TITLE: Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi
AUTHOR: MustangSally/Rivka T
CLASSIFICATION: XAR-NC-17
SPOILER WARNING: None
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Gossamer, Annex, others with permission 

Summary: Without your family, what have you got? As Mulder attempts to deal with the mundane horrors of suburban life, his fragile security is threatened by the return of a less-than-savory relative. It's Father Knows Best meets Seven as the former X-Files partners reunite. (XAR-NC-17, for those of you who must classify.)

Warnings:
"This segment contains moments of affection/happiness unusual for the series." According to the surgeon general, women should not read this product during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects. Reading this product impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery and may cause sleeplessness and irritability. Do not use in or near eyes. Keep this and all other NC-17 fan fiction out of reach of children.  Do not read this product if you have a severe reaction to extreme situations or an aversion to drool. Store at room temperature and avoid excessive heat.  Do not use if seal is missing or broken.  This has *not* been sanitized for your protection.

For new moms Parrotfish (Aaron and Paul), and Lynsa (Josie).  This drool's for you.

'VIX TE AGNOVI' means "I hardly recognized you."

Are you lonesome tonight,
do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day
When I kissed you and called you sweetheart?
Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?


Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi  1/20
Thou best know'st
What torment I did find thee in; thy groans
Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts
Of ever-angry hearts.


I'd already been through my bag three times, the rest of the room twice and I was about to turn the bag inside out when Zippy came through the connecting door.

Ropes of rain lashed against the windows. It was a vicious spring, wild and storm-wracked, enough to make me believe that global warming was already affecting climate patterns.  Or maybe the spring wasn't any different from any other spring; maybe I was noticing it for the first time.  Maybe I was losing my mind.

"Looking for something?" Zippy asked blithely. Oh no, the storm wasn't making *him* jumpy, not in the slightest.

"Yes," I snapped.

"What is it?"

"It's personal."

"Not one of those female things, is it?"

I bared my fangs and he smiled. "Could it be...this?" He brought his hand from behind his back and I snatched the stuffed animal away from him. I've had lots of practice with defensive glares and I gave him a pretty good one.

Thumper looked at him accusingly too.

"Look, Dana, I've spent enough nights on the other side of the wall from you, listening to you...well, I don't know if you're asleep or awake but frankly I don't care. That bunny is not going to solve your problems no matter how tightly you hold onto it."

I twisted the bunny in my hands, pressing it into my stomach so that its plastic nose stabbed into me, and I was painfully aware of how pitiful I looked. "What do you want me to do? Leave the thirty thousandth message on his machine? Call Emerson and beg him to intervene? Go to court and try to explain to the judge why I left the child I'd just gotten custody of halfway across the continent?"

"Let's try D, none of the above. The case is closed, the bad guy is a puddle of goo--and let's not even start on that one, all right?  Our flight leaves tomorrow morning. Talk to him.  *Go* there, Dana, I know you've got the address, you must have written it a hundred times by now. It's a lot harder to say no in person."

"You don't understand."

"That he can't forgive you for being human? For being hurt and used and fed up?"

"I don't need you to defend or justify my actions. I accept them. Mulder understands them."

Zippy groaned and raised his hands. "Fine. You tell yourself whatever you have to. But you need to do something, because I don't think my buying earplugs will really solve the problem."

The thunder growled elemental agreement.

****

There were lots of things that I never thought I would do. I never thought that I would climb Mt. Everest, I never thought that I would ever eat zucchini, I never thought I would wear a tie to work every day, I never thought that I would know the difference between large and small cap stock, I never thought that I would sell out and let the piercings in my ear fill in with scar tissue, and I never thought that I would spend a beautiful Friday afternoon in March waiting in a pediatrician's office.  Miranda, however, thought this was a good thing and sat upright in my lap, looking around at the other babies and toddlers raising hell with their mothers.  I was the only male in the room tall enough to see over the reception counter.

Humming to herself in untranslatable Miranda-ese, she sat on my lap with the tip of my tie stuffed in her mouth and kicked her feet.  The tie, as usual, was infinitely preferable to the pacifier I had jammed in my jacket pocket when her Highness found it wanting.  Unquestionably, she was the most intelligent and the most beautiful child in there.  The mothers looked at us with dismay at her aura of self-possession and poise, or maybe it was the shirt Warwick had put on her that morning.  Tie-dye with little dancing Grateful Dead bears he picked up on his yearly pilgrimage to San Francisco.  Hell, I thought it was acceptable and what else would a modern kid wear with overalls anyway?  At least she wasn't wearing the 'legalize it!' one Frohike had given her.
 
"Miranda Scully?" the assistant asked. 

I took my progeny over to the counter and waited.  The woman looked up at my tie-sucking princess and me and smiled an inane smile.

"Mr. Scully?" she asked. 

"No, Mr. Mulder," I corrected her and nodded down at Miranda, "this is *Miss* Scully, and Dr. Scully will not be joining us."

Damn straight she wouldn't be joining us until Miranda was old enough to vote.  Hell, I last saw Scully in early December, just after she'd abandoned Miranda out in Montana to my newly discovered twin Emerson. Emerson was a nice guy but I had begun to imagine something different for my life than fruitless quests and unending danger. I threw a temper tantrum and got on a plane to get my daughter. When I got back, I'd transferred to Quantico -- and that last meeting between us didn't really count, because I wouldn't look at her while armed. Now it was spring, and I was getting used to my new life.  Actually, things were shaping up really well. There was a possibility that I was happy.

The scores hadn't come in from the East German judge yet. 

The exam was a routine well-baby visit and Miranda looked imperiously at the doctor as she undressed her, examined her chubby little limbs and kept up a running patter of questions directed at both Miranda and myself.
 
"You're getting to be a big pumpkin, aren't you?"
 
The look Miranda gave Dr. Byrne was vintage Scully.  The translation was something like 'I beg your pardon, but my father and nanny speak to me in an adult fashion, not patronizing me with baby-talk.'

"I was wondering about her size. . . " I began.

"What about it?"

"She's two pounds heavier and four inches longer than the average for her age, and she was premature."

"The operative word is average, Mr. Mulder.  She's just on the high end of the curve."

"So she's a moose.  A Mooselet."

"Basically.  And you are an obsessive first-time parent with too many facts and figures from the million childcare books out there."
 
Had this woman been looking at my bookshelf?  

"She's happy and healthy.  Don't worry about anything.  What about you?"

I busied myself in stuffing my daughter's rubbery little limbs back into her clothes.  Given a choice she'd prefer to be nude all the time.  Sometimes on lazy nights I'd watch television on the sofa with her on a towel and me in my shorts.  I hoped this wasn't going to encourage deviancy in her adult years because she had watched the Redskins play while she was in the buff.

"What about me?" I asked.
   
"It's not easy being a single parent, gender roles notwithstanding.  You're separated from your wife, right?"

"She wasn't my wife."

"That makes the issues more complex, doesn't it?" Dr. Byrne put her hands in the pockets of her lab coat and leaned against the exam table and watched me try to ease Miranda's flailing dinner-roll feet into her sneakers.

"Dr. Byrne, I appreciate your concern for Miranda and myself, but I have a degree in abnormal psychology from Oxford and I'm administrative Agent In Charge of the Investigative Support Unit at the FBI section of Quantico.  I have seen things that make Silence of the Lambs look like The Cat in the Hat.  My issues are *nothing* like those of the average single parent."

I did stop before I pointed out that I had recently reviewed a case file about an infant of Miranda's age who had been reduced to hamburger after being raped by her stepfather.
 
"So you think that you don't need support?"

"I wouldn't know what it was like," I snapped the shoulder straps of her overalls over Miranda's hot little shoulders and sat her upright.  She gave me a gummy smirk and grabbed my already-wet tie and popped it back into her mouth.

"Doctor, we're fine."

****

The playground was deserted, not surprising because the moon was a hangnail in the sky and good little children were home in bed. Swings pulsed gently in the cool spring breeze and the slides lolled like outstretched tongues.

Everything was covered in green light, a layer of gelatin over the world. I moved forward, wafting like a ghost across the hopscotch circles and four-square boxes chalked onto the black concrete.

The green-tinged white shoes stood out starkly against the wood chips of the jungle gym area. I bent to look into the wooden box of the play structure, big enough for two very friendly eight-year-olds, hemmed in by ladders and ropes and other childish things.

The woman's body draped limply over the rough wooden floorboards. A runnel of dried blood ran along the long index finger of her right hand and colored her nail tarry black. Her neck was thrown back and I could see the livid bruises.

I didn't have to touch her to know that she'd been strangled.

There was a sound, feet slipping on damp woodchips. I turned and looked into a face that hadn't been far from my consciousness for years. Mulder's face was as immobile as a death mask as he reached for me.

He smiled as I began to scream.

Zippy's hand over my mouth and the harsh light of the motel room lamp brought me awake. He shushed and pushed at me until I managed to get my mind to run my nerves rather than my spinal cord.  When I regained control, I sat up and his hand fell away. He looked at me like a jigsaw puzzle whose picture he hadn't quite figured out. There were circles under his eyes that hadn't been there when I'd met him.  I remembered the feelings too well, of being caught up in someone else's undertow and being sucked below the surface, while still struggling against the currents.

"Are you going to tell me about this one?"

I shook my head and got off the bed, moving past him to my laptop on the table at the other end of the room. He watched as I booted up and logged into the FBI server and then the NCIC database.

He followed and watched over my shoulder as I entered the search pattern I wanted. Within minutes, the results returned, no exact matches but four hits worth looking at. Then I read the descriptions of the hits and understood.

"What is it?" he asked, as impatient as I'd been six years ago.

I tilted the screen so he could see it better.

"George Naxos lived," I said. "And he's working his way from Texas to DC."

****

I had barely managed to extract Miranda from the station wagon when my cellphone shrieked. I ignored it as I kicked the door shut. It was a nice car, really, a sporty silver gray and green Outback with a darker gray plush interior, and its new-car smell had lasted an entire five hours, before the Mooselet spit up all over the back seat. For the first time. Now the plush was flattened in places from various cleanup attempts, successful and not, the interior was strewn with Miranda's traveling toys (it being more practical just to have another set of toys rather than move them from car to house with the requisite forklift), and it smelled, more or less, like dirty feet.  The child safety seat in the back was a device of torture to the Mooselet. She resisted being put in the seat, whined at stop signs and red lights. There must been a genetic tendency for high speed in the Scully family somewhere.  As far as Miranda was concerned, when one was in the car one should *go* and not wait for anything.  If I didn't get her out quickly enough at the end of the journey she would begin to fuss, and if that didn't speed matters up enough, she set up howling as though I were pulling off her arms and legs. 

I could see how much fun I was going to have teaching her how to drive.

Miranda set up a counterpoint wailing to the phone that lasted beyond the point at which the voice mail took over. We did a couple of trips around the house while she cried herself out. I hated to hand her over to Warwick when she was crying, because it always made me feel like a big insensitive clod. The fact that he called me a big insensitive clod when I did so might have had some relation to my feelings.

While I was walking, I caught a glimpse of the stray cat we'd been feeding on and off for the past few months. We set out cans of tuna fish and she'd dart by, picking at fragments, as long as we stayed inside or across the yard from her.  A flash of sulfur yellow eyes indicated that she had registered my presence. The cat was black, skinnier than her own shadow, and very, very cautious. I was beginning to come to the conclusion that she was ninety percent sure that she didn't want to be tamed or rescued, but the ten-percent uncertainty led her to tease.

What did that remind me of?

Or, more importantly, who?

When Miranda was quiescent at last, I headed into the house. Warwick had made brownies and the house smelled like a chocolate factory. He came out of the kitchen and gave me a knowing look.

"Your old boss wants to talk to you. Real bad. He's called four times in the last hour."

I handed him the baby and he handed me a brownie.  I sighed and headed for my study, hoping that the brownie didn't contain any controlled substances.

Skinner, unsurprisingly, was still in his office. 

"I wanted to let you know," he said as soon as I said my name, "that there has been a request to take a set of ISU cases out of ISU jurisdiction for investigation by another unit."

"And you want me to approve it? I can do that, but can it wait--"

"That unit is the X Files."

Fuck, fuck, and triple fuck.

"What are the cases?" I asked, clutching the phone like a drowning man tugging at a fragment of timber.

He rattled off a barrage of numbers, "and one new enough that it doesn't have a case number yet; the locals haven't filled out the forms. Five murders, spread throughout the Southeast and moving upwards. Agent Scully" his pause could have been measured in microseconds, or I could have been imagining it, "said that it related to an open X File."

"And she asked you to be the go-between, passing our notes like in grade school? I thought she was--"

Whatever I thought was lost to history when he grunted like a man ducking incoming fire. "She wants to speak to you about the cases. I thought you might like some advance notice."

I blinked like a stunned steer. "I'll...read up on the cases," I said breathlessly, and hung up.

Then I remembered that I'd have some difficulty with that. The computer wasn't working too well as Miranda had spilled twelve ounces of apple juice into the keyboard. I wasn't too upset about it because too much apple juice is very bad for a growing child's health--they fill up on it and don't eat enough that's nutritious. The computer shop was sending a new keyboard, but for the moment I was computerless; Warwick's Little Mermaid screen savers made me seasick, even if he would have let me touch his jury-rigged monstrosity. Wasn't it Bill Gates who'd said that 640K of memory should be enough for anyone?

The end result was that I'd have to go to the office to look up the case files, and then Scully would probably show up here and find Miranda. Not that I was expecting some sort of Baby M smuggling scenario, but what if she decided she liked being a mom again?

What if she didn't?

I'd have to wing it, and Scully's devastating if you're not ready for her. And often when you are. I hear that hurricanes are like that too.


Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 2/20
We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again
(And by that destiny) to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.


All things considered, the meeting went better than I'd thought. 

We rang the doorbell, which was answered by an Asian man about half a foot taller than I am. He had a towel thrown over his shoulder and a Pet Shop Boys concert T-shirt that looked like it had seen better days, probably better discos.

"Sir? I'm Special Agent Dana Scully and this is Special Agent Michael Zipprelli, we're looking for Agent Mulder." When I said my name he gave me a once-over that had nothing to do with my feminine attributes. I guess he was surprised that I only had one head.

"I'm Warwick Chang," he said and didn't offer his hand. "Why don't you come in, I'll get Mulder."

We came through the foyer and entered a lovely sunny family room. Miranda's fingerprints were literally everywhere, along with piles of videocassette tapes out of their boxes--Disney, I was relieved to see when I craned my neck discreetly--and teething rings and one of those strange stacking toys whose purpose is to teach children that big is bigger than little. 

"She doesn't like that one," Mulder said and I spun, almost falling over when my foot hit a pile of alphabet blocks. "She thinks it's condescending, did you know that knowledge of basic physics and spatial relations appears to be hardwired into babies' brains? Of course you did, I forgot to whom I was speaking."

His voice was low and flat as the Dust Bowl.

He gestured at the couch, which was covered in a loud geometric pattern that couldn't have shown any spills that weren't glowing radioactive. "Sit down, it's not as nice as the old one but, well, you can guess."

I picked my way to the couch and sat next to Zippy, who gave my hand a furtive squeeze as Mulder looked straight through my head.

I licked my lips and met his eyes. "We're here about a case."

"Of course," he repeated, with disinterest that should not have made my ribcage close around my heart like a hand wringing a bird's neck. "The one you want to take from ICU."

"It's more than that," I said. "It's George Naxos."

The first emotion he'd shown crossed his face--horror and fear marbled in equal measure. "You've got to be kidding," he said when he'd managed to swallow the expression, "you know you don't ever need an excuse to visit."

I swear to God I would have hit him if Zippy's arm hadn't kept me down on the couch.

My partner -- Zippy -- began to talk, hoping vainly to keep us on-topic. "I think you'd better take a look at what we've got. You might be in danger, if he's figured out the connection."

Mulder's gaze broke and he looked over my shoulder, at the dinner table set for two (and a half, counting the high chair). "So tell me what you think dear George has been up to lately. I haven't seen any graveyard murders recently."

"He's not leaving them in graveyards. He's switched to playgrounds."

The muscles in his cheeks jumped as he processed this.

"So you think that now he knows--now that I know--my sister's not dead he's decided playgrounds are more his style?" I heard my own incredulousness in his voice and didn't like how it tasted.

I folded my hands on my lap. "I haven't ruled anything out. You yourself suggested that there was some sort of connection between his MO and your sister's abduction."

"Let me ask you, was my leaving all it took for you to become a believer? Because you've never been this gullible before. If I'm hearing you right, you now want me to believe that I'm not a serial killer because I projected my childhood trauma on someone who was one."

"I don't want or need you to believe anything, Mulder. This isn't your investigation, I take full responsibility. But I do want you to be concerned for your own safety." And that of your daughter, I added to myself. 

My daughter.

Damn.

"Pardon my incredulity, but I'm finding it a little hard to deal with the new Dana Scully. What, the position of Believer opened up and you saw it as a good career move? Your instincts aren't serving you very well in that regard, though I do congratulate you on the promotion to AIC, sorry I didn't send a card."

Mulder's anger was as familiar and comforting as a cup of hot chocolate. It helped me focus. "It's possible that George heard or read something while he was being held at Roush that enabled him to make the connection, he's nearly as smart as you are," I said heavily.

"Dana," Zippy warned, "you should tell him."

I looked down at the briefcase in my lap, my careful little presentation that I'd written up for Skinner and Mulder tucked inside, and shifted in my seat.

"What?" Distrust, sharp as the bread knife I used to cut open organs. It burned like acid against my skin; I thought I'd leave the house with a disfigured face to match the soul inside.

"I didn't just...figure this out," I admitted. "I've been having...disturbing dreams. Last night I dreamt about George's fifth murder."

A flash of interest from Mulder. Despite himself, despite me, he couldn't resist a story with that certain paranormal bouquet. "And?"

"And that murder was logged into the NCIC database five hours ago--twelve hours after I dreamt the scene."

A revenant of the old chiding smile crossed his face like fog or cobwebs. "A question we haven't learned how to ask yet?"

"Maybe." Zippy twitched beside me. I knew he didn't like being left out of our in-jokes. I'd explain later, possibly.

****

Warwick was guarding the Mooselet, down in his lair away from the combat zone. Scully still hadn't asked to see her, though I noted with clinical detachment her eyes searching out every sign of a baby's presence, every stain and primary-colored toy and Handi-Wipe that hadn't quite found its way to the trash can yet.

She excused herself while I read the file she'd put together and Zippy watched me like I was his latest suspect.

After five minutes I raised my head. "She never took this long in the bathroom when she was with me, aren't you letting her take breaks?"

Zippy stared at me, practically bristling. "I don't know, why don't you go ask her?"

"You sound like you don't really mean that," I observed.

"I think she needs you in her life like the President needs another horny intern. But she's hurting and you should talk to her."

I sighed. "And you can't soothe the savage Scully?"

"There's no need to be an asshole about this, Spooky."

"Fuck you, Zip."

Scully was in our  (and I mean Miranda and my) room, looking not at the empty bed but at the empty crib. Her hands, clutching the railing, were as white as the low-gloss nontoxic paint on the crib. Miranda actually had a room of her own but Warwick and I were in the process of redecorating it in a Disney theme and the Mooselet and I were sharing quarters until the toxins from the new paint and carpet had dissipated.

Scully's eyes were fixed on the wall above the crib, where I'd taped up all the postcards she'd sent. I think there was one for every airport they visited and every town. I hadn't acknowledged a single one but I had spent many nights pointing out landmarks to Miranda and making up stories about what the X File might have been. She didn't write anything on the back, you see, only the date and her initials.

"Kind of pathetic, isn't it?" I asked, "but at least I'll have something to show her when she's twelve and wants to know what her Mom was like.  'Oh Miranda, she cared about you enough to send you postcards, but not enough to actually write anything'.  You could have at least put the fucking case numbers on them so I could let her read the field journals."

"Skinner would have given you the case files if you'd asked."

"Let's not drag Walter the Terrible into our little domestic dispute, please," I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to stare her down.

My legs were shaking like the green Jell-O that Miranda liked so much.  I wanted to hate her, I really did, and I wanted to group her with the rest of the predatory females that have plagued my life.  I wanted to rip her away from the crib, wrench her head back in a flurry of burning hair, and tear the demure black suit from her white body. Then I would throw her on the bed and *prove* how much I had starved for her.  Of course she'd rip out my heart and eat it right there on the dark patterned comforter.  She was so good at that.

"How is she?"

"Oh fine.  Other than the fact that she wakes up screaming every night, wailing 'Mommy, Mommy! Where's my Mommy?"

The combination of pain and hatred that flashed through her eyes nearly stopped my heart in my chest.  I'd seen that look before and had never been on the receiving end of it.  I was now officially one of the bad guys.  She won the staring match as I dropped my gaze to contemplate the dried blob of mashed banana on the toe of my sneaker.

"If she could talk she might say that or she might say that she had gas.  It's kind of hard to tell at this stage of development."

"I'd like to see her," she asked in the most careful of voices.

I took a deep breath and hardened the shriveled remains of my willpower.

"That's probably not a good idea, she's reached that stage where strangers frighten her and she might throw a screaming fit, " I lied, "we went to the doctor today and she's a little stressed out right now."

Scully pivoted on the heel of her size six pump and stalked out of the room like a much larger species of predatory feline.  Her heels gouged into the carpet.

"Zippy," she growled in a tone she must have learned from Skinner, "we're going back to the city."

Zipprelli shoved the case files back into her briefcase and danced to her side.

"We'll be in touch," he said the standard Bureau dialogue without much emotional investment.

"You do that," I shoved my hands in the pockets of my pants and trailed them through the door and out to the motor pool Ford parked at the curbside.

In contrast to the behavior of the past five years, Scully slid into the driver's seat and gunned the engine.  I hoped Zippy's nerves were up to the challenge.

"You'll hear from Skinner regarding the reassignment of the cases," she said, nearly ripping the parking brake out by the cable.

"Take the cases, see if I give a shit. Do whatever you want, it's what you do anyway," I snapped, my last frayed nerve giving way like old dental floss.

I had to jump back from the car as she peeled out, nearly losing a foot in the process.

Bitch.

Selfish bitch.

I got the mail out of the box as the Taurus sped down the street.  Warwick's domestic tendencies did not extend to this chore for some reason.  I think it had something to do with the fact that he only believed in e-mail rather than anything made of paper.  Among the bills and the junk mail there was a thick envelope with an Austin postmark and what looked like a law firm's return address.  What the hell was "LLP," anyway, it sounded like a Schedule I drug rather than a business type. As I took my shaking body up the walk to the front door, nearly tripping over the blooming daffodils in the random front garden, I opened the letter and read it.

I had to read it again as I sat at the kitchen table and ate entirely too many brownies.

As far as I could make out through the legalese, the remainder of Jason's estate, that which was not tied up in Roush, he had left to Miranda, with a small bequest left over for me, just enough to be a slap in the face. Between the properties, contents of said properties and the horse farm, Miranda was the owner of no small chunk of change.  And there was blood on every coin of it. 

I'd have to tell Scully, as Miranda's legal guardian she had responsibilities now.

Bastard.

Warwick finally brought Miranda upstairs when the smoke had cleared; by then I was sitting on my old sofa in the study and gazing blankly at a documentary about Emperor penguins at the South Pole.  The hot heavy bundle that was plopped in my lap was the Mooselet who promptly gave out a chuckle and reached for my nose - her favorite toy.

"What up homey?" Warwick asked.

"Same old same old.  Maybe I should just get 'sucker' tattooed across my forehead and be done with it."

"She wasn't what I expected," he said and sat cross-legged on the old southwestern rug spread across the floor, "I thought she's be taller."

"She is taller, you just don't notice it at first.  It sneaks up on you, and then it's too late."

The Mooselet cooed in agreement, she too was larger than she seemed at first.  As if sensing my mood, Miranda went boneless and stuck to my chest like a limpet mine smelling of honey.  She continued to warble as her fat little fingers picked at the molded plastic eyes of her favorite kangaroo beanie baby.  Her scalp was hot against my face when I pressed my lips to her peachy little head.   

***

I probably should not have been driving.  I probably should have been sitting in the back seat shoveling anti-anxiety meds into my mouth like M&M's.  Or sleeping pills. But the Bureau's doctors were too fucking professional to let me get away with that and for some reason I was hesitant to prescribe for myself. So instead I drove, heading against the coagulated traffic.  Zippy, Blues Brothers shades protecting him from my Medusian gaze, looked out the window at the cars creeping past.

"That went well, I thought," he muttered.  

I couldn't look at him, I had to keep my attention on the road so the car would stay on it.  I passed a balky while minivan with a bumper sticker touting an honor student. Miranda would probably do well in school; she certainly had the genes and the cash for it.

"It could have been worse," Zippy added after the minivan lagged behind, "at least he didn't actually throw us out."

"In another minute he would have. The only good thing is Mulder's agreed to let us take the cases away from ISU."

"And how does that make you feel?"

I spared him a glare at a stoplight.

"I'm fine, Zippy."

"Pull the other one.  You're driving back to Annapolis."

"Shit."

"Let's go to your place and order a pizza.  I'll take the car home and get you in the morning."

Like a seagull dazed by a rough spring storm I headed home.

My apartment was a mess.  I honestly hadn't gotten around to cleaning in weeks.  There were dirty dishes in the sink, a pile of mail that I hadn't gone through yet overflowing from the coffee table, and the drapes were still closed as I had left them the week before.  I tossed my keys on the table and stepped over the newspapers jamming the door.  Zippy looked over his glasses as though he was examining a crime scene, and I suppose that he was.  

"Call the pizza place.  It's speed dial number four.  I'm going to put on some sweats."

While he called, I added to the pile of dirty laundry in my bedroom and sat on my unmade bed to take off my stockings.  My lonely dirty bedroom.  In my bra and panties, I stretched out across the bed, too drained to finish dressing.  I rolled over on my stomach and shut my eyes.  The rumpled sheets smelled like my own late-night sweat from the near nightly dreams of the Brothers.  All of the brothers.  Some nights my Technicolor dreams were of enacting half the Kama Sutra with my particular Mulder, other nights I dreamed of being bound and gagged while each one violated me, other nights it was one or the other of the brothers, and my subconscious betrayed me to the point of a baroque chiffon fantasy world where I reclined on silken sheets like Mata Hari and had them all at once.  The problem being, any one of the visitations from the adult movie studio in my brain could awaken me shaking with dread or trembling with lust with little relation to the subject matter.  The first time I woke grinding my pelvis into a hotel mattress while I dreamed of the useless, beautiful Darien underneath me made my precarious grip on sanity slip within sweaty hands.  The resulting orgasm from the dream Darien left me weak, shaky, and feeling filthy.  At least the first one had been Darien.

I was now on the fourth trip through the alphabet. To be blunt, dreaming of George's other nocturnal activities was something of a relief. At least it wasn't me he left in the playgrounds. I much preferred being a witness to full-fledged participation.

When the pay per view hotel movies offered 'Boogie Nights' I refused to even watch the ads.  Zippy probably thought that I was the world's biggest puritan. If he only knew the truth. I could have gone to talk to Karen Kossoff but I didn't want to upset her.  Maybe I needed an exorcist rather than a therapist.  I tried taking a vacation, and a week at the wintry beach in Delaware did not help in the least, just left me thinking about the amniotic pull of the sea. I wondered how far I had to walk into the water before my hair floated around me like seaweed and the sea washed me away.  I could float away on the cold water forever.

"Hey."

Warm hand on my shoulder.  I pulled myself out of the depths and rolled over.  For a moment, I saw a different face on the man standing next to my bed.  Realizing that it was Zippy, I grabbed the bedclothes and pulled them over my body.

"What?" I muttered and sat up, keeping the comforter wrapped around me.

"What did he say?" Zippy asked, his weight compressing the mattress next to me.

"Fuck off, more or less," I rubbed at dry eyes, "he also let us have the cases, but you heard that."

"Did you get to see Miranda?" he asked with surgical detachment.

"No," unaccountably, my throat closed around the words, "he wouldn't let me."

Zippy reached out and rubbed my knee through the comforter in a friendly, soothing gesture as though I had been Miranda.

God, how big was she now?  Was she happy?  Was she really better off or was she slipping into the morass of genetic destiny? Mulder was in some ways the eternal optimist, he thought that love could make everything better. If he loved her, he thought, he could protect her from fate and politics and skinned knees. And when his protection failed he'd see it as an inadequacy of his love. I wondered if her pain would disappoint him as much as mine did, if he'd be able to forgive her when she got hurt and if she'd ever understand that Mulder wanted to bear her pain so much that he would not allow her to possess her own suffering.

Of course at this point her suffering was a wet diaper. Perhaps I was projecting.

"Pepperoni?"  Zippy asked.

"Mushrooms."

That night I had the strangest dream.  For once, my late-night movie didn't star one of the Mulder brothers.  I dreamed that I was in the hallway outside the X-Files office.  I had a feeling that Mulder was inside, but I was unwilling to walk in. Instead I watched a woman in a severe black suit walk towards me in the hall.  I was too far away to see her, but her hair was long and curling past her shoulders, the color of Bing Cherries.

It must have been the pizza.


Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 3/20
His mother was a witch, and one so strong
That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,
And deal in her command without her power.


Believe it or not, I had a lot of work to do that was related to my *real* job, and so I tried to get some of it out of the way while simultaneously keeping the Mooselet entertained. This required some creativity on my part. She was about as mobile as a bean bag chair but as far as she was concerned having the world revolve around her was movement aplenty. So I plopped her down on the carpet in the study and stretched out on the floor. How did anyone get anything done before the invention of the cellphone?

"Ralph," I said into the phone as I waggled the plush unicorn in front of Miranda, who was still in the process of deciding whether or not she was bored, "you can't claim a Mr. Coffee as a reimbursable expense, no matter how much you need the caffeine to work." 

The doorbell rang. During the day dealing with the hoi polloi was Warwick's job, and I wasn't in any way jealous of it, so I ignored the noise and finished my lecture on fiscal responsibility. Miranda had not quite yet made the connection betweeen the buzzer or the sound of the front door closing and visitors, though she always appreciated finding someone new on whom to practice her wiles.

Footsteps down the hall suggested that I was going to have to face the world, or some fraction thereof, despite my feeble attempts at hiding out. Warwick knocked, then pushed open the door. 

"Mulder," he said, sounding even more strained than when he'd announced Scully and her new squeeze, "you have a visitor."

I pulled myself off the floor and squinted out into the hallway.

"Well," I said as Warwick evaporated, "it's old home week. How are you, Mother?"

She looked as patrician as ever, with her white hair I knew for a fact she dyed to get the gray out. She did, however, seem a little awkward as she held the enormous doll. It was as big as Miranda and eight times as elegant. Pale as China White, its rosebud lips and blue vitreous eyes reminded me of Scully. The flat sociopathic gleam of the glass orbs didn't hurt either. Its hair was curled in long blonde ringlets that would have looked good on a Hasidic Jew, and it wore a sapphire velvet dress with lots of delicate lace sticking out in uncomfortable-looking places. Its eyebrows were painted on like a model's but its lashes looked real. It was huge, expensive, and utterly absurd for an eight month old who still thought that sucking on her own toes was the height of coolness.

"I brought my granddaughter a gift, Fox."

"She's not quite to that 'playing with dolls' stage. I'm kind of hoping she goes straight for guns." What on earth, or on Reticulum, had she been thinking? The doll was completely developmentally inappropriate; at best Miranda was going to eat its hair and spit up on it, if she showed any interest in it at all.

Her mouth tightened into the flat grim slash I remembered well. She didn't seem drugged or otherwise confused, and I wasn't sure how well I liked that. "I want to spend some time with my family and to get to know my granddaughter."

"Samantha isn't enough to fill your lonely nights?"

"I haven't heard from her in months, Fox."

"Whatever. All right, you've seen Miranda, she's got all the requisite fingers and toes, she doesn't look very much like you or me, shall I call you a cab?"

She looked around the room. "It's a nice house. I take it you've finally spent some of your father's money on something that will last beyond next season's fall collection."

I took Miranda in my arms, despite milady's protests. I needed help staying calm and Miranda was better than Valium, even squirming and whining. 

"You were the one who taught me about good taste in menswear." Even after Mom took the night train to the Land of the Mood Elevated, she was always quick to notice when I wasn't looking spiffy. Never mind the fact that a boy who's well-dressed by adult standards couldn't be more vulnerable to harassment if he actually sewed a patch on his back that said "Yes, I am a faggot," never mind that I was already an incredible misfit, Mom had to ensure that my ties and socks matched, as if that was her good parenting credential. If it was, she should have sued the hack who sold it to her. 

No. She was leaving, and even if I had to put a Star of David and a string of garlic over every door and window, she wasn't coming back.

She stared at Miranda intently. Maybe she was looking for signs of intelligence, or attempting to commune with her on the astral plane. I suppose that I could have asked her what results I should expect from the various genetic manipulations to which Scully and my genotype had been subjected. But how could I expect her to tell the truth? 

The Mooselet took this opportunity to practice blowing spit bubbles, which she did with the concentration of a concert violinist negotiating a tricky movement of Tchaikovsky.  I didn't bother to tell strega mamma that the spit bubbles usually climaxed in a round of spitting that would have done a camel proud.  Miranda then let loose a cascade of evil baby chuckles that made Mom raise her eyebrows.

I heard the doorbell ring again. Great, Torture Mulder Day had been declared a national holiday. I wish I'd known so that I could have marked it down on my calendar. With my luck it was my boss come to yell at me, or maybe Kristen Kilar had finally named me in a paternity suit and I'd have to support a little bloodsucking fiend for the next fifteen years.

When Zippy came into the study I was so relieved that I actually smiled at him. This disturbed him enough to make him stop under the lintel.

"Come on in, Zippy. Mother, this is one of my fellow agents. We have some important work to do on a pending case, so I think you should leave. Warwick can get you a cab if you need one."

Her mouth twitched and she stepped towards me. Would she really slap me again? Zippy would love that. "I'll be in town for the next few days," she said. "I'm visiting some old friends...on Capitol Hill. We should talk, Fox."

Yeah, that's what women always say, right before they start rearranging your internal organs. I nodded as politely as I could and motioned to Zippy. He and Mom did an awkward little shuffle as he came closer and she went through the door. I wanted to follow her out to make sure that she really left, but that would be rude; anyway Mom wasn't the kind to wait around for further humiliation.

I put Miranda back on the floor and walked over to close the door. Zippy was still looking at me as if I were the kind of fungus that used to live in my refrigerator. He wasn't going to say anything, though; old psychologist's trick, force the subject to make the first move. Fuck that, I thought, I could spot him a queen -- and I had -- and still beat him at this game.

"So what are you doing here?"

Zippy bent down to greet Miranda. He pulled her up into a sitting position and nudged her cheek, eliciting a saliva-specked smile. He was looking at her, not me, when he spoke. "I had some more questions and I figured -- well."

I knew what he wasn't saying. "Where is the beauteous Agent Scully?"

"She had all the autopsy results from the first four sent to her and she's working on the body of the latest victim. Death doesn't do weekends and neither does she."

"I remember."

Now they were playing pattycake, or at least Zippy was trying to play and Miranda was watching him with the kind of wide-eyed adoration that he used to get from slightly more mature women.

"So have you figured out how you're going to explain the birds and the bees to her when she asks where babies come from?"

"Sure. See, when the mommy loves the daddy very much, she shoots him. Later his sister takes the daddy's sperm and mixes it in a little glass dish with the mommy's cryopreserved eggs. Then they go kidnap a woman off the street..."

He was laughing. Actually, I was laughing too. Miranda looked from me to him and back, and smiled wide as a moon pie.

"You're a sick fuck, aren't you?" Miranda nodded, agreeing with him.

"Watch it, Zip. Little pitchers have big ears."

"Better to learn at home than on the street." He feinted and poked her gently in the tummy. She roared with laughter and drooled on his arm, which he just wiped on the carpet. "So, talk to me. You read the original file on George, right?" I nodded; Scully must have told him about our first meeting. "Canadians are being coy about turning it over and I wanted to find out what you knew."

I turned on the microfilm machine in my head and rewound. "George Herbert Naxos--at least his middle name wasn't Wayne, right? Born December 1, 1961, given up for adoption the same day. Adrienne Naxos was a practical nurse who worked for a wholly owned subsidiary of Roush, I guess they wanted to keep it in the family. Unfortunately she seems to have been a real Nurse Ratchet. There are hospital records going back thirty-five years, and remember that she could take care of the minor stuff herself so the records, even if complete, would only be the tip of the belt buckle. I'm guessing that she'd lock him somewhere to punish him, maybe a closet or a basement, and she burned him when he was really bad. Given the contours of his crimes, sexual abuse is also a strong possibility.

"On November 27, 1973, around midnight, George had a series of seizures. Adrienne took him to the ER. She must have been very frightened, especially when he remained catatonic for nearly a week. When he woke up he had no recollection of anything out of the ordinary.

"After that, though, his budding criminal career began. Subsequent investigation by George's psychiatrist suggested that his first experiments with firestarting and animal mutilation began at around that time. No one made the connection between George and the local epidemic of kitty-cat slaughter, and things went back to normal for a while. Then George developed artistic differences with Adrienne. She wanted to live and he thought she looked better dead. He strangled her and burned her house down when he was fifteen and disappeared."

"And was he killing all through the time until he was caught?"

I shook my head. "Not enough evidence to be sure. He never copped to anything but the murders they already had him for, but that doesn't mean shit. Also, because he was caught in Canada which doesn't have the death penalty, the Canadians weren't really cooperative in investigating murders he might have committed in the U.S. -- they didn't want him extradited and killed."

"Bleeding hearts."

"That probably explains why Canada's such a violent nation. Execute more jokers like George and they'd be as peaceful as the United States." I smirked and sat down in my chair, realizing too late that I'd leaned back onto a reasonably fresh formula stain. Well, I wasn't dressed for work anyway.

"I've seen the pictures of his recent work, I know Scully's theory on why his MO changed. What do you think?"

I made a choked sound.

"She's exploring the possibility of some kind of connection between you two," he prompted.

"You can say the bad word, Zippy, I know it's tough but you're a big boy -- psychic. She thinks he's in my head."

"I've read the Roche file. I've read the file on your sister's disappearance. I know the significance of November 27, 1973, and that this isn't any more far-fetched than explanations you've endorsed in the past. Are you unwilling even to consider the possibility?"

Too full of nervous energy to sit still, I hopped off the chair again and began rolling Miranda around on the floor. She enjoyed it, but it didn't make Zippy go away. "I'm...not unwilling. Maybe too willing. Did you know that for a while in the 1980s, while he was still free, George and I were on some of the same mailing lists? The sticks and stones will break my bones but whips and chains excite me kind. I guess the family that comes together stays together, or something like that." Miranda made the face that indicates that a full diaper is on the way, and I picked her up.

Zippy followed me to the changing table, wordlessly opening the jar of baby-wipes for me. I worked in silence until I could be sure what I was going to say. 

"Frankly, Zip, I'm fucking terrified. I can barely control myself and here comes George, moving with the force of pure id, to showcase all the bad things about me. I have a bad feeling that this ends with me and him fighting to be alpha wolf, except that I don't know which one of us is me."

"You're you, he's him.  End statement."

Zippy scooped the now clean and sweet-smelling Miranda off the changing table and held her in one arm with a skill borne of long practice.

"You know the difference, don't you sweetheart?" he asked.

Miranda gave him a drooly smirk and stuffed his tie in her mouth.

Naturally, he was smitten.

**** 

After reviewing the autopsy data, I spent the weekend on the sofa with my favorite men - Ben and Jerry.  At least the freezer kept the ice cream edible.  Everything else in the refrigerator was suspect.  I ate my way through Cherry Garcia, Wavy Gravy, Phish Food, and Chunky Monkey before I went into the bathroom to throw up.  It wasn't bulimia per se - just nerves.  God, my other great problem relationship - food.  

Why was it that I had the worst time with the simple things in life?  Food, love, sleep, sex?  The things that should make life a little bit more worthwhile.  I overate when I was unhappy.  I'd eat until my stomach rebelled and then I'd throw up.  Sometimes I just ate.  When I got out of the Academy and the relationship with Jack Willis (love and sex) was going to hell, I put on twenty pounds.  When They closed down the X-Files, I ate myself three sizes larger and my best black suit made me look like an eight ball.  

The cancer, or the chip I now bore in the back of my neck like the Bar Code of the Beast, had twisted my metabolism so I now had that of a tree shrew.  Or maybe I just wasn't eating the way I used to. It was sometimes hard to remember, easier just to add another cup of coffee to the sloshing nightmare inside me.

I hadn't gotten sick from eating like that for years.  

I sat on the cold floor of the bathroom for almost an hour, listening to the clock over the shelf tick and counting the tiles in the floor.  No matter how many times I told myself that it was only an anxiety attack and that it would pass, the shaking and sweating refused to stop.  So I sat there with my face on the cold and forgiving toilet seat and waited it out.

Finally, I managed to make it to the medicine cabinet and dry-swallow a Xanax.  I avoided the gaze of the burning-eyed woman in the mirror and stumbled off to the deceptive sanctuary of my bed.  The pillowcases were cool, if dirty, and I huddled there while the sunlight made the branches of the bare spring trees skitter shadows across the walls.

I had the playground dream again.  The jungle gym, the monkey bars, the roundabout, and the swings.  As usual, I found myself moving across the wood chips in the strange and weightless way of dreams until I was peering in the open maw of the playhouse.  The dread and the darkness filled me again, as the blackness called.

"You don't want to go in there," a voice that felt feminine instructed me.

In a non-corporeal form, I turned, saw the shadow figure by the swings, watched the light bounce off of the blackness which made up the body.

"Don't go in the playhouse," she prodded.

"Who--"

"Just call me your subconscious, you can accept that explanation," she sounded a little bit the way I did on my answering machine, but annoyed, "but just trust me on this--"

"The last thing I'd trust is my subconscious."

"The old chestnut - that to understand the artist you have to study his work - this is an ideal application for that theory."

"The last thing I want to do is get into George's head."

"He's already in yours."

Then the drugs finally took hold of my lower mind and it all melted away.

****

It rained most of the weekend and Monday morning it looked like more of the same.  I was in the shower with the Mooselet when I remembered that Warwick had to meet with a client that day and I was going to have to work from home. I wasn't supposed to do that two workdays in a row, but I'd been such a good boy for so long that I thought I deserved it. I left a message for Diane before my feet hit the floor.  I'd never actually had an administrative assistant before and I was still in the honeymoon period where I was asking her to do things as though I was asking for an inconvenient favor.  I was starting to wonder exactly how screwed up my entire reaction to women had become in the past year.

"You want to go to the grocery store?" I asked Miranda. "We have no food and we're going to starve."
 
She thought this was hysterically funny and dissolved into a wet shower of giggles, flailing her feet and arms around like a little froglet.  She was easy to get a laugh out of.  I buried my face in her fat belly and blew a raspberry.  She howled with glee and grabbed a double handful of my hair.

Sitting in the safe confines of her baby bath at the shallow end of the shower, she giggled and banged both her chubby little fists against the blue plastic sides of the tub. This was our morning routine; I'd plunk her in the baby bath while I showered.  I never let her out of my sight, which meant for a lot of soap in the eyes and probably broke several covenants of child care, but when I was done washing, I'd lather her up and sluice her off under the shower head.  She loved the shower and squealed with joy as the water bounced off her pink little body.  I used to think that Scully had the softest skin in the world until this little green-eyed woman came into my life.  I was beginning to get used to smelling of baby shampoo and Dove soap every day.

I let Miranda roll around on the bed while I got dressed, then I shoveled her into a romper thing and trekked downstairs for the ceremony of feeding her Highness.  Bibs were for pussies.  Warwick and I had cut up bath towels and put Velcro on them so she was cocooned from chin to toes, with only her hands free to cause mischief.  She banged happily away on the tray of the high chair with her fat fists while I organized cereal, formula, and mashed a banana.  It was a good morning when most of the food went in her mouth rather than on either of our clothes or in our hair.  Today was not a good morning and the Mooselet gleefully spit a blob of banana straight into my coffee cup.  The result didn't taste all that bad.  I scraped dribbled banana off her rubbery little face and shoveled it back into her bubble-gum mouth.  Caring for Miranda hadn't been as complicated as I had originally thought it was going to be.  Time-consuming, yes, but requiring a high IQ, no.  She ate pretty much what I ate, only mashed into a pulp, she slept when she wanted to, and dirtied disposable diapers at an appalling rate.  Yes, I was worried about the environment, but the future was going to have to cut me a break -- I was, after all, a man and I deserved to have my handicap forgiven.

I had more coffee, sans baby banana, and prepared for the assault on the grocery store.  I gathered keys, wallet, cellphone, trench coat in case of inclement spring weather and my father's wedding band.    I'd taken to wearing the ring out in public when I was with Miranda as it tended to ward off awkward questions.  The few occasions I had forgotten to slip the thing on my finger I had gotten bizarre advances from women and even stranger advances from men.  Warwick had thoughtfully left the grocery list spreadsheet stuck to the refrigerator and I stuffed it in my pocket and grabbed the Mooselet to head out.

The sun was shining in the parking lot so I decided to leave my coat in the car.  I propped Miranda up in the shopping cart and slung the diaper bag over my shoulder, feeling my testicles shrink as a result of being so unmanned.

Taking a baby through a grocery store is not unlike running the obstacle courses at Quantico.  The Mooselet had a reach that was going to make her a top scorer in the WNBA.  The problem was the fact that her reach was paired with an oral fixation (something I had never bothered to grow out of) and anything that she got in her tentacles went straight into her mouth.  I kept popping Zwieback toast into her oral orifice to keep her from sucking on Windex bottles.  Vegetable aisle first and I went through the dull routine of checking the organic produce for bruises and ripeness.  I could have gone through all the produce with a forensics team and not been happy with the results.  Only the best was going into the Mooselet's body.  Warwick and I could live on beer and Doritos, but her Highness was only getting top quality.    Pasta, canned goods and baby supplies were next on the spreadsheet. The disposable diaper display still amazed me - I wondered what technology had been used to develop all the diapers.  No wonder there wasn't enough money for the space program, it was all being used for diapers.
  
Somewhere between the diapers and the cereal, Miranda's face reddened and she started to strain. This was the sign that she was moving her bowels and I had about ten minutes before she began an operatic howling.  Her Highness did not like to sit in a dirty diaper.  I can't say that I blamed her.  Rushing back to the deli section, I grabbed the nearest lunchmeat slicer and begged for a bathroom.  The woman eyed Miranda with suspicion until eau de dirty diaper wafted across the deli and cut through the assorted odors of salami and cheese.

The woman's eyes were sharper than the blades on her slicer.

"This way," she pulled on my sleeve and I decanted my aromatic baby and followed.

"Pay attention now, Skip--see those double doors, the ones that say 
*Employees only*?  Go through there, STRAIGHT back to the right of the
pop machine, through THAT door, make a left, go up the first set of
stairs, down the hall and it's the third door on your  left. Do you want
me to take you?  I'll wait outside--if you want me to..."

"No, I'm fine, really."

The bathroom was cramped and utilitarian, with nothing to put Miranda on while I performed *the worst job in the world*.  The only good thing about being over six feet tall is that the long legs make a pretty viable changing table.  I sat on the closed lid of the toilet with a drop cloth protecting my jeans, and performed the ritual of the changing of the diaper.  Miranda cooed with pleasure at being freed from her smelly plastic pants, cleaned and re-fitted with a fresh diaper with little bunny rabbits on it.  I snapped up her romper and balanced her on my hip while I shoved the debris in the trashcan to astound the cleaning crew later that day.  

Women have soft, curved hips strictly for the purpose of balancing a baby on them (it also gives them a shape that attracts men the way free Springsteen tickets attract crowds). Miranda tended to start out at my bony protuberance and slide downward, as she had nothing to rest on.  I was seriously considering having a seat bolted to my hipbone before she slid to the floor like a fireman on a pole one day.   But she clung with Velcro persistence as I re-shouldered the bag and left the bathroom. 

Once we had gotten back into the grocery store proper, I discovered that some helpful soul had decided that my shopping cart had been abandoned and needed to be emptied.  I caught up with the stock-boy before he had put everything back away.  I had to retrace my path through the canned goods again, and this time, I added a generous amount of canned cat food to the basket to feed our stray.  Cats do not live on tuna alone.  Neither do FBI agents and Web designers so I bought beer.  I had to balance the last six-pack in the kid compartment with Miranda and she twisted one chubby fist around the long neck of a Corona and gave me a cherub's smile.

"Da," she offered, nearly sending me into cardiac arrest, "da, da."

And then she trailed off into a bubbling peal of baby cackles.

A metaphor: Da equals beer.  Sophisticated logic for an eight-month-old, she took after her mother.

Between the two of us we were going to see what the cap on the therapy bills on the federal health care plan really was.

I couldn't wait to tell Warwick.

Unfortunately when I got back out to the parking lot the back window on the station wagon was shattered.  There was green safety glass everywhere, and my trench coat was gone, along with the cellphone that had been resting blithely in its pocket, so I couldn't roust Warwick from his meeting with the news of Miranda's burgeoning language acquisition. 

Shit, I'd paid a thousand dollars for that coat. It was made in England, it was absolutely *gorgeous*, and I wouldn't have enough free time to get a new one tailored until Miranda started preschool. I wondered if they couldn't use the old measurements.

Also it would be annoying to get a new cellphone and have the number changed, not to mention the hassle of getting a new ID badge to clip to the next coat. For some reason, even though the Bureau had my picture on the computer, every time I lost an ID badge I had to get a *new* picture taken, as if I was suddenly going to get plastic surgery or something. Not that plastic surgery was an outrageous idea, but it was aggravating that the pencil-pushers wouldn't take the more efficient route and use a file photo.

More importantly, the safety glass had done its job admirably well and there were about four thousand cubist pellets inside the car. They weren't sharp, but I hardly wanted to add them to her Highness's diet. So I parked her in the front seat, setting off a cycle of wails that made every passer-by check to make sure I wasn't slapping her around, and spent the next half hour picking out every piece of glass in the car. I'm not sure I could have put the whole window back together when I was done, but in the end if there was glass in the seats Miranda wouldn't find it until her arms were longer than mine.

I put her safety seat in its rightful place, threw out the ice cream that had melted in the interim, and headed home. The only redeeming thing was that I hadn't stashed my sidearm or my "insurance" pistol in the coat.  That would have been a *bad* thing, this was merely a hassle.

Miranda went into the crib for, hopefully, a nap while I put the groceries away and started the round robin of phone calls to begin the replacement process of phone and ID.  I also called the Arlington Police to report the break-in of my car and the Subaru dealer who promised to have a guy from the auto glass place come out and fix the window. In the meantime, he suggested that I duct-tape clear plastic over the broken window.  How charming and how professional.  I found the duct tape in the closet and went outside to do the deed with a roll of clear plastic wrap. Hopefully that wouldn't look as bad as a Huggies bag.  On the other hand, I just could have used a diaper, as if the baby seat and the accumulation of bright plastic toys in the back seat wasn't enough of a clue.  The Subaru was definitely not a car to cruise for chicks with.

My own little chick was wide awake and peppy as hell as she stuffed her fingers in her mouth and cooed at me when I finally made it upstairs to the bedroom.  Somehow she had managed to free her feet from her socks and her pink toes were cold to the touch. Sighing, I scooped her up and brought her over to the big bed, where I kicked off my shoes and rolled her around for a few moments before playing the Mulder family equivalent of "piggies".

"This little alien went to Market, this little alien stayed home,"

She squealed as though I were funnier than George Carlin on uppers and let me roll her until we were face to face, her round jade eyes just inches from mine.

"Da," she asserted and grabbed at my nose.

I could live with that.



Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 4/20
The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,
And time to speak it in. You rub the sore,
When you should bring the plaster.


I woke up without really remembering falling asleep.  I could sense Miranda still on the mattress, and heard a woman's voice cooing to her with thickened vowels and blurry consonants that did not belong to my surgically precise bete noir.  I opened my eyes and got a myocardial-infarction-causing view down the front of Ingveld's sweatshirt.  Warwick's squeeze (there are too many words to describe that kind of relationship and all are inadequate) was a tall, shapely blonde wench from one of the former Iron Curtain countries with an accent that could induce an erection in the clinically impotent and a body that could do the same for the hearing impaired.  Oy!  She was the kind of shiksa that Auntie Sophie warned us about.  Tall, blonde, stacked, motorcycle-driving, pierced navel and pierced nose, Ingveld fixed and built computers with her stubby dark blue fingernails.  She and Warwick were inseparable, bound together by a relationship forged through three years of e-mail, voice mail, and telephone.  Warwick loved Ingveld's mind.  The packaging was an added bonus.

Yeah, I envied them, wouldn't you?

More to the point I envied Warwick.  Maybe I needed to find a nubile twenty-four-year-old blonde to drown my sorrows in.

"Varvick said that your lady was here," Ingveld said, propping Miranda up on her flat stomach as she settled herself on the bed next to me.

Ingveld's head was on the pillows and mine was at the foot of the bed, and I basked for a moment in the nonchalant way that she dealt with her own personal space and the space of others.   She and Miranda both thought nothing of grabbing my leg when they wanted attention, or shoving me out of the way to get a better look at the television.  Casual, easy, and living in a world where nothing would hurt them.

Right.

"She's not my lady."

"Vhatever.  He said that she upset you.  Does she want to take Miri away?"

"No. She wants to take some of my cases."

"And the problem is?"

"I'm still mad."

With her usual lack of respect, Ingveld nudged me in the ass with a Doc Marten boot.

"Do not be.  You have the baby.  You have the house.  You should be happy."

"It's complicated."

"Life is complicated.  You love her or you do not.  Decide and then be that way."

Maybe I would be better off getting my relationship advice from the genie in Aladdin, but the genie did not smell like clean girl and leather.

"The new keyboard I have put in.  No more apple juice, okay?" she asked.

"Beer?"

"Not for the baby."

I had finally managed to download the files on George's latest spree when Zippy called from the hospital. 

The real problem with living in the suburbs is that it takes forever to get back into the city. I drove as fast as the rain would allow, hoping that the lack of any rear view wouldn't get me killed. Fortunately I was going against the traffic, as all the white folks who worked in the city but didn't pay taxes there headed back home to their nice houses, houses that looked just like mine from the outside. The ride should have given me time to prepare but for some reason I couldn't think. I just drove, with my mind on 'pause'.  Which was good since Zippy hadn't given much in the way of detail and I could imagine far more disgusting and lurid things than the average bear.  Occupational hazard.

Skinner met me in the hallway, pale lipped and shaking rain from his trench coat.

"What--" I started.

"You entered the Hoover Building at two thirty this afternoon."

My mouth hung at loose ends for a moment while my brain skipped tracks.

"No.  I was asleep, at home."

"No alibi?"

"What would I need an --"

I stopped, took a breath, tried to collect the thoughts that scattered like ticker tape at a parade.

"What exactly happened?" I asked.

The story was short and sweet.  A man fitting my description had attacked Agent Scully in the basement office.  My ID was registered as entering the building forty minutes before the attack took place, and I was seen leaving the building ten minutes after it happened.  Agent Zipprelli tried to stop the assault on Agent Scully and the attacker escaped. Since it was well-known that there had been some 'tension' regarding my promotion to Chief Administrator of ISU and Agent Scully's to AIC of the X-Files. . . rumors, you know.

"Sir," I said when he finished, "If I took it into my mind to do Agent Scully an injury it wouldn't be in broad daylight in the Hoover Building."

He blinked behind rain-speckled glasses.

"You wouldn't find the body."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," he snapped, "you realize the seriousness of this situation.  I know exactly how far things degenerated between you two and the performance in my office regarding the Admin Chief position was something less than convincing."

"Darien got all the acting genes in the family."

"I'm not finished yet--"

Although I technically didn't answer to Skinner anymore, his whip crack tone made me start.

"I know you and Agent Scully had a personal relationship the nature of which is generally discouraged between agents in the same section, and I also know that your sole motivation for applying for the Admin position was to remove yourself from the X-Files and Agent Scully's presence.  Suffice it to say that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that certain ill will could still linger after six months."

The OJ Simpson syndrome.

"Ah, there's just two mitigating factors -" I interrupted, which I could do now since I was higher up the food chain than I used to be, "First, you know Agent Scully and Agent Zipprelli are profiling a series of killings that they believe were committed by my jailbird brother George.  And - my car was broken into today.  My trench coat, cellphone, and ID were stolen. I did call into HR as soon as I got home, which might have been at about noon, to report the missing ID."

"You reported the ID loss as soon as you got home?" he echoed in a voice of disbelief.

"That's what I tell my agents to do," I looked over his wet shoulder and saw a nurse waft in and out of a room where a small woman with auburn hair lay on a white sheeted bed, "and I know you understand the importance of practicing what you preach."

I brushed past Skinner and into the room.

I'd played this scene entirely too many times before.  It goes something like this: the petite redhead lying in a white sandwich of sheets in a hospital bed with a clear tube running above her coral lips while her skin stretches pale and wan underneath the cold light from above the bed. This time there was the added benefit of petechial hemorrhaging around her conjunctival orbits, something I was used to seeing on dead people but not living ones -- most of the strangulations I dealt with were successful.

The heart monitor beats were a stately dance in the background. For the umpty-umpth time, she was in a hospital bed and it was all my fault.  Instead of holding her hand -- I'd given up the right to do that the minute I played Frisbee with her laptop -- I flipped open her chart and tried to make sense of the notes inside.  From what I could make out due to ignorance and handwriting, it seemed that other than the ugly bruising around her throat and larynx, she was pretty much all right, and that the ER doctor had given her a hefty shot of Demerol for pain management.  It must have hurt like a bitch to have your windpipe almost crushed, and from personal experience, I knew I would have been seriously stoned with that dosage and I didn't weigh a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet.

I should have been holding her hand when she woke up but I was afraid that she'd pull me back under, like a sailor who had already survived one encounter with a mermaid.

So I stood there and waited, waited until her reddened eyelids stuttered open and she stared up at me like a television between stations.

"Scully?"

She blinked. Sorry, Agent Scully's not home right now, may I take a message? The wrinkles around her mouth and eyes were crisp engraved lines in the stark fluorescent light and the broken-veined skin under her eyes was as purple as the dying crocuses outside.

I touched her cheek and she flinched, pupils wide as pennies with the drugs.

"She doesn't like to be touched," Zippy pointed out.
 
Of course not, and certainly not by someone with my face.

I straightened up and turned to confront him, squaring my shoulders. "Tell me what happened."

"I found them in our office. I thought--well, you can guess what I thought. I pulled him off and he kicked me in the balls and ran out. Scully was blue and gasping for breath and I called security. I'm sorry, man. I should have caught him."

I wanted to be angry at him. But that would have required this disaster to be his fault, not mine and I couldn't let that be.

"Did you call her mother?"

Zippy started. "Should I have?"

"She lives right around here, you know." I could see that he didn't even before he shook his head. I suspected that the lovely and talented Agent Scully had alienated more than just me when she ditched Miranda like a bad date.

"301-555-2791," I said stonily.

"You wanna call?" he offered me his cellphone. 

I shook my head. I'd had enough Catholic guilt to tide me over into the new millenium, and anyway Mrs. Scully's kind condescending manner drove me nuts now that we weren't united in what we were grieving over. She pitied me, this I knew, and I don't think I ever forgave her for authorizing the shutoff of Scully's life support all those years ago.

I wondered how I'd manage to get along with the third generation of Scully women once she started talking.

Perhaps unfortunately for Scully, she regained consciousness--of a sort--just before her mother arrived. She was looking hazily around and trying to speak when the door slammed open and in stalked Maggie.

Mrs. Scully sailed into the room like a destroyer, her hair frizzy from the rain, and immediately came over to Scully's bed, pushing me aside as she inspected her daughter.

"'m ok," Scully mumbled, responding to her mother's angry glare, and tried to turn her head but couldn't because of the swelling and the monitors.

"What happened, Fox?"

I counted to five and then looked her in the eyes. "She was attacked by George Naxos, who impersonated me to get into the FBI building."

"Will she be all right?"

"I'm not a doctor, Mrs. Scully, but from what I see--"

She slammed her hand down on the metal railing of the bed, and Scully winced, her red-marbled eyes seeming to sink further back into her skull. "Damnit, Fox, this wasn't supposed to happen anymore!"

Breathe, in, out, in, out. I was not going to fight with her in front of Scully, not when Scully was the real problem. I wasn't.

Zippy stepped forward like the stalwart guy he is. "Mrs. Scully, I'm Dana's partner Michael Zipprelli, it's a pleasure to meet you though I'm sorry it couldn't be under better circumstances." He did it all in one breath, before she could interrupt. She didn't take his outstretched hand.

"So, did you catch the man who did this? Fox's *brother*?"

He shook his head solemnly. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Scully. We're going to have Dana under guard until this is over--"

"She's coming home with me."

Scully's eyes widened and she shook her head. Her pupils were as big as bullet holes; I don't know how well she was really tracking, but she's always had great instincts.

"Dana, honey," Maggie said, leaning over the bed, "you're in no shape to continue working. We'll just stay at my place--"

Another frantic shake, and a hideous cough that matched any twenty-year smoker's.

"Don' wanna--"

"Mrs. Scully," I said diplomatically, "it might be better if Dana stayed with people who can protect her--"

"You?" she asked, not with contempt, precisely, but with disbelief, as if I'd told her that I had conclusive proof that Jesus Christ was a second rater carpenter and *not* the Messiah.

"The Bureau is very concerned for Dana's safety," Zippy said softly, "and that of her daughter, it really would be better if we could concentrate on protecting them in one location."

Holy fuck, I hadn't even considered--Maggie's eyes flickered over my blanched face.

"Yah," Scully chimed in. She sounded like she had a mouthful of marbles, but I understood. "Wanna go w' Muller."

Naturally, that settled it. It would take more than Demerol to take Scully out of the habit of command.

After a few more hours in which she didn't die, they released her. The doctor warned me to watch Scully for delayed onset of airway obstruction. Who knew that strangulation could work slowly? 

We drove back to my house. Frohike was outside the window of the room I shared with Miranda, hanging off a ladder as he hammered a black wire into place. I had no idea what it was for but similar wires now outlined every window in the place. They'd torn up the lawn something awful, and enormous lights were now in place to keep any part of the approach to the house from falling into shadow.

The neighbors were not going to like this. It probably violated one of the covenants in my deed and at the next meeting they'd vote to spend some of the annual litigation fund on suing me until I got the house back into compliance with neighborhood rules.

They could take a fucking number, I'd pay the damages.

I unloaded Scully, still limp and pliant as a mannequin, and helped her stumble down the path. She only fell against me twice. Inside, Warwick was pacing, carrying Miranda from room to room like a ship unable to find a port.

"Can you shoot?" I asked him as I eased Scully down onto the sofa. She lay across it, a slash of simplicity over the wild Ikea chaos of the pattern, and smiled softly at Miranda. Her gaze was so senselessly maternal that my chest nearly caved in.

"Like, a gun?" Warwick asked, mercifully breaking my concentration.

"No, like a camera. Of course like a gun. If you can't you may want to go stay with Ingveld until this is over, if you're not armed you're a liability."

"My parents run a twenty-four hour grocery store in Brooklyn," he said.

 "Shotgun it is," I said and headed back for the station wagon. Zippy, bless his homicidal heart, had brought his entire gun collection up from Texas--he lived out in Virginia to avoid the District's stricter gun control laws--and we'd stopped by his place on our way home. Zippy was currently getting some clothes for Scully.

Meanwhile his boy-scout preparation was going to be put to good use in my house. I figured that when Miranda learned to crawl we'd put trigger locks on all the guns, maybe I'd even join Parents For Gun Control, but given current realities every gun in the house made her a little bit safer.

When I'd put the guns in the most logical grab points around the house, I returned to the living room, where Scully was lolling on the couch. Her unfocused eyes were cornflower blue and she was nearly sleeping, her mouth open so that she could breathe more easily. I could very easily get used to Scully sleepy and biddable like this; I wondered if the Bureau's insurance would cover a continuous diet of sedatives.

I walked over to her and knelt, adjusting the sofa pillows so that she could rest more comfortably. Like Miranda, she had to be kept from sleeping on her stomach. I must have stared at her for several minutes before she raised her hand, little ladyfingers trailing over my cheek like liquid nitrogen.

"Mulder," she said and I could almost pretend that the huskiness of her voice was desire and not damage.

"Yeah?"

"Did you know I went to a rape survivors' group?"

I could have guessed for a hundred years and never come up with that as the first thing she'd say to me high on Demerol. I guess she didn't notice my shock, because she continued right on, wheezing a little but determined as ever to have her say.

"It was held in the Chevy Chase Public Library. I went because I thought it would help me, if I could talk to strangers about it maybe I could talk to you. There were six other women, and they...their stories, they were so normal, I know there shouldn't be such a thing as a normal rape but the sad fact is that there is." A soft, almost hesitant cough escaped her, and she took a few moments to breathe. "The strangest story was the woman whose son's high school principal raped her after a parent-teacher conference. And then they got to me, and a lawyer for DOE recognized me, she'd seen me at the hearings. It shouldn't have mattered but it did and I thought, I can't tell these normal people the story of what happened to me, I can't break their world apart. Anyway they wouldn't believe me, disbelief is so much safer. So I ran. I'm good at that, running, you know? Running from what I fear."

Carefully, carefully, Mulder. Even with the drugs there's never a safety net with Scully. One false move and you'll hit the ground like a Hefty bag full of tomato soup.

"Are you afraid of me?"

She blinked. "More than anything else."

Her left arm was curled protectively over her stomach and I rested my hand as lightly as possible on the sleeve of her shirt. Through the silk I could feel the warmth of her blood. In a minute she was asleep again.

I watched her sleep until the phone buzzed. I snagged it from the end table, missing my cellphone already. At least Scully was so far under that it would take electric current to wake her. "Mulder," I said, untangling the cord.

"What have you gotten yourself into this time?"

Julie Graff's bark wasn't music to my ears -- unless percussion counted. She'd been the first female profiler under John Douglas, moved out to California during the Patterson years, and had returned to head the ISU when Patterson nuked himself. She'd sacrificed any hope of a personal life to get ahead in the Bureau's culture of manliness, and I thought she might resent my flextime existence just a little. But with a Ph.D. in abnormal psych and more commendations than I had injuries in the line of duty, she was a wonderful Fearless Leader. And, to her credit, she didn't like to see profilers burn out; she didn't mind broken marriages, that was a part of the game, but she hated having to train fresh meat.

"I'm having some family trouble," I told her, knowing it would trigger her warning lights. "I may need to take a few personal days."

"Pretty fucking funny, Mulder. I don't like having an AD lecture me on the care and feedng of my agents. Why doesn't your charming brother show up in the NCIC database?"

"He did his confirmed wet work in Canada," I told her wearily. "Agents Scully and Zipprelli of the X Files just moved him from 'presumed dead' to 'presumed deadly' yesterday."

She sighed; I imagined her rubbing her temples in the overheated underground office, pushing loose strands of hair aside. Unlike most of the women in the Bureau, she kept her hair long, swept up in a huge messy bun that tended to get lopsided as the day went on. Most of it was salt-and-pepper gray, but there was a wide auburn streak just left of center. Her hair was a good indicator of her personality -- no-nonsense and fiery at once. "AD Skinner suggested, and I agreed, that you should remain in your house until we catch your worse half. We're releasing your picture to the local news stations, telling them it's George Naxos, and warning anyone who sees you to call the police."

"Isn't it nice to be so well-liked."

"Shut up, Mulder, did you want us to wait until we had a picture of *him*? Look, I know this is rough on you, having him attack your ex-partner --"

"He didn't do anything I haven't considered."

I heard the crunch of ice cubes. She always chewed them up when she finished drinking her iced coffee. "Right, I forgot. Sorry I offered some sympathy, Macho Man. Try not to get yourself killed, I've used up my recruiting budget for the year."

Click.



Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 5/20
For every trifle they are set upon me,
Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me,
And after bite me; then like hedgehogs which
Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount 
Their pricks at my footfall ...


My throat hurt.

I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and realized that I was staring at a painfully white ceiling. Off to one side a television was singing, and I heard various shuffling noises, someone making dinner perhaps.

I remembered the Bureau, the hospital, a little of what had gone on. Talking despite the pronounced harshness of my voice even in my own ears.

Glacially slow, I sat up. Everything seemed to work, though deep breaths triggered a spate of coughs which hurt like having George's hands on me all over again.

Mulder had thoughtfully left my file on the coffee table in front of the couch. I quickly gathered the essentials. My hyoid bone was intact, according to the soft-tissue X ray, which meant that I had a good chance of being just fine once the swelling went down. There were the expected thumb marks and fingernail scratches on my throat, along with the smaller circular bruises from the tips of his fingers. Because we'd struggled and he'd shifted his grip, the markings were spread across most of my throat, so it looked as if my throat was as covered with color as George's. What was up with the throat thing, anyway? I made a mental note to ask Mulder.

The report also noted that I had Tardieu's spots on my throat and face from the burst blood vessels and so I'd look a bit like I had a very, very late-onset case of chicken pox. I didn't want to rush the first look in the mirror; it's so easy to go from gratitude for surviving to horror at not looking one's best. If there were no pulmonary sequelae, though, I should be back in fighting form in no time.

I pushed myself off of the thickly padded sofa and stood, swaying a little as the blood rushed to and fro. I was hungry and it was going to be a bitch and a half to eat food in this condition. Maybe I could borrow some of Miranda's.

Tottering into the kitchen, I found Mulder. He was checking the temperature on the oven. There were glass bowls and spices strewn across the countertop, along with a shotgun.

He looked at me. "Back from Planet Painkiller?"

I nodded, then realized that was a bad idea. "Did they prescribe anything for the pain that won't knock me all the way out?" My voice was as hoarse as Marlon Brando's.

"I have some Tylenol 3 with codeine, the doctor said that was fine if you started coughing but they don't want you to take anything stronger that might depress respiratory functions." He pulled a wooden chair out from the small kitchen table and held it out for me. I figured that such generosity should not go unnoticed, so I sat. Anyway I still wasn't sure how ready I was to move around.

"Dinner should be ready in about half an hour. Zippy's upstairs listening to the boys explain the new security arrangements and Warwick's got Miranda. Can we talk?"

I looked around the kitchen, buying time. This room as well appeared to have been furnished in one quick trip to Ikea, the result being that everything was in primary colors and blonde wood. It looked a little like the showroom must have, except for the spills and stains that had accumulated in the strangest places, like the side of the refrigerator and about six feet up the wall, next to the clock.

"What are we going to talk about?"

He shrugged. "Survival tactics, maybe. You...said some things, Scully, while you were under the influence. I know you wouldn't normally admit to them but I don't think they were untrue."

I racked my brain, which simpered and shrugged helplessly. I remembered talking, but not what I'd managed to say.

He pulled another chair out, reversed it, and straddled it, his hands gripping the top of the chair. His sleeves were rolled up and the corded muscles of his forearms stood out. I remembered his hands, cool and certain, enfolding me.

"I admit that it's been hard for me to see things your way and frankly I haven't tried. Can you tell me...*why* you left Miranda?"

I took a deep, painful breath. I'd rehearsed this speech a few times, but that didn't make it any easier, or any more persuasive to my own ears. "You have no idea how hard it was to watch Aileen just pick her up and make her coo. Every time she showed me how to do something I just...got further away. I'm not good at trying things I'm not already good at."

He glowered. "I wasn't very good when I started."

"Fine, you're a better person than I am, you win. Does it feel good, Mulder? How does it feel to be a superior being?"

The words caught in the swollen tissues of my throat and I coughed.  It burned like acid.  I choked a bit and Mulder thoughtfully waited for me to catch my breath before he took it away again.

"A member of the master race, you mean?"

I looked down and laced my fingers together. "That's not what I meant."

He leaned forward and put his big hand over mine, swallowing both. I remembered that slightly sweaty palm intimately. "I know. Scully...I'm not saying I'm better than you are. Just that...you made some choices I didn't agree with."

"There comes a day," I said, "where you realize, at about eight o'clock at night, that you haven't thought about how you were raped for the entire day. And it's surprising, that you've gone so long without thinking about it. You congratulate yourself, that's good, that's progress."

He released my hand as if reminded of my need for distance.

"I like to think that I could have handled all this if it had just happened a little slower. But I had no sooner done the blood test than -- Mulder, I watched you, you and your brothers, you tore Jason to pieces --"

He stood abruptly and whirled so that he didn't have to look at me. "What was I supposed to do? Should I have turned the other cheek?  That only keeps your face from getting lopsided.  Should I have let him get away with it?  After what he did?  The women he killed?  What he did to our brothers?  What he did to you?" His hands were braced against the flour-smeared kitchen counter, shoulders heaving, taut and beautiful as a Stradivarius.

"Emerson is a saint, " he added a moment later, "he can forgive.  I can't and I won't.  I still hate Jason for what he did.  Am I supposed to forgive him?"

"No," I whispered and wanted nothing more than to throw my arms around him and never allow him to release me. "But he brought us to this place where you hate me and I'm -- I don't have anything of myself left over. I'm sorry, Mulder. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough for this."

"No one is."

No motion whatsoever. Then a series of shudders and the words emanated from him almost as if he willed rather than spoke them, as if he had no choice. "I just don't understand why you had to leave Miranda. I know why you couldn't stand to be with me. But what did she ever do to you?"

I was hunched over, my body reduced to a skin full of fire, charcoal burning and smoking from every pore. I would have screamed but the ligaments holding my face together were twisted and immobile.

I knew that nothing of what had happened was Miranda's fault. But I couldn't get away from some simple truths: Jason had raped me with the same casual glee with which he'd created Miranda. I'd discovered her the very week he'd ripped me apart. And when I held her she'd felt like a byproduct, I couldn't recognize her among the howling mass of my own troubles.  It was almost as though she had been the product of the rape, rather than a distantly related event. Truthfully, I resented the idea that her needs were somehow of a different order of magnitude than my own, that just because of the genetic connection I should be able to make my life work right or at least ignore all my problems and just dote on her. God knew that the genetic connection between the brothers Mulder had been of little value to my own Mulder, and though Miranda was too young to form much in the way of conscious intent I was no longer sure she'd be free to become an upstanding human being.

Yes, it was not her fault. But it wasn't my fault either, so why was I the one to blame?

How could I possibly explain this to him when I didn't rightly understand it myself?

I wanted the drugs again, wanted to have the edges of my own hurt and guilt blurred, and I wanted to sink into the warm pool of semi-awareness so I didn't have to feel anymore.

"Let's get you something to eat," he muttered and went back to the stove.

I felt as if I'd wandered into a bizarre version of I Love Lucy. Mulder, you got some 'splainin' to do.

The doorbell buzzed as Mulder was adjusting something inside the oven. It smelled good, but he slammed the metal door and grabbed the now flour-spattered shotgun from the counter, warning me with a look to stay put.

I heard him growl in the foyer and recognized the tone, standard posturing; the visitor was almost a friend, to the extent that Mulder had friends. (Theoretically he could have acquired a whole slew over the past few months, after all he'd gotten a house in the suburbs, a nanny, a station wagon and a promotion and friends would only be marginally more strange.)

Zippy followed Mulder into the kitchen, looking around with a strange wistfulness. He probably wondered when he'd lost his chance at domesticity and how Mulder had found it.

He was carrying a suitcase from my closet, the green one. If he'd packed carefully there could be two weeks' worth of clothes inside. If he hadn't packed carefully there could be three.

"We need to talk," he said. Mulder watched, standard superior smirk on his face as if we were just two random rookie agents from his team and he'd seen our entrance scores.

"What about?" It wasn't as if standing would give me a height advantage, so I didn't bother.

He drew a deep breath. His eyes were flashing like sunlight on water and those perfect teeth were bared in a snarl. "I got you some clothes. There were only two changes of underwear in your drawers so I had to do some laundry, which is why I'm so late. While I was waiting I threw out your trash, all three months of it. I threw out the two dead plants and watered the one that has a chance of making it. I also threw out all the food in your refrigerator and the onions that were rotting in your vegetable bin. Then I took the liberty of sorting your mail and I even paid your bills, since I assume you didn't want the electricity or the phone shut off, which events were scheduled for next week. You can pay me back by signing over your last few paychecks to me, which ought to be easy enough since you haven't deposited them either.

"Along with the clothes I brought your Zoloft, which I suspect you haven't been taking. I almost hope you haven't because if this is you on meds..."

Mulder's smirk had turned to ill-concealed horror, and I felt myself flush deep red with the shame of having him present for all this.

Another humiliation.  Funny, you'd think I'd be used to being violated by now.

I gathered all my remaining self-control into a tiny ball, smaller than a sugar cube, and tried to keep it in my mouth. "I wanted sleeping pills and I walked away with those, whatever happened to service?"

"Dana." His voice had risen an octave; this wasn't Zippy's hot-air anger but something else entirely. "I need to know what happened when George attacked you."

Of all the replacement partners in the Bureau, I had to end up with another fucking psychologist.

He didn't need to tell me I owed him an answer; we'd saved each other's lives and limbs often enough in half a year for me to acknowledge that truth. "He was reading a file," I said in the hesitant little-girl whisper George had left me with. "I came in and he turned and looked at me. I thought it was Mulder; he just stared at me. I went over to my desk and sat down. I was expecting an argument. When I looked up he was still staring. Then he said, 'Come here,' and I--"

I was panting and my throat hurt. I would have cheerfully paid a million of Roush's dollars to get Mulder out of the room. I could feel him broadcasting anger and pain off to my side. It was distracting. George's eyes had been curious, his voice burnt velvet; his rage in the sepia-stained basement had felt entirely appropriate to me and I had missed at first the absence of self-hatred that was the sine qua non of Mulder's existence.  For a moment, before the tired realization brushed me, I felt the lovely languor of desire.  Even after I knew it was George the languor held, until the pain started.

Another slow, calming breath, and I shuddered like a scarecrow in a high wind. "I knew then, knew it had to be George. Same damn mistake as always. So I, I stood up and I" deep breath, one that made me cough, delaying me when I wanted it to be over, "closed my eyes and I waited. And he came to me."

Mulder muttered something incomprehensible. My eyes were unfocused and I started when Zippy strode forward and dropped to his knees to shove his face up against mine.

"Dana," he repeated. "I can't stop you from killing yourself, though I must say you picked a particularly unattractive method. But like this you're going to get *me* killed. If I can't rely on my partner, what am I supposed to do? You put me in danger today, you're going to put Mulder in danger, and everyone else in this house. So we've got two choices here. I can tell Skinner what I saw at your place--he's itching to put you on disability, you know--and you can go home. George will probably find you again and you'll get what you want."

I put my hand to my throat and made the bruises sing again. "What's the other choice?"

"You agree not to do anything that fucking stupid again until we've got George, you take your goddamn meds and start to feel better and we catch him together. Once this is over I'll load the fucking gun myself for you if you insist but this shit does *not* fit into the schedule here."

I blinked. Tough love had nothing on my boy Mikey.

"You know, antidepressants take about two weeks to start working," I said.

He grinned. "Just pretend you've been taking them for a while."

I raised an eyebrow--it felt unfamiliar; I hadn't been in the mood to play for so long. 

He frowned, then. "There's something else."

"What more could there possibly be?"

In reply, he handed me a thick envelope, rough and expensive under my coarse fingertips. The return address indicated that Texas was going to smack me around again.

I hadn't expected to be Miranda's trustee, however. According to Jason's lawyer, I was legally obligated to use the money for her benefit until she came of age. I couldn't reject one lethal cent; it was all for her. I caught Mulder looking at the envelope and letterhead knowingly. He must have received similar information about Jason's will. Yippee.

"Well, there's this to say for the Mulder brothers," I said to no one in particular. "As far as I'm aware there are no deadbeat dads among them, which is better than you can say for any randomly selected group of ten men."

Zippy put his hand to my cheek, his thumb running gently over the broken blood vessels below my eyes, and then we both jumped as Mulder knocked a measuring cup to the floor, where it shattered.


Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 6/20
A devil, a born devil, on whose nature
Nature can never stick; on whom my pains,
Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;
And as with age his body uglier grows,
So his mind cankers.


She'd as much as admitted that she would have let George kill her if Zippy hadn't intervened. I tried to imagine what would have happened if she'd died and was completely incapable of it; the world without her would be white nothingness. Fuckhead, you could have answered one of her calls. You could have wondered why she stopped calling instead of assuming she didn't give a shit anymore. 

And if you hold that torch any higher you're going to get mistaken for the Statue of Liberty.

After I swept up the ill-fated measuring cup I fled the kitchen to set up the guest bedroom.

We'd never used it before. Mrs. Scully had made a few day trips, but we were both uncomfortable enough that I'd never asked her to visit overnight. When Ingveld stayed over she naturally slept with Warwick. Who knew what the neighbors thought about her--I suspected that the prevailing wisdom was that we were a gay couple raising the daughter I'd had before I came out of the closet, but don't ask, don't tell is a powerful norm in suburbia so I hadn't cleared up anyone's confusion yet.

I hauled a set of sheets out of the linen closet and began to make the bed. Wordlessly, Zippy came in with a set of pillowcases and began stuffing the pillows in.

"How many towels will you two need?"

Zippy put my hand on my upper arm, preventing me from tucking the top sheet under the mattress. "I'm not staying in here, Mulder. That couch looks fine."

"Don't be ridiculous," Scully wheezed from the doorway. "I'm nine inches shorter, I'll take the couch."

My brain was going to explode. I could see how the gray-pink chunks would decorate the carpet and be lost in the cabbage roses of the wallpaper. I pushed past Scully and went to find my daughter.

Okay, so Zippy hadn't known how depressed Scully was or what her apartment was like. On the other hand, after five years, including nearly a year of on-and-off raunchy sex, I'd had extraordinarily limited access to Scully's inner life, or even her outer life, so his ignorance proved nothing. He'd reassured me that they weren't going to get it on under my roof, but that didn't foreclose a history between them. It was Scully's pattern, Jack Willis and me and now him, unless of course she only went in for supervisors, which suggested that she could also be doing Skinner.

I reached Miranda on autopilot. Warwick gave me a worried look but handed her over without verbal protest. She was heavy and real in my arms, and I began to calm down.

Zippy wasn't sleeping with Scully. He was saner than that. And the jealousy had made me forget my dearly departed twin's intervention into her life. Even if Scully wasn't capable of taking care of herself enough to say "no," Zippy wasn't the kind of man who'd be indifferent when she stiffened and shut down.

It's hard to explain, but I never really integrated the rape into my understanding of what had happened to us over the last year. Of course it was the main reason, among a strong field of contenders, that I'd decided to kill Jason, but in many ways I had imagined a rape without a victim. Scully had been my bridge to the rest of the world for so long; what the concrete couldn't absorb, the steel bars beneath could. I could accept her destructive rage but not, it seemed, her need.

I think she might have said something to him that she wanted to say to me, something about the two of us, and he'd brushed that aside. And since close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, not twin brothers, I'd never get to hear it and she'd never feel it again.

I'd like to think that Scully ate the macaroni and cheese, soft enough to go down more easily than the chicken I'd cooked for everyone else. I myself skipped dinner because I didn't want to deal with anything but my little princess, who was demonstrating her mastery of the universe by whacking anything that came within reach, namely me, and squealing happy as a hog surrounded by soybeans when she could get a loud smacking sound out of the contact. I really, really wanted to live in her world.

Warwick kicked me out when he came back down to work on his latest presentation, but he let the Mooselet stay. I fled to my study and watched the sunset bleeding like a breach birth over the western sky.

The stray cat was in the back yard again; I could see her out the window. She darted from bush to tree like a scarf blown by the wind, snagging against every bit of cover she passed.

I wanted to lure her into the house. We'd feed her until she was round instead of rectangular, we'd get her a collar and all her shots, we'd do the right thing and have her fixed, and we'd pet her shamelessly.  She'd curl on my lap on the rare occasions it wasn't occupied by Miranda, and she'd sleep in the sunshine on the windowsill.

Then I had a vision, as powerful as anything Dr. Werber or Roche ever sent me. I came into the kitchen and was drawn, as in dreams we're drawn, over to the shiny silver sink. Tufts of black fur protruded from the disposal, clumped from the mixture of water and blood that still swirled in the drain. I turned like a marionette and went to the stove, where the pot was bubbling so viciously that the entire stovetop shook. The lid disappeared and I saw- her face hadn't been submerged, so it was still mainly intact, but the rest of the body had been boiling long enough that the sharp feline bones were visible in the brown, pungent stew.

"Mulder?"

I closed my eyes and willed my body not to tremble. If I looked bad enough Scully might want to touch me.

God, please let that be George's influence and not my own twisted impulses. If they could be separated at this point.

"Mulder?" Closer now, two feet at most.

I could smell her skin.

"What is it?" I growled, turning and staring down at her.

"Do you see anything out there?"

Little did she know that she had almost as much to fear from the monster inside the house.

I shook my head. "Just thinking."

"Oh."

Warwick knocked on the open study door, announcing his presence. "Sally Jessy Raphael's 'people' are on the phone," he said. "She's doing a show on 'My Twin Is a Criminal.'"

His presence punctured the tension so fast I almost heard the pop.

"How'd they'd get the number?"

"Probably bribed someone at the pediatrician's office."

"Tell her I'll wait until she focuses on the sad effects of genetic manipulation of the North American male."

"Aye, aye." He turned and closed the door as he left.

I looked at Scully. She was more shocked than she'd been upon discovering the Flukeman. If only all the monsters announced themselves with their deformities.

Then there was the nose thing.  Did that count as a deformity?  It pretty much depended on what my mood was like at the time.  Today, for example, I was giving Pinocchio a run for his money. At least Cyrano managed to get Roxane to love him by proxy; in my life, that would be a moral victory.

"I think the more publicity George gets the better," I told her, "but I don't think I can stomach Sally."

"You were expecting Jerry Springer?"

"I'm holding out for Letterman," and we grinned shyly at each other like kids passing notes during class.

"Top ten list?" she asked.

"Sally Jessy Raphael's 'people'. How do you get 'people'?  I think I need 'people.'"

"People who need people," Scully half-sang, sending my hackles to full attention. 

"Don't quit your day job," I said. This was way too weird, we weren't even friends, were we? We were sending each other more mixed signals than a dyslexic third-base coach. It was small comfort to think that she was just as confused as I was.

I turned to more immediately relevant matters. It was clear Zippy (and Scully, if I couldn't prevent it) would be doing the legwork, but I could review the collected evidence thus far. Ironically, this was the way ISU profilers were supposed to work; the theory was that we sat like Mycroft Holmes while all the evidence was brought to us and solved cases from afar, leaving evidence collection and on-site work to the Sherlocks in state and federal investigative bodies. 

Working in administration had made me aware of the reality of the *average* profiler's job. The only variety was where you were going to sit in the cafeteria at lunch. When you were done with one case there was no travel time to use to recover. And already I'd been sucked into solving cases instead of just assigning them, when I was right there and the file was open and the profile was just too obvious to waste anyone else's time on. Ralph Williams had already given me a mug that said "I'm too busy to delegate it, so I'll just do it myself." 

There was nothing unusual about profiling just from reported evidence. Examining the scene itself was a luxury, indulged only when the case proved intractable, or too high-profile, or strange in the way of X Files.

I moved to my desk and opened the manila folder from George's latest collection. Scully had organized the file and noted her opinion that he was escalating--as usual she had to put her two cents in even when it got to my areas of expertise--but she was thorough enough that I'd be able to form my own conclusions.

The photos from the crime scenes were repetitive, with the depressing sameness-in-variety of a soap opera plot or the designs on a deck of playing cards--hearts, clubs, protruding tongues. As I flipped through the stack I heard Scully sit on the couch, and the creak of the leather brought back the kind of memories that aren't terribly appropriate during the construction of a profile.

Five swollen tongues dragging on dirt or concrete or wood faded to gray with the passing of the seasons and the drum of small feet. Five uniforms, white and peach and pink. Five sets of torn pantyhose, five rapes. He *was* escalating now, not just in frequency but in violence, as there was evidence of vaginal and anal penetration. Prison must have been boring him. Bite marks on the last three, and on number four he'd taken a nipple but that hadn't been repeated, maybe it was just an experiment. The sexual assaults were postmortem, naturally. Live women just weren't the same.

Strangulation isn't a particularly unusual or suggestive method of killing. The necessary weapons are convenient, effective, and satisfying--it's good to be up close, to watch your victim struggle, choke, and turn blue. To feel her go lax underneath you like a yarn doll, all her pointless flailing stilled, her will overborne. I suspected that Scully's compliance had helped to save her, not that I was going to share *that* little theory, but George liked the power of dominating his victims and he was probably surprised and a tad miffed when Scully didn't resist.

There was no evidence that he'd attempted to force any of the dead women to fellate him, a favorite of many serial rapists. That would have required him to let up some on their necks. So it wasn't just the convenience, there was something about strangulation he liked. And the tattoo around his neck, this was related too. Barbed wire drawing blood so that he was eternally bleeding.

"Do you have a theory about George's apparent neck fetish?" Her voice snaked its way through the twilight to turn circles inside my head. I feared and hated and desired the return of her mind-reading capabilities. I needed her to look after me. I needed to talk this out. 

I needed a really good hairdresser, too, but that was beside the point.

"It's well-known that partial strangulation can be a source of sexual pleasure," thank you, Clyde Bruckman, "and I suspect he may think he's giving them what they want," is that what *you* want, Scully, "there may have been an early sexual experience with a woman who did enjoy that particular kink. One time it went too far, he killed the girl and he liked it. The girl reminded him of his mother, that bitch, and she'd provoked him, she wanted to fight and he wanted to fuck and because he was bigger he got his wish. He probably didn't do a great job of disposing of the body, but he was panicked and didn't go through the ritual of displaying her, which means the murder is probably still in some unsolved file in Anywhere, USA.

"It might have started earlier, though. His adoptive mother, nagging, saying such horrible things that he just wanted her to stop talking. The things he had to choke down just to stay alive, the rotten slimy food she fed him when he was bad and had to be punished. And the rage that felt like it would crawl out of his stomach and burst from his mouth and destroy the world. The anger frightened him and he liked it, I think he got the tattoo as a way of asserting control over the thing that lives inside him. He's bound it with barbed wire; *he's* the one who decides when the noose will tighten and when the beast will take over."

"You're saying he thinks there's something living in his stomach?" I had forgotten how that tone of hers, even distorted by the hideous swelling of the tissues of her throat, could make me absolutely batty. If it wouldn't be poaching on another man's territory I could have strangled her myself.

"It's a metaphor, Scully. Even psychos can understand metaphors." Hmm, that didn't come out as clearly as it should have.

She looked away. "Practitioners of Haltha Yoga believe that parts of the body have symbolic meanings as well and the throat is analagous to the vagina--could his MO, and the tattoo, be a reaction not simply to his hatred and fear of women but his hatred and fear of that which he thinks is feminine in himself?"

I stared at her. I don't know where she hides the CD-ROM with the world encyclopedia she uses for this little trick, and it's not like I haven't had the opportunity to check her over.

"It's possible," I didn't begrudge her the insight. Well, yes, I did, but it was a grain of sand on the shore of our accumulated struggles. And it was fairly clever.

Iolokus III: Vix te Agnovi 7/20
The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead,
And makes my labors pleasures. O, she is
Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed;
And he's compos'd of harshness.


Miranda woke at 3:23, demanding a feeding. She'd been sleeping through the night recently, but I suspected that all the strangers around her were disrupting her equilibrium. Possibly she was picking it up from me.

I trotted down to the kitchen, noting on my way that Scully had won the battle with Zippy and was stretched out on the couch, taking up about half its length. The light blue blanket had slid down past her breasts; she was sleeping in a long-sleeved sweatshirt and I saw the collar of a T-shirt peeking out around her neck. 

I remembered her sleeping in big flannel nightshirts that exposed her bird-delicate collarbones, and later, entirely without hesitation, in the nude even when I put my boxers and shirt back on. Standard response to sexual assault, I reminded myself, and was surprised to find a new vein of self-hatred. I thought that lode was mined out, but Scully's always inspirational.

I hurried to get the formula heated up, stopping the microwave just before it pinged so that I wouldn't wake Scully.  I took Miranda over to the table and sat down, staring blankly at the pictures stuck to the refrigerator, the ones of Miranda and I, Emerson, Aileen, and Samuel at Samuel's bris not long ago.  My favorite picture was of Miranda and Samuel sitting in front of Emerson's big fireplace, looking at each other with more skepticism than I could believe coming out of their little bodies.

The caption, in Emerson's neat handwriting, was "I thought I was the only baby in the world."

At this point feeding Miranda was more a response of my autonomic nervous system than a conscious process, and it took me a while to notice that her Highness had fallen asleep in my arms again. She went back in her crib, bare of pillows and stuffed animals to cut down on the risk of SIDS, and slept.

Scully was thrashing against a nightmare when I went to put the bottle in the sink. Flailing as ineffectually as a sick kitten against the tangled blanket, she keened and her eyes rolled beneath closed lids as I approached.

I wanted to believe that she deserved to suffer, that her demons were proportionate to her demonic nature. Like many things that I want to believe, I was having increasing difficulty with this claim.

Her eyes popped open as suddenly as a camera flash and I was trapped in the glare.

She ground herself against the pillows as if she could disappear through the thick padding through force of will. One hand flailed for her gun on the side table, and I reached out to stop her. If she was going to shoot me again I wanted both of us in our right minds.

"Mulder?"

I nodded and pointed at my unmarred neck.

"Did I wake you?"

I didn't like that question, it suggested that she'd been loud enough to wake other people before. My nightmares were silent, she'd slept through plenty lying in the same bed with me, but hers apparently had a soundtrack. "Late-night feeding," I said. She nodded, accepting.

I should have left. Instead I reached out and pulled the blanket back up to her neck. "Were you dreaming about Jason?" I could really get sick of my passion to know the truth, if I thought about it.

She shook her head and smiled the way homeless drunks do when they ask you for money, rueful and mocking and self-hating all at once. "Baylor, actually."

What? Surely she didn't have bad dreams about *his* death, of all we'd seen; most of my brothers had died worse deaths. Then I thought again about her pitiful struggles with the blanket and understood a little better.

"That happen a lot?"

She knew what I was really asking--is it all of us who do this to you? She gave me the same smile as she brushed sweaty strands of hair off of her smooth white forehead. "I'm hoping my subconscious gives me some time away from George on the theory that he's made his quota for the month."

I wanted to ask her if I was featured in her late-night horrors, I needed to know, but I didn't want to be the villain of the night.  I also didn't want Emerson bonking her, even if it was only in her own mind.

The thought must have been plastered across my face like a handbill, because she gave me another pained smile and pushed her hair away from her cheek, making the bruises show inky black on the paperwhite of her throat.

"Sometimes.  Apparently my id isn't concerned with your ego."

"Scully, " I started, "you know I would give almost anything for all of this not to have happened to you."

"Almost?" she asked in a slightly sharp tone.

There was a time when I wouldn't have qualified the statement.

"Miranda.  I wouldn't sacrifice her for anything."

Curling herself up into a half-seated position, she pulled up her legs and I sat in the space on the sofa that was still warm from her body.  Despite what she had just said, she leaned against me, boneless and limp as the Mooselet.  I could smell the soap on her skin and the dark vanilla and almond smell that was only her.  God I missed this, the silent intimacy that had evaporated like perfume oil when we had started sleeping together.  We'd gotten the physical world and all those pleasures, and lost everything else.

"Is she your salvation?" Scully asked in a dreamy voice, her head drooping like a daffodil with no water against my shoulder.

"Yes."

"That's good," she said in the singsong tone of one already asleep.

When her breathing deepened and she drifted away again, I eased her back against the pillow, and I couldn't stop myself from smoothing her hair as I did so before I made my guilt-drunk way back upstairs and fell into bed alone.

****

The pain in my neck was fighting a battle with the crick in my back for my attention.  Morning sunlight batted at my face and I groaned as the events of the day before ran a slow-motion replay through my mind.  I smelled coffee and that brought me off the sofa like Dracula arising from his coffin.  Stumbling into the kitchen, I expected to see any number of people, Mulder, Zippy, Warwick, even George, but I was not expecting the BLONDE.  And she was blonde, blonde down to the tuft of pubic hair that was coyly peeking out from underneath the bikini panties small enough to be an afterthought. I swallowed hard in my hurtful throat and tried to concentrate.  Tall, leggy, buxom, and stuffed in a tight white tank top that let her nipples show, she was everything that I wasn't, oozing sex appeal like the warm smell of coffee.  Turning, she smiled and handed me a mug of coffee. 

"You vant sugar?"

She had an exotic accent and straight teeth.

"No," I croaked and retreated to the table.

"You are Scully?  I am Ingveld," she said by way of introduction.

I nodded and drank coffee.

"Vox said that you had been strangled at the throat," she said, sitting in the chair across from me, with one foot on the seat and her arm around her leg, casual and nonchalant even though I could probably have given her a gynecological report from the view. 

Vox?

Oh God.  Murky waters ran clear. He was sleeping with her.

The burning in my chest had nothing to do with George or the coffee.

"You look like death not cooked.  Come and we'll fix you up a bit," she stood up and pulled on my sleeve like a child.

Since I didn't have anything better to do, I followed her.

Downstairs, into the realm of Warwick, where himself was glued to a computer monitor bigger than my television set, with headphones attached to a Discman.  He had become one with the machine and lines of multicolored code moved across the black void as fast as his hyper-kinetic hands could type them.  As she passed, Ingveld trailed her hand over his shoulder with telling intimacy.  So unless she was sleeping with both of them (and you never could tell with these Marlene Dietrich types) it was Warwick whose name she mispronounced in the throes of passion.

The "mother in law" apartment consisted of a big living room complete with TV, sofa and computer, a separate entrance and a big bedroom which I followed Ingveld into.  Like every other room in the house, the apartment had been decorated in Ikea showroom. Warwick's bedroom was a mess, clothes dripping off the furniture and soda cans on the bedside table. 

Ingveld opened a black duffel bag and hauled out a plastic zippered bag.

"You go take a shower, and I will give some clothes to you and the marks we will make vanish."

The bathroom attached to the bedroom was clean, at least, even though there were wet towels hanging all over the place.  I found a dry towel, finished my coffee, and locked the door behind me before I got under the hot spray of water.  Emotional fallout from Jason's rape had been extreme, and I still locked the bathroom door even when I was alone in my own apartment.  I also could no longer stand flowery-smelling soaps and shampoos.  Fortunately, Warwick and Ingveld were heavily into herb shampoo and deodorant soap so I could wash without feeling sick.  Bundled in a towel, I stuck my head out of the bathroom. 
"What have you got?" I asked.

Ingveld passed me another tank top and bikini panties.  I almost laughed. I'd been dying of cancer, sick unto death with chemotherapy drugs and I'd still worn a bra.  Then again, my life hasn't been without regret and wearing a bra too much was one of the things that I could fix with little disruption to my life or anyone else's.  When I had struggled into the underwear and we stood in the bedroom like two textbook illustrations of different female body types, Ingveld handed me a green wrap skirt that probably bared her slender calves. It made my lower half look like a sofa -- a sofa with ten little toe-worms wriggling out from underneath. 

"You know," I said, looking sadly into the mirror, "I think I'd better try whatever clothes Zippy brought me."

She grinned and went over to the side of the room. She must have brought my suitcase over while I'd been in the shower. I really wanted to dislike her, but upon further consideration I decided that she was way too happy and aboveboard for Mulder to fuck. Also she saw my point about the skirt, didn't protest, just got out a pair of jeans and handed them over.

"Maybe we do something about your neck?" she said after I had slipped into a pair of jeans that had been fashionably tight and now were fashionably baggy.

My throat and neck still hurt, but it wasn't anything that a judicious application of Ibuprofen and cough drops couldn't handle. The external signs of my near-George experience could also be dealt with. God knows I'd covered up bite marks from George's good twin for almost a year. While Ingveld dabbed Clinique Pale Ivory and a lot of pressed powder on my throat, I tried not to flinch at her touch and, for the most part, I succeeded. Next we covered up the broken blood vessels on my face, already purple with death. Eventually the cells would blacken and dissolve into the surrounding tissue. For the moment artificial pigment would have to do.

Shaky, wearing more makeup than the average clown, and violating most of the FBI dress codes, I pulled a blazer on over my jeans and shirt and went to look for my partner.

Zippy and I drove out to Quantico to surround ourselves with signs of law enforcement activity. I had to remember that there were plenty of hard-working people on my side. Still, I knew first-hand, or first-neck really, that the Hoover building basement wasn't all that safe, and I sat facing the door as I reviewed the autopsy reports at my borrowed desk.
 
"I think we've got another," Zippy said, coming into the stifling little room I had appropriated for us. He'd been pulling all the reports on recently discovered bodies in Virginia, Maryland, and the District, looking for any that might match George's pattern.

I reached over and took the printout. Victim characteristics matched somewhat: her teeth identified her as Charleyne Davis, physician's assistant, four foot eleven, missing since last week when she'd disappeared after the end of her shift at Northeast Georgetown at four a.m. He'd always done nurses in the past, but he might be branching out further into the health care profession, especially now that hospitals were hiring all sorts of non-nurse personnel to do caretaking tasks. But Davis was not just a PA; she was also African-American, which put her at the outer reaches of plausibility for George who as far as we knew had to date stuck to the standard intraracial pattern.

If this one was George's he was trying some new techniques to coincide with his new set of victims.

"I'll call and have the bones sent over," I said. "Was any flesh recovered, anything preserved in the refrigerator or something like that?"

Zippy nodded. "It was in the garbage disposal. It got--clogged--because the UNSUB just kept, um, stuffing bits. Nothing in the fridge though."

"Well, I guess whoever did this wasn't big on leftovers."

Davis's hyoid bone had been fractured, suggesting death by strangulation. There were no fingerprints in the cheap rented apartment where the killer had left her remains. He'd had time to clean up, didn't have to leave in a hurry, because even though his neighbors had called the super to complain about the strange, sour smell coming out of his apartment the place was too much of a pesthole to expect rapid action.

He'd killed her and hacked her up, but I didn't think the cutting was part of the fantasy, just a necessary practicality to fit her body, by parts, into the pot. This was speculation because there wasn't actually anything bubbling on the stove when the cops finally came along. But over the hacksaw marks where bone had been cut there were the distinctive signs of "pot polish" -- shiny marks made when bones are boiled and strike each other and the sides of the pot as they bubble. And the crime scene photos included images of the kitchen. I didn't even know that pots *came* in that size; what could they possibly be good for except to serve mankind?

The bones had been stacked neatly on the cheap fiberboard coffee table when the super had finally entered to check things out, the skull and the two tibia bones displayed in a pirate's cross in front of the rest. The soggy muscle and fat trapped in the pipes was not very helpful; any trace evidence had been washed away, and it was impossible to tell, given the condition of the flesh by the time it was found, what he'd used to cut her up or whether his technique indicated any past experience with butchery.

There was no forensic evidence to suggest he'd eaten her flesh, but there was nothing to indicate the contrary either. We couldn't even be sure it was George, at least not until Mulder gave his oracular opinion.

First I had to deal with Mulder's superior. She sent a message up to the surface, she wanted to see us instantly, and we took the elevator down into the depths of the bomb shelter that was the ISU.

I'd heard about Julie Graff for years. Meeting her was even more impressive. She had blue peregrine eyes and a nose to match, a wild swirl of hair piled precariously on her head, and a no-nonsense brown pantsuit that screamed "authority figure." If there'd been more women like her at the Academy I wouldn't have had so much trouble with male father-substitutes.

I wanted to genuflect but I thought she might take it as mockery.

"You look like a college student," she said. "Don't you own a pantsuit? Don't answer that. Instead, explain why this case should be in your bailiwick," all rattled off before we were able to sit down.

Zippy glanced at me and then made his own attempt to answer. "George Naxos is part of an X File that's been open for the past four years, and active for over six months."

"You're counting Agent Scully's disappearance as part of the same X File, I presume," she laid her hands flat on her mahogany desk, "I've read the reports on Roush, I know Mulder's twisted little version of Family Feud. What I don't understand is why this serial killer should of his own merit be an X File. Surely you don't think Naxos's actions are being dictated by some shadow conspiracy or a shipful of little green men?"

"Gray," I muttered.

"What was that, Agent Scully?"

"Ma'am, there's evidence that George Naxos's pattern is somehow related to the trauma that Agent Mulder experienced as a child. The unexplained transmission of sensation and information between twins, even when other crimes are involved, has historically been the business of the X Files. If you'll look at the cross-references in the file--"

"Fuck the cross-references. You think you'll be able to catch this monster faster than my profilers because you've got more experience with spoon-benders? Zipprelli, I remember you were an okay profiler but you've been away from the game too long."

"Ma'am," I tried again, "the X Files represent a legitimate area of inquiry, we've survived numerous levels of review by demonstrating that our methods work. Agent Mulder himself has noted the disparities between George Naxos's pattern and what one would otherwise suspect. And the particular change he's demonstrated after being freed in Texas--the switch from graveyards to playgrounds--is highly suggestive."

She wasn't buying it. This was worse than trying to convince Skinner of something. And I wasn't nearly as inured to skepticism as Mulder had been. "Suggestive of what, Agent Scully?"

"Of some sort of -- spiritual -- connection between Mulder and Na