Amazing Grace (3/5) 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. *** Samantha picks up the mug again and stares into it as though trying to read her fortune in the dark clumps of tea leaves. "I was in a car accident then, five years ago. I survived, my parents did not. I was flown to Bethesda for emergency surgery and haven't been back home since. They're buried in Rockwell, near Faith, where I was born." "I'm sorry to hear that," Scully says, struck by the extent of the woman's misfortune. Samantha huffs a laugh that catches on the phlegm in her throat. "I was lucky. I had two broken legs, a broken hip, a fractured skull and a bruised hippocampus, among other things." *A bruised hippocampus.* The hippocampus, the memory keeper. Some of the oddities Samantha has spoken begin to make sense to Scully and her indescribable neuroscience. "I have no memory of the four months I spent in hospital here; later, they told me I'd been in a coma since the accident. When I woke up my body was... fixed, I guess, as well as it could be. I'd always been thin, but now I was breakable. I could barely lift the plastic spoon to eat my Jell-O. Sitting up in bed made me gasp for breath. You'd think," she says, addressing Scully, "that being in a coma for four months would make you permanently rested, right?" "If only it worked like that," says Scully with a tight smile. Samantha coughs before speaking. "Sleep was like a drug. I craved it constantly. They told me, in layman's terms, that sleep gives the body an opportunity to fix itself while the brain is turned off. And I thought, sure. That seems reasonable." Her eyes turn to Mulder, glinting with the unknown blue depths of an ice floe. "But what about my mind? I had to wait years and it still isn't completely fixed. The doctors gave me back my body, and with it my physical existence, such as it is. But I," she says, pressing her hand to her chest, "me, my memories, my past, my life, was lost, and I have struggled daily, minute by minute, to get it back." Silence stretches out like her Southern-tinted vowels. Samantha's ferocity, dashing itself against the walls of the stale apartment with all the futility of the ocean, is difficult to witness, but something tells Scully not to break the strange, desperate bond between the storyteller and the listener. Something tells her that Samantha needs to be heard. "I heard everything second-hand and after the fact," she begins again. "My entire life has been constructed from scraps and pieces of a story that belongs to everyone but me. They told me my name, told me about my parents and their deaths. I remembered odd things, like the proper tool for digging potatoes and the formula of a quadratic equation. About my family or friends, I remembered nothing at first. And I soon found out that they didn't care to remember me either." Scully tries not to let pity show in her face, figuring that Samantha doesn't want or need such a condescending emotion. She can see, though, that Mulder has a little more trouble concealing it. His eyes bore into Samantha as though willing her to look up from her coffee mug, wanting to somehow help shoulder the weight of her unknown past. "It came back to me slowly, in dribbles and clumps, mostly places and events and people with blank faces, like in a horror movie. Then vague faces without names, without connections to anything. I recognized a friend here and there, but only by their appearance. A first name, sometimes. Addresses, phone numbers, forget it." She trails of and takes a sip of tea to fortify herself. "I found out there are no Mulders left in Rockwell, we must have been a small family with roots elsewhere." Mulder breaks the gaze and examines his hands as Scully flicks a look at him. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows. "But still, I thought the others might have heard about the accident, you know? Four long months filled with long days went by and still no-one came for me. I recovered physically," Samantha continues. "I was thinking about going back to the pharmaceutical company in North Carolina where I'd apparently been a secretary." She shakes her head, as though in apology. "Anything to get out of that wretched hospital. Soon after that, my doctor brought me a visitor, my old boss from Salisbury. The doctor told me he was still concerned about my health, and that it would be best if I stayed near the city. My boss had arranged a transfer to the company's DC branch, with a government pension and a subsidized apartment within ten miles of the building. I had nowhere else to go." She tries to breathe through the debris in her throat. "And that's how I came to live here." Scully knows her face is dark at the horror of it all. "What was the diagnosis? It sounds to me like mixed retrograde and anterograde amnesia." "Yeah, that's right. With a dose of post-traumatic amnesia because two kinds just weren't enough." "And you still haven't made a full recovery?" "As near as possible, the doctor says. Any memory I recall from here on out is an unexpected bonus." She tries and fails to keep bitterness from her voice but it clearly indicates how woefully inadequate such a bonus would be. "Every little bit counts, Samantha," says Scully, hating her trite words, but at a loss to comfort this ragged, patchwork woman. Mulder stirs, stretches his legs beneath the coffee table, and leans over to touch Samantha's trembling fingers. She looks at the ceiling and fiercely blinks away the film of tears over her pale and vibrant eyes. "Believe it or not, I understand. We both understand," Mulder adds, raising his eyebrows in Scully's direction. Scully blinks away a badly-projected image of bald, dark mountains. The circumstances surrounding her abductions are firmly locked away in a shadowy corner of her mind where theoretically, she should never, ever find them, but the knowledge that they are there, lingering like cancer, still disturbs her sometimes in the quiet hours before dawn. She knows the fear of white, of total blankness, of waking up in a hospital bed without the slightest idea of where she'd been or even how she'd gotten there, clinging to her remaining memories as though they too were spiraling down the giant sucking hole in the middle of her mind. She swallows and gathers her thoughts. "We've both experienced memory loss, though nowhere near as severe as yours. The fear of not knowing what is real and what is imagined is..." Scully shakes her head, aware of how empty her words must seem. "Losing your memory is tantamount to losing your identity, losing everything you've built your life on, it's... terrifying on the basest level." Mulder rubs his nose. "Uh, Samantha..." Samantha nods and tries to collect herself. Mulder pulls a scrunched Kleenex from the depths of his jacket pocket and proffers it; she stares at it for a moment before taking it from his hand with murmured thanks. "Your memory loss... what exactly do you remember from before the accident? Do you remember your home in North Carolina at all?" She sniffs. "When I said I recalled places, I didn't mean specific landmarks or whatever else. I know what it looks like, the building where I worked, for instance, but I can't connect the dots and tell you what or where it is." She waves a hand, which trembles in the air. "I see long wide parks, rivers with white boats at the docks. I see people in cars, driving past me. I just don't know where exactly." Mulder hunches forward. "Could it be possible that these memories have nothing to do with North Carolina? That they could've been created from another source?" Samantha stares at him again from the depths of her chair. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean." "Could it be a different place you're remembering?" he suggests. "The things you described, the river and the park, they're fairly generic across the country. Have you ever travelled outside of North Carolina or the US, even?" Samantha arches a brow. "Well, I don't know that, do I? I wasn't stupid enough to question the memories that came back; I assumed they had taken place in Rockwell because that's where they told me I was from." "You're right, that was a stupid question," says Mulder, drawing away like a cautious kitten from a snappish tomcat. "I'm sorry." Scully watches Mulder bite his lip and knows that he isn't finished exploring whatever fine line of questioning he is attempting to walk. She suspects he too is aware of the looming chasm on either side of his wary footsteps. "Can I ask something else, Samantha?" "Only if you use your brain, Fox," says Samantha tartly. "And like I said, call me Sam." "How did it happen?" he says, ever the investigator. "The accident? Or--what did they tell you happened?" "Well, considering they found a blood alcohol reading of .30 when they scraped my father off the road, I'd say he was driving drunk. I have no idea why my mother and I agreed to even get in the car with him. I daresay he was not the most sensible person in the world." Mulder snorts. "Well, he was still my father," retorts Samantha, frowning. "Nobody is perfect." "No. Not even fathers." Everyone sits in silence and ignores the remaining tea. Scully leans forward to take a chocolate-chip cookie from the blue china plate on the table and nibbles on it as Samantha's words roll in her throat like crushed gravel. "Was he reckless too? Your father?" She wipes her nose with the Kleenex, leaving it reddened at the tip. "My father," says Mulder, and pauses to choose his next words carefully, "was an eminently sensible man. He died some time ago." "What was his name?" "William. Bill." "My dad was Bradley James Mulder," she says. She lifts her chin a little, bares her long white neck and looks at him from beneath her lashes, obviously hoping for a sign of recognition just as he had hoped for it earlier. But Mulder shakes his head, his eyes saying more than a thousand apologies ever could. "I like the name William," says Samantha softly, shoving the hurt away with a visible effort. "It sounds like a good Mulder name." Scully blinks twice. Somehow, her heart has managed to migrate to her aching throat. She forces air past the blockage and to her horror, it makes an audible noise. Mulder touches her hand in question. "Did I say something wrong?" asks Samantha, her fingers bunching her dress in her lap. "It's all right," says Mulder, though his own voice has a hint of uncertainty, and Scully curls her fingers around his. She gives him a small smile and the slightest of nods to show that she can still breathe. "His middle name is William," she says to Samantha, tilting her head in Mulder's direction. "Well, you struck out, didn't you, Fox?" "Guess so," he says, an easy grin on his face. Scully picks up his lonely mug and lets the bitterness of lukewarm black tea soothe her, all the while marveling sardonically at how agreeable he has become. Mulder holds up a finger and asks for one more question. "Not much else to know." "Have you ever experienced missing time?" Scully inhales a mouthful of tea with a splutter. "Mulder..." she croaks in warning, knowing at last the absurd destination he has in mind. Mulder was right about one thing, though; after all this time, nothing has changed. He ignores her and steeples his fingers. "I only ask because in certain cases, incomplete or lost memories often go hand in hand with instances of missing time, and are generally indicative of something else altogether." "Indicative of what? What are you trying to say? In which certain cases, cases like mine?" Her eyes gleam with a pale fire. "I don't know if I've missed any time because any possible memories of it are gone. Why don't you just say what's on your mind, Fox?" He raises his palms in surrender, finished beating around the bush. "Okay. Memory loss and missing time are the two most commonly reported side effects of alien abduction." Without warning, Samantha chokes and dissolves into a fit of belabored coughing, holding her mug in Mulder's direction to prevent spilling the dregs of her tea all over herself. Mulder shifts slightly towards Scully. "Take the mug," gasps Samantha between hacking coughs, and Mulder places it on the coffee table. Scully watches in concern as the woman's cheeks blotch with red like badly mixed raspberry ice-cream. Samantha bends over, arms wrapped around her legs, an ominous rattle in her lungs as she struggles to catch even the smallest slippery breath. Truly alarmed, Scully drops to her knees beside Samantha's chair and asks Mulder to fetch a glass of water. "Slow down," she advises, pressing her hand against the woman's shoulders as she pitches forward with the force of her coughing. The bones beneath Scully's hand are hard and sharp, with barely a layer of muscle and fat to cover them. "Take a deep breath through your nose, just one breath. Hold it... and breathe out... one, two, three. And another... in, two, three..." Samantha wheezes on and on, trembling, a death rattle in her lungs. She presses a limp hand against her chest and leans back against the chair with her eyes closed as Mulder reappears with a dripping, half-full glass. A bluish vein throbs in her forehead. "Is she all right?" Mulder asks, handing Scully the water. "Yeah, I think so. For now, at least." She turns troubled eyes on Samantha. "That's not the first time you've had an attack like that, is it?" she asks, watching her take a long gulp of water. Scully touches the bottom of the glass and instructs her again to slow down. Water slides down the glass and patters into Samantha's lap. She attempts to clear her throat before giving up and shaking her head. "Is it chronic?" asks Scully quietly, setting the glass down. Samantha clears her throat again with a sound like ripping Velcro. "Yes," she forces out in a scratched whisper. "I'm a medical doctor, can you tell me what kind of antibiotics you're on?" Samantha's voice catches on a blockage and she almost chokes again. With a clear effort, she staves off another coughing attack and gestures for a dish sitting on the coffee table. She spits into the dish without ceremony and Scully stares at the blood-tinged sputum, recognition sinking inside of her like pellets of lead shot. Samantha's lips tremble with the weight of her whisper. "None of them work." "Here," says Mulder, offering her another balled Kleenex, and she presses it to her mouth and slumps back in the chair, utterly spent. Her face is bone-white save for the grayish hollows cradling drooped eyelids. "I'll wash this out," says Scully, taking the soiled dish to the kitchen. When she returns, Mulder is sitting on the arm of the couch, hands clasped, studying Samantha's supine face. Scully touches her hand and asks if she needs a cool washcloth to clean up the blood. Samantha drops the bloody tissue to the table and gets up without a word, leaving Mulder and Scully alone in the hot room. Water splashes into a sink in the bathroom. "Did you have to do that?" asks Scully in a low voice. Mulder clenches his jaw. "I have to know." "You're asking more from her than her mind can give." His lips tighten and he says nothing. Something scuffles against a wall, and Scully starts toward the bathroom in case Samantha has fainted or worse. Before she can take two steps, a tiny thud comes from the direction of the front door, follows by a low exclamation. She ignores the thrill of fear in the pit of her stomach and darts across the room to press her eye to the peephole. Though he cannot see her, the black-haired man with his ear to the door seems to sense Scully is there. He shoves something in his jacket pocket and hares away down the hall and out of sight. With unnatural calm, Scully pulls the gun from her handbag on the front table and flicks the safety off. "Mulder, stay here with her," she says, her heart ratcheting in her chest. Before he can reply, she yanks the door open and tears down the hall toward the elevator. The man comes into sight, hunched over, jabbing the call button as hard as he can. *Fifth floor,* announces the smug robotic voice as the elevator arrives. The man manages to slip between the doors while Scully is still six feet away. She dives for the call button but it's no use; the elevator descends with a whirr of machinery. Scully gets a better grip on her gun and rounds the corner, searching frantically for the fire stairs that must be around here somewhere. There. The door crashes against the concrete wall with one hard shove. Her boots clatter and echo throughout the stairwell as she descends, like an army tramping behind her. Her heart trips wildly enough to hurt. She ploughs into the exit door, shoulder-first, and bursts out into the parking lot and the dying day. The golden sun melts over the outskirts of the city and its smoggy crown. A dog yips in the distance. Scully stashes the gun beneath her shirt but keeps two fingers on the grip, and takes a step toward the line of parked cars. She catches her breath easily enough as she crouches to peer beneath a gray Volvo. Nothing. She straightens slowly, quietly, sweeping her gaze across the grounds, her frustration mounting with the knowledge she cannot possibly search each and every hiding place fast enough. She gives the car tire a swift kick and hurries back over to the main entrance. The lobby is deserted but Scully moves from end to end, peering into alcoves and niches and man-sized hiding places. Nothing. The clerk narrows one eye at her as she approaches the desk, his scrutiny lingering on the obvious gun-shaped bulge at her waist. Scully moves it out of sight and taps the marble desk with her index finger. The clerk snaps to attention. "Did a man just run through here?" "No, ma'am. Running in the lobby is not permitted." "I understand that; what I'm asking is if anyone has come out of the elevator in the last five minutes." "No, ma'am, nobody. Did you miss someone?" Scully rubs her forehead. "You could say that." As she heads back over to the elevator, her mind is racing. The man is still in the building, but she does not have the authority to search him out. Exhausting the possibilities in her mind-- calling the police, door-knocking to flush the man out, canvassing witnesses on the block--leaves her with the reluctant knowledge that the black-haired man has committed no crime, and that there is nothing she can do about it. His anonymity makes fear boil in her stomach, fear and anger at the injustice of it all. As she expects, Mulder is chafing at the bit when she knocks on Samantha's door; he whips it open before she can even bring her knuckles down for a second knock. "You should have put the chain on," she rebukes. "What the *hell* just happened?" he says, taking hold of her upper arm and drawing her close. She kicks the door shut with one boot-clad foot. "All I know is you were looking out the peephole and the next thing you've got a goddamn *gun* in your hand and you're telling me to stay put!" "You're in danger, Mulder," she says, squinting out the peephole at the now-deserted hall, no other thought in her mind but getting out of what is surely a death-trap. "How do you know that?" She grabs his other wrist and puts her mouth as close to his ear as possible, considering the height difference. "They're listening." "Who?" he whispers back, head bobbing urgently. "Scully, who was out in the hall?" "He got away." She pushes him away and meets his eyes, figuring that mere words will not be enough to convince him. "We need to get out of here." He straightens up and his own gaze falls on Samantha, her mouth hanging open in something resembling shock. "Who *are* you?" she asks yet again, each word scoured out of her, gathering distrust around her like a blanket. "We're FBI," says Mulder, taking a step toward her. "Mulder!" "Ex-FBI, both of us. We can protect you." "What?" Scully exclaims. "Mulder, no, we need to leave this building immediately." "What about her?" "It's you they want." The words drop from her mouth like bricks and she hopes the weight of them is enough to get through to him. "She'll be fine." "How do you know they're not after her?" "For God's sake, Mulder!" "Did he have a weapon?" That brings Scully up short, though her frustration continues to grow subterraneously. "Not that I saw." "Then no-one's in any immediate danger." Scully remains silent but glares at him and his inability to see past the promise of truth. "What did you see, exactly?" he prompts. "A man, standing outside with his ear pressed to the door." "Pretty unprofessional for the kind of people we're used to dealing with." She feels a scream clawing at her throat like molten lava. "I know you're just being cautious, and you have every reason to do so, but what if you're reading too much into this situation? What if that man was just a neighbor, or a friend of Samantha's?" Scully forces herself to suck in a breath as she turns to Samantha. "Do you know anyone in this building well enough to call a friend?" "No," she replies, her gaze pinned to Mulder. Scully compresses her lips and arches both brows in Mulder's direction. "It's strange, I'll give you that," Mulder says off her expression, "but I don't think we're unsafe here." Scully stares at him, feeling as though her insides are caving in. "You're unbelievable." He pinches the bridge of his nose, preparing himself for battle, and Scully takes it in, angry, frustrated, but not surprised. This is typical Mulder to the core; personal safety has always taken a backseat to the truth. Everything takes a backseat to that old chestnut. Scully is tired of fighting. She is sagging under the weight of unshakeable memories and the burden of fresh hurt. Right at this moment, she'd like to jettison all her attachments, sever the cords which bind her with varying tightness to Mulder and William and Christian and even God, for between the four of them Scully feels like she is being slowly, agonizingly quartered, like the French traitors of old. Mulder knows what he is doing. Attempting to protect him is an insult to them both. "Here," she says, handing over the gun. Mulder stares at her for a moment before taking it by the grip. "I'm getting a cab back to the hotel," she says dully. "I think it'd be better if you took the car yourself." "Scully?" She ignores his pained inquiry and sidesteps him to approach Samantha. The woman begins to push herself up from the chair but Scully waves her down, figuring her body cannot endure much more today. Her mind, either, she thinks, imagining what Mulder himself has in mind as a topic of conversation. She crouches down beside Samantha's chair. "I'm sorry," she says, not knowing exactly what she is apologizing for, not knowing which reason to pick from the many options that come to mind. But Samantha does. She places a cool hand on Scully's, and Scully watches blue blood pulse through the prominent veins which run between the valleys of her sharp knuckles and down to her wrist. Whether it is the special crazy strain of Mulder blood coursing around her body or not, Scully thinks, Samantha is a human being who deserves the same care as everyone else. Nobody should be left behind. "Thank you," Samantha replies, and Scully wonders if she can't, in fact, read minds. Scully climbs to her feet and brushes past Mulder to collect her handbag, lips pursed, resolve collapsing more with each moment she tries to hold it steady. When Mulder says her name in that momentous way, swallowing the last syllable in a murmur, she has to turn and face the door and bite the inside of her cheek to keep from either begging him to come with her or berating him into an early grave. He crosses the Oriental carpet and takes her face in his hands and kisses her until she no longer wants to do either of those; the only thing she wants to do is cry. Damn him. "See you at the hotel," he says, his breath drifting warm across her cheek. "Call me if you need me." She nods and works up the strength to push him away. Her lips tighten in farewell at a rather shaken Samantha, and she closes the door behind her. She is still waiting for the elevator when the backlog of tears overflow, but she blinks them away in order to keep a fierce eye out for the black-haired man. *** Bubbles. Scully wants bubbles. She takes the cap off the tiny jewel-like bottle and pours a stream of shiny liquid into the rising bath; it plunges under the faucet and froths like baking soda mixed with vinegar, like an elementary school science project. Warm haze gathers in the gilded bathroom and makes the marble countertop slick and damp. Scully draws her palm across the foggy mirror and wonders if she should feel guilty for wasting hard-earned money on such an expensive hotel, lovely though it is. Well, she rationalizes, this gorgeous suite and its marble tub is her reward for years of countless nondescript motels with the occasional bug-infested bed. Hard-earned, indeed. She wraps her bathrobe around her and goes to find the paperback stashed somewhere in her overnight bag. Both her and Mulder's bags lie open on the bed, hers messy, his neat for once. The world is backwards and upside-down. She sorts through shirts and skirts and uncovers the thick, dog-eared book, but a pair of tangled wires trailing from his bag catch her eye. The iPod lies on the bedside table, full of the promise of distraction and solace. She carries it and Mulder's tiny speakers back into the steamy bathroom. She puts on some Fleetwood Mac and tries to forget everything. Everything except the bubbles. But her brain is not accustomed to inactivity. Somehow, her tumbling thoughts marshal themselves into manageable lines, as though inviting her to put them to rest one by one. Fine, then, she will begin with the most pressing. Quite simply, she cannot imagine a world where Mulder is gone and she lives on. She could not endure such a world. Though she is keenly aware of her impotence, Scully rages silently at the injustice of having to fight an enemy with the uncountable thrashing jaws of a mythical Hydra. Her son has already been lost to these people, and sometimes she feels that her spirit is doing its utmost to follow him to that bright unknown corner of the world. She tries to imagine six-year old William, sans baby chub, but the boy she sees has hair dark as shoe polish, a face the color of day-old milk, limbs cramped and thin in his wheelchair as he smiles up at her, the lamp overhead burdening his eyes with shadows belonging to a much older person. A wayward bubble attaches itself to her chin and she brushes it away with a brief sniffle. Christian is gone now, and even she is startled at how hard it has been to mend the gap where he had become part of her. Her quickening breaths are tiny and regimented, like a string of pearls. Her throat aches. What is it about bathtubs that is so conducive to crying? In order to keep the threatening tears at bay, she forces herself to indulge in some ruthless psychoanalysis. She knows she uses people as walls, and each loss is an assault on the brick and mortar of her heart. Mulder is her last remaining wall and without him, she will be alone. She hates her dependency, hates that the impermanence of that connection frightens her. She wishes she could still stand upright on her own, secure in her stoicism and solitude. Maybe then her paranoia and irrationality might diminish. She exhales, sending a fluff of bubbles to her wet knees, and ponders how she can put a halt to the bothersome transference of personality traits between Mulder and herself. Sometime later, having perked up the bath twice with hot water, Scully hears Mulder close the hotel room door. Relief melts her more than the long soak has; her limbs are slack and heavy, her synapses pass lazy messages to each other about nothing much at all, and the vice around her heart eases its grip at last. Music twists in the steam above her. *If I could, baby I'd give you my world.* She manages to lift her head and crick an eye open, waiting for him to push the bathroom door open. Droplets roll down her neck and turn cold in the air. But the sudden blare of the TV dissuades her of that notion, and she eases back down into the tub, not knowing whether to feel glad or hurt. *Open up, everything's waiting for you.* Her throat aches again. The water grows cool and the bubbles begin to droop. Scully looks at her wrinkled fingers and takes them as a sign to get out and get dry. The bath splutters in protest as the tepid water drains away, leaving a trail of hopeful bubbles down the centre of the tub. She drips onto the thick bathmat, gathering her damp hair into a messy bun, humming softly. The music plays on as she slips back into the bathrobe and follows the sound of the seven o'clock news. *You can go your own way.* Mulder is lying on his stomach on the wide bed, cupping his chin like a child watching Saturday morning cartoons. His sock-clad feet rest on a stack of pillows and Scully makes a mental note not to use the topmost one. She sits on the edge of the bed, just behind his shoulder so he has to turn to see her. "What happened?" she asks, trying not to dread the answer. "This guy was arrested for trying to give a stolen edition of the first folio to the Shakespeare Library here in DC. Worth nearly three million, they said. Raided his house, took his Ferrari, the poor bastard." His avoidance irritates her freshly smoothed feelings. "If he stole such a priceless artifact, I'd say he got off easy." "'The quality of mercy is not strain'd', huh, Scully?" he says. "Not everyone deserves it, Mulder." "Well, maybe you're right," he says mildly, turning back to the television. "What happened with Samantha?" she says, returning to her intended inquiry. Mulder sighs and focuses on the news while he speaks. "We had a deep and meaningful about our screwed-up memories, among other things. She told me about the blackouts she's been experiencing pretty regularly since 2003, since she came out of the coma in Bethesda. Blackouts, Scully." He scrambles to a sitting position and touches her shoulder, bowing his head to peer at her in excitement. "Blackouts are another classic sign of abduction." Scully backs away off the bed, retreating to surer ground. "After that story she told us this afternoon, how can you still believe that she's your sister? It's utterly--" "It's possible, more possible than I could've hoped!" He bounds across the bed toward her like a magnet. "Who's to say she hasn't been on a ship somewhere for God knows how long before they returned her five years ago in a catatonic state, like so many others? Like yourself?" "The memories of her real family, for one," she throws back, knowing this game well. "Her father, Bradley James Mulder." "Everything she knows, everything she bases her life on now has been constructed from things other people have told her. False memories, remember those? They could have planted them during her recovery at the hospital--" "How?" asks Scully flatly. "Through hypnosis, or psychiatric therapy," he replies, clutching the duvet with the excitement of trying to convince her. "It's not uncommon, Scully. Misinformation has the potential to invade our minds when we talk to other people, or- -or when we're suggestively interrogated, when we confuse fiction and reality. The combination of imagination and suggestion can create something resembling truth; you and I know that better than anyone." "Yes, I know that," she retorts. "And I'm not saying you're wrong on that point. What I don't know is why you immediately make the leap from 'alien abductee' to your sister. Say you're right, Mulder; this woman could be any random abductee." He looks scandalized. "Now you're deliberately ignoring the evidence. Her name, her age, her physical appearance, all that can't just be coincidence!" "You don't know for sure that's what she would look like," says Scully doggedly, though she is unsure how much she believes that to be true. Mulder's lip curls a little and he climbs off the bed, raising himself to his full height. "Aren't you tired of repeating the same old argument?" His voice is like a sharp knife. "I thought we were past the stage where you feel you have to oppose me just for the sake of opposing me." Scully has nothing to say because once again, he is excruciatingly correct. It is well-worn ground she had thought was behind her. But she just doesn't know how to tell him that she is deathly afraid. "In any case, I'll have a definitive answer tomorrow." He pulls a ball of mottled red and white from his pocket and Scully recognizes it as Samantha's blood-spotted Kleenex. "My turn for a personal favor from our favorite assistant director. I'm going to take this to the FBI, have them analyze the blood and DNA, and then I'll know for sure if this trip has been a complete waste of everyone's time." "And then what?" she says, her heart hurting. He goes to the bin beside the bed, yanks the out the empty plastic bag and deposits the bloody tissue inside. "Mulder--" "I don't know," he says, twisting the neck of the bag. "I can't know until I have some answers. But even if, by some chance, I am wrong, I won't abandon her now." She is afraid to ask. "What do you mean?" "I mean I'm going back there tomorrow to make sure she's okay." He looks at her as though it is the most obvious thing in the world. "If she's dying, as you say, then she should be in a hospital, or have a live-in nurse, or at the very least have someone coming by daily to look after her and check that she's still alive." Scully shakes her head, horrified. "Yes, someone should be looking after her, but you aren't that person. Mulder, you can't go back to that building. They know you've been there and they will most certainly be counting on you returning." He throws his hands in the air. "Who?" he asks angrily. "That guy you saw earlier?" "Him and who knows who else! The military, the man at your trial with the toothpick," she says in a flash of inspiration. "Gibson Praise said he wasn't human. And you shouted to the entire courtroom everything you knew about colonization. Their secret is in danger of being exposed while you're still alive." She remembers the deadened, lost months of William's first year, at danger in her own home, unable to protect her baby. The memory grates on her. "At least in Virginia we were out of sight, but I would never assume we were out of mind. They knew my workplace, my P.O. box, and probably our address, but instead of coming to get us they sent letters as bait. They want you here in DC for a reason." Though a reply is clearly edging at his lips, Mulder listens to her speak. The fact that he does so now, when it might be too late, infuriates Scully more than anything. "And now here you are practically knocking on their front door, offering yourself up to them like a goddamn sacrificial lamb in exchange for the so-called truth about your sister!" Scully presses her fingers to her eyelids, feeling her eyes burn beneath them. "Mulder," she says tiredly, "our enemies are the same people who sent the Samantha letters, who put you on trial, the people we've been running from for six years. These people want both of us dead because of what we know about the future." He makes sure she is finished before beginning his rebuttal. "Besides some random harmless eavesdropper, there's no evidence that anyone even knows we're here, let alone that our enemies are lying in wait to catch us like flies in a spider-web; there's no proof!" Her ire rises again. "You know, you can deride me all you want for being deliberately obtuse and having a circular argument, but you do the same thing, Mulder. It's the same excuses over and over." His face remains stony. "Yeah, that's a side effect of living cheek-to-cheek with someone for as long as we have. You develop each other's bad habits." Scully takes a deep breath to calm her inflamed temper, refusing to rise to the dig. "You're worried about Samantha, I get it. I do. But I'm worried about you." Her eyes implore him to listen to reason. "Go to the FBI tomorrow, get your answers. Just stay away from that building." He stares at her. "I can't--I won't leave her to die alone in that apartment." "Do it for me," she says. Mulder closes his mouth, looking pained at such an unfair tactic, but Scully remains firm. "Do this for me and I'll go and see her myself. I'll try and convince her to go to the hospital, I'll do everything in my power to help her, just as long as you stay the hell away from 2475 Virginia Avenue." Her heart quails at the visible effort it takes him to pause and consider her offer. He holds the plastic bag in both hands as though it weighs ten pounds. "Fine," he says. "For now. Can't make any promises after I get the results of the blood test." "All right," says Scully. She studies him sadly as he knots the plastic bag containing the possible end to nearly forty years of heartbreak and confusion. He drops it onto the bed with a sigh. In the silence that follows, Scully is embarrassed to hear an audible growl from her empty stomach. "I've ordered room service," says Mulder, gesturing in the direction of the complaint. "Oh, thank God," breathes Scully. "I'm starving." "I figured," he says, the corner of his lip twitching. "I ordered something called Rubbed Crispy Chicken on Baby Spinach, which sounds degraded to me, but... I thought you might like it." "Because it sounds degraded?" Scully takes a few steps closer to touch his wrist. "I love you, Mulder," she says sincerely, and he grunts in amusement. Silences engulfs them again like a dark fall of rain and Scully tries to deflect it with light-hearted words. "Why didn't you talk to me when you got home?" she asks, still holding his wrist. "I was waiting for you to tell me about it." Mulder exhales in amusement. "I thought you were giving me a not-so subtle hint with your choice of music." "What?" Her hand falls from his. Confused, Scully tries to remember any subliminal messages in her 'Best of the Seventies' triple album. Aside from Led Zeppelin's back-masked verses devoted to the sweetness of Satan, nothing springs to mind. "I was only listening to Fleetwood Mac." Mulder strums the air. *"You can call it another lonely day..."* "Oh, my God," says Scully with a short laugh. "Right, because the girl *cheated* on him, Mulder. The lyrics don't really apply in this situation." *"You can go your own way..."* When he railroads over her protests by singing louder, Scully gives up and lets him air-guitar to his heart's content. But the particulars of the second verse elude him and he drops his hands, a grin lingering on his face. It twists with regret as he looks at her. "It's all right," she says, getting in first. *** Onward to part iv!