Summary: Immediately after the episode "Syzygy," Scully leaves The X-Files and appears to meet a horrible fate. Mulder, who has been assigned a new partner, tries to move on. Just when he least expects it, Scully returns. With his five-year-old daughter.

• plain text version

Staring idly at the crowd around him, he wondered how it had ever gotten to this point. He understood the events surrounding what had happened, of course, but he didn't understand how he'd come to feel like an outsider at his best friend's funeral. He stood apart from everyone. He felt uncomfortable listening to them share their fond memories of Dana Scully. He'd had his share of good memories with her. But right now, all he could remember were the bad times. The times she hadn't even been willing to listen to him, not that there were many. The times when she'd shot him looks that clearly stated how pissed off she was at him. And the more recent times. Her storming away from him. Her cruel words, accusing him of being unprofessional. She'd actually driven him to drink. His lips twisted upwards in a wry smile momentarily before returning to the thin line they'd been pressed in since he'd found out that she was dead.

She hadn't deserved to die. He never thought that. And the moment the doctor had confirmed his worst nightmare, he'd felt the utter pain and despair he'd felt when she was missing. But this time had been much worse. There was no chance she was alive. They'd allowed him to see her body before they wheeled her off to the morgue. And it had only taken A millisecond of seeing her bruised and broken body to understand that there never really had been a chance that she might have lived. And a second later he was running down the hall, ignoring the shouts of the people he was running into, ignoring the commands of the doctors and nurses to stop, ignoring the tear stained face of Margaret Scully as she ran into the emergency room, praying for a chance that Dana was still alive.

His photographic memory would not let him forget any of it. Least of all the pain she'd been in when he'd last seen her alive. She hadn't been in physical pain then. It was all emotional pain. And it was all his fault. He watched as the ground shifted dangerously to the side and mode no move to stop himself as he slid down into the wet grass. No one would ever see him here, among the taller headstones, and he silently hoped they would just leave him alone. Leave him alone to curl up and die.

It was almost like a movie that replayed in his head. But he could see it with his eyes closed and there was no way to escape. After that disastrous case, the first time they'd ever actually hurled insults at one another, they'd studiously avoided each other for a week. Somehow, she'd managed to find another office to work in unless it was absolutely mandatory that she see him. Like when Skinner had call them into his office to formally notify them of the gross misconduct charges Detective White had filed. But as soon as Skinner was sure that neither of them was going to own up to the arguments, he dismissed them and watched as Scully turned and practically ran from the room. By the time Mulder had gotten to the hallway, she'd already either taken the elevator or run down the stairs, but he knew there was no hope of talking with her.

He hadn't seen her, except for that once in Skinner's office and once in the middle of a crowded cafeteria in over a week. So, needless to say, he was rather surprised when he opened the door to his office at 6 a.m. and found her sitting at her desk. He'd been afraid that she was about to run out of the room again. And he was hoping that they could talk and at least patch things up, if not keep working together. But she'd just looked up, stared at him for a second, and then went back to whatever she'd been doing. He didn't really care what it was that she was doing. He didn't really care what it was that she was doing, not as long as she was there. He sat down at his desk and pretended to do something while he tried to think of something to say. Nothing came to his mind, though. He started to think that maybe she ought to apologize for how rude she'd been, but he remembered how much more rude he'd been and decided that it was his turn after all. He turned to face her, hoping that she might say something. Surely she had no plans of sitting in their office all day every day in silence.

And it was when he found himself facing her desk that he saw the box on the floor. The box with various things jutting out of the top. Like pens and pencils and her nameplate and anything else he could think of that he'd ever seen on her desk. He continued to stare as she set more things in the box. She hadn't noticed him yet, or she probably would have uttered some choice expletives at him for staring. He noticed that she wasn't tossing things haphazardly in the box. She was *packing* things in the box. Packing meant that this wasn't in the midst of some hysterical rage. She was perfectly calm. He sat there and stared as she turned on the computer and started deleting her files and copying a few of them onto disks. She had yet to look up and see him staring.

But she knew he was. She could feel his eyes on her. She'd come in at 5:30 in the hopes that she would be done before he ever got in. But for the first ten minutes, she'd stood in the doorway in so much pain that she couldn't even cry. What they'd had was gone. Whatever special bond had held them together since the first time she'd walked into his office was just gone. He no longer looked at her with teasing and friendship in his eyes. When he looked at her at all, it was cold and accusing. And he insulted her. Maybe she'd insulted him back, but he'd been drooling on that blond bimbo since he'd first laid eyes on her. And she wasn't even that pretty. He'd been so busy being a stupid hormone driven man that he'd cut down his best friend without even having a reason.

She blinked back tears when she heard the key in the lock. She knew it was him. And the tension and hatred she could feel emanating off him made her want to run from the room. But she couldn't. She was going to prove to him, and herself, that she was stronger than this. She wasn't going to run out of the room crying because she was afraid that he might follow her. And nothing would be worse than watching him pretend to care about her. Or worse than tolerating the strain on their relationship. Not even losing him all together. Maybe if she was far enough away from him, she'd remember the times he'd teased her and they'd joked and the comforting silences in the car at night on their way home from working on A case.

It took all of the strength she had left not to throw everything in the box and run. It would be easier. But not in the long run. As much as she told herself that she didn't want him to, she knew the longer she stayed in his office, the more chance there was of him trying to convince her to stay. And part of her knew that if he did, if he even tried to talk to her, she'd agree. But the other part of her knew that there was a reason he hadn't spoken to her yet. There was nothing left between them. Nothing at all.

Mulder watched as she rechecked every drawer in her desk and then shut down the computer. He knew that time was running out. But there was nothing he could think of that would make her stay. He made no moves as she crossed the room and put on her coat before returning to collect her box. She was almost out the door before he said anything.

"Scully." His voice sounded strange, even to him.

She turned around way too quickly. So quickly, in fact, that a pencil went flying out of her box and rolled under her desk. She didn't even think about picking it up. She was too busy concentrating on whether or not he was going to ask her to stay. But the lump in her throat prevented any words. She just stared as he stood up and turned away from her. Then he turned back towards her and walked closer.

When he was an arm's reach away, he held out the reason he'd stopped her. Her mug. It had been sitting next to the coffee maker and she had obviously forgotten it, because he knew she loved it. She balanced the box under one arm and tried to take the mug. But in a moment of panic, he realized that their hands might brush in the effort and he didn't know if he would be able to stop himself from grabbing onto her and refusing to let her go. And he couldn't stand to her her laughter if he did. He let go.

She watched in horror as he released the mug a moment before her hand closed around it. She felt her chin start to tremble as the mug joined the broken pieces of her heart on the floor. Her father had given her that mug when she'd graduated from college. And she'd loved it. And Mulder know she loved it. And she had just seen him throw it on the ground in front of her. What had she done to him to make him hate her that much? For the life of her, she didn't know.

He saw her face crumble. And he wanted to die. He hadn't meant to drop it. He'd thought for sure that she'd actually reached it before he'd let go. He hadn't known what she would do, other than stand in the doorway crying, but he wasn't expecting the cold words from a voice he couldn't believe belonged to her.

"You son of a bitch," he listened, waiting for her voice to rise and become a yell. But it didn't. It stayed flat and even. Like she didn't like him. And it didn't bother her at all that he'd never see him again. "When did you become such an ass?"

He couldn't believe she was cursing at him because he'd dropped the mug. It wasn't like he'd done it on purpose. He felt the fury in him rise up again, and again, he was confronted with that fact that somehow, he didn't know his best friend at all. "Right after you became such a bitch."

She stared at him, open mouthed. She never would have suspected that he would ever have been so rude towards her. Even when she'd first met him, he'd respected her. But now, he didn't like her, respect her, or want to be anywhere around her. And it bothered her. A lot more than she was ready to admit. In the past whenever he'd said something that bothered her, she had felt like she could say something. Not anymore. She'd somehow earned his scorn and she would have to deal with it.

She ducked her head in acceptance of his comment. And when she did, she saw the shattered pieces of the mug on the floor. This time, she didn't even try to hide the tears. She let her vision blur and her chin tremble. Maybe he would see how sorry she was for whatever she had done and be able to forgive her. It may have been a long shot, but it was the only shot she had. As much as she cherished the friendship they'd had, it couldn't continue like this. If leaving was the only way she'd be able to remember what it had been like, then she would leave. And everyday for the rest of her life, she would think about how it had been and wonder if there had been something she could have done to make it stay that way.

Her tears were the last thing he needed to see. He was already fighting his inexplicable urge to reach out and grab her. But now, he could see how much he'd hurt her and knew without a doubt that she would never accept any type of affection from him. Not without slapping him or hitting him or shooting him. He wanted to apologize but there was nothing he could say that would make up for what he'd said. Nor could he make up for the way he'd been treating her. He'd been horrible to her. He'd finally achieved what he'd been working for- driving her away. Now they wouldn't be able to hurt her. They couldn't do anything to him short of killing him now because he'd already removed his weakness. For the past four years, she'd been his weak spot. Now, she wouldn't work with him, wouldn't speak to him, wouldn't be taken away from him. For that and that alone, he was happy.

He knew she didn't understand why he'd been acting so miserably towards her and he couldn't explain why. Then she'd be even more upset at him for trying to protect her and trying to leave her out of things. She hated it when he did that. And he knew that he really didn't need to, that she was perfectly able to take care of herself. But he didn't want to listen to reason. He wanted to listen to the little voice in his head that said they would take anything away from him that he cared about. And they had taken her away from him before. He'd thwarted their attempts to kill him and to turn her to their side once he was dead. She'd refused to turn on him even when she thought that he was dead. She'd never leave him if she knew what was going on. And as far as he was concerned, nothing involving her was going on anymore. He would protect her, whether she liked it or not. And if making her hate him was the only way to protect her, then she was going to hate him. She had no choice in the matter.

She stood there, the box still in her hands, watching him. He could see the tears in her eyes. And he didn't move. He didn't even have the decency to look down or avoid her eyes. She shuttered when she realized that the look in his eyes was remarkably close to pride. She couldn't believe he was proud that he'd made her cry. It was getting harder to believe the man in front of her was the same Fox Mulder she'd known for years. She closed her eyes tightly and willed the tears to stop. And luckily they did. She shook her head, took a deep breath, and stood up straight. If this was the way he was going to act, then he wasn't the man she'd thought he was, and he certainly wasn't worth her tears. At least not in front of him. She could go home and cry her eyes out but she would not allow him the satisfaction of seeing it.

"If that's the way you feel, fine. I'm leaving." She turned to go. But the cold hatred she heard in his voice made her shiver.

"Am I stopping you?"

Something made her turn back to him. And she was sorry she did. He didn't look apologetic, his eyes were shining with pride. She never realized it was his tears that made his eyes look so bright. Not entirely trusting her voice to hold out, she spoke in a whisper. "I gave you my respect. I gave you my friendship. I thought you gave me yours. I guess I was wrong." Then she turned and walked away, perfectly content to never look back.

As he watched her walk away, he wanted to scream after her. He did respect her. He was her friend. And someday, he hoped, she would understand that. He'd make her understand that. Unfortunately, fate wanted to intervene. He'd had no idea that watching her walk down the hall was the last time he would ever see her alive. And seeing someone dead just wasn't the same.

It took every ounce of courage she had left in her body to walk away from him. She wanted to scream at him, or maybe even slap some sense into him. But she couldn't. She knew it wouldn't help. She sadly admitted to herself that she had once again made a terrible mistake in character judgment. And the pain she felt from this was the most appropriate punishment on earth. The people she almost slammed into on her way to her new office didn't even dare say anything to her. There was nothing to say to someone who came barreling down a hallway in tears half attempting to knock everyone down that they passed.

When she walked into her office, the one she now shared with a partner she'd only known two days and already didn't like, she forced herself to stop crying. But she did give in to the urge to throw, literally, her box on the new desk. A satisfying crunch was emitted from the box when it made contact with the table. Unfortunately, that satisfying crunch sounded a lot like a picture frame. A picture frame that she liked. She didn't bother to check what had broken. She just collapsed in her new squeaky chair and buried her face in her hands. This wasn't the way things were supposed to be. He wasn't supposed to destroy her favorite mug. He wasn't supposed to act smug and pleased that she was finally throwing in the towel. He wasn't supposed to let her go. He was supposed to stop her. He was supposed to beg her to stay. Not that she really expected him to beg her, but it would have been nice.

At the very least, he was supposed to call her and say he was sorry. And he was supposed to mean it. And even though she stared at the phone all day, willing it to ring was not quite enough to make it do so. It was a sad sight, a thirty two-year-old woman staring at the phone in her office, refusing to do anything else until it rang. And when the phone stubbornly refused to obey, she picked up her purse and walked out of the office, leaving the box sitting on the desk where it had spent the entire day.

As she walked to her car, she didn't notice the stares of her coworkers or the fact that the parking garage was completely deserted. Very few people who worked for the FBI actually left the office at five. But she'd put in plenty more than her eight hours and she figured that she deserved to go home early for once. Had she only known, then she might have second guessed her decision to skip the overtime that particular night.

Preoccupied at she was, she didn't notice the van that followed her out of the parking lot. And when her car suddenly spun out of control not even five miles away, no one paid any attention to the men that ran out of the van. Everyone assumed that they were there to help. And everyone was too busy running around and calling the police and pretending to not have witnessed the accident that they didn't see the men drag one unconscious body from the car and replace it with another one.

And when Mulder left work a full hour later, the police and ambulance crews were still there, trying to free what looked like Dana Scully from the wreckage of Dana Scully's car. Mulder didn't question that it was her when he pulled over and began refusing to leave the scene. It didn't occur to him that it wasn't her because he couldn't get close enough to her to see. And when he finally did get to see her in the hospital, he was too overcome with guilt to even conceive the idea that it might not even be her. The doctors and even Margaret Scully just assumed that it was her, especially with all of her i.d. and Mulder's statement that it was, in fact, her.

So everyone just believed that it was Dana Scully. And everyone accepted the fact that Dana Scully was dead. And no one even tried to find her. Even though her horror was just beginning.

Mulder watched as the crowd around her grave dissipated. He was still hoping that no one would see him. He didn't want to have to explain why he was hiding from them. He didn't want to have to explain why he didn't feel like he belonged at her funeral. He didn't want to have to explain that she'd been upset because he'd been horribly mean to her and that was why she'd lost control of her car and it was all his fault that she was dead and that was why he had no right to be at her funeral in the first place. And he really didn't want to have to look at Margaret Scully's forgiving face and know that she didn't blame him because that would make him feel even worse. Surely Margaret knew about the problems they'd been having getting along. Surely Margaret would have known of her daughter's intention to transfer to another section. And he just couldn't deal with that.

He didn't want to have to deal with the guilt either. He just wanted to forget everything and anything that had to do with Dana Scully. He knew that if he let himself think about it, he'd just end up hating himself even more so he might as well stop. If only he could. He felt like throwing himself on her grave and begging for her forgiveness. Unfortunately, she wasn't alive to give it to him. And it was all his fault that she wasn't alive to give it to him. And even if she had been able and willing to forgive him, he'd never forgive himself. Understanding that blaming himself could be just as easily accomplished in his own apartment as in a graveyard where it had just started to rain, he began to wander back towards his car.

The crowd of people hadn't disappeared entirely, but they had broken up into smaller groups. Groups that Mulder could successfully dodge. Except for one of the groups that was looking for him. The Lone Gunmen. They wanted to share some of their theories on what had really happened with him. And he'd have none of it. He was trying to blame himself to death for causing the completely *explainable* death of his former best friend. The last thing he wanted right then was a reason to cling to the hope that she was still alive. He couldn't very well blame himself for the death of someone who was still living. And he wanted the guilt and the self-loathing. They were emotions that he had felt for most of his life. They were emotions that he knew how to handle. They were emotions that were actually more comforting than the utter fear that he was dangerously close to feeling. He would much rather blame himself for her death than deal with the fact that she was dead.

As he was dodging the Gunmen on the way to his car, he felt the despair rising up again. And this time he was too busy trying not to talk to anyone to bury it. And by the time he'd made it to his car, the tears were falling freely. He didn't care who saw him. It didn't matter to him anymore. Handling her death would have been hard enough if they had been on speaking terms. Unfortunately, the last time he'd seen her alive, she was storming down the hall, hoping to never seeing him again. He should have stopped her. He should have thrown himself at her feet and begged for another chance. He should never have insulted her. But none of it mattered now. She was gone. And it was his fault.

Somehow, he found the strength drive his car home and find his way to his apartment. But that was the extent of the strength he could muster. So he practically collapsed on the floor right inside the door and stared directly in front of him. He couldn't manage to more to the couch. Or to even turn off the phone. He listened to it ring incessantly. He listened to his answering machine pick up. He listened to Margaret Scully leave a message. He listened to his mother leave a message. Then to Frohike, Skinner, and some guy named Matt from the cable company. And then Margaret called again. She merely identified herself and waited. Whether she was waiting for him to pick up or for herself to stop crying, he wasn't sure. But he knew that she remained on the line until the tape ran out. And then he got so frustrated that Scully would never sit there and listen to silence as she waited for him to pick up that he found the strength to haul himself off the floor and lock himself in his bedroom. Who he was locking out was beyond him, but he somehow needed the security that could only be had when he was locked in his bedroom alone.

When he finally fell asleep, exhausted from trying not to cry and then from crying his eyes out, he prayed that no nightmares would plague him. But he was not that lucky. All night, he dreamed that he was standing in the doorway of his office and Scully was walking down the hallway. The hallway was completely dark, but it didn't seem to be bothering her. And he knew that she was in terrible danger and that she didn't know it. But before he could stop her, a sound caught his attention. When he turned to see what it was, all he could see was the broken mug on the floor. And by the time he turned back to Scully, the darkness had swallowed her. Then the dream would replay over and over again, until the sound of real breaking glass woke him.

He sat in his bed shaking. It was almost completely dark, only the reflection of the street light lit the room. And he'd just heard something break. And he was terrified that he had somehow slipped into the nightmare and that if he were to open his eyes, the broken mug would be on the floor. After ten minutes, his eyes hurt from squeezing them shut so hard. And as afraid as he was of seeing the mug, it would be better than imagining the mug. He was sure that knowing would make it easier. Maybe. He bit down on his lip as he pried his eyes open. And as he moved closer to the side of the bed, he bit down harder. By the time he could peer over the side and see that the shattering glass had been his lamp breaking, which he'd knocked over during his nightmare, blood was running freely down his chin. Even though he was relieved to find that it had only been his lamp, he felt like an idiot. He deserved to feel scared. If there was such a thing as fate, he was due for some major payback for having killed Scully.

He didn't even try to wipe the blood away. He just curled back up in the fetal position and hoped that he wouldn't have anymore dreams. As guilty as he was for causing Scully's death, he knew that spending the rest of his life completely alone and not being able to trust anyone was enough torment. He didn't need to be tormented in his dreams as well. His dreams were tormented by another ghost.

The first thing she was aware of was pain. Everything hurt. She vaguely remembered a car accident and assumed that was the cause. The next thing she noticed was the dark. If she had been in a car accident, there should have been police cars and an ambulance or two. Maybe she was dead.

She was upset by the fact that it wasn't light. She refused to accept that she was going to hell. She hadn't really done anything that bad. But before she could rationalize anything else, she felt a sharp, excruciating pain in her arm. When she tried to cry out, she heard nothing. The outlines of bodies moving around her didn't seem to be bothered by her attempt to scream. She could see that the pain was being caused by someone twisting her arm, which she was relatively sure was broken. She thought for a moment that this was the ambulance crew and that she was just too upset to notice things accurately. Then she realized that her mind was making way too much sense. And she knew this was no ambulance crew. She tried screaming again, and even though she still couldn't hear anything, she noted with pleasure that one of the bodies hesitated. Within a second, the shape was replace by another, who twisted her broken and mangled limbs without remorse. Just as she was sure that she would die if they pulled one more part of her, she felt a sharp prick in her arm and felt herself drift back unconscious.

When he walked through the hallway of the FBI Building the next day, he was sure he'd actually received more stares than he ever had before. No one had actually believed that he'd have the nerve to show up the day after her funeral. But he didn't think he could handle sitting alone in his apartment, contemplating the fact that he was the reason she was dead. He'd blamed himself every night and everyday since she died. He was sick of blaming himself in his apartment. Besides, he was sure that it would be much worse to sit in the office that had once been hers too and stare at the empty space where all of her things had been and know that she had hated him when she died.

But he knew when he got to the door of the office that something wasn't right. The door, which he always closed, wasn't. It was standing slightly open, just far enough to raise Mulder's suspicion. He had one hand on his gun and pushed the door open with the other. A man he didn't recognize was leaning on Scully's desk. The desk formerly belonging to Scully. Since the man didn't seem to be much of a danger, Mulder relaxed the hand on the gun. And then he felt his stomach somersault. He was being assigned a new partner the day after the funeral of his last? Did they really hate him that much? He questioned that he would ever be able to work with a new partner. He might eventually allow someone to tag along behind him, but he would never allow someone else to be his partner. And now here he was staring some yuppie scum down. And it wasn't bad enough that it was a yuppie scum. The yuppie had to be leaning on Scully's desk. Ok, so maybe she had removed all of her stuff from the office, severed all ties with Mulder, and then died, but it was still her desk. And Mulder wouldn't have some irritating yuppie who probably still watched thirty-something reruns leaning on it.

While Mulder had relaxed the hand that would have held his gun, his face remained every bit as tight. The more he thought about having to deal with this guy, the more he was sure that he would have to kill him. The guy stood up straight when he realized that Mulder was not about to offer any assistance.

"Are you Agent Mulder?" he was not a rookie. But his voice came out in a squeak anyway. Something close to a grunt came out of Mulder's mouth and the other agent took it as a Yes. "I wasn't sure what to do with this stuff. I only met Agent Scully once, but you worked with her for a while. I thought maybe you might know what to do with this." He motioned to the box sitting on the desk behind him. It was the very same box that Scully had carried out of the office three days earlier.

If Mulder had thought he might be able to make it through the day, he had been seriously mistaken. He didn't even notice when his mouth dropped open. He felt like all the air had been knocked out of him and he was very very very close to hyperventilating. He didn't notice when the other agent quietly walked out of the office. He just stood in the middle of the room and stared at the incredibly empty half of the office and the box. The box seemed to be a symbol of how he'd failed to keep her safe and how she'd wanted nothing but to get away from him the day she died. Somehow he found the strength to cross the room and lean on her desk. He started to look through the things in the box, as if they could explain why everything had gone wrong. As if maybe they knew why she'd begun to hate him so much.

Unfortunately, they didn't tell him anything. He saw the shattered picture frame in the bottom of the box and found himself cursing the guy's name who'd brought the box down. He hated that man for breaking her things. Sure, she was dead, but he still didn't have a right to break her things. He had no idea that Scully herself had broken the frame.

He turned around, hoping to bury his head in the mess on his desk and pretend that he didn't care. And when he took a step forward, he heard something crunch. He knew what it was before he even looked. He'd cleaned up the glass from the mug the same morning that it had broken, but apparently, he'd missed some. And it was like his nightmares when he looked down and saw the shattered glass. It had been her favorite. He'd known that it was a gift from her father. He'd known how much she loved it. And he could still see the horror stricken look on her face when he'd dropped it. She'd thought he'd done it on purpose. He hadn't, of course; he'd never do anything that mean to her, but she hadn't known that. And he knew he should have apologized, but he didn't know where her new office was and the only number the operator for the building had was the phone in his office. He hadn't even known the name of her new partner. He still didn't. It wasn't anyone he'd ever seen before, nor did he necessarily ever want to see again. That man was just more proof of how he'd failed. He may have driven her away, but he'd miserably failed at his self-appointed duty of keeping her safe.

He picked up a piece of the glass and then sat down at his desk. He didn't think that he could start a new case. He didn't think that he could think about a new case. He didn't actually care about a new case. It wouldn't be any fun to argue with himself about his insane theories. Then people would just think he was really nuts. Scaring off any prospective new partners had lost its appeal when Dana Scully had walked through his door. He'd tried to drive her away for the first five minutes and then realized how much he really wanted someone to work with, argue with, and occasionally agree with. Someone he could trust. Someone he could protect. Someone who would care about him.

And he thought he'd found all of it in Scully. He found out a little too late, however, that he could not protect her. No matter what he did- pushed her away, pulled her closer- he couldn't protect her. And whether it was because he was destined to lose everyone he cared about or because Scully would not be protected by anyone else, he'd never know.

He sat at his desk for the remainder of the day, turning a broken, jagged shard of her mug over in his hand. It was a few minutes after six when he heard a tentative knock at the door. He ignored it the first time and the second time. Then a hand appeared on the edge of the slightly open door, followed by a face. Had he looked up, he might have noticed that the woman leaning around the door was remarkably attractive. But he was busy hoping to 'accidentally' cut himself on Scully's broken mug. He was well aware that there was someone standing there, he just really didn't feel like looking at, or even acknowledging the person.

The woman looked around the door for only a moment. So she was being ignored. In her job, as a woman, it happened a lot. But even with all the strange rumors she'd heard about Mulder, she'd also heard about his respect for female colleagues. And she'd heard that his former partner had just been buried the day before. She knew better than to show up today and expect to work. She just wanted to meet him before she left for the day and at least give both of them an idea of what was coming.

His eyes never strayed from his hands, but his peripheral vision registered the person walk through the door and assert itself right in front of his desk. He could tell mostly by the way it carried itself that the person was female, but he could faintly smell what was left of the perfume which had probably been applied at seven in the morning. It was same perfume that Scully always wore and it was really pissing him off. Rationally, he told himself that she most likely didn't know what kind of perfume Scully wore, but he didn't listen. He was really growing very annoyed with this woman who he'd never even laid eyes on. She wore Scully's perfume. That was enough for him. And then there was always the fact that she was planning on working with him, being his partner. Basically trying to replace Scully. It wasn't going to work. He wasn't going to let her.

Megan cleared her throat and stared as Mulder tightened his fist so hard around whatever he was holding that blood started to run down his arm. She began to rethink the whole idea in favor of just leaving. If she came back in the morning, then he'd know to expect her. She took a step back, planning on bolting for the door and pretending to not have been there.

Pleased that at the very least she'd gotten an eyeful of his bizarre behavior, he looked up and fixed her with a stare that froze her on the spot. He noticed this time that she was very pretty, more accurately, conventionally beautiful. But he didn't let her know. He observed with demented pleasure that she squirmed. He'd given Scully the same look and she'd simply introduced herself. She'd completely ignored the fact that he was deliberately acting as cocky as he possibly could in order to make her run away screaming. This woman obviously lacked Scully's fierce determination and he therefore concluded that she would not last long. He actually smiled when he thought of something that would freak most people out enough to vanish. He put the piece of glass down on his desk, watching a drop of blood roll off his hand on to a pen that was laying there.

Then he held out his right hand, the one that was bleeding, and spoke."I'm Agent Mulder, and you are..."

She knew this was a test. And the thought of shaking his bloody hand was really unnerving her. But she wasn't about to show it. She was sure that if she thought about it really hard she could come up with something she'd done that might have been slightly more disgusting than shaking hands with a complete stranger who was obnoxious and bleeding. She stepped forward again and took his hand, smiling because he winced when she squeezed it. He obviously hadn't been expecting her to actually touch him.

He pulled his hand back first and wiped at it with a tissue. He was obviously in pain. Content with having one the first battle, she answered him. "Megan Mcbride. It's nice to meet you." It was all she could do not to rub her hand violently across anything she could grab, but she couldn't. She probably wasn't going to get cooties from him.

He stared at the cut on his hand, realizing that it was nasty enough to require stitches. He didn't look back at her. "There's a bathroom down the hall if you want to wash your hands," he continued to stare at his hand, amazed at exactly how profusely it was bleeding.

She nodded, even though she knew he wasn't watching her. "I just wanted to introduce myself before I started working with you. I'll see you in the morning." She turned to walk out, wondering if it would be just a tad rude to sprint to the bathroom.

"I won't be too *terribly* offended if you were to request another assignment. I'm not the easiest person to work with," he didn't mention that he was insane. She'd probably figured that much out herself. He picked up another tissue, trying pointlessly to stop the blood. He'd really done a good job this time. He was not looking forward to spending the evening in the hospital emergency room waiting to get his hand stitched up and then having to come to work in the morning and deal with this person, who in the few short minutes he'd known of her existence, had become his nemesis.

Upset that he'd suggested the exact same thing she was thinking, she became even more determined to put up with him. Maybe she could request a transfer as soon as he gave up trying to get rid of her. It seemed like a good idea. Just stick around long enough to make him angry. She smiled and lied through her teeth. "Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you." She walked out of the office and never noticed that all the blood had drained out of his face at her words.

He hated her. He really hated her. She wore Scully's perfume. She said what Scully had said. And she'd actually shaken hands with him, even though he was bleeding. Scully would have insisted on looking at it and then demand to drive him to the hospital. Then she'd call around ten thirty, right before she went to sleep to make sure he was feeling all right and tell him to take Tylenol if it started to hurt. He slid back down into his chair and absent-mindedly wondered what Megan Mcbride would do if she came in the next morning to find him having bled to death after cutting his throat with a piece of Scully's favorite mug.

After she washed her hands three times, she felt relatively certain they were clean. She still had every intention of going home and pouring a bottle of hydrogen peroxide on them just to be sure. As she walked past the office on her way out, she ducked her head in the door, just to see if he was still there.

This time, she did notice that he was deathly pale and his eyes were vaguely focused on some nonexistent point in the middle of the room. "You might want to go to the hospital and have that looked at, Mulder."

He turned towards her with so much hatred that it physically hurt. He wasn't going to the hospital, even if Scully would have wanted him to, just because Megan had said he should. "Don't wear that perfume tomorrow." The simple act of turning his head had made him dizzy.

She looked and felt hopelessly confused. Ok, so he was every bit as weird as she'd heard. And he was looking at her like she was Satan incarnate. But she figured it was all an act and shrugged her shoulders."Fine." She walked towards the stairs, hoping that he was just acting weird because of the blood he'd lost.

He stood back up, planning to go home for the night and thoroughly berate himself for causing Scully's death some more. Unfortunately, the room seemed to twist to the side and he fell heavily back into his chair. How had he managed to bleed so much that he couldn't stand up in ten minutes? Understanding that it probably had something to do with the fact that he hadn't eaten in three days, he wanted to cry because there was no one who would come looking for him if she couldn't reach him on the phone. Maybe he should have just curled up and died. But instead, he called out for the only person who might even consider helping him.

She'd just reached the stairs when she thought she heard something. She pondered that fact that she might just have only lost her mind, but she was relatively sure that it was Mulder's voice and that he was calling for Megan. She looked over her shoulder to make sure it wasn't some other Megan he was calling. And then she walked back to the office. This time, she walked right in and saw that Mulder was even paler than before. And the fact that he had his head laying down on his desk, shaking, worried her.

"Um, did you..." When he didn't move, she walked around his desk and put her hand on his shoulder. "Mulder?"

He mumbled something incoherent at his desk and cursed himself for this. Then he reminded himself that he deserved no better and weakly lifted his head up to face her. Thank God he didn't blush. "I think I need to go to the hospital."

She laughed. She actually laughed. Not like it was the funniest thing she ever heard, but it was still laughter. "Your plan to scare me off backfire already?" she raised an eyebrow at him.

If he'd had the strength, he would have strangled her right there. But he couldn't. So he settled on scowling at her while she helped him stand up. He really hated her. And he hated that he needed her. And he hated himself for being too afraid of dying to sit there and bleed to death like he deserved. And he hated that the only reason he was afraid to die was because he was afraid that Scully might still be mad at him. For that reason, and that reason alone, he desperately wanted to live.

Megan may have been taller than Scully, but she wasn't exactly Mulder's height. And, since he outweighed her by a sizable amount, she had quite a bit of trouble dragging him out the door, up the stairs, and through the parking garage to her car. And it was all for someone she didn't like and certainly didn't like her. When she finally got to her car, she threw him against the back door as she unlocked the passenger's side. Once she had the door opened, she motioned for him to get in. But his eyes were closed.

"Get in the damn car, Mulder, I want to go home." She was getting very upset that she'd just gone through all that trouble for someone who merely opened one eye, frowned at her, and then closed it again.

Leaning against the car, knowing that he didn't have the strength to do anything other than get in the car, if that, he decided to press his luck. "I'd rather die." Maybe it was a lie. But she didn't know that.

She grabbed his shoulder and pushed him into the car. Getting in the other side, she turned to him, and practically growled. "That is definitely an option at this point." She still couldn't help but feel sorry for him. He looked so pathetic, half unconscious, leaning his head against the window, with his knees uncomfortably shoved into the dashboard, pale as a sheet, which just so happened to be a very unattractive color on him. She didn't know very much about him, only the rumors she'd heard. And one of them being that he and his former partner had been rather *close*. Maybe he was just taking her death really hard.

By the time they reached the hospital, Mulder was completely out of it. Megan pulled some napkins out of the glove compartment and wrapped them around his hand, muttering something about not staining her car. She got out, walked around to his side and opened the door. She had no recollection of putting a seat belt on him, or of him putting it on, but sure enough, there was a seat belt happily fastened around his waist. She punched his arm and reached around him to unhook it. And as she did, his head fell forward onto her shoulder. She froze, not sure if the best course of action would be to stand up, causing him to fall out of the car head first, or to wake him. She settled on the latter and poked him in the stomach.

"Mulder, wake up. We're here and I am not carrying you in." When he didn't respond, she raised her voice. "Get off of me!!"

She felt him stiffen. So he was awake. Good. His head lifted about an inch off her shoulder. Then it dropped back down. "Mulder."

"I'm tired, Dana," he had no idea what he'd said, what was going on, or whose shoulder he was leaning on. His foggy brain functions at that point reminded him that the only person he knew who would take care of him when he was like this was Scully.

She didn't know how to respond to that. She didn't know who Dana was. It could have been the partner, or his - she checked his left hand-girlfriend. But she was not Dana. She pushed him back up and stood up."Mulder, I am not Dana."

This time, when he heard her voice, he remembered why it wasn't Dana and why he was in this situation in the first place. And he really didn't want to move.

Luckily for him, Megan had called over an orderly who had previously been on break and instructed him to take Mulder into the emergency room. Luckily for the nurse who was writing up his chart, Mulder didn't even hear when she asked where his redheaded friend was who usually signed the consent forms when he couldn't do it himself.

She could see nothing the next time she woke up. And she didn't know if it was because there was a blindfold wrapped around her face or if it was because there was nothing but blackness to see. She couldn't move. But she didn't know if she was tied up or down or if she just no longer had any control over her body. She turned her head to the side, as if that was going to achieve anything. Her neck was stiff and she still couldn't see anything. There was no way for her to tell how long she'd been there, immobilized. She didn't know what she'd been given. She didn't even know if she was still alive.

If nothing else, this would certainly be an effective hell for her- not being able to move or see or even think clearly. And then she started to wonder whether she wanted to be able to think clearly. Was this what she'd gone through before? It certainly didn't seem like the type of thing she vaguely remembered as having been through before, but then she'd never really trusted regression hypnosis anyway. It occurred to her that something was really very very wrong with this situation. She paused for A second to figure out what it was. She imagined hearing a watch ticking away the minutes while she contemplated the situation. And then it hit her. She couldn't hear a clock ticking. She couldn't hear herself breathe. She couldn't hear anything at all. It was dangerously quiet. The type of quiet where you'd be able to hear your heart beating. Except either her heart wasn't beating or she was effectively deaf.

She didn't panic at the thought like she imagined ought to be the normal response. She would definitely be able to think like this. She wouldn't have to worry about hearing weird noises at night when she was alone. And she wouldn't be able to hear Mulder insulting her anymore. But she hadn't really been worried about him insulting her before. She didn't expect to ever see Mulder again anyway.

That was the only thing about the entire situation that frightened her. Somewhere, throughout the entire time they'd been arguing, she'd hidden the fact that she was sure they'd make up. Maybe they wouldn't work together anymore, but they'd at least part as friends. But that didn't appear to be an option anymore. She'd never hear his voice again. Never hear him tease her or joke with her or argue with her or comfort her. She'd never hear him completely disagree with something she'd said. She'd never hear the comforting sounds of him moving around in the next motel room in the dead of night. She'd never hear the phone ring at three in the morning and know without a doubt who it was. And she'd never hear his breathing become even when he'd fallen asleep on the phone after he'd called to talk to her in the middle of the night.

She felt tears begin to form in her eyes and she realized that there was no blindfold. And she suddenly feared that she could no longer see either. Maybe she was blind and deaf and alive. And he wasn't there to comfort her. And he didn't want to be. She felt herself begin to shake as sobs rocked through her. And the silence she heard even though she knew she was making a lot of noise just served to make her cry harder. Even hearing herself cry at that point would have been comforting. Hearing anything at all would have been comforting. She opened her mouth to scream. She couldn't be sure whether she'd actually succeeded or not. She couldn't hear anything or see anything. She desperately wanted to wrap her arms around her knees and rocked herself to sleep but none of her body seemed to respond to her. And there she sat, not being able to hear or see or move or even think straight until she drifted back to sleep.

And the men behind the mirror that she couldn't even see said nothing as they scribbled furiously in their notebooks.

And had she been awake, it might have comforted her to see the flair of a match for a brief second before the room plunged back into darkness. But it probably wouldn't have because then she would have realized that this wasn't just a nightmare. At least not one she was going to wake up from.

This time she did not wake up of her own accord. There was a bright light shining directly into her face. She was unwillingly torn from her uncomfortable, yet dreamless, sleep. Her first instinct was to shield her eyes. And when she tried, she remembered that her body was on strike. She tried to turn her head away, knowing that had been the only thing she could achieve before. Unfortunately, this time she discovered that her head was on strike as well. Which left her in the rather uncomfortable position of having a light beamed directly into her eyes and not being able to do anything about it. She made no attempt to open her eyes. Not only was she truly afraid that she would not even be able to do that, but the light was so bright that tears were forming behind her closed eyes.

I don't really want to see what's going on anyway. Mercifully, after a few extremely painful minutes, the light faded. It was still there, and it was still aimed directly at her face, but it just wasn't as bright. Sensing that it was what she was supposed to do, she eased her eyes open. At first, she could only see the glow of the light. But as her eyes adjusted, she saw that she was in what appeared to be some type of hospital room. For a brief period she thought that maybe she'd just been confused and scared and had been in a hospital the whole time. But then she noticed the three men standing around her bed that could quite possibly be anything except doctors. And one of them looked vaguely familiar. Before she could think of who it was, she realized that she was able to see. And she could hear the distant hum of some type of machine. She actually was so happy that she once again had command of her senses that she ignored that fact that she had no movement except for being able to open and close her eyes. She wondered for a moment if she might be paralyzed. She remembered being able to feel things when she'd first woken up. But now she couldn't move. She tried to think of all the things that could cause this type of condition. And then something caught her sight.

There was a tube running onto the bed from somewhere off to her right. She strained to see exactly where the tube was connected. She couldn't feel it, and it struck her as strange because resting on her face and neck like that, she should have been able to feel it. She decided that it had to be a breathing tube. Maybe she'd done something in the accident that caused her to have trouble breathing. She had no idea why she was making excuses for these people who were just standing there watching her while she was in the middle of discovering some very distressing information. She tried as hard as she could to turn her head, even the slightest bit to see what the tube was hooked up to, but everything was out of her line of sight.

She took a deep breath, hoping to clear her head and think about the situation from a different perspective. But for some reason, she couldn't discern between a deep breath and a regular breath. She tried holding her breath to see what that might do. But she couldn't. And then she knew. She was on a respirator. That was the final straw. She had a living will, but she'd never thought of the possibility that she could be completely paralyzed but have a completely functional mind. She began to thank God fervently that she could open and close her eyes or else there would be no way for her to communicate that she was alive. The tears began to flow freely down her face. She couldn't even face the possibility that this would be the extent of her functioning. With machines doing all the work, she could live for an extended period of time. And be completely helpless forever. There wasn't even anyway for her to communicate that she didn't want to continue living.

Once she'd begun to cry, two of the men stepped closer. One checked the machines that she couldn't even see. The other just stared into her eyes with a look that spoke volumes. And he only needed to say two words.

"I won." Then he dropped the cigarette from his hand and crushed it before walking out of the room, closely followed by the other two men.

Once he'd had his hand stitched up and satisfied the doctor by eating a pack of saltines, Mulder was given permission to leave. The doctor obviously had no idea that he'd been driven there by some woman that he absolutely detested and who probably wasn't even still there.

He parked himself on an abandoned stretcher in the hallway and dropped his head into his hands. He was then painfully reminded that he'd just gotten stitches in his hand and jerked his head right back up. Ok, so Megan wore Scully's perfume. And she thought she was going to be his partner. And she said the same thing Scully had said. Now she'd abandoned him at the hospital. Scully never would have left him there. No matter how mad she might have been, she would have sat there with him the whole time. If he'd begged her enough, she probably would have talked the doctor out of making him eat the saltines. Now he was thirsty. And he was quite certain that his wallet and any loose change he might have had was in his jacket pocket hanging over the back of his chair. Scully would have known that his wallet was in there and she would have brought it so that he could get a cab home even if she had decided to leave him stranded at the hospital even though she never would have done that in the first place.

He'd come to the conclusion that he could just mope around the hospital and then walk back to work in the morning. Even he wasn't dumb enough to walk around that neighborhood at night. He checked up and down the hall to make sure no one was around before he stretched out. Hey, they are called stretchers, aren't they? He closed his eyes and willed the lights to dim at least a little bit so that he could get some sleep.

And by some miracle, the lights obeyed. He opened his eyes and found that the lights were actually still on, but that his eyes were being shielded by a flying paper cup. A flying paper cup with a decidedly feminine hand wrapped around it. He knew exactly who it was before she moved the cup out of his face, allowing him to sit up. And the only thing that entered his mind at that moment was that Scully never wore nail polish. It was way too impractical for her. Besides, Scully would never have been able to stand chipped nail polish and she wasn't the type to sit still long enough for it to dry.

He grabbed for the cup with his right hand, growing extremely angry when she moved the cup just out of his reach. He plastered the scowl on his face again and held out his hand. He didn't want to play games. And he really wanted the damned coffee.

She looked at him like he was child telling her he wanted to wear his bathing suit out to play in the snow. "Didn't you just get stitches in that hand?" she watched as he looked at his hand and remembered why they were there in the first place.

Ok, so he had to admit that it would have been Scully's job to remind him of the stitches that he'd forgotten. And he scowled some more. He was beginning to feel like a little boy who wanted to wear his bathing suit out to play in the snow. Why did this woman have to keep coming to his rescue? He hated her. Why wouldn't she just go away? Just to spite her, he grabbed the cup from her hand, ignoring the pain that shot through his hand. So maybe he shouldn't have grabbed the cup with a stitched up hand. But he wasn't about to tell her she was right. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction.

Exasperated at his inane display, Megan shook her head and began walking down the hall. And somehow she knew she was going to have to pay to get her car out of the garage even though it was his fault that she'd been trapped there for two hours. The only bit of satisfaction she got out of the whole deal was that three steps later, he shifted the cup to his left hand and looked at his right in obvious distaste. He was in pain. Good. He was the one who wanted to act stupid. So she'd let him. She certainly didn't care.

After she'd dropped him back off at work and went home, it was only nine thirty. And she was as tired as she would have been at three am. Megan hadn't known what to expect when she met Mulder, but she sure hadn't expected him to act like an overgrown child. And she sure hadn't expected to have to baby-sit all day. She sat down on her couch and tried to think.

So maybe he was trying to scare her off. And then maybe he was just upset over losing his last partner and was trying to torture her so she'd leave him alone. She couldn't leave him alone. She wasn't allowed. She had been assigned to work with him. And to report on his mental state. She had no idea if he normally acted like this or if he was just trying to run her off or how she'd ended up with that assignment. She had a degree in chemistry, not psychology. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She felt like a spy. But that wasn't what she'd wanted to do. If she'd wanted to be a spy, she would have joined the CIA. She didn't look forward to earning his trust and then turning around and reporting about everything he said and did. She began to hate herself for taking this job. She began to hate herself for agreeing to do such a miserably cruel thing, even though she hadn't exactly had a choice. Mulder was obviously in some emotional pain. Now, it was entirely possible that he was being even more obnoxious than usual, but she could still tell he was in pain. And he had called her Dana. Whoever the hell Dana was. She was going to look through the file they'd given her about him, but she was too tired to move. And before she knew it, she was asleep.

When Mulder got home, he didn't want to think about anything. His hand really hurt. And the more he thought about Megan, the more every part of him started to hurt. He hadn't accepted the fact that Scully was dead, let alone dealt with it. He'd been planning on not dealing with it for as long as he could. But when Megan walked through the door, he knew he had to start thinking about it. He kept thinking that Scully was going to call at any minute and demand to know where he'd been or something. Then he could beg for her forgiveness and tell her that he hadn't meant to be mean to her. He could tell her that he had never meant to make her leave, except to keep her safe. And the only way he could think to keep her safe was to keep her away from him. That was the only way to keep anyone safe. He was a walking talking vortex of safety. If he ever decided to leave the FBI, he could make a fortune producing children's videos of exactly what not to do based on his own life experiences.

He looked down at his throbbing hand and once again thought of how much he deserved it. He'd made Scully think he hated her. Then he'd been mean to her. Then she'd gotten upset and driven into a pole. So it was all his fault. He had blamed himself enough for causing her death, he certainly felt guilty enough, but he decided he should blame himself some more to make sure.

He glanced at his watch, and upon determining that it was late enough to be stupid, he decided to go for a run. When he stepped outside the building, he stopped for a minute to adjust to the cold. He never wore a coat unless it was snowing because after he ran, it become a hassle to carry. He took a deep breath and started moving. He paid little attention to the headlights that came on a few seconds later. And he barely noticed when a car started up. He assumed it had been connected to the headlights. This was Washington, D.C. People had cars here and unfortunately, they had licenses as well. He did take note, however, when the headlights cut off abruptly, even though he could still hear the engine running. It bothered him. But he assumed that he was just being paranoid and that the driver was just not paying attention to what was going on. Even so, he found his pace start to pick up and the light sound of the whirring engine blocked all thoughts of Scully's death for a few minutes.

After three more blocks of accusing himself of being paranoid, he decided that even though it was likely he was committable, whoever was driving the car was certainly feeding that notion. He knew that there was an equal chance of the driver being a mugger wannabe as there was that it was a shady government character. Since he'd had more run-ins with shady government characters, he decided to believe that it was just one of them. He kept running and figured that after a few more minutes someone would get out of the car and try to talk to him.

So it didn't come as a surprise when he heard a voice call his name. It did however bother him when the voice got out of the car and started to follow him. And then he noticed that the car continued to follow him even while someone was pursuing him on foot. He kept running as fast as he could, taking the most evasive route he could find, but these people were professionals. And every time he ran down an alley to lose to car, it would meet him at on the other side. And every time he ran in front of a car to lose the guy on foot, traffic would kindly stop and allow the guy through.

He was tiring out and he was also getting dangerously close to lost. And then he took a left turn into an alley. And this alley didn't have another side. Huffing and puffing and sighing, he turned around to surrender. Before his eyes could even focus on the image of the man in front of him, a hand with a rag closed over his face and everything faded to black.

It had been years since Megan could remember having a nightmare. But she found herself, sitting up on her couch, shaking, and she was incredibly afraid of the hall closet. The apartment she lived in was very old and not all of the doors closed all the way. The hall closet being one of them. And for some reason, the first time in the five years she'd lived in that Apartment, she was unnerved by the door that stood just slightly open. She was certain the monster that had lived under her bed when she was younger had now moved into her hall closet. She knew it wasn't going to attack her. But it was just watching her. And she hated it. She checked her watch and then rubbed her eyes. Maybe if her life seemed really boring the monster would move on. A few minutes later, she decided that it wasn't worth waiting the monster out. She stood up slowly and then cautiously moved towards the hall. Then, just as she reached the closet, she broke into a run and didn't stop until she tripped over her bed. She pulled the covers up, hid her head under the pillow, and fell asleep waiting to hear the squishy footsteps of the monster coming down the hall to stare at her some more.

A few hours of shaking irrationally in her bed later, Megan decided that she'd had enough and began to get ready for work. And once again, the feeling that what she was doing was wrong settled upon her. She knew that Mulder's mental state was his to deal with. He didn't appear to be homicidal or suicidal for that matter. Just decidedly passive. There wasn't really anything wrong with being passive as far as she could tell. He'd just lost someone who was, probably, his best friend. He was entitled to act weird for a little while. And if it hadn't been her job to report it, Megan wouldn't really have cared if he acted weird for the rest of his life. She had no idea how long she was going to have this ridiculous assignment. If they wanted to know how he was doing, why didn't they just send him to the bureau psychiatrist? She had a feeling that if she'd read the file like she was supposed to, she might know the answer.

As she was walking to the door, she looked at the file on her dining room table. She knew there was no chance in hell she was sitting down to read that any time soon. There had to be five hundred pages in there. She grabbed her keys and wondered if it would be rude to ask for the Cliff's notes on Mulder's personnel file. Then she started to wonder if the clerks in personnel wondered the same thing. When she reached the office, she was rather dismayed to find the door locked. She had no idea how it had gotten locked, since Mulder really hadn't been in any shape to lock it the previous night. And since she didn't have a key, she stood in the hallway, assuming that Mulder would be in sooner or later to open the door. Fifteen minutes later, she resorted to sitting on a box that she was relatively sure would hold her weight. A half hour after that, she considered going home. He could well have been sitting in the office the whole time, laughing at her. But she doubted it. She didn't know who had the keys to this office, but she knew that she had to get in there somehow. And on the way to the assistant director's office, she thought to herself that this was quite possibly a sign of things to come.

The first thing Mulder became aware of was that it was incredibly dark. Secondly, it felt like his throat was closing over. He didn't know why he'd been brought here, or whether or not he was going to live or if he really cared. He tried coughing to clear his throat, but he found that only served to make it hurt more. And then he noticed something move.

He had absolutely no idea what it was. For all he knew, it was a giant rat. But when his eyes adjusted to the pathetic amount of light, he realized it was just light enough for him to see that it was a person. At least, it looked like a person from across a very dimly lit room. Whoever it was seemed to be in worse shape than he was. But Mulder still didn't trust anything that was going on here. He backed up against a wall in an effort to protect himself. He waited. The person made no more moves. He wasn't sure if it was good news or not that there appeared to be another prisoner in the room with him. Just as he reached the decision to not move, the other person coughed. And the cough was followed by a whimper that told Mulder that coughing had obviously hurt this person a great deal.

The boy scout in him, as well as his inability to stay out of potentially dangerous situations, made him stand up, intent on crossing the room. Once he'd stood though, the room spun violently around him and he was forced back down to the floor. He suddenly was consumed with curiosity as to what was going on and found himself crawling across the cold cement. He'd made a considerable amount of noise and the person seemed to have heard him. And now the person was violently shaking, scared to death of whoever was in the room.

He put his hand out to announce his presence. As soon as he rested his hand on its shoulder, the person turned to look at him.

And Mulder was confronted with a face that he was certain he'd never see again.

Somehow in the time that she'd been gone, and without even realizing it, Mulder had come to terms with Scully's death. Perhaps come to terms was not quite right. More like he had accepted that she was dead and there wasn't one damn thing he could do about it.

Either way, seeing her face right then just about scared the life out of him. At first, he was too shocked to even realize she was shaking and crying hysterically like he was going to hurt her. But then, it occurred to him that after having been locked in this room for all this time, she should have been happy to see him. She didn't look even the slightest bit happy. Or relieved. Or mildly pleased. She looked downright terrified.

She was crying so hard that she couldn't even see him anymore, but she was sure that it wasn't actually him. It was just another one of their clever ploys to drive her out of her mind. And it was working. Every time she woke up, she was in a different hovel, with a different problem. For once, she wasn't paralyzed or deaf or blind. She could hear and see and move. Unfortunately in a room approximately six by six by six, there wasn't much space to move. She could stand up, but she'd been huddled on the floor for what seemed like years, with the exception for the brief stint in what she was sure was not a hospital, she wasn't sure that her legs would straighten out, let alone hold her weight.

And now she was facing the person that she had so desperately wished she could see the whole time she'd been here. The same person who, just hours before she'd ended up here, wherever the hell here was, she had desperately wished she might never see again. Instead of feeling the immense relief of having him there and throwing herself into his arms, she sat still and found herself wondering if he was still mad at her. She had no idea how long she'd been here, if Mulder had even noticed her disappearance in the first place, or if he had particularly cared to find her. She didn't know if he had come looking for her or if he had been drug here as she had. And between the trauma of what she had endured and the almost nonexistent lighting in the room, she was completely unable to understand his expression. As far as she could tell, he was completely dumbstruck, certainly a first for him.

Seconds slid past and the window of opportunity passed. Throwing herself into his arms was no longer an option because she'd had too much time to think about it. The act couldn't be dismissed as instinctual or just a reaction to the shock of seeing him. She knew it. And so did he. She let her gaze fall from his face and onto some vague point in the distance. It didn't appear that he had come here to save her. God only knew why she'd ever thought he would. He was most likely kidnapped and brought here and absolutely no more help than her imagination had been. Except for the little fact that her imagination didn't make a very good pillow. Mulder's shoulder, on the other hand, was starting to look much like a gift from the gods. She thought for a moment about how he would react if she crawled over to him and rested her head on his shoulder. Then she realized that she had probably spent way too much time sitting on the floor in this miserable prison hallucinating. And she remembered that she last time she'd seen him, one, or both, of them had declared exactly how much they never wanted to see the other. Either way, he definitely wasn't here to save her and there was very little chance of his saving himself.

He watched her, with as much curiosity as his headache would allow. Squinting made his head hurt more. And then he realized that his head hurt much in the same way it would had he taken a brick and smashed it repeatedly into the top of his forehead. He watched as a slightly hopeful look crossed her face. He noticed the black and blue marks on her face and neck. And as mad as he had been at her, he wanted to kill the bastard who had put them there. The thought of someone hurting her, while he was sitting at home, refusing to do anything but pity himself, made him sick. Well, it was either that or the concussion he was relatively sure he had. He noticed her face change once again, this time to one of utter despair. So she had probably realized that he wasn't there to rescue her. He felt like he'd let her down. He watched her look away, in a half-hearted attempt to hide her tears. He wanted to cry at that moment too.

She looked at the ground. She didn't know why she was crying. It could have been the fact that he wasn't there to save her, or the fact that he didn't really seem all that happy to see her, or even the fact the he'd hurt her so badly the last time she'd seen him. But, she found that the most likely culprit was the way he was staring at her like she had no right to be upset. She glanced back at him, and was rather upset to discover that his unreadable expression had become one of contempt. She didn't know it was because he could only imagine what she'd been through to have no other response than to cry. She looked back at the ground and let the tears fall.

"Dana." His voice was barely a whisper and he would have questioned that he'd actually spoken at all. But then she looked at him. She looked him straight in the eye, not even trying to hide her tears. She didn't understand it, but no matter how much he hurt her, she always managed to seriously expect that he wouldn't do it again.

When she looked at him, she didn't see the anger or contempt anymore. He looked like he was about to cry himself. She could see how guilty he felt for this. And she started to wonder how she could have ever doubted him.

He reached out with one hand and gently ran his fingers over her cheek. She was in so much pain. She'd been through so much. And every last bit of it was his fault. There was no way he could ever make this up to her. He was about to beg for her forgiveness when she leaned her head into his hand. He couldn't believe that she still trusted him. But she did.

As soon as he had touched her face, she knew that the fight was over. He wasn't mad. Whatever the problem had been, it was gone now. She closed her eyes, knowing that whatever they were here for had not gone away, but knowing that they would make it through together. Then she felt his arm slide around her waist. She snuggled closer to him and began to hope that this was all a terrible nightmare that she would soon wake up from.

He took it as a good sign when she snuggled up against him. Even if he was the only person around to curl up with, if she absolutely detested him, she wouldn't bother. For the time being, no matter what kind of danger they were in, they were together and she was alive. For now anyway.

Megan stared the man down. She had not even been told to contact him until this morning. Now that she was locked out of his office, the locking of which was a problem in and of itself because there wasn't even supposed to be a lock on the office, she was in even deeper trouble. If she had not spoken to him last night, he wouldn't have known to expect her and he wouldn't have locked the door. She tried to explain that while he hadn't particularly liked her, he hadn't acted like he was going to lock her out of his office. That had gotten the most frightening look she'd ever seen since she got caught talking during study hall when she was fourteen. So she spent the rest of the lecture staring at the gray curtains on the window and wondering if their color had anything to do with the cigarette smoke or if they had started out looking like a starving artist's impression of lung cancer. She wondered if Mulder's attitude towards people in general had anything at all to do with meetings of this nature. The smoke in the room was enough to make her choke, but she wasn't about to give anyone the pleasure of having a coughing spell. She got tired of the curtains and turned towards the no smoking sign as a source for inspiration. She really wanted to tell these people to leave the poor man alone and let him drive himself crazy with grief. She wasn't even sure if she was supposed to apologize or grovel or pull out her gun and shoot herself in the face. She desperately wanted to pull out the gun and pretend she was going to shoot herself so that she would get out of this assignment.

Megan may have been an experienced field agent, but she wasn't an ass. She did not believe that she personally held the qualifications to be judging Agent Mulder's mental state, nor did she really feel like ratting on some guy who quite possibly wasn't an ass when he hadn't just lost his best friend.

Suddenly aware of dead silence in the room, Megan slowly bit down on her lip and turned towards the assistant director. He just stared back. Upon receiving nothing much in the way of an idea of how she was supposed to act, she nodded her head slightly and glanced at the table of assholes out of the corner of her eye. She was suddenly filled with an intense desire to know exactly why she was called in front of a review board because her partner of all of ten official minutes had locked her ut of her new office.

"Agent Mcbride?" the stern voice seemed to come from somewhere in the vicinity of the table, but when she looked in that direction, no one gave any indication of having recently spoke. She directed her gaze back at the no smoking sign. Still no help.

Swallowing the lump that had mysteriously risen in her throat, she managed to force a squeak out of her mouth. "I'm sorry?"

The man surrounded by a veil of smoke, who gave no indication of being in any way connected with the party seated around the conference table, spoke his first words of the meeting. "That's the answer we expected from you when you first arrived," He stared at the burning end of his cigarette before looking back at her and adding, almost as an afterthought, "You may go."

She had meant to say 'I'm sorry' in such a way that would convey her confusion as to the question at hand. They had taken it as the meek apology they sought. Sighing, not even knowing what she'd just apologized for, she relaxed her shoulders a little bit and wondered once again, exactly what the hell she'd gotten herself into. She looked at the suspiciously silent assistant director, who was doing the best impression of a little boy who's little sister had just stolen is lollipop that Megan had ever seen a bald man perform. He looked away from her, almost daring her to mention the ridiculous occurrences she'd just been witness to. For complete lack of anything better to do, she politely nodded to Skinner and then started walking to the door. She was tempted to ask just what the hell she was supposed to do about the whole damned locked door situation anyway, but decided the best course of action would be to get out of there and sit in the hallway, waiting for Mulder to return to work. Should Mulder return to work.

When her elevator paused in the lobby, she had to fight the urge to walk right out of the building. But she figured that as long as she was at work, she had to get paid, and if all she had to do was sit in the hallway for eight hours a day, this job was a hell of a lot better than she'd ever imagined. As she settled back on the box she'd waited on earlier, she made a mental note to bring a book in the next day. And at exactly 4:57, she stood up and went home. Maybe she could bring in Mulder's file to read the next day. It would certainly pass the time. And from what she'd seen earlier that day, it promised to be more interesting than any of the books she'd already read a million times.

For one joyous second, Mulder tightened his arms around Scully. He was completely relaxed, comfortable, and Scully was safe. Then he realized that this was not how he'd gone to sleep. When he finally convinced himself to pry his eyes open to whatever nightmare awaited him, he saw nothing. Except his living room. And the realization that his arms were securely wrapped around a pillow, that showed no immediate desire to free itself, made him want to cry. He had allowed himself to believe, just for a few hours, that Scully was alive. He stood up to get better access at a wall into which he could bang his head. And exactly how the hell had he convinced himself that Scully would ever forgive him anyway? One millisecond into ramming his head into the wall, his headache came back and he was forced to give it up. He felt even worse than he had when he'd found out she was dead in the first place. If that was even possible. He sunk down onto the floor, wrapped his arms around his legs and began to cry.

Megan looked at the file sitting opened on the table in front of her. So this guy was really smart. That much she understood. And he liked to annoy people. That much she could figure out. And he liked to investigate crimes that went unexplained most of the time. That much was obvious.

So why the hell was she being forced to waste her time following him around, pretending to be interested in all of this? And she definitely didn't get why she had to report on his mental state. So his partner was dead and he was taking it rather hard. They had been partners for four years. What was the big deal?

Megan shoved the file off the side of the table and watched the pages cascade onto the floor. She didn't feel like wasting her time with this. She didn't want to investigate anything that was going to have her called into more meetings like the one she'd been at earlier that afternoon. She didn't want to be called into any more meetings period. She was starting to reconsider her decision to join the FBI. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea. But she wasn't about to go running back to her parents and ask for them to let her live there while she was coming up with something else she would rather do. She wondered whether or not her parents would accept that she desperately wanted to become a housewife. Not that she really did, though. But it would give her enough time to come up with something that she could do. Something that wouldn't involve spying on other people because she didn't really think that it was very nice. And she didn't want to be a part of it anymore. She could always walk back into work and tell them that she was quitting and let them sit there and try to come up with somebody else to do it. But she knew that they would find someone else. Someone who had no qualms with spying on this guy. Someone who would probably shoot him in the back if they told him to. So why did she even care? He hated her from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her. He hadn't actually laid eyes on her when he had obviously decided to hate her. So she was going to protect some guy who didn't like her. She was going to protect some guy she didn't even like. But why?

Because he was cute. Well, that and the fact that he had a decided tendency to annoy the very same people who had been in command of the meeting she had attended. Those were the only redeeming qualities that the man seemed to possess.

The last thing that Scully remembered was falling asleep with Mulder's arms around her, and the two of them sitting huddled on the floor in a dark room. She remembered that he had forgiven her and that they weren't fighting. At least, she thought she remembered that. Sure enough, when she opened her eyes, she was in a bright room, alone. That was all she could see. She closed her eyes again quickly in an attempt to pretend that she was just imagining it and that Mulder was still there with her.

The next time she ventured a peek at the room around her, she insisted to herself that the tears running down her face were merely from the light, as opposed to anything else. Stubbornly scolding herself for getting carried away with her delusions, she wiped the tears off her face, refused to wish that a certain someone was there to do it for her, and looked around. She was still in a tiny little room, but now there was a reasonable amount of light shining into the room. Possibly the exact same room she had 'imagined' being in earlier, except that someone had turned on a light. A light that she could not see the source of. Instead of even trying to figure out what her dream had meant, she focused her energy on getting very upset about where the hell the light was coming from. It seemed that the whole room was illuminated, rather than having a light simply turned on. She pondered it for a few minutes longer and then decided to take stock of the situation. She slowly and methodically tested each part of her body to make sure that it was in good working order. She even tried talking to herself to make sure that her hearing was ok. With the exception of the Mulder incident, which she was steadfastly calling a dream, she had gotten used to hearing nothing, even when it seemed that there ought to be sound. Once she determined that everything was working, she decided to try out her legs. Although she had no way of figuring out how long she'd been there, she knew that it had been way too long to go without using her legs if she ever wanted to be able to use them again.

It took her a good five minutes to actually get up to a standing position where she felt balanced enough to take her hands off the wall. It was a very odd sensation after spending so much time sitting. Her legs were shaky, but she was still upright. She took a few hesitant steps forward before stopping to rest. She had never realized before how exhausting just standing up could be. She turned around and noticed something she hadn't noticed before. A door. It was painted the same color as the rest of the room so it didn't particularly stand out, but it was there nonetheless. She walked over to it, pausing as she reached the wall to take a few deep breaths. Whatever was on the other side of this door, or was going to come through this door was probably something she needed to brace herself for.

She tentatively reached out for the knob, praying that it would be unlocked, and knowing the odds of it being so where virtually impossible. And even if the door was unlocked, what would she be walking into? She wasn't exactly in the best shape of her life to go run for it. Whatever it was and wherever she was planning on running to didn't seem to matter.

Regardless of the consequences, she slowly tried the knob. Much to her surprise, the door opened easily. She was so nervous that she actually began to shake. Scully turned back to the room she had been in and hoped that there would be directions somewhere, like maybe 'go through door, find room 107, all answers will be there' would be written on the wall. Nothing. Well, nothing except for a tiny speck on the ceiling that Scully was pretty sure was a spider. Other than that, it was all blank. And so she turned back and proceeded, slowly, through the door and into whatever she would find.

When Mulder finally gathered himself together and got up to go to work, it was well into the next afternoon. And it was all just as well because the last thing he needed after the dream he'd had was Megan Mcbride. He had no idea that she'd decided to not be a thorn in his side. She had decided that she was going to help him, and she was planning on telling him as much. But he was just generally too miserable for logical conversation.

So Megan spent the day playing waitress and bringing him coffee every five minutes. He said nothing. He didn't even want to know why she wasn't arguing with him. At one point, around four, she asked to check on his hand. She wasn't a doctor, but she was relatively certain that she could determine whether or not he would need to see another doctor. The first three times she asked him, he had just sat there with his head lowered and his jaw clenched. The odd thing about it was that she didn't think it had anything to do with the question. She had watched him do that all day and she didn't think it was all her fault. He hadn't seemed to even notice she was there. He just mindlessly sat there and stared and drank cup after cup of coffee. Megan had spent the day, except for the periods when she was playing waitress, leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room from the 'other' partner's desk. She knew that even going near it would just cause her physical pain, should Mulder suddenly notice her presence. So when she decided to check on Mulder's hand, she announced her intent, as if it would do any more good than the three previous attempts to get him to look at it, and then slowly neared his desk. She waited for a reaction from him, and upon not getting one, she lightly touched his hand. She took a deep breath and paused, thinking that perhaps he was just delayed in responding.

Still after a few minutes of standing there with her hand resting on his, she decided that it wouldn't look good for either of them, should anyone happen by, and it wasn't entirely comfortable. Megan gently lifted his hand and turned it over. She should have known to expect it, but she didn't. She had expected that at least one of the stitches would still be intact. But none of them were. Not one single stitch. And instead of acting like he was in serious pain, with an obviously infected cut, he was acting like he didn't even feel it. And with the stupor he was in, she suspected that he didn't feel it.

Megan knew better than to drag him back to the hospital, so she went to the bathroom, got a soapy paper towel and went about, as gently as she could, cleaning up his hand. Then she managed to find a first aid kit with gauze and tape in it. Maybe as his partner she'd be able to keep an eye on it. When she was done taping him up, she sat his hand back down on the desk, pathetically attempting to figure out what had caused such an obvious decline in less than 48 hours. The second she sat his hand back down, he reached for his coffee cup without missing A beat. It was when the cup slipped out of his hand that he first realized that something was different. Megan jumped away from the desk when the coffee went flying in every direction, but Mulder didn't even move. He still brought his hand up near his face, like he was still holding the cup, then looked confused and sat his hand back down, right in the middle of a large puddle of coffee. Exasperated, Megan screamed at him and lightly punched him in the shoulder. She was trying, damn it, but she was beginning to think that Mulder might be better off in an institution.

Mulder wasn't really aware of what was going on, and to be honest, he didn't exactly care to be. He couldn't remember how he'd managed to drag himself into the office, nor could he understand why he didn't ever seem to run out of coffee. Then, suddenly, someone, presumably the woman standing to his left with coffee stains on her skirt, had punched him. Then he saw the coffee on his desk and woke up.

"What the hell are you doing? You just spilled coffee all over my desk," he jumped up out of his chair and began picking things up, which was a little ridiculous because the coffee had already gotten just about everything sitting there and was dripping its way down into the drawers.

Megan folded her arms and sighed. She stood still and stared at him as he quickly realized what she already knew and tossed the ruined papers back on his desk. She waited until he had thrown himself back into the chair before speaking. "For your information, you dropped the mug of your own accord." Amazed that she'd gotten a response, even if it was just an incredulous glare, she continued. "Your hand is infected and I personally wish you would go check into a mental hospital. I'm surprised you've remembered to breathe all day."

He glanced at the bandage on his hand, now completely covered with coffee, and started mumbling something to the effect of 'how would you know, there's a bandage on it.' Then he started to add something else about getting the hell out of his office before he removed her, but thought better of it and began, instead, to remove the brand new coffee colored bandage from his hand.

Halfway through a valiant effort to damage his hand further, Mulder looked back at Megan with a pleading look on his face. She opened her mouth to speak, but settled on just closing it again when she realized that he wasn't going to hear anything she said anyway. She just began helping him, using the still present soapy paper towel to clean it out again, in case he'd managed to get coffee all the way through. Then she wrapped it up and looked back up at him. The look on his face was almost enough to make her whimper. He looked so ...thankful. She started to think maybe he didn't hate her all that much. Then he pulled his jacket off the back of his chair and spoke.

"Would you mind giving me a ride home? I don't feel too well, Scully," he made a pathetic attempt to walk to the door and ended up slamming his leg into a filing cabinet so hard that Megan was sure he'd come close to cutting it off.

Knowing that he hadn't heard her all day, and still didn't even see her, she half heartedly picked up the jacket he'd left there the day before and helped him out to her car.

About halfway to his apartment, he instructed her to turn in the opposite direction. Megan was confused by his sudden helpfulness, but went along with it. He led her to a small apartment building that she'd never seen before. She knew this wasn't his place, she'd driven him home two days earlier, but he got out of the car and walked towards the door like he knew where he was going. She was going to wait until he got inside and then leave, but she remembered the state he'd been in all day and she saw him trip into a stone wall halfway to the door, and she climbed out of the car and went to help him.

She let Mulder direct her to the elevator and then down the hall to a door. Then he started looking on his keyring. "OK, I give up Mulder, where are we going?" she had absolutely no idea whose apartment this was, if it was some place she wanted to be, or if Mulder was just completely confused about where he was.

But, when he slid a key into the lock and twisted the knob, it opened. He tossed his keys on the table near the door, dropped his jacket on a living room chair, and then collapsed on the sofa like he owned the place. Luckily, he hadn't noticed that mostly everything that wasn't classified as furniture had been packed into boxes. Most of the boxes were taped shut and labeled. In fact, the only box that remained open sat at the edge of the kitchen doorway, next to the front door, and immediately in front of Megan's feet. She glanced in it and saw nothing of any interest. She could see a few computer disks, several file folders, and a picture frame. Megan checked to make sure Mulder wasn't paying any attention before carefully lifting the picture out. Staring back at her, was Mulder's face. And some woman. She could tell that the picture had been taken in Mulder's office. So she assumed the redhead had been his partner. The one who wrapped herself and her car around a pole. According to rumors she'd heard, the woman had wrapped herself and her car around a pole moments after having fought with 'Spooky Mulder.' Some people had even gone so far as to say that 'Spooky' had put a curse on her.

Megan knew better than that. She was willing to believe that Dana, as Mulder had called her before, had died just after a fight with him, but judging from the way he was reacting, she could not accept that Mulder had ever, at any point, had any sort of bad feelings towards her. This was the type of stupor she would expect from someone who had lost a close friend right after a fight. He was blaming himself. That at least gave her some insight into why he was so upset.

She put the picture back in the box and walked over to where Mulder was sitting. She waited for the reaction that she knew she wasn't going to get. She had thought that he hadn't noticed all the stuff that had been packed up. Apparently, she'd been wrong. Sure enough, when she pushed his jacket aside and sat down on the chair, she could see silent tears streaming down his face. She felt incredibly uncomfortable. She felt like she should comfort him in some way, but she didn't know what she could do for him. They certainly weren't friends and he wasn't the kind of guy who would be willing to be comforted by a stranger. She had a feeling that very few people ever saw Mulder hurting this way. She stood up and backed away from him. At the very least, she could give him privacy. She knew that he didn't want her anywhere around him at this point. They didn't know each other that well yet, and they likely never would. She took a final step backward and felt her heart flip over in her chest. There was someone behind her.

Megan turned around slowly, to meet the face that she'd just bumped into. And regardless of the fact that she'd never seen her before, she knew it had to be Dana's mother. Not only the fact that she was in the apartment, and seemed to have been there the whole time, but she knelt down on the floor in front of Mulder and began talking to him. It was in the soothing voice that only a mother knows how to use. Megan watched Mulder push himself off the couch and into the woman's open arms. And Megan listened silently as Margaret quietly spoke to him. Megan wasn't sure, but she could have sworn that the woman had called him Fox. Pushing that thought out of her mind, positive that it was absolutely ridiculous, Megan continued to back up. When she hit the wall, she stopped. She had no idea whether she should stay, and wait for Mulder, or if, perhaps, this was a better place for him to be right then. Mulder was taking this harder than her mother was. And Megan didn't know if she even had a right to be there.

Just as she thought her head would explode if she didn't come up with something to do, Margaret Scully stood up, much to Mulder's dismay and quietly spoke to Megan. She knew this was her daughter's replacement, at least by Mulder's side, if not in his heart. Margaret knew, at least she hoped she knew, by looking into Megan eyes that she wasn't there to hurt Mulder. She politely explained that she would see to it that Mulder got home all right and that Megan ought to be leaving. And even as Megan was gently, but firmly pushed out the door, she felt that she had to say something.

"I'm so sorry, ma'am. I didn't know your daughter, but I'm sure that she was..." she trailed off. This woman must have heard this speech a million times by then and it wasn't making a dent. So Megan changed her strategy. "I suspect that there is no one else in the world that could mean as much to Mulder as your daughter did. If it's any comfort, know that she was loved very much."

Knowing it wasn't nearly enough, but at the same time, more than she should have known in two days, Megan turned and walked out the door. She missed the fact that Mulder had looked up when he heard her voice. Somehow, hearing Megan's words comforted him. If Megan was able to tell so quickly how much he had loved Scully, then there was a chance that Scully herself had known. And that meant a lot to Mulder. Especially since he knew that it was his cruel words that had killed Scully in the first place.

Scully was half expecting bells and whistles to go off as she stepped out of the room. But they didn't. She could see nothing out in the hallway, except for a few closed doors. Then, a man in a suit walked past, regarded her strangely for a moment and then continued on his way. *Well, it's not my fault you left the door unlocked*. She was still busy waiting for some type of siren to go off to announce her freedom. But nothing happened. She dared a few more steps out into the hall. Suddenly feeling self conscious, Scully peered down and realized that she was only wearing what would pass as an oversized T-shirt. Like the one she usually slept in when she wasn't working on A case. But this was clean and white, blindingly so. She assumed that she was just hallucinating and continued walking. This time, an entire group of about six men impeccably dressed in business suits sauntered past. They were too busy talking and arguing quietly amongst themselves to notice her at first. She'd gotten about two steps past them when she heard them stop and stare. She paused for a moment, wondering if she had fallen asleep and was now sleep-walking through some law firm in downtown Washington. She checked again on her clothing, and was disappointed to discover that it was still the plain T-shirt. She had hoped that she'd been wrong the first time around. When the group began walking and arguing once again, she started moving again, this time with purpose. If these people were going to turn her in, she was at least going to see something worth her while before they drug her kicking and screaming back into that room.

She finally reached the end of the hallway, and found a conference room of sorts. There were so many people walking around that had she not be just wearing a nightshirt, she would have blended in perfectly. The most remarkable thing about the room was that the majority of the people were gathered around what appeared to be a computer terminal. Scully pushed her way into the group and found herself looking over the shoulder of a young child, somewhere around four she guessed, who was rapidly hacking her way into something that Scully was relatively sure she should not be hacking her way into. Scully wondered if she should say something, when the screen went blank and an excited gasp ran through the crowd. The next thing Scully saw on the screen was a message saying that access had been granted to the Defense Department's Central Records.

Suddenly, as if all the fun was over, the girl pushed the chair back from the desk and ran off, skipping and singing a song about a bus, soapy birds, and an elevator with what Scully hoped were not the actual words. Then the crowd broke up and went back to their work. She overheard one guy complaining about the fact that he was never going to get a vacation unless the kid found a better hobby. Another joked that she wanted to stop encrypting everything because then maybe it wouldn't be so much fun for the girl. Scully felt her jaw drop open and wondered how she had wondered into the defense department and why she was walking around in a nightgown. Baffled, as to why everyone was allowing her to walk around, she stood where she was and stared. She, as far as she knew, had been held prisoner in that room for however long she had been held prisoner in that room and she didn't understand why everyone was now letting her walk around freely. She looked around the room and found absolutely no one that appeared to be in charge. Then she heard someone clear their throat behind her. She spun around and expected to come face to face with some sinister character. But she saw nothing. At first.

She glanced down and saw him. It was Cancerman. In a wheelchair. With tubes and an oxygen mask sticking out from his head. Scully could see an oxygen tank hooked to the back of his chair. She felt like handing him a lit match. She felt like laughing in his face, as dilapidated as he looked. But she couldn't. She knew this hadn't happened in the space of a few days, or weeks, and that it most likely hadn't happened in a few months, either. But she didn't get it.

She looked down into his ever emotionless face and really wanted a lighter. She spoke through clenched teeth, knowing this man had stolen more from her than she could ever reclaim. More than she would likely ever know, since she couldn't seem to remember any of it. "I want to leave."

He pulled the mask off his face and huffed at her. She could see how much he wanted a cigarette and smiled, knowing that he would most likely never have the pleasure again. His voice came out hoarse and less commanding than it ever had. "You are free to leave if you like."

He abruptly wheeled away from her, motioning to a man who appeared to have materialized out of nowhere. Then Cancerman wheeled off somewhere beyond where Scully could see. Before she had a moment to collect her thoughts, someone handed her some clothing and pointed to A room where she could change.

Dazed, but desperate to get the hell out of there, she put on the clothes, noting that even though they were a full size smaller than she remembered wearing, they fit perfectly. Reaching in her pocket, she found her license, her Visa, and some cash. She didn't stop to count it, she just shoved it back in the pocket and walked back into the room. A woman was waiting right outside the door. She smiled politely, and Scully thought about how innocent the woman seemed.

"I'll show you where the door is." She quietly started walking even farther away from the original room Dana had been in and through another long hallway. Just as they reached what would pass for a lobby in any building in America, a voice called out from behind them.

"Wait for me!" Scully recognized the little girl from earlier. This woman must be her mother.

But as the girl neared, Scully could see her own piercing blue eyes staring back from beneath her long brown hair. Hair that was stubbornly falling in front of her eyes. The girl smiled up at her with a stunning grin that Scully had only ever seen on one person before. Her heart almost stopped at the next words the girl said.

"I thought you were gonna leave without me, Mommy." Scully couldn't say anything as a lump formed in her throat. She simply reached out for the girl's hand, which fit perfectly in her own. She looked accusingly at the woman, but the woman was busy saying good-bye to the girl.

"Bye, Missy. I'll miss you! Come back and visit." Then the woman walked away.

Stunned, Scully stopped there at the door, leaning her hand on the cool glass. She felt a tugging on her hand that she wasn't accustomed to, but felt completely familiar all the same.

Missy smiled up at her mother. "Smile, Mommy, time to go!" Then Missy charged ahead, pulling Scully behind her.

Scully silently followed, wondering how any of this could be happening, and knowing that she would get even, if she had to rip that bastard's lungs out herself. Knowing that when Mulder found this out, he'd be right behind her. And that somehow, everything would be fine between them since they now had this gift to share. Then she did smile, knowing that nothing had ever felt as right as the night before when Mulder had held her in his arms.

The one thing she didn't know, was that five years had passed for everyone else, in the space of which she only remembered one night.

When he'd broken down on the couch, he'd completely forgotten that he wasn't alone. Then he heard Margaret's voice, trying to reach him. It was the only voice that could make a difference. The only voice that he could even hear through the guilt. He'd felt her soft touch on his arms, pulling them away from his face, and somehow, he didn't feel vulnerable letting her see him with tears rolling down his face. She was telling him that everything was going to be ok. He tried to tell her that it was all his fault, but she wouldn't listen. And then, just as he was starting to get upset that Margaret wasn't letting him blame himself, she asked him a question. And it was the last thing he needed right then.

"Were you in love with her, Fox?" she had known the answer, of course, but she wanted to know if he knew it. She wasn't prepared to see his face crumble and for him to start sobbing violently. It was his way of admitting how very right she was. He was having enough problems just dealing with the guilt, let alone dealing with the fact that he was in love with her. That was when she held out her arms to him and then held him like a baby.

He held on to her as if she might still have a link to her daughter. Like there was some way for Margaret to get the message to Scully. He wanted to feel like an idiot, sitting there, almost twice the size of the woman who was comforting him, but he didn't. She loved him because he'd loved her daughter. It was like his own mother would have done. And then Margaret pulled back and stood up. He felt like someone had pulled the carpet out from under him just as he was standing up.

He stayed on the floor, too upset to move. Then he heard Megan's voice and was so embarrassed that he thought he would die at that moment. How could he ever look her in the eye? He heard her words and knew that she knew what he'd never understood before. He watched her walk out the door. For someone he'd treated like shit, she was being awfully nice to him. And he couldn't help but like that she was putting up with him without taking any of his crap. Maybe she wasn't so bad after all.

When Margaret rejoined him on the floor, he was feeling slightly better that Megan was his partner. He wasn't sure that he could trust her, but he was hoping he could. Margaret handed him a mug of tea and settled next to him on the floor. Neither of them spoke at first, they just sat there together.

"I dreamt about her, Margaret."

It startled her at first because she hadn't expected him to speak and then because he'd finally called her Margaret. He'd always used 'Mrs. Scully' no matter how many times she said not to. She assumed that the name Scully would hurt him too much to use now. She asked him, gently, trying not to probe, about his dream. She, on the other hand, had no had any dreams about Dana. And she wasn't sure what to think about it.

He blushed slightly, making Margaret wonder exactly what the dream had been about. "It was nothing. I was just in this room with her. It was dark and I didn't even know she was there. She was mad. I mean,-" he wasn't sure if he should tell her that they'd been fighting. "We'd been arguing right before she." This time he just stopped. He couldn't make himself say that she was dead. He just couldn't. And he didn't want to listen to Margaret saying that Dana hadn't really been mad at him. He knew Scully. And he knew that Scully absolutely hated him when she had walked out of his office that last time.

Margaret sense his inability to continue and came to his rescue."She had mentioned that you weren't getting along." She frowned remembering how Dana had described it. "She thought that you were being an ass." He looked up, alarmed that Margaret would say such a thing, and that Scully had said it about him in the first place."Well, actually," she took a sip of tea and then cleared her throat. "She said you were being more of an ass than usual."

Mulder couldn't help but smile at the fact that she'd always thought he was an ass. She'd liked him anyway. Then he started to feel guilty. He shouldn't have acted like he had. He should have been nicer to her. He should have taken better care of her than he had."I shouldn't have acted like that. Not to her. She didn't deserve it. She shouldn't have put up with it."

Margaret laid a hand on his wrist. "Stop, Fox." She closed her eyes and told him what she'd promised Dana she'd never tell him. She didn't see any harm in it at this point. "She loved you, Fox." He looked up and caught her eye. He couldn't be sure if she was just telling him what he wanted to hear or if it was really true.

"She said so. I asked her, like I asked you, and she said she loved you more than anything in the world. And then she made me promise never to tell you." Margaret took pleasure in seeing his face light up. For just a moment, she thought that he was truly happy and she wished that she'd broken the promise before it was too late.

"Then why are you telling me now?" he didn't think she'd lie to him, and he honestly could picture Scully making her mother promise to never tell, but he wanted to be sure. He'd always considered it too much to expect her love in return. He would have been amazed if she still spoke to him if he ever managed to tell her that he loved her.

Margaret shrugged, and a contented smile appeared on her face. "I can't see the harm now. And I think she would have wanted you to know. Especially since she couldn't tell you herself." A melancholy smile crossed her face and Mulder could just about see the wedding unfolding in her mind. She probably had their kids names picked out. "You would have made a great couple. With beautiful children." Her smile threatened to turn into tears at any moment.

"Let's go home, Margaret." He stood up and took their mugs into the kitchen. He managed to rinse them out and leave the room without paying any attention to the fact that the mugs were the only things remaining there.

When he returned to the other room, Margaret had gotten her keys out and was holding a box. She handed it to him. I think you should have these things. He didn't notice that she had removed the framed picture. She knew he would hide it somewhere where he'd never have to see it. But she wouldn't. She was going to put it on her mantle where there were pictures of her other children proudly displayed.

He took the box without looking in it and walked out of the apartment. He knew he wasn't going back there. But he also knew that his memories of her were locked safely in his heart. That night, when he finally got home, he slept soundly without any nightmares.

Time slipped past. He didn't count the days because he didn't see any point. And Megan was honest with him. She told him exactly who sent her, what they wanted her to do and that she had absolutely no intention of doing it. She'd write them reports if that's what they wanted, but they weren't getting anything useful out of her. When he'd asked her why she wanted to help him, she just shrugged and said she didn't want to help them. Since that night when she'd seen him break down, he'd been doing remarkably well. He'd actually been nice to her, apologized for how rude he'd been earlier, and even tried to take her seriously as his partner. And she ignored the disappointed look on his face everyday when she walked into the office.

And somehow, almost two years passed. Mulder managed to go to work on time, generally, and Megan learned that the grimace he made when she walked in was usually because he was afraid it would be someone else coming to say that she'd been transferred out or she was missing or that she was dead rather than because she was the one who walked in. Mulder eventually found himself showing up on Megan's doorstep, uninvited with a pizza in one hand and a bottle of Dr. Pepper in the other. He even figured out that Megan's couch was pretty comfortable when he accidentally fell asleep on it. In two years, they had grown closer. But it was different than it had been with Scully.

While Scully had always been the one to try and calm Mulder down, Megan seemed to need more calming down than he did. When Mulder got mad and went storming into offices, Megan usually chased after him, angry only because she hadn't gotten to yell first. Needless to say, they got called into Skinner's office approximately three times a week.

But this had been a bad week for them. They were working on a case locally, and in so doing, were within driving distance of Skinner's office. He'd already called them in four times that week and it was only Wednesday. It had been previously determined by Skinner, and mentioned to both of them at the fourth meeting of the week that if he had to call them in a fifth time they were both going to be suspended for a week without pay. But they didn't think he'd actually do it. Unfortunately, they had seriously miscalculated the sincerity of the threat.

Mulder stood up so fast that his chair almost fell over. Megan, on the other hand, was gripping the armrests so hard that her knuckles were white. Mulder began his usual rant about the unfair practices of the bureau and how every time he even got close, they stopped him somehow. And each time he paused to take a breath, Megan would jump in with her own rant. Had Skinner not been inwardly cringing at the combined anger of the pair, he would have been amused at what a truly great pair they made. He knew, however, that he could never mention that because it would remind everyone of the other truly great pair that Mulder had been a part of. Skinner refused to back down and told them to leave the office. He was willing to bend rules for them, and let them off the hook, but when they annoyed him just for the sake of it he would not let them get away with it. He dismissed them and, as usual, they stood there.

At some point during the argument, Megan had joined Mulder in standing in front of the desk. They both waited, with their arms crossed in front of their chests, defying the order to leave. Skinner pondered standing up and physically removing them. Instead, he repeated the order.

"Agent Mulder, Agent Mcbride, I have removed you from the case. You are suspended, effective immediately, for one week, without pay. Any further incidents and you will both be called before a review committee." When he still got no response, he pulled out a form accusing them of some infringement or another and wrote their names on it, large enough that they could see it from where they were standing. He filled about three lines of the form out, then looked back at Mulder and Megan. They were standing in the exact same positions and Skinner got the distinctive impression that they had been making faces or something to that effect when he wasn't looking."You're both dismissed. I don't want either of you near the building for a week."

Skinner watched Megan consider this command and then look to Mulder to check on his reaction. Mulder sighed and raised his hands in an 'I surrender' pose. Then he turned toward the door and waited for footsteps behind him. Megan didn't move. She was too busy wondering how long she could stand there alone before Skinner had her removed. She thought that Mulder had given in too easily.

"We're not getting anywhere, Scully, let's go," he glanced behind him, not even realizing what he had just said. He saw that Megan had gone deathly pale in the last few seconds and Skinner had an absolutely astounded expression on his face. Mulder thought over what he'd said. 'We're not getting anywhere, Megan, let's go' didn't seemed like the kind of thing that would get this reaction. It wasn't because he'd called her Megan. He always called her Megan. Everyone did, even Skinner, unless he was really angry. He waited another second, and when no one had composed themselves, he shook his head and walked out the door. He thought after two years he could count on Megan to be behind him. He honestly didn't understand what he'd done. The last time he'd looked, Megan was waiting for him to renew his tirade.

After Mulder had walked out, Megan felt like crying. For the last two years, she had thought that she was making progress with him. She could only remember a handful of times that he'd called her Scully, and two of them had been right after Scully's death.

Skinner, himself, had never seen Mulder make that mistake, but he could tell that Megan had. He was wondering just how often it occurred. He seriously doubted that anyone, even Mulder, could live in adamant denial for two years. He cleared his throat and watched as Megan remembered where she was. The mask settled back over her face as she turned to look at him. "He's done that before, hasn't he, Megan?"

Megan stared straight ahead. She knew that she didn't look upset anymore, but if she were to talk, Skinner would know immediately how upset she was. It was like every time she ever got yelled at in school. She always looked like she was perfectly in control, but if she was made to speak, she wasn't able to hide the fact that she was crying. She attempted to swallow the lump in her throat, but it just made her want to cough. She couldn't do anything. She knew that in seconds she would be crying and she didn't want to break down in front of Skinner. She had to get out of that office. But she knew that he would keep her there until she answered. She kept right on staring, willing herself to get a grip.

"Megan, how often? How many time has he called you Scully?" He could he saw a fierce look of determination settle on her face. But it just didn't mesh all that well with the tears that were falling down her face.

Knowing the battle was lost, and that she was now crying in front of her boss, she spoke. Her voice came out in the same take charge tone it always had, not even wavering a little. She didn't even know why she was crying. It hadn't hurt that much. It shouldn't have hurt that much.

"He has done it before. But usually only when he's really upset. It's just force of habit. He doesn't really think I'm her."

Skinner thought over the words. If it was true, he didn't think she would be crying. "Are you sure he doesn't think so?"

She hated the fact that he'd managed to read her mind. Maybe somewhere in Mulder's intelligent mind there was this little block that kept lying and telling him that Scully was still alive. But she didn't want to accept it. She knew how to handle Mulder and he may not have wanted to accept it at first, but they made a great team. Before she could answer Skinner though, she had to find out for herself.

She didn't bother responding to Skinner's question, she just turned around and left. Mulder was waiting for her by the elevator. She ducked her head and wished she were a few inches shorter so that she could hide her tear streaked face. She rubbed her eyes and pretended that she always walked around in tears.

"Meg, what the hell was that about?" he looked at the way she was diverting her face from him and became intensely curious. He waited until they got in the elevator before gently turning her chin towards him so that he could see her face.

She almost jumped out of her skin. He never touched her. Ever. Not even accidentally. She was so surprised that she forgot to hide her face from him.

"Why were you crying? What's wrong?" he waited, let her turn her face away, and then continued, refusing to accept a shrug as an answer. "Was it something about me? Did I do something?"

She knew she wasn't getting out of this. He knew her. And he knew she didn't cry. He'd seen her get shot one time. He'd watched her pick pieces of her jacket out of the gunshot wound in her shoulder. He'd watched her attend the funeral of her mother. But he'd never seen her cry. He'd never seen her refuse to answer something, no matter how much it hurt. She had to tell him. "I'll tell you later. You bring the pizza."

"Then you get your own Dr. Pepper." He smiled at her, hoping that she wasn't just buying time to compose herself and then dodge the question later.

That night, half a pizza later, he brought it up. He'd at least had the decency to wait until she didn't have a mouthful of food. That much impressed her. She wanted to be honest. But she didn't know how he would react. The last time she'd called him on the very same thing, a little over a year earlier, he denied it and walked out of the room and she didn't see him for two days. She looked at the pizza, back at him, and then back at the pizza. This was difficult.

"In Skinner's office earlier," she looked back at him. She knew she should definitely not stare at him. She looked at the pizza again. "You called me Scully. " She dared a glance back at him. He looked exactly like he had that time he'd come into her unlocked Apartment without knocking and she'd punched him in the stomach. With brass knuckles.

He opened his mouth to say something, but he realized before anything came out that there was nothing he could really say. "And that's why you were crying?"

She shrugged again, giving him the advantage of knowing exactly how uncomfortable she was. "Uh, Skinner wanted to know how often you did that."

"I hope you told him never." Even as he said it, he knew that it wasn't true. He never noticed it. He would just see her dumb-struck face and know he'd done something hopelessly wrong.

Her next sentence came out in one word. "He asked me if I knew for sure that you know that I'm not her." She knew exactly how dumb it sounded, but it was too late to take it back. And it was true anyway.

He reached for her hand. As well as he knew her, he knew this was probably killing her. She'd been competing with Scully's ghost the entire time she'd known him. And even though he'd never tell her, she was doing a damned good job of it.

She pulled her hand back. Twice in two years he'd touched her and it all had to be that same day. She saw the hurt look flash across his face and wished she hadn't. She just wasn't used to people touching her. Definitely not him. She was aware of his eyes burning a hole in her face. She reached for a piece of pizza, which he promptly removed from her hand.

Then, before she could stop him, he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her. When he released she was too confounded to move. She just stared at him, waiting for him to apologize and walk out of the room. But he didn't. He stared back at her.

"No, you're definitely not Scully. "

She pulled back from him and stared. "So that's what this was about." She stood up and walked across the room. And began to pace. She told herself that the only reason she was pacing was because she was nervous. She refused to admit that it was because she knew he was going to stand up and approach her. She didn't know what to do. He quietly waited for her to stop pacing. But she didn't. She knew that as soon as she stopped he was going to try and touch her and she didn't know what to do. She therefore could not stop.

But Mulder was prepared for Megan's attempts to avoid him. He let her calm down a little, using the time to allow himself to try and figure out what the hell had just happened. Well, he knew exactly what had happened. The problem was trying to figure out why it had happened. And if either of them wanted it to happen again.

The next time she paced past him, he grabbed her shoulders and spun her to face him. He'd never seen her looking so unsure of herself before. She couldn't make herself look at him. His hands were still on her shoulders and even though he would have let her go if she had really tried to fight, she felt like she really couldn't move. She was frozen on the spot. She didn't have the heart to tell him no. She didn't really want to tell him no.

But she honestly didn't think that he was even seeing her. She was a lot like Scully in many ways- her unexpected, unfailing support, her ability to back him up, her willingness to help him even when they didn't agree. She was pretty certain that he was just trying to do something differently this time around. Maybe he did care about her, but this wasn't what he wanted. And as much as it hurt, she had to tell him what she thought. Because if he really was seeing this as a repeat of Scully, then she couldn't go through with it. And she wasn't about to let him.

It seemed to her that the more he swore he knew she wasn't Scully, or A replacement for Scully the more she was sure that she actually was. He tightened his grip on her shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye. But she was afraid. She was afraid that he'd be able to see right through her. Through the fact that she was trying to avoid this whole situation. Through to the fact that she wanted this to happen more than anything in the world.

Admitting it to herself, finally, shocked her enough to make her forget to not look him in the eye. Their eyes locked for a brief second and that was all it took for him to see it all. He saw the fear and the trust and the love and for just a moment, he completely forgot that he was looking at Megan. He'd seen the same look hundreds of times in Scully's eyes, but he'd never recognized it for what it was.

He knew that Megan would never replace Scully. But he also knew what he'd wasted with her. And he wasn't about to let it slip past again. He knew that Megan would never, could never be what Scully had been to him. He didn't want her to be. But he knew that he could still love Megan. That he did love Megan. He could love them both. Scully was dead. Any relationship he'd had, or might have had, with her was gone. Two years gone. He was ready to move on. He just needed to convince Megan of that.

"Megan." She was already looking at him, but he felt like he should at least prepare them both for the fact that he was planning on speaking. He took a deep breath before continuing. "I know what

You're thinking. And I know what you're afraid of. I just want you to know-" Before he could finish his hastily prepared speech, she pulled out of his grasp and walked over to the window. Annoyed that she didn't appear to be listening, definitely not understanding, and not even the slightest bit interested, he followed her. He stood behind her and lightly placed his hands on her shoulders once again. He leaned his face against her hair and whispered the rest of the sentence.

"This isn't about her, Megan. This is about you and me."

Megan closed her eyes and tried to relax. But his being so close to her, and his new proclivity towards touching her, was making her nervous. He sounded like he meant it. He probably really believed it. If she tried really hard, she could probably believe it too. She closed her eyes and made a decision. She wanted to believe it. She was going to believe it.

Instead of voicing her decision, or drawing attention in any way to the fact that she had made a decision, she simply leaned back towards him and let him put his arms around her. And luckily, he took it for the acceptance that it was meant to be.

Holding Missy's hand in hers, she walked out of the building and onto the street. It was just an average street, teaming with average people trying to get everything they needed done by a certain point in time that they had absolutely no chance of making. Scully felt slightly out of place, wearing jeans and a sweater, walking around with a small child in the midst of so many suit-clad people. It seemed that she was surrounded by businessmen and women and she had picked up the paranoid feeling that people were staring at her. A man she vaguely recognized noticed her, walked a few steps past, then stopped and turned back to her.

Suddenly feeling an unnerving protective urge, she pulled Missy behind her and held both of Missy's hands in hers. She might not remember her daughter, but she still wasn't about to let someone hurt her. The man smirked at her and then stared at Missy with a look that frightened both Missy and Dana. Missy wrenched her wrists free and fastened them around Dana's legs instead. Dana heard a scared moan coming from somewhere, but she couldn't be sure whether it had been from herself or her daughter. The man looked back at Dana and started to speak.

"My associates and I were not aware of that fact that you and Agent Mulder were ever more than-" He managed to shoot an even more menacing glance at Missy. "-friends," he abruptly walked away before Dana could even say anything. She'd been hoping that perhaps she'd over reacted and that Missy didn't really look all that much like Mulder. She pulled the girl out from behind her and began to study her.

Yes, even the queen of denial-it's-more-than-just-a-river had to admit that the girl looked just like Mulder. Except that it was a female version of Mulder, one with blue eyes, a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, and apparently quite a bit challenged with vertical growth. Dana could tell already, judging by the tiny size of her, and the fact that at least some of her DNA had to be in Missy, that Missy would wait well into her twenties for the growth spurt that wasn't coming.

Even being able to clearly recognize both herself and Mulder in the child, she was having a difficult time rationalizing how exactly this *person* had come into existence. Sure, she knew that she had been locked in that room for a while, but she could remember being awake at some points and it certainly didn't seem to have been that long. Besides, she had just been with Mulder the night before. He had been in that same room with her. He'd apologized to her. He'd put his arms around her for the third time in all the time she'd known him.

And there was no way that his putting his arms around her three times, the third time of which having been only one night earlier, had resulted in the adorable four-year-old Dana found herself staring at. Somehow, most likely because of the voice in the back of her head, she began to believe that this girl, her daughter had come into play during the time she had been missing. The first time. It still didn't answer the question of exactly how Mulder had gotten involved, but it answered something. Now she could bitch at people for making her miss the first four years of her daughter's life, let alone that she had absolutely no recollection of how her 'daughter' had been created anyway.

She unwrapped Missy's hands and looked for a place to sit down in a pathetic attempt to process the information that had just been given to her. Luckily, in the fog induced by this attempt, she just about tripped over a bench. She sat down heavily and closed her eyes to think. As unaccustomed to watching her child as she was, she forgot that four-year-olds, even intelligent ones, can get into trouble. Actually, it's the intelligent ones that usually get into more trouble. Sitting there, with her eyes closed, she didn't notice when Missy spotted a man walking a dog. Dana didn't notice Missy's squeal of delight and then a hastily mentioned 'puppy' before the girl took off after it. The only thing that Dana could actually think about right then was the inevitable moment when she produced this child in Mulder's presence. Sure, she was having a time accepting it. But as soon as she'd taken the girl's hand, she'd known that the girl was hers. Hers and Mulder's. But Mulder was a man. And as much as she respected and cared about him, she knew that when he tried, he could be quite an ass. And she could easily imagine the pain she'd feel if he refused to believe that Missy was his daughter.

And how the hell could she expect Mulder to believe that this was his daughter when she herself was relentlessly refusing to accept it. She was having trouble imagining where exactly she'd managed to fit getting pregnant and having a baby into her schedule approximately four years earlier. Yes, she'd missed a period of three months, during which she could recall nothing, but she was a doctor and three months was just not enough time. Besides, that hadn't been four years ago. It was, at least as far as she could tell, only two years since she'd been missing. Before she could think of anything else, she noticed something that she hadn't noticed before. Quiet. The sound of another person with her, the sound of feet skipping around her as she tried to understand how her daughter could be so used to her while Dana couldn't even remember Missy's middle name, the sound that would accompany any four-year-old, was gone. She opened her eyes and sat up from the slouching position she'd unknowingly gotten into. She scanned the area around her for something that would hold the interest of a four-year-old and found the area remarkably lacking in youthful amusements. Absolute, a feeling that was completely foreign to her flooded her and she stood up. Turning around, in hope that Missy would magically appear behind her, Dana surveyed the area again.

She was simultaneously afraid to move and afraid to stay where she was. She was afraid that Missy might have just wondered off and then return she'd to the bench and in the meantime, Dana would have gone off somewhere to look for her. And still, Dana was afraid that at that very moment, Missy was being dragged off kicking and screaming and Dana would completely miss it if she didn't move. Paralyzed by fear, she couldn't do anything. And for once, she was not embarrassed to scream in public.

"Missy!" About half of the people around her turned to stare. The other half deliberately didn't look at her and started walking faster. Unhappy with the result screaming had produced, she ran, as best she could on her shaking legs, about ten feet back the way she'd come. Then she tried again. "Missy!"

Being a new parent and all, she had no idea of exactly what she was supposed to do in this situation. Screaming had not produced the desired effect. She could recall that every time she'd ever wondered off, all it took was one of her parents to call for her and she would reappear. But she should have known that calling for her wouldn't work. This was Mulder's child after all.

Dana continued to walk in one direction and then another. She couldn't find Missy anywhere. Frantic, and with nowhere to go, she sat down on another bench and allowed herself to feel completely hopeless.

Megan and Mulder allowed their relationship to progress. To a certain extent. They cared about each other. And on some level, somewhere, they loved each other. But neither of them wanted to draw any more attention to themselves that they already did. Megan didn't want to be trapped in a relationship with someone who had a tendency to take off without notice and had a predilection for carrying emotional baggage everywhere he went. And Mulder's feelings, as much as he did care about and love Megan, were pretty heavily involved with his sister and Scully. Neither of them wanted to get in over their heads.

So they opted for a low maintenance plan. They didn't really have time for 'dating' but they did see each other just about every waking moment. And they spent quite a few non-waking moments together as well. It was understood between them that dating other people might be tolerated, but that it would be met with great resistance and should be avoided at all costs. Generally, they shied away from dating others, not that it ever seemed all that pending anyhow.

And in three years, they had miraculously not gotten caught. As far as they could tell, no one, not even Skinner, knew about their relationship. Megan began writing, in her now biweekly reports, that Mulder was 'a remarkably well adjusted and trustworthy man who investigated cases of unusual circumstances with both unending curiosity and a healthy respect for Bureau policies.' At least, it was Megan's name and badge number appeared on the cover of those report.

And in three years, they had not managed, between the two of them to come up with any word that could accurately describe their relationship. It just was. And they were comfortable with it, however undefined it was.

He didn't usually leave the office at lunch, but he was feeling restless for no particular reason. So he found himself walking around in a relatively professional section of town. People walked around him, some openly upset with the fact that he was going nowhere special and was walking in a speed that showed it. But at his age, and with the air of authority that followed him around wherever he went, none of those who were bold enough to shoot glances at him were actually bold enough to say a word to Skinner.

Just when he'd decided that he'd gotten too much fresh air, he noticed a small child standing on a bench. Being the law enforcement officer that he was, and fearful for any child alone in Washington, he looked around in the hopes of spotting a parent. But he saw no one. And judging from the frightened whimper of the little girl when he approached her, he doubted that she knew where her parents were either. He was just about to explain that he was with the police and wanted to help her when she looked up at him.

For the first time in his life, he felt like the wind had actually been knocked out of him. He knew exactly who this child's parents were, but he didn't believe that they had been able to hide this. Like a robot, he pulled out his badge and showed it to her. Somehow, hearing her response made him feel even worse.

"My mommy and daddy have these." The girl smiled and Skinner began to feel very ill. Seeing their daughter, he began to understand why Mulder had been so hopelessly lost after Scully had died. But he couldn't recall any evidence at all that Mulder was raising a child. He never asked for a day off. He never came in late. Megan had never even slipped and mentioned any of it. It occurred to him for a minute that maybe Mulder wasn't even aware of this, but he knew that was impossible. If the girl's mother was dead, then her father must have her.

Unsure of exactly how best to handle the situation, he reached out and gently took the girl's hand. "I'm Walter. What's your name?" the girl smiled smugly before replying.

"I'm Melissa. My mommy's sister's name."

Skinner just nodded and desperately fought the desire to scream for his own mommy at the top of his lungs. "Well, I know your daddy, so how about if I take you to him?" It sounded like as good a plan as any. Skinner pondered how exactly Mulder had managed to raise a child, who would have been an infant when its mother died, without giving away his little secret. Skinner wondered how Scully had managed to have a baby and not have anyone notice it, him especially, since she spent at least an hour a week sitting in a chair opposite his desk getting yelled at. He refused to even breech the subject of exactly where the girl had come from since Scully had never even been pregnant in the first place.

Missy stopped suddenly and tugged on his hand. "Daddy? I haven't seen daddy in a long time!" She was so excited that Skinner practically had to hold her down to the ground.

"When exactly was the last time you saw your daddy?" Half afraid of the response, and half wanting to kill Mulder for having abandoned his child in the middle of Washington, he waited for the answer.

"I dunno. But I think Mommy will be scared if I don't tell her I'm going with you." Missy shrugged and looked back at Skinner. For a moment, he started to wonder if maybe this was Mulder's daughter with another woman, but staring into her big blue eyes, he had to acknowledge that this was Mulder and Scully's child. Even if she was an X-File in and of herself. And then he started to wonder if maybe Mulder had lied to Melissa about who her mother was in an attempt to deny that Scully was dead.

"When did you see Mommy last?" And before he could get another shrug out of her, Missy pulled her hand right of his grasp and went barreling off. Skinner turned around and was completely startled to hear Missy scream 'Mommy' at the top of her lungs. He watched the girl launch herself at a woman who, looked, albeit from a distance, identical to Scully. He watched the Scully look alike drop to her knees and wrap her arms around the girl.

Refusing to let this delusion go any farther, he walked over to them. And felt his heart skip a beat when Scully looked up at him. He'd been to this woman's funeral five years earlier. He'd watched Mulder blame himself, and everyone else he came in contact with, for this woman's death. And now, here she was, holding a child that Skinner was now completely sure that Mulder knew nothing about.

"How-?" he wanted to ask her how she'd managed to come back to life. But he wasn't sure that he could make the words come out of his mouth. He'd seen her *dead*. Now, she was alive. And something was totally wrong with this situation. He watched her face change as she recognized him. He watched her stand up, pull Missy behind her legs, and begin to shake her head.

"Sir, this really isn't what it looks like." She continued, having absolutely no idea that he wasn't even hearing her. "Mulder and I were never- I mean, we didn't," she pulled Missy back in front of her and then clapped her hands over Missy's ears. "Sir, I have no idea where this child came from."

Seeing the look in her face, he knew that she was telling the truth. But he wasn't entirely sure where this woman had come from. "I can give you a hint," he almost asked why she bothered calling him sir, since she hadn't worked for the FBI in five years. He looked at the girl, who was starting to look a little weary of being pulled alternately in front of and then behind her mother, and decided that Melissa shouldn't be subjected to what he was relatively sure would be A very very involved story resulting in some potentially upsetting news. "We can talk in my office. But you'd better be willing to explain everything you know."

Dana once again took hold of Missy's hand and began to walk, hoping the somehow, everything would magically start to make sense. She'd seen the shocked expression on Skinner's face. She'd noticed that he was incredibly pale. She assumed that she'd been gone for a reasonably noticeable period of time. But she had no idea it was five years. She had been thinking perhaps a week or two. Possibly even a month at the absolute longest. She had expected that people who'd even noticed that she was gone would be glad to see her, but not shocked beyond belief. She could barely even remember the car accident. And she most definitely did not remember the passage of five years. She most definitely did not remember raising a daughter in those years.

Skinner took the hint and began walking, easily catching up to Scully in a few strides. Still unsure of exactly what was going on, he looked down to check that the little girl was really there and not some bizarre figment of his imagination. Unfortunately, what he was hoping was merely a result of eating tacos took close to going to sleep was still there. And it was grinning at him. With a grin that he recognized, even though he couldn't think of a time that he'd ever actually seen Mulder grin. The thing that frightened him the most was that Melissa seemed the least phased by all of this than anyone. When they entered the building, which was magically devoid of people for once, he began to rethink the whole 'going to his office to talk about this' thing. He was completely certain that there were more bugs in there than even he could imagine. There was only one place that he could think of that was safe. He didn't even glance back at her to catch the dismayed look that crossed her face as she realized that he was heading for the stairs. The stairs that only led to the basement. She knew where he was going and she wasn't sure that she wanted to go there. She knew that she would have to face Mulder, and she knew that she would have to introduce him to Missy, but she wasn't really planning on doing either of those things in Mulder's office. She needed to do it on slightly more neutral territory. Like the hallway outside his building.

About halfway down the stairs, she reached out and put a hand on Skinner's shoulder. She'd never seen anyone turn around so quickly in her life. Feeling intensely uncomfortable, she pulled her hand back and stuttered out the reason she'd stopped him in the first place."I-um-well-I think maybe it's really not such a good idea to, uh, I think maybe I should talk to Mulder alone?" she hadn't been meaning to ask him a question, but it came out that way. She didn't think she could handle the confrontation that was bound to take place between herself and Mulder with Skinner and her daughter looking on.

"Agent Mulder is out of town. They-" He stopped short of mentioning that they were on a case. He didn't think Scully would react well to that news. Perhaps it was something that Mulder and Scully ought to discuss in private. "I think it might be better to discuss this in Agent Mulder's office. There aren't quite as many people around.

Dana knew he was right. Mulder had the only office down there. Less people to explain Missy to. But when Skinner opened the door, Dana knew something was wrong. There were sounds coming from the hallway. There were no boxes piled haphazardly around. She saw a few people walk past, nod politely as Skinner, and then continue on their way. She wanted to scream. What the hell were all these people doing here?

Skinner caught her bewildered look and stopped to give her a chance to look around. After running out of office space in the rest of the building, they had remodeled the basement and brought quite a few offices down there. The only part of the basement that wasn't wall to wall people in their miserable little cubicles was what everyone called 'Mulder's Suite." His one office took up about ten regular offices. And his office was one impossibly huge mess. But Skinner had seen both Mulder and Megan produce a certain paper from the midst of the chaos without hesitating, so he had no right to complain. And since they were invading Mulder's space, Skinner knew he would have lost miserably if he'd bothered trying to make them clean. Or move.

When he realized that Scully was not taking any of this well, he placed his hand on her back, the way he'd seen Mulder do numerous times, and pushed her forward gently. She began moving automatically towards Mulder's office. Luckily, in her daze, she missed the sign on the door. The sign that said 'Agent Megan Mcbride.

To be sure that they would be alone, Skinner knocked once on the door before swinging it open. Dana was still trying to understand where the government had come up with the money to completely renovate the building. And where anybody had found the nerve to invade Mulder's territory. And how they'd managed to do it in the short time she'd been gone. Assuming, of course, that it had been as short as she'd originally thought.

They hadn't gotten more than a step in the door before Megan peered around the wall. Looking at Dana, she started to speak. "Can I help-" Finally noticing Skinner she appended her words. "Sir." She was still mad at him for something. What for she couldn't say, but she did remember that she was angry. She saw the bewildered expression on Dana's face. A face she vaguely recognized, but couldn't place. But the kid was a different story. She'd never more definitely *remembered*

A face in her life.

And she couldn't believe that in five years, Mulder had never mentioned his daughter.

Dana, Megan, and Melissa all just stared at each other. None of them was sure exactly who all the others were, where they had come from, or why they were there.

Skinner used the time the confusion bought to attempt to collect his thoughts. But they still didn't make any sense. "Megan, I thought you and Agent Mulder were out of town on a case."

Megan started to explain that they'd missed their plane and they hadn't been all that interested in catching the next one so they'd just forgotten about the whole damned thing, but her voice was drowned out by another.

His voice was muffled by the papers his face was buried in. "Meg, who-" As he walked around the corner, his voice trailed off and the arm that he'd casually draped around her shoulder dropped to his side. Skinner never came down here, except for the time he explained that contractors were going to be poking around and to just ignore them. He could tell from the way Megan was standing that she was angry. Hopefully not at him. She turned to look at him and he could see that she was hurt as well. Then he looked over her shoulder at the people who stood silently next to Skinner.

Scully. His mind told him that he'd finally and completely lost any tenuous grip on reality that he might have had. Then his mind informed him that since there was now probable cause to commit him, he could pointedly ignore the source of his distress. So his eyes instead focused on the little girl standing between Skinner and the person his mind was diligently refusing to acknowledge.

Once he even began to comprehend who the little girl was, he changed his mind and switched his stare to Scully. A perfectly healthy, living Scully. He felt his jaw drop open and heard the distinct sound of a file being dropped and papers scattering all over the floor. He started to get lightheaded and assumed that it was only because of the simple fact that he'd chosen not to breathe in the last few moments. When he decided to ignore his lungs rather demanding cry for air, he leaned dramatically to the left. He felt a hand on his shoulder and someone, somehow, placed a chair behind him before he managed to fall. Most likely it was the other people in the room that he wasn't staring at and that he was had simply chosen to ignore, but he wasn't looking, so he couldn't be sure. He was too busy staring into Scully's eyes, and knowing, even as he hoped to find something to prove that it was her, that it undoubtedly was.

Skinner and Megan figured out rather quickly that this was not the best possible place for them and left. But still, Missy and Dana stood in the doorway of the office, waiting for something to happen, and Mulder sat in his chair and hyperventilated, waiting for someone to wake him up.

Several minutes of dead silence ensued. Mulder's breathing gradually slowed down to a speed slightly more compatible with life, Scully stood exactly where she'd been, just beginning to grasp the fact that although it was in the same physical location, this was not the same office she remembered. She'd never really met Megan, except for a slight nod of the head, so she didn't know that it was Megan's presence which changed the office. She just knew that things were different. And that she'd been gone long enough for them to have gotten that way. And that Mulder and Megan were more than casual acquaintances. A lot more. She waited quietly, hiding behind Scully's legs. Missy knew who her father was, but she knew that this was not what was supposed to happen.

As a four-year-old, she didn't really know what to expect. But she knew that according to her definition of love, people who loved each other were supposed to be happy to see each other. And, naturally, her mommy and daddy loved each other. She didn't understand this. But she was still a child and not understanding something was not reason enough to keep paying attention. She decided that if no one was doing anything of consequence, then they probably wouldn't notice her absence. She turned around and quietly slipped out the door.

Scully barely noticed when the arms encircling her leg let go. And she completely missed it when the door opened and her daughter walked out. She was too busy trying to figure out why Mulder was so upset to see her. Even if she'd been gone for a long time, she thought he still would have been happy that she was back. Thinking back, she remembered the last time she'd been in this office.

*Well, that explains that*. The last time she'd been in the office, the last time she'd actually seen or spoken to Mulder, he'd basically told her to drop dead. And she'd basically told him the same thing. She'd transferred out of The X-Files and he hadn't even tried to stop her. She remembered the smug look on his face when she was leaving. She remembered the way he'd dropped the mug her father had given her. She remembered how she'd desperately wanted him to say anything, anything at all that would have given her hope that there was still something special between them. And she remembered his silence, his way of telling her that there really wasn't anything left between them. It didn't matter to him that she was back. He probably hadn't even noticed that she was gone in the first place. He had a new partner. He was working away happily when she returned. He didn't miss her. He didn't care about her. And he most certainly didn't want anything thing to do with their daughter. Instead of sticking around and having to listen to his rejection, she left the office, quietly closing the door behind her.

Mulder watched Missy leave, but for some reason, he didn't worry about the girl getting lost. He knew absolutely nothing about her, except who her parents were, but he still wasn't worried. He was sure that she either wouldn't wander very far or she'd be able to find her way back. He was trying to think. Trying to figure out what to say or what he could do. But nothing was coming to him. Seeing her standing there, waiting for him to do something was unnerving him. He wasn't ever supposed to see her again. He'd managed to deal with losing her. He'd managed to continue to live, something he'd questioned being able to do without her. He'd even managed to fall in love. And now he couldn't escape the guilt that was pressing down on his mind. He'd gone on with his life. He hadn't tried to find her. And now, she was standing in front of him, probably having gone through hell, with a daughter that absolutely had to be his, and he couldn't manage to breathe. Skinner seemed to be taking both Scully's miraculous reappearance and the little girl's entire existence in stride. Megan had to know who Scully was, and looking at the girl, there was no doubt in his mind that Megan knew who the girl's father was as well. And still, he appeared to be the only one who couldn't function.

He watched as Scully turned and walked out of the room. He'd lost his chance to run up to her and tell her what he'd figured out after he'd thought she was dead. He let her walk out of the room without knowing how much he loved her one more time. And every time it happened, he swore that it wouldn't happen again. And yet, it had. He'd gotten the opportunity to tell her, an opportunity that had evaded him for five years, and he just let her walk away.

Finally gathering enough thoughts to form a plan, he stood up and followed her out of the office. He didn't know where she'd been or what she'd been through, but he wasn't letting her not know this. Even if she still hated him, even if she laughed in his face, she deserved to know because of everything that she'd gone through because of him. He was telling that he loved her, whether she liked it or not.

Unfortunately, the minute he opened the door, he came face to face with someone he'd hadn't even gotten around to thinking that there was something he needed to say to her let alone thinking up exactly what it was that he needed to tell her. He caught Megan's bewildered look, quickly masked by something closely resembling extreme distaste. He looked down at his feet, feeling like slime, although not knowing exactly why. He knew that Megan was rather upset with the latest development of things that she probably thought she should have been told that he felt no pressing reason to tell her. It was a long-standing disagreement between them over exactly what they needed to know about each other and what was really none of their business. What he didn't realize was that Megan was more upset over the fact that he had a daughter than the fact that Scully had reappeared. He had just assumed her anger was over Scully and the feelings that he'd previously refused to admit towards Scully.

Megan had never pressed him to talk about his relationship with Scully, mainly because she didn't really want to know if Mulder had a habit of sleeping with his partners, but also because Scully was dead and she didn't see how a dead woman was going to affect the relationship. She was mad because Mulder had a child, a child that he'd never mentioned, with Scully. Somehow, their having a child classified their relationship in a whole different category. And Megan was rather upset to discover that not only did they have a daughter, but that Scully hadn't actually been dead. Now, she was completely positive that Mulder was a slime because he'd gone through all the trouble, and a convincing lot of trouble it had been, to make Megan believe that Scully was dead for five years, and never mention the fact that he had a daughter either. And she really didn't like the fact that Mulder had nothing to do with the child. That was unforgivable in her book. Even more unforgivable than what he'd done to her. But it didn't really matter, because she wasn't about to forgive him for either one.

He froze, trying to decide which issue was more important: Scully running off or Megan pissed off and armed in front of him. Megan didn't give him a chance to decide. She placed both hands on his chest and forcefully shoved him back into the office. Once the door had closed behind them, she folded her arms over her chest and stared. Upon receiving no response, she dared speaking, hoping her voice wouldn't come out nearly as pissed off as she actually was. She wanted to pretend that she was willing to listen to his explanation.

"What the hell is going on here, Mulder?" they both knew there was no right answer. The only chance he had was to sound really sorry. But she didn't let him speak. "That was her, wasn't it?" Knowing the look on his face could melt the polar ice caps, Megan averted her eyes. She wasn't letting him talk his way out of this. She'd seen the look on his face when he'd seen Scully. She'd seen the look on Scully's face. She might have stood a chance if Scully was dead. But the rules had changed. Again. Scully wasn't dead. She was alive and well and had an adorable little girl. And Megan was mad. She had given in and let herself fall in love with this guy and now she had this odd feeling in the pit of her stomach that was basically chanting 'you're screwed' repeatedly.

Mulder watched the emotions dance across her face. He watched a look of extreme sorrow settle in. Followed by a look he'd never seen on her face before. Defeat. He wanted to say something. But he didn't know what he could say. She was right. They both knew it. He did love Megan. But he loved Scully more. Maybe. Looking at Megan's face, and knowing how much she had to be hurting, all he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her and tell her that everything was going to work out.

So he did. He didn't care if someone walked in and caught them. He didn't care if Skinner and Scully and the girl, whoever the hell she was, all walked back in at that moment. All he knew was that he loved Megan and that she was holding onto him for dear life. And suddenly, the words he had always been afraid to say spilled out of his mouth.

"I love you, Megan."

She wanted to be mad. She wanted to scream and yell and rant and rave until someone hauled her away. She could handle anger. She was used to it. And it was a hell of a lot easier to admit that she was angry than to admit how much it hurt. But when he reached for her, and finally told her what she hadn't known she'd wanted to hear, she couldn't hold out any longer. She hugged him back, tucking her face into his chest, refusing to ever let go. She wasn't giving this up without a fight.

Approximately two seconds after she practically ran out of the office, Missy came bounding up to her. Missy's ability to vanish and reappear at will was beginning to rub Scully the wrong way. She had no particular destination in mind. The plan was generally to get as far away from Mulder as she could. She also needed to find out how long she'd been gone, what had been done about her apartment, and if she still had a job. She vaguely remembered having transferred, but she couldn't remember where she'd ended up. If she was still employed.

And she had to figure out what to do with, and about, Melissa. She had this four-year-old genius tagging along behind her that she had to deal with. And Missy's father didn't even seem to care about her. Or that she even existed. Although from his reaction when he saw them, she couldn't be sure that he'd even noticed Missy.

Had she not been so alarmed that her presence was the cause, she would have been thoroughly amused at the sight of Mulder passing out. Or coming as close as he had. But she hadn't been expecting Mulder, or Skinner, for that matter, to be that shocked to see her. She'd been hoping that Mulder would be happy to see her. It was too much for her to hope that he'd be happy to see Missy. Well, too much to realistically expect.

By the time she'd meandered to Skinner's office, she'd come to one conclusion. Something very, very weird had happened with her disappearance in the first place since no one was even looking for her. And that something very, very weird was going on in Mulder's life that he wouldn't even react to finding out that he had a daughter. She suspected that it had something to do with the woman from the office, but she wasn't sure. And she had more things to worry about than just Mulder's problems. She had a whole slew of her own to deal with now.

She worked up the nerve and managed to ask Skinner point blank how long she'd been gone. And when he told her, she grabbed Missy's hand and stormed out of his office before he could stop her. He had to be joking, although if he was, his sense of humor was even lamer than Mulder's. Even holding hands with the proof that she'd been gone for five years wasn't enough to convince her that she'd really been gone all that long.

Five years was a long time. Too long for her to believe. Had everyone grown tired of looking for her? Had Mulder just decided to move on? Why would he spend twenty years looking for his sister and give up after five years of looking for his partner? A little voice inside her head reminded her that she hadn't been his partner anymore, but she still couldn't believe that he hadn't looked for her. Yes, he'd been mad. But that mad? Writing her existence off was going a little too far. Even for Mulder.

She found herself back out on the street. Looking around, she saw a few differences that she hadn't noticed before- simple things that didn't really matter, like the deli she used to go to for lunch had changed hands. *And you have a daughter*. Realizing that her life was not only radically different, but now entirely nonexistent, she came up with a plan. A short one at that, but it was a start. She was going to her mother's. A very interesting feat to undertake, given that she didn't have a car now, but it was manageable. She hoped.

The invasive ring of the phone ended their embrace. Megan pulled back, embarrassed while Mulder answered the phone. She'd just gotten herself situated back at her desk, where she might not feel quite so uncomfortable, when Mulder hung the phone up and went tearing out of the office. In the silence that followed the noise of his running down the hall, the crash of a mug into the wall behind Mulder's desk seemed slightly out of place.

Upset now because she'd just destroyed her mug by hurling it at someone who'd already left the room, Megan collected her things and stormed out, grumbling about what a sucker she was and what an ass he was. She didn't know where he'd gone running to, and she didn't particularly care, other than his neglecting to even mention that he was leaving. But the absence of an explanation, which she'd grown used to in five years, seemed excessively strange in light of his recent confession. The confession she should have known came at the wrong time. The confession she should have known was meant for someone else.

By the time she'd reached her car, she'd already drafted the first paragraph of her resignation in her head. And by the time she'd gotten home, she'd already reconciled with herself that there was no going back.

It wasn't until she was halfway down the block when she heard his voice calling her. She should have known that he wasn't going to let her walk away from this. She didn't want to stop walking. She didn't want to talk to him. But the options weren't looking real pleasant right then. And she knew that in the past she might have been able to walk to her mother's, but she had no idea what sort of physical condition she was in after her ordeal. And she knew that genius or no, there was no way a four-year-old was walking twenty miles. No chance in hell.

Turning back to look at him, she realized that there weren't really any other options. She could tell by the way his face contorted that he still hadn't come up with anything to say. She watched his glance fall on Missy. She watched a half-disbelieving, half-awed expression appear.

He glanced from Scully to Missy, and then back to Scully. He didn't even stop to question how, he knew this was their daughter. And, unbelievable as he would have thought it to be, he loved her instantly. He dropped to his knees and reached out to the girl, not even knowing her name, and hugged her close to him. He was afraid that she'd cease to exist when he touched her, but she was real. And she called him daddy when she hugged him back. Not wanting to let go, he pulled her up with him when he stood up to look at Scully. He didn't say anything, he just stared into her eyes.

She answered the question that he hadn't yet asked. "Her name's Melissa, but I think she likes Missy." He nodded and looked down at Missy. Her arms were still wrapped around his neck, but she was looking at her mother. Scully couldn't help but smile at the sight. Of course Mulder wouldn't question it. He was the believer. And he was holding the proof. She also could believe how comfortable he looked holding Missy. She couldn't remember ever seeing him look more happy in the whole time she'd known him.

He shifted Missy to the side, holding her with one arm, and used his other hand to cup Scully's cheek. She was alive. She was still here. And from the look on her face, he was pretty certain that she was still his. All thoughts that Megan had even existed flew out of his mind.

This was all that mattered to him.

This was all that ever had.

Megan tapped her foot impatiently while waiting for her printer to warm up. She wanted to get this over with. Somehow, in her imagination, the resignation had seemed much more articulate and just plain better than the actual letter had turned out. Still, it was written and all she had to do was fax it in. After she looked at it and read it over eleven times. She had already decided that she was leaving and wouldn't be entertaining any thoughts to the contrary. She figured that she needed to stay upset long enough to fax the damn thing in and then it would be too late to stop herself. She knew that it would take a matter of seconds to change her mind and continue this charade. But she knew that she'd be lying to herself if she went back to work with him.

She should have known to question why he suddenly realized that he loved her. She should have known to question that he didn't seem concerned at all with the fact that Scully was still alive. But she'd never questioned him in the past. Not really. Not on anything important. She'd only second guessed him when he said he was fine and she could see that he was anything but. His feelings, though, were the one thing she honestly thought he'd figured out. It was clear to everyone else that Yes, he'd been in love with Scully, but she was dead and his life either had to end or had to go on. Megan had thought that he'd chosen to go on. And she'd been dumb enough to think that he'd chosen to go on with her. But he hadn't. Of course not. She was the runner up. When she'd first gotten involved with him, she'd accepted that. But somewhere in the time they'd spent together, he'd done a really good job of making her believe that she was first.

Refusing to allow herself another minute to think it over, she shook her head in an effort to shake off her thoughts. It was no use. She'd be plagued forever in a hopeless universe of what if's. She slapped her hand down on the mouse to deactivate the screen saver and maybe figure out what was taking the printer so damned long. Unfortunately, according to the computer, the letter had already printed out. She glanced at the empty paper tray and then back at the computer. Perhaps it was just confused. She hit the print button, again hoping that it would work this time. And again, the computer pronounced that it had printed the resignation while her printer remained suspiciously silent. That's when she realized that the modem was turned on. She sank down in the chair and slammed her face into the keyboard. Yes, the goal had been to irrevocably ruin her career, but she hadn't actually wanted to fax the resignation in just yet. She hadn't even checked it for typos. Instead of reading it over and trying to not listen to herself as she attempted to talk herself out of it, she'd faxed damned thing to Skinner. Twice. There was nothing she could do now. She lifted her head up and let it drop again, smiling to herself when she heard a ominous crack. Good. She'd broken something. Maybe, if she kept trying, she could break her face open too. Then the broken pieces of her face could join the broken pieces of her heart. Hell, Mulder might even notice a black eye. She knew there was no chance he'd notice her any other way.

If nothing else, she knew when she was beaten. And the damned printer turning against her was the last straw. Sighing heavily, Megan pulled the plug out of the wall, and for good measure, pulled out the cord from the back of the computer. She had one chance. She could pick up the phone at that moment and ask Skinner's secretary to throw out the faxes before Skinner got his hands on them. Then she would still have her job. She'd have lost the man she loved, but she'd have her job. Working next to the man she loved. Maybe she could request a transfer instead.

She rested one hand on the phone and sighed again. She could feel the seconds slipping away. She had less of a chance to intercept the faxes with every second that ticked by. But her hand wouldn't pick up the phone. Maybe it knew something she didn't.

Megan distractedly found her way to the couch and threw herself at it, face down. She'd hated feeling jealous of a woman that was dead. Absolutely hated it. Especially when in quite a few ways, Megan had more than replaced her. There were even times that Megan was half convinced that he'd completely moved on. Well, almost-maybe-kinda-sorta moved on.

She hated being gullible even more than she hated being jealous. And now that Dana Scully was actually alive, Megan felt the jealousy creeping back up, this time unabashedly. She could very easily be hatefully jealous of a completely healthy person who was probably in the arms of the man Megan loved at that very moment. Either that or sitting next to him playing with their child.

She heard a growl emanate from her throat. She really hated the kid. Merely for existing. Megan had gotten used to and almost accepted that she would always be second to Mulder's lost love. But it was more acceptable to her, at least, to not be able to measure up to a memory. But she wasn't a memory anymore. Now she was real. There was an actual living person that she would never be able to compare to in his eyes and it just wasn't going to work. She would not accept that.

She flipped over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She waited for the tears to come, but they didn't. She was upset, she was hurt, but she wasn't crying. It wasn't worth it. And the absolute last thing on his mind was her. She was sure of it and somehow that made it ok not to cry and be extremely upset over it.

What she didn't know was that she was wrong. And she had no idea how wrong. She was on his mind. Even as he sat in his living room watching Scully sleep peacefully on his couch with her arms wrapped around Missy, his mind was on Megan. And on how exactly he was going to explain this, most especially the daughter that he had no recollection of yet was undeniably his, to Megan. And then there was also the problem of explaining Megan to Scully. He wasn't looking forward to either.

He continued to watch Missy as she slept. And the longer he watched, the wider his smile got. Through all the pain of losing Dana, he'd never expected this. He'd never even thought about having a child. He stared at the two of them for what seemed like hours. And then Missy's eyes opened. Two gorgeous blue eyes, that he knew better than he knew his own, staring up at him with all the unadulterated love in the world. The instantaneous love he'd felt for her when he'd realized who she was hadn't faded. Not at all.

And when she grinned at him, he suddenly realized why Scully could never say no to him. He'd never had his own grin used against him. But he had a feeling, as Missy silently wiggled out of her mother's arms and onto his lap, that this wasn't going to be the first time.

And even as he held Missy, Megan was still on his mind.

When Dana woke up, she felt more content than she could ever recall. But also more confused. Everything that had happened to her seem like A barely remembered dream. She'd turned away from Mulder and Missy in her sleep, and as she stared at the well-worn leather of his couch, she almost convinced herself that she'd just fallen asleep on his couch and had dreamed up the whole thing. But as she woke up, she recognized the disconcerting feeling that her body didn't actually belong to her. It felt like someone else had been using it for a while. And she didn't like that.

Slowly, she twisted around to face the room and pitifully attempted to hold onto her hope that it had just been a dream. But the most beautiful sight in the world greeted her. And as welcome as it was, it shattered her hope completely. Mulder was still leaning against the chair next to her, exactly how he had been when she'd fallen asleep. And her daughter, their daughter, was curled up against his chest, with her tiny hands clinging to his shirt even in her sleep. She'd pressed her face into the collar of his shirt and he was resting his chin on the top of her head. It was the cutest, most endearing thing she'd ever seen.

But it was a metaphorical dose of ice water to her face. This girl existed, how exactly she had no idea, but she did. And their daughter was four years old. She'd been gone for years this time. She'd been so upset over having lost three months, and now she had to deal with having lost years. The most painful aspect of that, she reluctantly admitted to herself, was that she'd been gone for years and he'd moved on. She knew he hadn't forgotten about her, or stopped loving her, but he'd moved on. He'd never admitted to loving her in the first place and she'd never admitted to loving him either, but she still felt betrayed. She couldn't have honestly expected him to stop living, or even working, really but, realistic was never a word she used in her expectations. This was hard to accept.

She was having trouble reconciling the way he'd reacted to her, the love she'd seen in his eyes when he'd understood who Missy was, the way he was holding Missy while he was sleeping, and the way he'd sat there watching them sleep until he fell asleep himself with the way he'd put his arm around the woman in the office. It had seemed familiar to both Mulder and the woman. More familiar than it had ever seemed when Mulder touched her. She felt her chin start to tremble as she thought about it. She understood the way he'd reacted finally. He was in love with that other woman. With her replacement. The more she thought about it, though, the less she could blame him. It wasn't that she couldn't understand it. It just seemed more appropriate to her somehow that he'd be more likely to stop living completely than he would be to fall in love with his new partner. But as easy as it would be for her to deny it totally, she'd seen the way that woman had reacted to her. She'd seen how everyone present had reacted to her. There was something going on there. She knew that. And so did everyone else.

She felt torn over everything. Especially what her mere presence was going to do to him. He had a girlfriend. There was nothing she could do about that. But now he had a daughter and by all appearances, he wanted something to do with her. She didn't want to have to make the choice to keep Missy away from her father. She didn't want to force him to decide between the other woman and herself. That wasn't fair. And she was afraid she'd lose.

She continued to lay there and think for quite a while. Even as Dana smiled at Missy, she felt the fear run through her. She knew nothing about her. Nothing. And Mulder hadn't seemed to know anything either, But Missy knew who her parents were and didn't seem at all phased by her parents not knowing who she was. It bothered Dana. She didn't understand how Missy could recognize Mulder instantly as her father even though, to her knowledge, and apparently Mulder's as well, they had never met.

Dana wanted to know if she'd been with Missy for the whole five years and didn't remember it or if Missy had just recently met her. And then there was always the question of how Missy had come into being in the first place. She'd never slept with Mulder, at least not that she remembered. And the last time she could remember being with him, which seemed to her to have been just the night before, he'd done nothing more than hold her. There was always the chance that something had happened that she didn't remember, but her instincts kept whispering that there was a much more sinister plot.

Shivers ran through her. She wanted to talk to someone. Not Mulder. Someone who would listen to her. He mom. She quietly got up and reached for the phone, but then she thought better of it an aimed for the phone in his bedroom. She needed to talk without being overheard.

Megan continued to stare at the ceiling for an interminably long time. There was no chance she could intercept the fax. At least the computer had saved her the trouble of having to decide whether or not to send it. Just as she began to wonder how long it would take for Skinner to call, the phone rang. She wanted to ignore it. Aresignation was relatively simple to understand, it wasn't like she should have to explain it to him. Maybe he just wanted to grind the knife a little deeper.

Megan gave in and picked up the phone. At the last minute, it occurred to her that it might not be Skinner, but it was too late to not answer. She was almost thankful to hear Skinner's controlled anger on the other end of the phone.

"What the hell is this, Megan?"

He was furious. At her. She didn't want to talk to anyone, not after the rather upsetting turn of events that day. "Gee, Sir, I don't know. Since I'm not there, I can't really help you." Megan could already feel the guilt welling up. She was preparing for the 'I'm disappointed in you' speech. And she could imagine Mulder's face when Skinner told him that she wasn't coming back. But she couldn't keep working with him. That just couldn't happen.

"Megan, you know exactly what I'm talking about," he did have a point there. "And there's no 'd' in resignation."

Megan rolled her eyes. Of course there had to be typos. Just so she could look a little more stupid. "Well, since you obviously read it, I don't see any need to explain it further. I believe the word resignation to be self-explanatory." Megan was amazed by how calm her voice sounded. She wanted to scream at the world in general over her miserable life in particular, but her voice came out in its normal tone, giving no indication of the irate fit she'd been in when she'd written the letter.

"Is this about Scully?" the man was awfully dense at times.

"Absolutely." She was beginning to realize exactly how not willing he was to give up without a fight.

"When Agent Scully," he paused seemingly searching for the right word that didn't actually exist, "died." Another pause. That was definitely not the right word. "Agent Scully was no longer with the X-Files. There's no reason why you would have to leave."

She smiled to herself, finally able to drop the respectful attitude she'd always been forced to keep around Skinner. "Yeah, right. Would you want to come between them?" she took his sigh to mean he admitted she was right. He remained silent for so long that she began to think she was supposed to say something.

"Megan, I realize Agent Scully's retunr was unexpected. She is no longer an active agent and she will have to requalify before she can return. Even then, I would have serious reservations about reassigning her to The X-Files. Your job is secure."

Wasn't she making herself clear? Did the definition of resignation change without her noticing? "I don't think you understand. I quit. I don't want to be there. I don't want to be involved. I don't want to be around either of them anymore. I quit, ok?" Once she was finished, she realized she might have gotten a little carried away. She was answered by more silence which she decided meant that either he was having another conversation or that he was discussing it with someone else. She felt paranoia seize her momentarily, before she noticed she could hear noises from the other end of the phone. He probably just didn't know what to say.

"Megan, I'd really like you to think about this, maybe talk to Mulder. I don't think quitting will do you any good."

"Talk to Mulder? Are you out of your mind? I can't." She squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip. Had she really just snapped at her boss? She reminded herself that he was her former boss, but she didn't feel any better. She needed to keep herself calm and ignore the emotions that were finally surfacing.

"Megan, why do I have this odd feeling that this involves a lot more than Scully wanting her job back?"

She wanted to ask why she felt like her father was grilling her about breaking curfew. She didn't. "I don't think I should have to give any more reasons than the ones I already gave." And she was thoroughly afraid of where the conversation was going.

"I think the reasons you stated in your letter have nothing to do with why you're leaving. What's really going on here?"

She hated the feeling that she was letting him down. But she knew telling him the truth wouldn't make the conversation any easier. He was trying to get her to stay, that much she knew. He had no idea how impossible staying would be. Maybe she could just continue to be deliberately evasive until he got bored and found someone else to torment. "Are you asking me to admit to lying?"

"Are you amitting to having lied?" Megan began to seriously believe Skinner had had the exact same conversation before. She felt her blood run cold. He probably had the exact same conversation with Mulder. That must have been what took so long for him to call her. And Mulder had probably told. What did he have to lose?

She stood up and slammed her head into the nearest wall. Skinner wasn't going to hang up until she broke. And although it normally would have taken a lot more time than Skinner had to get Megan to break, she wasn't up to her usual antics.

"OK, so maybe I lied about why I'm quitting. What are you going to do, fire me?" she could picture the crease in his forehead while he tried to come up with an answer. She took advantage of his silence to ask him what she desperately wanted to know. "Have you already spoken with Agent Mulder about my resignation? Is that why you've decided I'm no longer trustworthy?"

She heard another sigh. Maybe she could outlast him. "Megan, I'm not implying that you're not trustworthy. I just want to know what's going on. Yesterday, nothing could have split you two up. I think I'm entitled to an honest answer."

"With all due respect, the circumstances today are not the same as they were yesterday and I think I'm entitled to my privacy. Besides, he'd rather be with her. I have no desire to work with someone who'd rather be working with someone else."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you met Mulder, he wanted to be working with someone else."

Damn it, score another point for Skinner. "Yeah, but she was dead. It was different."

"How so?" Megan had grown painfully aware that he wouldn't be satisfied with anything short of a full report, complete with diagrams and a laser pointer.

"Before I answer that, I think you should think hard about whether or not you really want the answer." She cringed, imagining for just a moment how terribly inappropriate her threats would be should he actually convince her to stay. But she knew she could never ever face Mulder again, never admit her defeat, never return to work in a building where she might run into him.

"Megan." There was a distinct growl to the word that made her skin crawl.

"Are you sure?" she got another growl and momentarily enjoyed having regained control of the conversation. But that modicum of control wasn't enough to outweight the shear torture of having to tell him. She knew he didn't really want to know. She knew that once she told him, he would realize how much he didn't want to know. Unfortunately, he wasn't willing to take her word for it. "OK, just remember that

You're the one who wanted to know." She gulped. Deciding to tell him and actually telling him were two entirely different issues. "Sir, with the return of Agent Scully and her child, I firmly believe that the relationship I share with Agent Mulder witll become extremely awkward. Agent Scully, whether or not she wants or can get her job back, will effectively hinder, if not sever, both of the relationships I have with Agent Mulder." She figured telling Skinner about how much Mulder had hurt her would be excessive.

"Both relatioships, Megan? What the hell does that mean?"

She smirked. He either really wanted to torture her or he was really really stupid. "Well, Sir, the, um, professional relationship and the uh," she cleared her throat, "the, well, distinctly unprofessional one."

Dead silence. From Skinner. Now there was a feat beyond her wildest dreams. Megan amazed herself sometimes. Not only had she managed to keep their relationship secret for years, but she'd actually told her boss what they'd been keeping from him. She waited for him to recover, but as the silence drug on, she realized he had probably passed out and was unconscious on the floor of his office. The longer the silence went on, the more she wanted to laugh.

"Sir?" she had no reason to call him 'Sir' anymore, but Walter didn't sound right to her. Neither did Skinner or Mr. Skinner or Assistant Director Skinner. Maybe she ought to try Wally. Megan pulled the phone away from her face and smothered her laughter in a pillow. She could only imagine his response to her saying 'Hey, Wally, I'm sleeping with my partner, and now that his girlfriend and love of his life is back, I feel like I'm in the way."

Once she'd regained controll, she put the phone back to her ear. Just in time to hear his response. "This isn't even remotely funny Agent Mcbride." Oh, no, she was really in trouble. But then, she'd just quit. No, she wasn't in trouble.

"Actually, Sir," or Wally, "As per earlier in this discussion, it's ex-Agent Mcbride, or Miss Mcbride, or Megan, which I prefer, by the way, and I happen to be under a considerable amount of strees, which leads me to the conclusion that the vast majority of this conversation is hysterically funny." So there.

"Are you finished?" he used the quippy I'm-not-listening tone that made her skin crawl. And made her angry. Very very angry.

"No, actually, I'm not. I quit, get it? You can't bully be into not quitting. Is there anything else you want or can I please hang up now?"

"Yes, there is something else." His tone was much more friendly and Megan could tell by the sound of it that he hadn't meant to offend her. He was just used to bullying people.

"Then what the hell is it?" Sheesh, he was dragging it out as far as he could.

"Megan, I would really appreciate it if you were to take a few days to reconsider. I can arrange a transfer to another section or location easily," he paused for a moment. "I'd hate to lose you, Meg, you're one of the few who know what you're doing out there."

Guilt. boy, did he know how to sling it around. "I'm not sure if that's-"

"Great, I'll talk to you next week." With that, he disconnected the phone.

Megan dropped the phone on the cradle and stared at herself in the mirror. She was trying to imagine how she would look with 'sucker' tattooed across her face. After a few minutes, she gave up, opting to stare at the TV instead. She flipped channels until she stumbled across the Weather Channel. She watched the national forecast with unexpected interest. California did have nice weather this time of year...

Mulder woke up gradually, not entirely sure how much of what he remembered was a dream. He looked at the couch where he remembered seeing Scully asleep. The couch was empty. His lap, where he remembered seeing Missy asleep, was also empty. He checked his watch. Four o'clock on a Thursday afternoon seemed in keeping with the dream, but nothing else did, and his memory wasn't appearing to be accurate. His shoulders dropped and he tried to come up with another, more plausible reason why he wouldn't be at work. Maybe Megan knew. Mulder stood up, ignoring his muscles' complaints about sleeping in a sitting position on a hardwood floor.

He walked to his bedroom, still amazed by the clarity and detail of his dream and still appalled at the fact that it had only been a dream. He pushed open the door to his bedroom, so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn't notice the woman sprawled across his bed talking quietly into the phone. Until he heard an oddly familiar squeal of delight. Missy made an attempt to run toward him, momentarily forgetting that her hair was twisted in her mother's fingers.

"Owwww!" Missy was certainly good at that whole shrieking thing. Scully shushed her, trying to salvage the braid she was in the middle of. With both of her hands in Missy's hair and holding the phone between her ear and her shoulder, Scully hadn't noticed when Mulder walked in.

"Daddy's sleeping, Missy." She tried to suppress the thrill that ran through her at the thought by using an indignant voice when her mother inquired about where she was and with whom. Missy made a noise to demonstrate her unhappiness with having to get her hair braided.

When Mulder answered, Scully was so startled that she dropped the phone and let go of Missy's hair. "No, Daddy's not sleeping." While Scully scrambled for the phone, Missy hurled herself at Mulder. And before Scully got the chance to grab Missy and finish the braid, Mulder lifted Missy up and turned her upside down. Missy's squeal reflected her approval, Scully's reflected her disapproval. Scully said nothing, assuming the look on her face was enough to get Mulder to release Missy. But Mulder was busy shaking Missy until she was laughed.

"Mulder, put her down, you're going to hurt her." Scully gave up on talking to her mother any longer and replaced the phone in it's cradle. Her full attention was directed at the frighteningly immature pair before her.

"He's" giggle "not" giggle giggle "hurting me, Mommy." More giggles. Scully tried to glare at Mulder, but he was too happy and having too much fun for her to rain on his parade. Nonetheless, he was well aware that Scully was worried and he conceded by dropping Missy onto the bed and tickling her instead.

He caught sight of Scully's face, her completely unamused face, and stopped the tickling immediately. But he didn't realized that, although her face didn't reflect it, she loved watching him play with Missy. And she loved the fact that he so obviously loved his daughter. The moment her expression softened, Mulder brought his hand to her face, conveying in action what he couldn't in words.

He was just so damn happy that she was back. He had a million questions he wanted to ask and a million things he wanted to tell her, but all he could do was look at her and smile. She was back. She loved him. And he had a beautiful little girl that loved him even though she'd just met him. He watched as Scully turned away from him and started braiding Missy's hair again. It had to be the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen.

He knew the lump in is throat would prevent him from using his normal voice, so he whispered instead, relishing the moment when Scully leaned closer to him in order to hear him. "When I woke up and you weren't there, I thought I'd dreamt everything."

"More like a nightmare, Mulder" She titled her head to indicate that she was talking about Missy. The Missy who had proceeded to dismantle the phone while her parents weren't looking.

Mulder picked up the pieces of the former phone and grimaced. "Yeah, but it's a cute nightmare," he grinned at Scully and then stared at Missy in awe before he looked back at Scully. "As for you, Dana," he put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her slightly in a semi-hug, "As for you, the nightmare is over."

A crash coming from the other side of the room reminded that Missy, their devilish daughter with the angelic face, apparently needed to be under constant surveillance.

"Mulder, we have to child-proof your apartment. Now."

Mulder just smiled smugly and nodded. He would have happily agreed to a root canal right then. As far as he was concerned, his life was going back to normal. Well, not normal, per se, but he didn't really care as long as he was with Scully. Even after five years of proof otherwise, he didn't think he could survive another day without her.

Megan looked down at the ticket in her hand. Then she looked at the envelope in the other. With a few extra days to think about it, she decided that quitting wouldn't help her out. A change of scenery would. She had managed to call Skinner back and talk him into making the bureau pay for her moving expenses. The closer it got to when she was leaving, the more excited she grew. Megan was looking forward to her move.

But before she could begin her new adventure, she had to end the last one.

She hadn't gone near the FBI building or his apartment. She'd ignored the phone when it rang and didn't answer the door for fear it was Mulder. It wasn't that she didn't care about him or that she wanted to hurt him. She needed to think everything through and decide what was better for her, not for him. Once she'd made her decision, she still couldn't talk to him. So she'd written him a letter, several pages long, detailing all the things she'd completely forget if she tried to tell him good-bye in person. She had yet to mail the letter. It was the last tie she had to cut and the hardest by far.

Megan heard her plane being announced and knew her time was up. Her life was moving on around her and didn't particularly care if she was coming along. She took a deep breath and started walked towards her plane, dropping the letter in the trash on her way. Let him wonder. She would never say good-bye. He'd figure out she had left and could find her easily if he wanted to. But she would never ever say good-bye. Never.

Read More Like This

Write One Like This

Non-Canon Kids list

A Very Full House Challenge