that it's all been forgotten?" Scully hesitates on the verge of a black hole. "Scully? What is it?" "They've always known," she says slowly, before the words begin to rush out. "I don't know how they found out. I don't know why they haven't come for us. But the fact they haven't is what makes me believe you're in danger if you leave here. They're planning something." Mulder rests his hands on his knees and tilts his face to look at her inquisitively, wordlessly challenging her to prove it. "I'll show you," she says, and leaves the room. When she returns, she thrusts the fat manila folder in his direction as though it burns her hands, and quietly asks him to look at the dates stamped on each one. He flips through the identical letters with agonizing slowness. She bites her lip. "I couldn't tell you, Mulder, I couldn't risk--" He stands up and the folder falls to the floor, sending paper in every direction. "Why not?" he says, his voice exceedingly composed, and Scully, prepared to argue, stutters to a confused halt. "I--because--she's your sister, and you were wanted for murder! And when it comes to her, all your common sense goes out the window. I didn't want you to just... go... I..." she blusters, embarrassed now and angry because of it. "I thought you would do something stupid, something exactly like this." Mulder nods along with this, lips pressed together in a thin white line. "Well, I'm glad you're here to do the thinking for both of us, seeing as I'm apparently incapable of rational thought." "Only when it comes to her," she enunciates hotly, and he reaches past her to grab the gaping bag. Scully resists the urge to take hold of it herself, anything to keep him from leaving. "Mulder, don't be stupid. You'll be playing right into their hands. And you'll just be disappointed again." "I can deal with it," he says. "You'll never have to know." He picks his cell phone off the bedside table and shoves it in his jacket pocket. "What are you going to do?" she asks. "I'm going to see if my poor judgment impedes my driving skills. I'll call you when I get to DC." Any thoughts of staying uninvolved fly out the window. "Oh, no. You're not getting rid of me that easily." She glares at him, suddenly furious. "Knowing your track record, I expect you'll be needing a doctor within hours of arriving in DC, and I don't ever want to have somebody inform me yet again of your death." "Fine," he says, yanking on the bag's stuck zipper until it closes. "I'm leaving in five." "Fine." Mulder matches her glare for a long moment before leaving the room. As she drags her own bag out and throws clothes into it, Scully fumes at him for goading her and at herself for allowing her neuroses to tangle her in his quest. But lurking beneath the furious bluster is that awful dread again. The very thought of him going to Washington, alone, makes her light-headed, and she takes a long breath. Without a second thought she takes the gun from the dresser, along with some extra rounds, and stashes it in her handbag. The phone on the bedside table rings twice, but Mulder picks it up from the kitchen before she can reach for it; after being cut off from humankind for so long, he answers phone calls with the diligence of a newly-hired secretary. An irrational urge to run from the room and wrest the phone from his hands is tempered by a sharp spike in dizziness, and Scully drifts to the window and clutches the sill for support. As a white haze creeps in the corners of her vision, she shoves the casing open in case the urge to vomit becomes overwhelming. Her temples ache. The sunshine burns fiery red beneath her closed eyelids but keeps her from feeling like she's spinning off into another dimension. "Scully!" Mulder shouts from the kitchen. When she opens her eyes to see bone-white fingers clutching the edge of the sill, she makes a conscious effort to loosen her grip. Mulder climbs the stairs and she catches snippets of a one-sided conversation while she pats cold water on her cheeks in the bathroom. She takes a few sips from the water glass on the sink. It occurs to her that she hasn't eaten anything substantial for nearly twenty-four hours, and that this is the logical explanation for the sudden bout of nausea. "Oh, okay. Yeah, of course. Thanks for calling. Alright. Bye." Scully is staring at her rice-paper face in the mirror when Mulder raps on the door. "Who was that?" she asks, and after a moment's silence he clears his throat. "It's after eleven; we've gotta go. I'll tell you about it in the car." *** The blue sky is papered with sheets of cloud and the mountains appear bluer and bluer in the distance the further away they get. Past a certain point it becomes difficult to distinguish between the two; the peaks and ridges are blurred into the atmosphere with the softest of brushstrokes, the sfumato of a heavenly artist. A pair of horses converse beside a roadside fence, chestnut coats gleaming, and they raise their soft noses in interest as the car whips by. After fifteen minutes of such pastoral scenery, they are both drowned in silence, and the further from home they drive, the more Scully regrets barging into this utterly pointless exercise. She can think of a hundred things that she'd rather be doing, not to mention the actual work she is paid to do, which requires her constant attention and will multiply like a mass of spores in her absence. Being on leave is not the vacation Hawaii was; it is shorthand for mountains of paperwork. A glimpse of her thunderous expression in the side mirror doesn't improve her mood; two ominous lines wrinkle her forehead and linger even after she relaxes her face. "What exactly do you plan to do once we get there?" she says, crossing her arms and continuing to stare out the window. "Me, personally, I'm going to speak to this woman, assuming she's still alive," he says. "You, I don't know. You can do whatever you like." His fingers drum against the wheel and Scully finds their arrhythmia almost hypnotizing. "We're staying somewhere nice," she announces abruptly, still watching his fingers. "A good hotel." "Fine," he says. After ten long minutes of nothing but unbroken Virginia countryside, her frustration begins to dissipate, and she speaks again to try and temper the corrosive silence. "Who were you speaking to on the phone earlier?" His eyes flick to the rear-vision mirror and back again before he answers. "Margaret Fearon." "Christian's mother?" Scully leans forward. "Is she all right? Why didn't she speak to me?" "She's fine, Blair's fine. Considering the circumstances, she sounded remarkably calm. And she was in a hurry so I took a message. She just wanted you to know that the funeral is on Friday, 10 a.m. at St. Andrew's." "Oh, God." She clenches her fists so tightly that her nails bite into her palms, stamping painful half-moons into the skin. "Mulder, I've got to go back." "What?" he says, startled. "Scully, that would add another forty minutes to the trip." "I forgot the damn funeral!" she says. "I have to go back." "It hasn't happened yet, remember? It's not 'til Friday." "I know that," she says with dangerous calm. "What I don't know is why I agreed to accompany you on this idiotic quest to Washington, of all places, when I'm needed at home. I can't believe after everything you accused me of last night that you'd keep such an important and *private* phone call from me." "You were in the bathroom, Mrs. Fearon was in a hurry, she asked me to give you a message, and that's that." "I see. And you waited to pass it on until we were too far to turn back, because you knew damn well I wouldn't have agreed to come otherwise." "First of all, I didn't ask you to come along; you invited yourself. I made it clear that you had no obligation to help me. And second, I know you feel like you have to help them. But..." "Their son is gone," she grits out. "They have each other," he says, not unkindly. He has become so damned logical in his old age, thinks Scully grudgingly. And yet here we are. But she realizes he is right, and the Fearons' grief is not her own. And knowing what they do about the Samantha letters and the very real possibility that returning to Washington is like stretching both their necks over a chopping block, there is no doubt that where she needs to be is with Mulder. "All right," she assents. He stays silent for a little while. "I would have taken you home, Scully, if that's what you really wanted. But despite everything, I'm glad you didn't ask me to." "I thought you would have been happy to be rid of me." He lets out a huff of laughter. "I may not have invited you, and you may not trust me to even tie my own shoelaces, but who else is going to tell me I'm acting like an idiot? Scully, this feels like old times." "Yeah, it does," Scully mutters, lying back against the seat. If only her brain would feel as exhausted as the rest of her. Not for the first time, she wishes the barrier between her and Mulder was still immutable, like it was in the early days; their colors have long since bled and blurred together and it would a be a Herculean task to pick them apart and create two whole people from the mess. Even as she waits on the fringe of sleep, and feels Mulder's hand smoothing her hair from her cheek, she can't get away from the fact that he is both the best and worst thing to ever crash into her life. He sent her careening off into the stars. Scully opens her eyes as a thought occurs to her. "Mulder, this woman could very likely be dead." Mulder lets his hand drop. "I realize that. I'm at least a year too late, right?" Scully is determined not to feel guilty. "The letter didn't ask for you." "Who else could it have been for, all things considered?" "It was faxed to my private work number." "Yeah, because I don't have a fax machine. What makes you think it was intended for you? You're not an FBI agent anymore, Scully." "Thank you for the reminder," she bites out, fed up. "Neither are you. And I assumed the letter was mine because my assistant delivered it to my office and said 'Here, Doctor Scully, this came for you'." Scully leans forward against the seatbelt, trying to look into his eyes, trying to get through to him. "What was I supposed to do, Mulder? Leave Christian just when he needed me most, get some other doctor to perform my surgeries while I ran errands in Washington to satisfy your curiosity?" The safety catch jerks her back and she tugs at the black strap with increasing irritation. "For God's sake!" "Of course not," he says forcefully, trying to look at her and keep the car within the yellow lines at the same time. "I never expected you to run any errands for me; the fact that you have for the last six years of your own volition, well, that just goes on the unending list of things I owe you for. But you could have told me about the letter." "I did those things because I wanted to!" she says in a fury. "Not because I ever expected repayment for services rendered. I threw my lot in with you a long time ago, and damn it, the last six years have been hard beyond belief, but it was my choice to try and make the best of a bad situation for both of us. You don't owe me for it." Mulder concentrates intensely on the road, a muscle working in his clenched jaw, hands throttling the wheel. Once again, Scully doesn't know whether to lambast him or comfort him, but her attention is distracted by the seatbelt now strangling her torso and digging into her neck. She tries to breathe but it feels like an iron chain lashed across her chest; yanking on it only draws it tighter and tighter until she wants to scream in frustration. Her throat constricts and she forces herself to remain calm in the wash of irrational panic. Mulder glances at her as her fingers find the seatbelt buckle and push, and the belt sags like a windless flag. Air balloons her lungs. "You all right?" he asks. "Fine." The countryside rolls past in an endless tapestry of green, brown, and grey, and she refastens the seatbelt. "I already explained why I didn't tell you about the letter. This--" she says, gesturing to him, the car, the road, "--is why. A year ago, going back into Washington would have been a death sentence for you. And I'm not entirely convinced that anything has changed. Isn't it enough that Skinner has vouched for the truth?" "If you were in my place, Scully... what would you do?" She opens her mouth helplessly, knowing she cannot answer that truthfully. "I understand that you wanted to protect me," he says. "But you could have trusted me enough to tell me about the letters. Where is your faith in my ability to make a sane decision? I know what it has cost you to build this life we have--" he shoots her a look, "--what it's cost both of us. I like to think that a year ago, hell, even five years ago, I would have had more sense than to throw it all away over nothing. And *I'm* not entirely convinced that anything has changed." Scully closes her eyes. "I've got a good feeling about this, Scully." She doesn't trust herself to reply. *** Despite her general unease, Scully is glad for the constancy of the capital and its surrounds; her favorite bakery in Arlington and their grilled chicken sandwich is as good as ever. Mulder eats his half with indecent speed and spends the remainder of the time jiggling his knee against the table leg, staring at the park across the street. Untouched water trembles in his sweating glass as the fan labors overhead, doing absolutely nothing to stir the steamy air. Scully clears her throat pointedly, though she suspects he isn't aware of his outward agitation and how it feeds her own inner disquiet. The sandwich somehow has trouble making its way to her stomach so she pushes it away with a small sigh, the crusts drooping on the crumb-scattered plate. Her index finger taps the tabletop, ignoring its thin veneer of grease, and Mulder scoops up the keys from beside the salt shaker. He keeps his comments to himself at the sight of the admittedly rather bourgeois hotel of Scully's choice in Washington's northwest, but cannot resist an admiring whistle as they trail the bellboy and their pair of overnight bags through the foyer. The marbled eggshell floor gleams with polish and perfectionism. The room is more than Scully had expected and everything she had hoped for, all cream and soft lighting and high ceilings, all peaceful and cool. "Thank you, dear Scully, for having such impeccable taste in hellishly expensive hotels," Mulder says, hefting his bag onto the enormous bed as Scully draws open the heavy curtains. "I can see my old neighborhood," she remarks in reply, hand pressed against the glass, her heart compressing like dead flowers in the pages of a book. She misses it. William existed there. "We can drive by on the way," he offers, keys in hand. She considers for a moment, listening to the smug hum of the air conditioner. "No." Mulder bypasses Georgetown and drives east along the waterfront. Scully watches the Potomac glint like a sheet of rumpled tinfoil in the afternoon sun and thinks how oddly fitting it is that 2475 Virginia Avenue stands in the shadow of the Watergate complex. Mulder cranes his neck to look, peering through the windshield, and she too examines the hotel in all its snarling ugliness. They pass by it in silence. Mulder parks in the lot of the Potomac Apartment complex and gets out of the car with half a smile on his face. He goes to the sidewalk, shading his eyes from the yellow sun as he surveys the traffic, the city, the noise, his t-shirt creased and damp with sweat. An irate driver leans on the horn as his car whines past a green minivan taking up one and a half lanes. Mulder stretches while Scully climbs out of the car and shrugs into her coat; though the day's smog still strangles the city with warmth, her fingers are chilly. She slams the door shut to catch his attention. "Let's get this over with," she calls as he strides toward her. "What's the hurry?" "Oh, cut the crap, Mulder. Let's just go in there, interrogate this poor woman, and go back to the hotel while we're all still alive." She stalks across the parking lot toward the rigid building's entrance, her handbag slung over her shoulder, the gun burning a hole in the bottom. She tells herself that nothing is out of the ordinary, that nothing will go wrong. Her fingernails keep time against the bag's leather strap. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices a black door denoting the fire exit, and files it away for future reference, just in case. In the lobby, Mulder introduces himself, slides his ID across the counter and smoothly asks after his cousin Samantha. The helpful clerk points them to the elevators and advises them to visit apartment number 500. "Would you like me to call up and advise her you're here?" he asks, cocking his head like a baby bird. Scully makes her way over to the elevator while Mulder politely refuses the young man's offer. A painting hangs on the wall, shedding paint flecks like dead skin, obviously a cheap knock-off purchased on a street corner or junk shop. It appears as though the artist was lacking in white paint, for the forest landscape is as dark as an unpurged Grimm fairytale. Scully feels an instant repulsion from the picture, but something entices her to study it closer. Could it be familiarity? A subconscious recognition of a place she has visited in the past and long forgotten? There is a subtle horror in the looming bare mountains, fading into nothingness in the background. Her skin feels electrified and the back of her neck crawls with sweat. Mulder touches her shoulder and she sucks in a sharp breath, feeling utterly ridiculous. She jabs at the elevator button crossly. Mulder folds his arms while they wait. Her apprehension grows as the elevator empties them into the silent hall of the fifth floor, and Scully wants time to erase and rewind and take them back home. Samantha Mulder's apartment is second-last from the end of the hall, its television's tinny blare audible through the door. They stand side by side, not touching, listening to muffled canned laughter, waiting for Mulder to make a move. His face contorts as though he wants to speak, and the hand curled to knock on the door drops a little. After a short pause, Scully catches her lip between her teeth and lays her hand on his forearm. The muscles and ligatures and the very bones within seem to thrum with energy. "Don't do this," she beseeches. "Don't do this to yourself." Mulder hesitates, his hand hovering. "We can always come back tomorrow," she adds, tackled by sudden desperation. Someone coughs inside the apartment. Mulder raises his hand again, Scully lets hers fall, and he knocks four times. After a minute and sundry noises from within, the deadbolt clunks into position. The door cracks open, halted by the chain. The woman's face is in shadow; all but one blue eye just above Scully's own eye level. "Can I help you?" the woman asks. Behind her, the game show host drawls the name of the next contestant and the audience erupts into applause. "Are you Ms... uh, Samantha Mulder?" Mulder asks, trying to peer around the door at her face. "Yeah, that's my name. Most people call me Sam, though." Her voice is like old felt, her vowels as long as the summer afternoons. Mulder squints at her. "I'm... my name is Fox Mulder, and this is my partner, Dana Scully." As he speaks, Scully notices his hand drift unconsciously to the inner pocket of his coat and, finding no badge there, jam itself in the front pocket of his jeans. "Sorry to bother you--" He breaks off as Samantha moves out of his shadow and the hallway light illuminates her face. Scully's heart jumps into her throat at the sight of the woman's washed-out features, framed by wisps of graying brown hair, a strange and yet instantly familiar face, very like the one she hasn't seen in ten years. A face like Mulder's. Samantha presses bloodless lips together as she narrows her eyes at the strangers. "Your name is Mulder, you said?" Mulder swallows and nods. "And you're family." It is more statement than question, and a disbelieving smile edges across her face. Scully watches a very similar expression appear on Mulder's and returns her scrutiny to Samantha, taking in her tall forehead, her protruding nose, her round cheeks. She even has the cleft in her chin. Scully feels the tips of her ears begin to burn hot, but she refuses to cede any ground. There is no earthly way this pale, thin, Southern ghost of a woman could be Mulder's Samantha. It is impossible. An abrupt laugh, a cough full of mirth, bursts from Samantha. "Oh, God. Oh, my God. You've come. You found me." She slams the door in their faces, leaving them more than bewildered. Scully tries to silence the calm, polite voice of reason that advises her to turn on her heel and leave the building. She glances down the hall at the deceptive blankness of each gold-numbered door as a red-hot unsettling grain of mistrust burns its way through her internal organs. Having removed the chain, Samantha yanks the door open as though she is afraid the strangers might disappear into thin air. The inrush of warm air puffs the hem of her floral-print dress and she smoothes it with both hands. The dress hangs off her painfully slim frame; her white limbs seem almost frail, though she appears to be only in her late forties. "Come in, come in," she says, smiling as though it hurts her face. Scully follows Mulder into the apartment and raises an eyebrow at the sheer number of rugs beneath the dark wooden furniture. Only the barest glimpse of polished hardwood is visible between the gaps of wall-to-wall Oriental carpet. She studies the low-ceilinged room as Samantha fiddles with the deadlock. It is cluttered with heavy furniture, an abundance of chairs, and a mish-mash of lamps, candlesticks, and chandeliers. There is a lot of light but little air, as each spotlessly clean window appears to be tightly fastened. It resembles nothing more than a pawn shop, or the experiment of a blind interior decorator, or, as Scully realizes with a pang, their own cobbled-together home. With a small start, she notices Samantha standing next to her. "Hi," she says without thinking. "It's so nice to meet you," says Samantha, placing her hand on Scully's upper arm. "Dana, right?" "Yeah," says Scully, feeling slightly foolish. "I hope you weren't in the middle of something..." "No, I was just passing the time, watching this junk." Samantha picks up the remote and silences the painfully old-fashioned tube. Scully wishes she had left it on. Mulder remains speechless for once as he tries and fails to keep his eyes off Samantha. The woman presses a bony hand to her mouth and coughs. "Excuse me," she says, and clears her throat. "Would you like a drink?" "That would be great," says Scully, seizing on the opening in conversation. "Just water, for me." "Fox?" Samantha inquires. Scully raises another eyebrow but strangely, Mulder doesn't protest the use of his maligned first name. "I'll have whatever you're making," he replies. "Is tea okay?" "It's fine, thanks." Samantha drifts towards the kitchen. "Sit down, please. Anywhere you like." "Fox?" says Scully under her breath, once they are alone. She takes a seat in the middle of a cinnamon-colored suede couch and Mulder drops down on her right, hunched forward as he surveys the room. He bounces on the balls of his feet and nudges her knee with his own. She goes to speak to him and is almost shocked by the unrestrained glee in his face. It is practically glowing. "Mulder--" "Is there any doubt in your mind now?" "Yeah, there is!" she bristles, trying to keep her voice down. "You can't know that's her just by looking at her face. You haven't seen her since she was eight years old." "I've seen her clones, seen the adult version of her. You have too!" "That was ten years ago," she says, determined to stay on rational ground where the world remains horizontal. "Scully, look at the resemblance," he protests. "I'm not saying she doesn't share features with the last known version of your sister. But a million people share those same features, Mulder. And this woman is much thinner, with different hair, and she's from North Carolina, for God's sake." "A person can change a lot in ten years," he insists, and Scully nudges him as Samantha enters balancing a tray with two steaming mugs and a glass of water. Mulder stands up to help her lower the tray to the coffee table. "Thanks, Fox," she says, and Scully waits for him to correct her, but he merely smiles and returns the sentiment. Not an anomaly, then. Could it be he has mellowed in his old age? Samantha dips a teaspoon into the sugar bowl and lowers herself into a squashy chair whose upholstery clashes horribly with her dress. "So you're from North Carolina?" asks Mulder with all the subtlety of a hand grenade, and Scully bites her lip, knowing that Samantha has never articulated this fact. "Rockwell, North Carolina," nods Samantha, taking a sip of hot tea. Scully drinks the entire glass of water with nary a breath; the air in the room is unbearably close. She sets the glass down and slips from her coat with no small measure of relief. "That's near Faith, isn't it? The town famous for its Fourth of July celebrations?" says Mulder, ignoring his own tea. "I think George Bush Sr. played a baseball game there back when he was president." "Right. Is that where you've come from? Took your time about it!" "Actually no, we're... well, I'm the last surviving member of the New England Mulders." *Not the last,* thinks Scully, suddenly acutely aware of her empty hands. She clenches them and tries not to think of her baby boy, who is no longer a baby and no longer has any claim to that name. Samantha is squinting at Mulder. "You're one of the lost ones, then. They said the rest of the family would be scattered across the country. New England, huh? Siding with the Yankees," she admonishes with a click of her tongue, "traitor." A grin takes the sting out of her words but both Mulder and Scully find it hard to muster up any amusement. "If siding with the Yankees is treason, Mulder should be hung, drawn and quartered," says Scully drily. Off Samantha's questioning look, she adds, "Huge Yankees fan." Mulder laces his fingers over his knees and speaks with some difficulty. "I'm sure on some level, no matter how distant, you and I share some DNA, but I'm... not from North Carolina. I was born in Chilmark, on Martha's Vineyard, and that's where my sister and I grew up." He watches her carefully. "We spent summers in Rhode Island at a place called Quonochontaug, and we'd play tag on the beach and you'd get so sunburned that you'd have to take a nap when we came home." A muscle works in Scully's jaw as she grits her teeth. He dropped the pronoun on purpose, she knows, as bait, hoping to see some hint of recognition or remembrance in Samantha's face with the memory he sketched in the air. She searches for it herself, but nothing registers in that white face save the dullness of disappointment. What little life Samantha has burning inside her seems to flicker and fade; she sinks into the chair like a deflated balloon. The musty air gathers about their heads like invisible thunder clouds. Samantha clutches the half-empty mug in both hands, rests it in her lap, and when she speaks it is not to Mulder or Scully but to it. "You're not my family," she says, more accusation than question. A vein spasms in Mulder's neck. "Who are you? How do you know my name?" "I told you, my name is Fox--" "Mulder? Give me a break." "It's the truth," he says softly. Samantha shoves her mug onto the tea tray. "What are you doing here?" "We wanted to see if you were okay," Scully interjects, unable to bear Mulder's wretched expression any longer. Samantha glares at her and straightens her shoulders. "I'm fine." Her tenacity crumbles and her head bows under the weight of a mucus-clotted coughing fit. "Obviously," remarks Scully, frustration getting the better of her. Unbelievable. This woman is in complete denial about her tenuous grip on life. She is fading away before Scully's very eyes, it seems, becoming as transparent as white gauze and just as insubstantial. No wonder she keeps all the windows closed; a stiff breeze could send her spiraling up and away into the deep blue sky. Only her eyes show any sign of undeniable life. "I'm alive, and that's something," Samantha grits out, uncurling herself. The strain of coughing has left her face whiter than ever rather than reddened. "I'm alone and I'm alive." "What's that supposed to mean?" "I mean--" she coughs like gunfire, "--I managed to carry on without anybody's help, without any of them trying to find me or help me." "Who?" asks Mulder, his gaze boring into the trembling woman, irresistibly drawn toward her and her pain, a tiny bright star sucked into the endless unknown of a black hole. She stares back at him, eyes blazing, her chest rising and falling with measured deliberation. "Do you know what it's like to be forgotten?" she begins, before clearing her throat explosively. "To know in your bones that you are alone, to feel the absolute certainty that you will die alone? You don't," she says, railroading over any possible answers, "because you have each other. Am I right?" After a moment, Mulder nods without looking at Scully. Scully swallows a scoff full of indignation that this woman assumes she has a monopoly on loneliness. Once upon a time, loneliness itself was her only constant; it walked with her, slept with her, held her hand in the silent moments, a quiet parasite she tried in vain for years to shed. It is a beast of a different name now, but still there in the silence. "You get to a certain age and whether you like it or not, people start leaving," Samantha continues, her voice barely raised above a whisper. "They die, or they forget you, or they just plain don't give a damn about you anymore. In my case, it was all of those in one quick moment, and then there was nobody." *** Onward to part iii!