The Glimmering Girl

AUTHOR: Tesla 

RATING: NC-17 

KEYWORDS: MSR, Casefile 

ARCHIVE: Anywhere. I like to know where I am, so let me know if possible.

SPOILERS: After Mulder returns from the Ship, but before the end of season eight 

DISCLAIMERS: All hail Fox, 1013, and Chris Carter! There's Definitely no money being made off this, boys, although I have borrowed the characters of Mulder and Scully and Frank Black. Hey, what's the use of having action figures if you can't use them? 

SUMMARY: Mulder works a child abduction with Frank Black, while Scully is away for the weekend, but very much on Mulder's mind. This is a follow-up to "After the Ship", But it's not necessary to read it first. 

Obligatory thanks: I can't say enough to my online fan-fic friends for being an unfailing help to me through the mundane crises of my offline existence. But, without MaybeAmanda, this wouldn't have been written, let alone beta'd. Also, Fran58; Tangential Thinker; Kel; and Lisby for their support. (Bartle & James joke here for those of us old enough.)

Prologue

Driving around the block after he dropped Scully off, Mulder suddenly realized that the Lamaze class had started and he still hadn't found a parking place. Somehow, he knew that saying he had "missing time" was not going to help, and indeed would bring on several responses, all negative, starting with: "Mulder, don't joke about that!" and going through "I can walk two blocks!" to ending with a tight-lipped, "You volunteered to bring me. You don't have to do this."

All of which were true. None of which were finding him a parking place closer than three-quarters of a mile. He thought there had been a decrease in the birth rates; why was this place so crowded? Or why the hell wasn't it held somewhere with a parking garage? (He didn't consider the irony of that last thought until days later.)

The truth was, he didn't want to do it. He wanted to be there, and help Scully, and back her up, and he hoped he felt everything he should feel, but----and he was guilty about it----he didn't think he could stand it. He felt more comfortable being the one connected to the I.V. If anything happened. . .

Nothing was going to happen to Scully.

Mulder saw a car pull out and jammed on the brakes. Ignoring the frantic horn-honking of an SUV, he reversed and shot into the spot. Great. Only seven blocks. He started walking back to the Carter Medical Arts Building, ignoring the screamed imprecations of the SUV driver. Too bad he didn't time to flash the badge and terrify him, the damn gas-guzzler. This just wasn't his day. Afternoon. Evening. Whatever.

Mulder sprinted the last block with more fear than he had felt in Tunguska. He saw Scully standing on the steps, and jogged up to her, unable to speak or breathe. When his vision cleared, he noted a look of thunder on her brow. "Parking.." He wheezed. "No parking." Jeeze, the class couldn't be over, could it? There was no way he had driven in circles the entire time.

Scully held out her bottle of water, and waited for him to drink. He took a huge gulp, sneaking a glance at her. "The instructor went into labor," she said succinctly. She looked at his sweaty face. "Mulder, what on earth?"

"I couldn't find a parking place anywhere. I'll go get the car, it's----"

Scully frowned at him. "I can still walk, Mulder. I won't break. What's so funny?"

"The perpetrator's fantasy disintegrates when he realizes he is dealing with a child or young woman who has no wish to have a relationship with him."

Mulder was remembering a lecture at the Academy, in a half-waking state. He didn't know if he was giving the lecture or listening to it. "The victim is upset, fearful, and wants nothing to do with the perpetrator. If the perpetrator has attempted or completed a sexual act with the victim, she is in pain, weeping, and begging to go home."

No, he had lectured to a class of would-be profilers. He was awake, now, the sound of his own voice in his ears. He squinted at the clock out of habit, then sank back down in the sheets. He didn't have to be anywhere at eight o'clock; not this Friday. He hadn't begun to enjoy unemployment yet, and he had years of sleep to catch up on. Scully had gone for a weekend pregnancy Zen retreat.

At Mulder's barely concealed look of horror, Scully had laughed. "I'm not suggesting you join us, I'm just giving you the phone numbers. I'm turning off my cell phone most of the time, but I'll check my call log." She had smiled up at him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"I'm not going to need any autopsies done, Scully," he had replied. "I'm going to play basketball at the Y."

Then, she had rather put a damper on the mood by pulling out a fat manila envelope. "These are still coming to me, Mulder, but I've signed them, and you can put them in your account." She was flushed. "I cashed out the rest of the trust account and put it in there, too...so you'd have some money."

"Who knew that coming back from the dead would be so much trouble?" he said lightly, taking the checks. Some part of his brain insisted that he make a gigolo joke, but the problem was, he didn't think his situation was that funny. "I appreciate it, Scully." He couldn't think of anything else to say.

Her face was definitely red. "It's your money, Mulder. And you better call Mandy in Human Resources, she's giving me fits about your back pay and the insurance co-pay."

"I'll take care of it, Scully. Go have a Zen time."

So why was his cell phone ringing? "Mulder."

"This is Frank Black. I got your cell number from a mutual acquaintance. Something's come up. I understand that you're no longer with the Bureau?" Mulder grinned up at the mirrored ceiling tiles. Frank Black, Mr. Omniscient. Still with the Bureau hard-wired into his brain. "Yeah, that's right. Are you offering me a job?"

"Yes, I am. It's about a kidnapping, and the chief of police called me and asked for my input."

Mulder stopped smiling and sat up, swinging his legs out of bed. "Why the hell did he do that?"

"Two reasons. There's no ransom demand. And the victim is the illegitimate daughter of the assistant Director of the National Security Agency. The chief is under a lot of pressure."

"Where can we meet?" Mulder said, scrabbling on the floor for his jeans.

"I'm driving to Hegel Place now. I'm in a Jeep Cherokee; I should be at your building in forty minutes." The line went dead.

Mulder had spilled salsa on his jeans the night before, so with a sigh, he pulled out a pair of khakis and a pressed shirt from his last dry-cleaning. Dorky but clean. If there was no note, then someone had taken the victim, either as a crime of opportunity, or because he had been stalking her, obsessed in some way. Thinking he could have----thinking he did have a relationship with her. He ignored the little scared voice in his head, the one that said, "You're doing it again. You're seeing them again." But it was better than spending eight hours on the Internet, reading about everything that had happened in the real world since he stepped into that circle of light into the otherwhere.

Mulder wondered if Black had gotten his cell number from Skinner; and he caught himself reaching for his cell phone to call Scully.

No. Let her have a nice weekend. She didn't need to hear about a little girl lost. He didn't he want to hear about it, but it was already too late. He was out the door and running down the stairs. He might even feel like himself again, instead of his own ghost.

On the way to the victim's home, Black gave Mulder some background. "She goes to a private girl's academy in walking distance of her home. She ducked into a coffee shop, and never came out. The coffee shop employee said he saw a uniformed school girl come in, and was met by a man who seemed to know her. She wasn't surprised, or taken forcibly from the place. No video cameras in the shop."

"So she knew him, or he looked familiar. Or he gained her confidence very quickly. A kidnapping for ransom, or a sexual predator?"

"It's going to be treated as a kidnapping," Black said. "But there's something odd. He wants his daughter back, but he doesn't want it known. In fact, he's not listed on her birth certificate, he doesn't own the house, and there's not a thing to tie him to this girl. The mother will be presented as a single parent."

"You don't think he wanted her gone, do you?" Mulder asked. Black scowled, but not in surprise; he had considered it, Mulder thought.

"No, Mulder, I don't think he would have called me. He'd rather no one knew about her, but I don't think he'd hire someone to get rid of her. A poor father, but a father."

The house was a tasteful Colonial styled one in Alexandria. There was one discreet, unmarked van, and the police chief's car in the driveway. The mother of the child was lying on her bed, sobs breaking through a sedated sleep. The father was torn between his loss, and the fear that his wife and college age children, and the White House, would find out. Nevertheless, he was standing in front of the cold fireplace, promising Black and Mulder the sun, the moon, and the stars. The chief looked like he was trying to psychically remove himself from the scene. Black knew the chief; they had Bureau connections. Mulder thought that he knew, now, how Black had received the call; but why did Black think of him? Mulder put the question away for later, and gave himself over to watching everyone else. Oddly refreshing, not to be the one with the badge.

Very quietly, like servants, a forensics team was going through the child's bedroom and searching every square inch. No one wanted to miss any note, but, since she vanished on her way to school, it was doubtful one would show up in the house. The phone lines were already being tapped. A pair of detectives was at the school, interviewing teachers and fellow students.

"There's no ransom demand. Even if there is one, we don't have the luxury of time. If there is one, the police and the Bureau can well handle that end. "

"What if there's no ransom? What if we're never contacted?"

"It's possible that this man has concocted an elaborate fantasy around your daughter." Black said. "Of course, another possibility is that she's run away."

The chief spoke up. "The housekeeper has gone through her things with the team upstairs. There's no clothing missing, all her favorite books and teddy bears are still in her room. Not even her gym bag is missing; she brought it home last night to have her PE clothes washed. She took her homework assignments."

The supervising detective was nodding in agreement, and met Mulder's eyes. Mulder raised his eyebrows slightly, and the other man looked up at the ceiling.

"Can we look at her bedroom?" Mulder asked. "If the initial photographs are done?"

The detective caught his eye and nodded slightly.

"She wasn't taken from here," the father said.

"Yes, I understand," Mulder said. "But we have to start from the moment she woke up this morning." Something odd about the father, he told himself. Something there.

She was twelve. She had a cache of cards and letters in her desk drawer, among class schedules and old book reports, signed by "Your Secret Pal" or with "You know who." She had a room filled with stuffed animals, and posters of boy bands on the walls, and a closet of plaid school uniforms. Vicky.

Mulder took a greeting card out of Black's hand to look at it more closely. He heard a strange buzz, and could see---could see a man. Waving at a girl riding her bicycle toward him. Swingset. Trees.

"You see him, don't you?" Black asked quietly. He stood in front of Mulder, blocking him from the view of the District detectives.

Mulder flinched. "What?" He dropped the card and bent to pick it up, to disguise his reaction to the question.

"You see part of it. A flash, a vision. Like tuning in," Black said. "But not always."

His impulse to deny it faded away. "Yes," Mulder said. "Once in a while, on a crime scene, I can see what happened. I always thought I was just reading the clues and reliving it." The image of Scully, crawling through broken glass rose before him, as sharp as when he had stood in her old living room, and Mulder had to swallow the sudden taste of bile in his mouth. He picked up the small picture of Vicky Frank had handed him earlier, and put it in his pocket, before following Frank downstairs.

"Two things occur to me. Either he was a stalker who imagined a relationship with Vicky, or he had a relationship with Vicky. And even if he frightens her, or if he abuses her, he may tell her she can't go back; that her parents would never take her back after what has happened."

The Director said, "How could she believe that?"

"This is a secret family," Black said. "Vicky's existence is a secret. She broke the secrets. You're putting pressure on the police to keep her disappearance a secret."

"We should be calling the press," Mulder said. "Why shouldn't we call the press?" He didn't quite mean it, of course. It could be quite handy to have all the leaks sealed, in the initial stage of the investigation. Secret. Sealed. Sealed with a kiss. Secret pal. He walked over to the French doors, and pulled back the curtain, but he didn't see the neat lawn. He saw a small girl walking to school with her backpack swinging on one strap. He touched a fingertip to the glass pane.

Behind him, the Director collapsed onto the Chippendale sofa, his mouth moving soundlessly. Mulder watched his reflection in the glass. Another well-manicured man in an English suit. He wished he'd worn the salsa-stained pants.

"Ah," Black said. "Why don't you tell us the full story?"

"I can't," the man replied. "I can't tell you anything."

"You don't live here," Mulder said, staring out the window into the garden. "You have another house out on Foxhall, don't you? And a house back home? Is this relationship even current, or do you still go to that dominatrix in Baltimore?" He turned away from the window and back to the Director. "It's not that big a secret, you see."

Reluctantly, the chief cleared his throat. "We've already put out a bulletin, Frank. Standard procedures. I agree with you that it's not a kidnapping. Any help you can give me, I'll take. Just give me a head's up, okay?"

Mulder turned around. "Give me your cell number, Chief, and we'll keep you informed if we find anything at all. I think we want to retrace her steps to school, but you'll want to have someone searching her locker and her computer access at school. I think she knew the person she went to."

Slowly walking to the school, Mulder took out his cell phone and checked for messages. Nothing from Scully. He sighed, and thought of last weekend.

He was glad she asked him to stay the night. After long deliberation, and considering that she'd seen him without pants before, Mulder took off his shoes and jeans, and went to sleep on the couch in shirt, boxers, and socks. He rolled himself in the blanket she gave him and tried to sleep.

From his uneasy doze on the couch, Mulder heard Scully cry out. He was at her door, still clutching her old Navy blanket.

But Scully was asleep. In the dim light from the desk lamp, he saw that her eyes were closed, and she was dreaming. She was frowning, with one hand curled to her cheek. It was all right, then.

Her eyes opened. "Mulder?" she said hoarsely.

"Yeah. You were dreaming," he said, closing the door.

"C'mere," she said. She put her hand down to her bulge.

Mulder took a half-step forward. "I...." he began, and tossed the blanket over the foot of the bed. Scully smiled up at him from her pillow, and he took another step forward. He bent over her, and stroked the hair from her face. "I was just outside," he said. She didn't say anything about his pant-less condition.

She spoke in a teasing voice. "I'm pregnant, Mulder, I'm not dying. This isn't like the cancer. You don't have to worry all the time."

He sat down beside her, his hip nudging her thigh, and laid his arm across her lap for support. "I don't think I know how to function without worrying. Has it ever occurred to you that we spent an inordinate time in hospitals?" Their faces were very close; he could feel her breath on his face.

She snorted. "Is this just now coming to you?" She moved her leg against him. "It's why I keep telling you I won't break. I. Won't. Break."

Mulder kissed her. Her mouth opened to his, and she slid her hands under his tee-shirt to caress his back. He shuddered, and she said something against his neck.

"What?" he managed. He hoped it wasn't, 'Stop.'

Her face was flushed. "G-good. I said, good."

They started laughing, and Scully made room for him on the bed, holding up the sheet. Mulder moved into her arms as if they had been sleeping together for years. He began licking the place where her jaw curved into her neck. Well, they had slept together for years, if you wanted to think about it. As if they had been having sex regularly. He didn't know what he meant. He had to stop giving himself bulletins. He had to stop describing this in his head. Scully was pulling the shirt over his head, and he was pushing up her gown to kiss her belly.

Her belly kissed back. Or kicked. He sat up, dazed, to see her looking back with an almost painful intensity. "The baby," he whispered, and gently nuzzled her again. The baby kicked again, the smallest of feelings, something that was Not-Scully but was Scully. He put one palm on her belly, and applied his tongue lower, lower, until now Scully moved uncontrollably. Until Scully cried out. He substituted his hand for his tongue, and with infinite care, knelt between her knees. He braced himself with one hand and guided himself into...her. She opened her eyes wide, her mouth forming a soundless "o".

O, Scully.

Afterward, Mulder wanted to lie beside her all night and say foolish things. Tell her about when he caught the fly ball in right field and threw to third base to get the runner; tell her how it felt when he got his scholarship to Oxford; how he felt when he had read her journal entries that bad night in the hospital. He wanted to whisper in her ear and hear her laugh in the darkness. He wanted to tell her what he remembered about the experiments, but he knew he wouldn't. Just like he didn't tell her what he remembered about Cancerman's little brain surgery. The one that nearly killed him.

But Scully seemed to feel so awkward, so incapable of resting that Mulder got up and pulled his clothes back on and went back to the couch. She didn't want to hear about his feelings right now. She wanted to be matter of fact. She wanted to sleep.

Then there was that last time he had tried to tell her what he felt, again during one of the less charming hospital stays. Mulder had taken advantage of not being on an I.V. to get up. He just couldn't stand being handed that urine catcher and then having a nursing aide stand just outside in the hall, opening the door to check on his progress.

No, he was a guy. He would pee standing up, goddamnit.

The dizzy spell took him when he was one step outside the bathroom, and the next thing he knew, he was staring at the ceiling. He lay flat on his back, staring up, and wondered dispassionately how some unfortunate managed to squirt blood on the underside of the television shelf.

He tried to raise his head, but he saw bright specks of light that spelled out "loser", and subsided. At least the linoleum was nice and cool, if a bit redolent of pine oil cleaner. Yes, Mulder was a connoisseur of hospital smells. If it was pine, he was in the southeast; Lysol, he was in California; and for the northeast, the straight-forward smell of Clorox.

And the mere whiff of a certain potpourri air freshener brought back all the horrors of going to see Scully at the oncology ward. Scully. He better try to get up before she caught him on the floor, he thought. He twitched a foot experimentally. Okay, on the count of three----

The door swung open. "Mulder," said a resigned voice. Scully's high heels came into view.

Mulder wanted to explain, but what came out was, "Scully, I can see up your skirt."

"No, you don't," she said firmly, kneeling beside him. Cool fingers touched his neck. Shit, she was taking his pulse.

"Stop," he said. He sounded ineffectual even to himself. She cupped one hand behind his shoulder and pulled him up to sitting position. "Scully," he said, and managed to infuse urgency in his voice.

Surprised, Scully looked him in the eye. "Are you hurt, Mulder? I thought you passed out because you got up too quickly." Bitch. She reached for the hem of his hospital gown, and he slapped her hand away. That was a bad idea, since it made the room spin around, and Scully clutched at him. He was lying with his head in her lap when the fractured images became one.

"Oh, Scully," he said, sounding more despairing than he intended, "I do love you."

A muscle moved in her jaw. "You say that every time someone gives you a benzodiazepine."

"It's when I lose my inhibitions," he said. His throat hurt, but it was an old ache. "You know---"

But the moment was lost, lost with all the moments of all their days and years together. Scully raised her head, and shouted; an aide came in. "Help me get him back in bed," Scully said, as if she did this every day; as if she had never heard of the X-files and was about to resume her hospital rounds.

And when she looked into his eyes, it was only to check his pupils.

That's when he first began to think that she loved him more when he wasn't actually there. And now, of course, being massaged with scented oil and soaking in hot mud or whatever, this weekend, he knew she was thinking warm and loving thoughts about him. She did. She was always tremendously pleased to be back with him after a short time away, but all he had to do was open his mouth, and he could manage to annoy her all over again.

"Pregnancy does odd things to women," Black said, scaring him. "I hope Dr. Scully is all right?"

"I'm off the leash this weekend," Mulder said. "How did you know she was...." he trailed off. "Everyone knows, huh?"

Black moved his head negatively. "I heard. I still have friends in the Bureau. I've always been interested in you and Dr. Scully." He stopped walking, suddenly, and pointed to a little garden between two brownstones.

Mulder stopped and looked at the two weathered picnic tables, the little public water fountain, all tucked under ancient elm trees and carpeted in tiny spears of new grass. "Looks like a great place to meet someone. Or where you'd have a kid come meet you on the way to school."

Black stood on the sidewalk, his hands in the pockets of his ancient barn jacket, and watched as Mulder turned into the garden, and began walking around, scuffing his feet through last fall's dead leaves.

Mulder felt as though his skin had lost a layer, or as he felt coming out of the heated swimming pool into the cold gym. Something shimmered in his mind's eye, just beyond his thoughts. Vicky had been here. Vicky was still alive. He would wait until night before he tried to rape her. Of course, he wouldn't think it was rape. He may be surprised how sophisticated grade school girls were, these days. But the actual physical contact of sex was scary, icky, painful--- she would cry, she would---

He stopped, his hand to his chin. The Lover wouldn't drug her. He'd take her on a dream date, he'd spend the entire day doing things she wanted to do. Mulder turned to Black, unaware that the pupils of his eyes were as dilated as if he'd been smoking pot. "Frank," he said, "We've got to go to a mall."

He turned and went back, walking to Black's jeep and getting inside. When Black caught up to him and got into the car, Mulder sat with one elbow on the door frame, his head on his hand.

"You don't see it like you used to, do you?" he asked Black. "But you still know their moves. You know what kind of guy does this."

Black sighed. "I know the kind of guy," he acknowledged. "But I don't know how he'll play this."

"It's all on how Vicky reacts. If he gets physical right away, then we both now it'll be bad for her. But he won't."

Black stopped the engine. "What if it involves the Agency?" he asked, turning in the seat. "What if he has something---no, what if he has done something to merit revenge?"

Mulder considered it for a moment. "Go on," he said. He took the picture of Vicky from his pocket, weighing it in the palm of his hand.

"If the assistant Director was involved in something dirty, he wouldn't have called the police. He wouldn't try to get her back. He could have told the school some story, and quietly got rid of the mother. His people would have cleaned this up for him." Black gave a grimace that was almost a tic. "I'm familiar with conspiracies and shadow agencies. This doesn't have the right feel."

Mulder nodded. "Yeah, so am I," he said, without irony. "It doesn't. Someone saw her. Someone developed a relationship to her in a way that would not arouse suspicion. It used be through tutors, music teachers, coaches that pedophiles had access to the kids. Now, with the Internet, he could have met her anywhere. And in that case, his own agency can crack that computer faster than we can."

"He doesn't want them to know until he gets it fixed."

"She's his secret. A secret child. A secret life." Mulder dropped his voice to a whisper. "Her daddy doesn't come to school to see her play lacrosse; her mom doesn't cook dinner for them, but she gets into a limo and flies off to the islands for a week, while Vicky goes to school and goes to practice and does her homework."

He tapped the edge of Vicky's picture against his knee. "So she has a secret pal. A secret friend. She reads books about secret gardens, and Harriet the Spy, and misunderstood young girls. So it seems like it's finally happening for her."

Black squinted, in a way that would have reminded Mulder of Clint Eastwood's later work if he wasn't feeling so oppressed. He knew what Black was going to say, before it even came out of his mouth.

"Mulder, you have to get into his head, not Vicky's. If you want to check out the shopping malls, the metro police will do it. You have go back in there and look at the letters."

Mulder's right hand clenched on the door handle. "It's not voodoo, Frank. It's a science. You know that better than anyone."

"Not for you, Mulder. It's a gift."

"I'm a dangerous man," Mulder hummed to himself. "I'm a dangerous man in a dangerous land playing a dangerous..."

He stopped, picking up the first of the tiny notes. He had been slightly surprised that the police had agreed to let him "consult" but then, they wanted to find Vicky, and no one had time for worrying about strict jurisdictions. He sat on the edge of the bed, bathed in incongruous sunlight. Vicky was with a pedophile, and there was the bright blue sky of early spring visible through her bedroom windows. The sky. . .the sky. There were little white clouds on a sky-blue card, and inside, the perp had written, "to my princesse lontaine." So Vicky had French lessons, and the perp knew enough to know that being a faraway princess was a romantic idea. He set it aside for

Mulder didn't want to do it. He didn't want to trace his latex- covered finger over the scribbled initial on the card, didn't want to pick up the little stuffed toys and the stickers and the glitter nail polish. He didn't want to stand up and look in the closet, and put his hand on the plaid school jumper. He didn't want to feel like a man who wanted a prepubescent girl. He didn't want to know what that felt like.

"The pedophile is an inadequate personality whose primary sexual focus is on children who have not reached puberty. He has no interest in sexually mature partners. He may have been abused, himself, as a child. He usually collects photos or drawings of children that are not, on the surface, erotic or pornographic to the average viewer. These collections come from newspaper and magazine advertisements or clothing catalogs." Black had given him a hand-held recorder and a package of tapes.

She was unspoiled. She was sweet and tender. She was always rapturously happy to find his notes, because he watched her. He had a job with flexible hours, or even a night shift position, something that gave him plenty of time to cultivate Vicky's interest. Plenty of time to follow her around....and take pictures. Take movies of her. Sweet and tender. Check photo shops, but he probably had a digital camera and loaded the pictures straight into his computer.

Mulder shuddered violently. God. He couldn't deal with a pervert's sexual fantasies. He couldn't even deal with his own.

Why couldn't he remember more about how Scully got pregnant? Why couldn't he remember the first time? He thought it would have been burned in his mind. He had wanted her for so long, felt guilty about it, felt angry about it. Some days, for hours at a time, he had felt absurdly happy, as if she had made some declaration of love by asking him to father her baby. And then he thought, who else would she ask? Skinner? Who else did either of them know? And then the black depression came back, that he had done it to her, he had sucked her into his obsession...

...obsessed, the perp was in love with her. He thought he was in love. If he felt sexually inadequate, he may not try anything aggressively sexual with Vicky. He may behave as he thought an adult would romance a grown woman....

Then Mulder had crawled out of the grave like Frankenstein's monster, and there was Scully, with baby visibly on board, weeping over him, and there was goddamned Doggett, lurking. Doggett thought Mulder was scum, and that Scully was co-dependent on him. Doggett loved her. Mulder recognized that hopeless look in a man's eyes. He had seen it in his bathroom mirror every day.

He had seen it this morning.

He wrenched himself back to Vicky. Her hair as bright as the sun. The promise of great beauty. Illegitimate. Had Vicky begun asking questions? Had Vicky wondered who she was? Did this guy....he could be in college. He could be a student, and that's why he could follow her around. If so, he was acting out some script of his own. Maybe.....

Mulder crushed the card in his hand. Look for a literature major. Someone without priors. Look for someone who was a student teacher, or a tutor. She knew this guy. She knew him, and he seemed so safe, so innocent that his name hadn't surfaced in the minds of the schoolteachers, or the maid, and certainly not to her mother, who was sedated into a coma, but was still the trophy mistress, still the secret affair, and certainly not to her father, who bought out the mall for her but didn't know her.

Vicky wanted someone to love her. Someone to tell her he loved her. She probably didn't realize that she was pretty. It was hard to wait.

It was hard to wait for it. You could die waiting.

You could die if you didn't wait.

Mulder couldn't make up his mind about the Lamaze classes. The class itself was like every sitcom he had ever seen; the life- sized dolls were just as battered.

He liked being accepted as the Dad/coach. Scully seemed pleased to be part of a crowd; and even more pleased that other women had partners that made worse comments than Mulder would ever venture. Of course, he was the only one who knew that his partner had a gun in her purse; in fact, he bet he was the only one who had been shot by his partner.

"What are you grinning at, Mulder?" Scully asked. She was sitting on her pillow, holding the practice baby and absent-mindedly patting its back.

"I'm just happy to be here, Scully," he said pacifically, and rubbed her back. "I'm happy to be _here_, with you and the baby."

Wow, for once, he had hit the right button. Scully's cheekbones flushed slightly, and she bit her lip. She didn't stiffen up when he put his arm around her during the video, and even let him sneak a sip of her bottle of water.

He had started staying the night with her after the classes. It was a foot in the door, but half the time Scully acted like they were on their first date instead of expectant parents.

She even had beer in the fridge, for crying out loud, although she wasn't drinking for the duration. "You love beer with pizza," she told him, and who was he to disagree? Although he hadn't drunk Rolling Rock in years, he wouldn't complain.

Tonight, Scully seemed a little preoccupied. Mulder licked the tomato sauce from his finger, and studied her. "What?" she said, looking up from "What to Expect While Your Expecting."

"Scully, does it freak you out having the medical training, and knowing objectively what is happening to your body? You aren't sitting around thinking about every worst case scenario that you heard about, are you?"

The tiny frown lines on her forehead disappeared. "Actually, Mulder, it's kind of reassuring. I mean, I really do know that most of my physical sensations have a reason, and it doesn't scare me when my ankles swell or I get a cramp in my side. And I did get to deliver that baby in Florida, you know."

"I was being throttled by a critter at the time," he said. "I should write Dales, though, he'd be thrilled. He took quite a shine to you."

"Yes, and your lip was out to here," she said, gesturing. "You pouted for days."

"I don't pout," he said with dignity. "I just contemplate my errors."

"Oh, and that's not pouting? The silent treatment for days? That wasn't pouting?"

"I had _spines_in my neck," Mulder said, sitting up straight. "One hundred and thirty fucking spines in my neck. And your tweezer action was not as gentle as it could have been."

Scully leaned back. "My hands were a little tired from delivering a ten-pound baby," she said, smirking. He sat there, one hand along the back of the couch, glaring at her. "Oh, there it is," she snorted, "the lip." And she touched a fingertip to his bottom lip.

He nipped at her finger, but she was too quick, and snatched her hand away, giggling.

"Oh, how would you like to be bitten a hundred times?" he growled, and moving his hand to the back of her neck, leaned over and nipped her gently. Scully went perfectly still. He got three nips before he felt her swallow.

"What---what are you doing?" she asked, in a small voice.

"Shut up. You have another hundred and twenty-seven bites." Even after all their time together, Scully seemed to smell different every time. Although he knew she didn't wear what she called "old lady" colognes, he usually asked, "Hmm, White Shoulders" to annoy her.

He put his finger tips just inside the collar of her robe, and said, "Hmm, white shoulders."

"Sung, Mulder." she said, sounding a little faint as she tilted her throat back to his mouth.

"No, I know you wear Alfred Sung. I mean, white shoulders." He slid her robe back. "You have no idea how erotic red hair is on your white shoulders. Blue eyes and red lips and white skin; you're like a Sargent portrait." He wasn't nipping her so much as giving her little kisses along her shoulders and under her collar bone.

"What are you doing, Mulder?" she murmured, her eyes closed, her arms and thighs opening to him, as he pressed her against the cushions. He loosened the robe.

"Shh," he said, and did a small double take at how large and dark her nipples were now. "Tell me if I hurt you," he breathed, licking his lips and bending his mouth to one, then the other. She inhaled in a hiss, and he looked up. "Hurt?' he asked, smiling.

"No, just sensitive," she said, smiling. "Mulder, I'm all yours. Let's go to bed."

He followed her, turning off the television and the lights, and taking the pizza and beer to the kitchen. He walked back in to see her reach for a nightgown.

"Oh, don't hide, Scully. You're beautiful."

Her eyes teared up. "I'm short and fat! The kid is standing on my bladder; how can you say that, and don't say a I have a glow."

Mulder left his tee-shirt and boxers on, and crawled into the bed. He left her bedside light on. "Come here, Scully," he said, and sulkily, she wrapped herself in her robe and got into bed, presenting him with her back.

He began stroking her back and arms with long, slow, soothing motions. "You have a beautiful baby. Our baby. You're beautiful inside and out. You were beautiful to me when you were in the cancer ward. You were beautiful when you used to wear the little red velvet jackets and the hair bands. You were sweet. Now, you're sexy, and you're professional, and you have Skinner and Doggett at your feet. Hell, Doggett wants to take you to Lamaze."

"Oh, Mulder," she said, but relaxed slightly into his hands. "Doggett does not..."

"Wake up and smell the devotion, Scully. He's bringing you flowers! That's not part of Academy training. And Skinner, he faced down Krycek for you."

"That was for you, Mulder."

"No, honest Walt came to me and admitted that he tried to kill me to protect me from becoming an alien. He wanted to remove threats from you."

It was very strange to Mulder, but the more harrowing the subjects they discussed, the more relaxed Scully got. Not his idea of bedroom chatter, but then he wouldn't have thought last year that he would be a regular in Scully's Zen nun-like bed. He tried one more kiss, under her ear, and he was pleased when she turned, both hands on her belly, into his arms.

"You sleep well when you're here, don't you Mulder?" she asked. "You're not here just to keep me company or to seduce me, are you? You don't want to stay at your apartment."

"I want to seduce you, Scully," he said, and buried his face between her breasts and the baby bump.

"Oh, move down here, and you'll feel its arm," Scully said, getting more interested. She draped her arm around his shoulders, her fingers in his hair. Mulder looked up at her from under her hand, his expression one of concentration. Then his face changed. "I feel it, Scully. That's an arm?"

"I think so, from the last sonogram." She stroked his hair.

"Maybe he'll pitch." Mulder kept his face on her belly, listening intently.

"Maybe she'll pitch," Scully corrected.

Mulder propped his chin on one hand, and began talking directly to the baby. "Pitching is good, but if you hit, too, you can write your own ticket. I'm a Yankees fan, but your mother is an atheist. She doesn't even watch." He stroked her belly as he talked. Scully seemed to like this; her eyes closed slowly.

Mulder looked up, and then straightened his back to kiss her cheek. With a murmur, she turned into his arms, one hand up to caress his neck.

With a lump in his throat, Mulder turned off the light. Family man, he thought unironically.

Mulder was pacing Vicky's room, sweating from his hair to his socks. Something very weird here.

He heard someone rap gently on the door. He turned, and a short, stout blonde woman in a suit stood there. He blinked. Not stout, but pregnant. More pregnant than Scully, in fact.

"Mr. Mulder? I'm Detective White," the woman said, and gestured with a little notebook she was holding. "I'm in charge of this investigation, and I'd be interested in any help you can give me."

"I'm here as a consultant," he said, trying not to look at her belly. "The chief gave us permission." Jeeze, he could imagine calling Scully and saying he was on a case with a Detective White. Some old memories were better left in the file cabinet.

"Yes, and I'm fine with that. I know you used to be with the Bureau, and this way, we get the benefit of your advice without having to admit we called the Feds." She eased herself to sit down on the window seat. "Don't be embarrassed. I feel like the woman in _Fargo_."

"No, I'm not embarrassed. My---partner is pregnant. I'm trying not to ask you who your obstetrician is." He grinned at her, and she blinked for a second. "What can I tell you, Detective?"

Detective White opened her notebook. "Well, we have someone at the school, interviewing the teachers and the other kids. She didn't get there, of course, but we want to see if they saw her with anyone. We're pulling a couple of surveillance videos to see if we get anything." Mulder nodded, going down his own mental checklist. "The housekeeper has volunteered to be hypnotized to see if she remembers any details, such as a car passing when Vicky started walking down the sidewalk. The mom is out cold. The father is trying to keep it quiet, but we're going wide open. We have a couple of pictures we're giving to the media, and our media spokesman is downstairs getting ready to talk to the press. He'll do that from City Hall, but we can expect the neighborhood to be crawling with trucks by this evening. Anything else we need to do before the dogs are loose?"

"Check the school internet access," he suggested. "I see you've got her computer. And look into the mother's friends, ask the housekeeper who came here socially. Or service people. Who would have seen Vicky? If he planned it, he had to be hanging around here for sometime, even to get her school schedule."

"But you don't think releasing the information will hurt the case?" she asked.

"This isn't the crime scene," Mulder said. "We don't know at which point she was taken. Treat 'em well; the reporters may just find out something you can use. And that'll deflect the attention away from the parents. Single mother, nice house, beautiful little girl. That's enough. Ask the public to help, all that. Tap the phones, see if there's a ransom demand, but I don't think you'll get one."

"No," Detective White said regretfully, "I think it's a sex crime. It's really a question of whether this was a crime of opportunity, or if he had been watching her for a while." She paused. "Do you think you're going to be able to give us a profile?"

Mulder looked up from the carpet. She was looking at him with honest, professional admiration. "Oh, you know what I used to do?"

"I was working in Manassas when you found Addie Sparks in Bosher's Run Park," she said, as if that explained everything. It did, in a way. She thought he could solve cold cases in his sleep.

"That was an old case," he said. "The fourteenth of sixteen. He had confessed to thirteen."

"Yes, I followed it. I'm glad you killed him," she said. She stood up slowly, one hand on the small of her back. "This gets old. Is it your first?"

Mulder stared at her, collecting his scattered thoughts. "Yes, it is."

"Our second," Detective White groaned. "Well, here's my card. Please call me if you have something." She turned, and made her sway-backed way out.

"I'm not enjoying this," Mulder said to himself. "Not at all."

"Mulder," Scully had said, "I don't know about you being my birth coach."

It was so abrupt that his heart started pounding. The mouthful of coffee he had just swallowed almost came back up. "Oh," he said, and carefully set his cup down. "I, I don't, understand."

"I just don't feel comfortable," Scully said, not looking at him. "You being there."

"Don't give me that crap," he said. "I didn't feel comfortable each and every time you stood around and watched people ramming tubes down my throat and up my dick, but I didn't tell you to leave." He was trying to make her smile, but she only assumed her "I'm-a-medical-doctor" expression.

"I only walked in when they were taking out the catheter that one time. You are not the best patient in the world, you know. They called me because the nurse was certain you'd kill her. And that's not the point."

"I get the point, Scully," he said in a monotone. He stood up, and carefully picked up his jacket from the chair back.

"You're not getting the point," she said, her face flaming.

Breathe, Mulder, breathe, he told himself. Deep cleansing breaths. "You don't want me to be in there when you have the baby. I get it. So, I guess I'll just...see you...later." He bent and gave her a fraternal kiss on the cheek. She took a firm hold of his arm, preventing him from standing up.

"Mulder," she began. "You're upset."

"I'm not upset," he said patiently. "I have fish to feed, unemployment to file, dry cleaning to pick up, bills to pay. So if I'm not going to class, I need to go do it. Call me if you need me." He carefully removed Scully's fingers from his sleeve.

And he left, walking out on rubbery legs.

He did have all those things to do, so he drove home and did them. Well, not the unemployment. He got fat checks from his mother's trust fund, and he would get more from his father's estate when he turned forty. Strange age. Kind of insulting, his lawyer had said indignantly, and wanted to break the trust.

"I'd like it to go to Scully's baby, anyway," he told her.

His lawyer shook her head. "Can't do it until the baby's here. And you can't transfer your interest to other than your heir. Otherwise, it goes to the Republican Party. Your dad evidently expected you to think that taking his money was the lesser of two evils."

At any rate, the checks didn't have Roush on them, so he took them. He had to live, and he had never thought much about what he would do after the Bureau. That's what fighting nameless conspiracies did to you, he supposed: narrowed one's focus.

He wasn't too surprised by Scully getting cold feet about having him with her. From his reading, he knew that she had to be feeling insecure about the pregnancy, and from being around her, he knew she felt uncomfortable about him. About them, about them being a couple, rather than partners. She didn't seem to know what to do with him, without the X-Files as a focus. He didn't know what to do with himself, for that.

But he didn't feel uncomfortable around Scully. It felt natural to go to sleep with her snuffling little snores at his ear; natural to walk around "ToysRUs" and price the mountain of equipment that was apparently necessary for minimal maintenance of a baby. He had even tried on one of those harnesses to carry around the baby while Scully had been busy reading all the small print on the packages of disposable diapers.

He decided to go for a run. Lying in a coffin had really screwed up his muscle tone. And when he felt more like himself, and Scully had this baby, he was going to hash it out with her about this crap. He was the one with the abandonment issues, after all.

He was going to need years of recovery after this one summer was over. That, or some of Langly's hash. Lots of hash.

That night, he had fallen asleep with "Psychological Aspects of Pregnancy." He awoke to someone knocking on the door. Yawning, he tossed the book under the sofa and got up to look through the peephole.

It was Scully. He undid the bolts and chain.

"What are you doing running around this time of night?" he demanded, opening the door. "We're not on a case. Well, you may be."

She winced. "I started thinking and I didn't want---" she stopped, taking in his rumpled hair and pajama bottoms, the silent television. "Were you asleep?"

"Yeah, but that's all right, I don't have to get up," he said.

"Cut it out, Mulder, you quit. You quit!"

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh, did you come over to take back everything you said about that?"

Scully sat on the arm of the chair. "I didn't come over here to fight," she said, looking at the toe of her shoe.

"If you wore decent shoes your feet wouldn't hurt," he observed unkindly. "I've been telling you that for years, and now, with the baby throwing off your center of balance, you're looking at a lot of back pain."

She looked up at him, her expression hard to read. "You know a lot about pregnancy."

"I read," he said. "I'm interested in the subject." He relented slightly, and sat down in the chair she perched on. "See, my partner is having this miracle baby." he said to her back. "So I think it's fascinating. In fact, there's talk of it being an X- File." He patted her hip.

"God," she said, over her shoulder, "You are such a shit."

He put his arm around her waist. "Second generation," he replied, rubbing his face into her back. "Talk to me."

"I thought about all the things that happen in delivery. How the obstetrician examines you; how you have to lie there and stick your legs straight up in the air; and how I would look to you; and it just embarrasses me."

"You shouldn't be embarrassed, Scully," he said. He nearly said, "you're a medical doctor," but instead, "millions of women and millions of men do this. We can do this. And, after all, I'll be at the head of the bed. And I could faint."

She gave an almost silent chuckle. "You won't faint. Just don't film it and show the guys, okay?"

Mulder lifted his face from her back. "It never even occurred to me," he said. "Good God, woman, now you're just being difficult for the hell of it."

She sighed. "You're right. The other women in the class are going to a spa weekend next week. I think I'll go." She stood up, patting her pocket. "Mulder. You took my keys."

"It's too late for the baby to be out," he said innocently. She frowned down at him, then shrugged and went to his bedroom. After a moment of disbelief, Mulder got up and locked the door, and turned off the living room light.

Scully was in the bathroom, washing her face. Mulder, pretending a nonchalance he didn't feel, flicked back the duvet. Had he really been telling himself, just ten minutes ago, that he was comfortable as a couple? Hah. He felt like he was breaking the ice again. Breaking the ice. Not a good metaphor. He scrabbled around on the floor for one of the magazines he was reading to find out what had gone on in the world while he was, apparently, off it. "Knicks prospects suck," he muttered, refusing to concentrate on what Scully was doing behind the half-closed door. He was forcing himself to read about the Yankees' trades when Scully emerged, wearing his bathrobe.

"I didn't realize you read in bed," she said, smiling. She sat on the edge of the bed, and after a moment's hesitation, shucked the robe before sliding quickly under the covers.

"You're breaking my concentration now," he said. But she didn't turn over, and not letting himself sigh, he concentrated on his magazine. But there was no need. She was sound asleep.

Mulder stacked Scully's mail and newspapers on her kitchen table, as previously instructed. Why, Scully, already reading "Parents" magazine? He shook a subscription form out, and pocketed it. Wouldn't hurt to see what kind of pseudo-psychology she was reading. He checked the plants, touching the potting soil. All moist. Why she asked him to do this was mystifying, but he didn't mind. If he wasn't working on this case, he would have been tempted to spend the night, just so he could sleep in her bed, smelling her Scullysmell on the linens.

That was his little secret, though. Scully, like many women, thought if you could smell her, it was bad. That was just so wrong. Mulder bet he could pick her bathrobe out of a line-up, just with his nose.

On Scully's television, the news was on. A reporter, with a suitably solemn face, was giving the details of Vicky's disappearance. There was her picture, in her school uniform. Detective White was right; the matter was well in hand. He assumed that Vicky's mother would make a scripted appearance, begging for the return of her daughter.

Something wasn't right, and neither he nor Black could figure it out. "There's evil here," Black had said, in his hollow prophet's voice. "But where did it come from?"

To put off the moment when he had to write his profile, Mulder went to the coffee shop Scully liked, just down the block. He got a double latte, and was turning away from the counter, when he saw a familiar military haircut. Doggett, sitting there reading the paper. Waiting for Scully? No, she would have told him she was out of town.

"Agent Doggett," he said, startling the man. John Doggett stood up, stiffly, and after a micron of hesitation, held out his hand. Mulder shook it. He could sense Doggett's surprise.

"Mulder," he said. "Have a seat." Not sincere at all.

Mischievously, Mulder did. "Thanks," he said, sipping at his latte. "Slow week, agent?" One day, he would get the better of this impulse to mess with someone's head. Not yet, though.

"It's never slow in the basement, Mulder," Doggett said. "I thought Dana was out of town?"

Mulder raised his eyebrows. "She is."

"I asked her yesterday how you were doing, and she said she had no idea." Doggett gave him the same 'You sorry bastard' stare that Bill, Jr. liked to bend on him. Jeeze. Bill, Jr. Wonder how he was dealing with the prospect of Mulder knocking up his sister.

"She probably was speaking metaphorically," Mulder replied. He caught sight of two long-legged little girls walking in, and frowned. Walking in after dusk. Perfect prey. Sweet and tender. Oh, shit. He needed to go home and do this thing. Do this profile.

He looked up to say something to Doggett, and caught the other man studying him. Like a bug. Fuck it. He had lost the urge to torment Doggett, to ask him if he had Scully's apartment staked out. Mulder picked up his latte and walked out.

No rest for the wicked, he thought. I have a date with a pedophile.

Something was off. He felt like there was a terrible evil in that house, but it was odd how Vicky didn't bother to hide the cards and the teddy bears. They were in plain view. Was she trying to leave a message? Was she signaling someone?

He lay on his couch, one forearm over his eyes. He could see the guy, see him clearly; he could describe him; but he couldn't see him with Vicky. She would have run to the first man he thought of, the younger man, but now he kept thinking of an older man.

It was an older man. Most seductive pedophiles were homosexuals. They became friendly with the child and then slowly introduced sexual content into the relationship. But Vicky had almost cataloged her cards and notes.

She was laying them out for someone to find.

He had the telephone in his hand, talking to Detective White, beginning before she even had the second syllable of "Hello?" out of her mouth.

"Detective," he said, "Look hard at the mother's contacts. Look hard at her background."

"Mr. Mulder?" she said. Then, slowly, "Mom's a professional?"

"Maybe a retired one," he said. "But maybe she wanted to carry on the business. Look at her finances."

"Jeeze, Mr. Mulder, if she was pimping Vicky, she wouldn't have..." He heard a sharp click, as if she had shut her mouth with a snap. "The school reported her," White said, again in that slow, considering tone. "But Mom is hysterical; Mom is drugged."

"I don't know if she was going to sell her own kid," Mulder said. "But no one saw anything. No one saw her disappear. Tell Mom you need to know if someone was stalking Vicky. You need to get hold of every old guy Mom has clinked a martini glass with." He paused. "I know it sounds farfetched," he said.

"No," White replied. "I've seen things that I thought never happened these days, that I thought only happened in Bangkok." She cleared her throat. "Thanks, Mr. Mulder. I'll keep in touch."

Mulder was still sitting on the couch, with the cell phone in his hand, when Frank Black called. "I don't think anything bad is happening now," he said, without preamble. "I don't think this is what it seems."

"Did you cash the check?" Mulder asked. "Because we might as well get paid before it all goes to hell."

"First thing I did, Mulder." He paused. "Do you think it's the father or the mother?"

"The dad didn't have to contact you," Mulder said. "He could have gone on with his life. Despite the fact that he apparently had a relationship with the mom when she was twelve."

"I'm betting she's not some Wellesley grad who went astray," Frank said. "You and I both know that a lot of young girls come to the District before they can drive, just to hook up with wealthy older men. It's an international disease. Middle=aged men with power want children. When you're a father, you'll understand how disgusting that is."

Mulder felt a headache coming on. "A lot of these guys are fathers, Frank, and we both know they don't give a damn who's little girl they're introducing to oral sex."

"They have kids, but they're not fathers. There is a difference." Then, with that scary psychic knowledge, Frank said, "You'll be a father, Mulder." And hung up.

Mulder turned off his phone. Bastard. He was still reading minds.

Early Saturday morning

He was dreaming that someone was in the room with him. Someone small, someone who wanted to tell him...who wanted to tell him she was alive.

He sat up and looked around for Vicky in the half-light, almost prepared to see her standing at his side. Curiously, he wasn't scared. Instead, he felt elated.

He had felt oddly elated sitting next to Scully at the doctor's office. Scully didn't really like driving any more. She had casually told Mulder that Doggett had offered to take her to her appointment. Mulder loved it when Scully tried to use reverse psychology; it was like a little kid shooting a water pistol. He would have leapt at the chance to get out of his apartment, get away from his obsession with his old scars and the Knicks videos Frohike had given him.

Get to behave like a normal man, a normal father. Sit in the waiting room, and rub Scully's shoulders and put his hand on her knee without her even giving him a look of reproof. It was like the Arcadian Subdivision from Hell, only Scully was going along with the joke.

Maybe it was just a joke. She hadn't really said anything about his place in her new world order. His place in her life, in the baby's life.

And he noticed something suspicious; the other men were going in with their women. To see the sonogram; it seemed not to occur to Scully to include him in that. Or maybe she didn't want him to see her? No...and if he coached her in Lamaze, he'd see her in a hospital gown and with her feet in stirrups...no. The first answer is usually the correct one, he had learned long ago. It didn't occur to Scully that he'd want to see it. And maybe he wouldn't have. But it would be nice to be asked.

Every time he thought he had Scully in his grasp, she eluded him. She had been with him all morning, and she still wasn't there. She was off somewhere in her inviolate and unknowable mother- hood, even as she stood there beside him. She put the card with the date of her next appointment into her bag, and looked up at him, the clear blue of her eyes as honest as the sky.

Maybe it was that he still eluded himself. First he was lost, then he was found; dead and then alive; an FBI agent and then...not.

Saturday morning

Who do you run to when your mother turns against you? Mulder thought. His chest hurt, and he slowed the pace of his running.

Oh, good. Now he felt alive. He thought he was reconciled, he thought he was at peace, but it was back, leaping into his mind like the family dog. Who do you run to when your father is distant and your mother turns against you? Stop it. Stop turning everything back to your own psycho-drama. You had a family. You're going to have a family again, maybe.

He stopped, gasping ragged breaths, and swiped the sweat from his forehead with the hem of his tee shirt. Okay. So when she got scared, when she was afraid, and she knew her mother was a fool and her housekeeper just an employee; and everyone thought "Gigi" was a romantic French comedy, instead the story of a young girl being brought up to be a prostitute. . .

"Gigi." He was old.

If Detective White could only get the background on the mom, he'd bet his video collection----oh, that's right, that *hadn't* been kept in the Mulder Memorial Apartment----that she could find mom's---Ginny's---history; and a look at her bank statements wouldn't come amiss.

If only she had run to someone who would help her; if she had gone to someone safe. But who the hell was safe?

"Something very interesting in the e-mails on the kid's computer," Detective White said, without preamble. "Child porn sites. More specifically, someone sent Vicky sites on older men and young girls. Looks like she was being introduced to the idea of sex with an older man." She crumbled the up her Styrofoam cup and tossed it in the Dunkin' Donuts trash can.

"That's exactly the kind of perpetrator we were thinking about last night," Black said. "If she had been snatched off the street, we could profile what kind of perpetrator would do it. But if she was being courted..."

Detective White picked up fragments of glazed sugar with her finger tip and transferred them to her tongue. "Sue me," she said to Mulder. "I gave up smoking." She wiped her fingers on a paper napkin. "Well, she wasn't enjoying the courting. She put all the stuff in a folder titled 'Creep.' Like she wanted us to find it. Like she knew something was going to happen to her."

"Has something happened to her?" Mulder said, tying his coffee stirrer in a knot. "Dad thinks so. I think his fear is real. He called Frank, and I just don't think he would hire two ex-Feds as part of an elaborate camouflage."

"We never got to talk to Mom," Det. White said. "She was sedated when we got there." She leaned sideways, uncomfortably, and pulled several sheets of folded Xerox paper out of her purse. "But it turns out that she doesn't own the house; there's a lease-this first one-- that is paid up until, guess when? Vicky's twenty-one. Dad settled things nicely for Mom. She didn't even bother to go to court for formal child support, and his name isn't on Vicky's birth certificate. Here."

Mulder stuffed a glazed donut hole into his mouth, and leaned forward. "Virginia 'Ginny' Clark. Had Victoria Mary Clark when she was nineteen. The lease was signed the week after Vicky was born. Nice. And the signature belongs to?"

"A bank officer, the bank is the trustee of Vicky's trust fund. They immediately froze the assets, by the way. They pay the private school fees and make Ginny give a pretty rigorous accounting-show receipts, the whole deal. Seems like she got a little sloppy last year, now they pre-approve expenses and make her bring in proof."

Mulder smiled to himself. That must be the kind of thing Scully was so conscientiously trying to show him. He hadn't seen the bills for his funeral yet, but he could wait for that.

Frank was sipping his coffee, examining the copies. "So the assistant Director is not worried about being found out," he said. "Because the bank gave you all this."

"Threw it at me," White said. "This case is getting murkier, rather than clearer. Mom says its a stranger abduction. Dad doesn't know who, but hires two very expensive consultants. The bank says that Mom is a spendthrift but not abusive; they don't have her personal accounts."

"Ah," said Frank. "Then, I wonder what her source of income is? And if she's borrowing money, or into the club scene, or---"

"Works for an escort service?" White said. "Yeah. I tried telling her that we have to look at the immediate family when there's a kidnapping. She was pretty obstructive for a bereaved mom. My lieutenant is ready to arrest her, just for the hell of it. Thinks she did something to Vicky and this is a cover-up."

Mulder exchanged glances with Frank. "Do what you have to do to get a warrant for her bank records."

White smiled a surprisingly girlish smile. "Well, while she was upstairs screaming, I tossed her desk. One of the guys went around the block and made copies of her bank book. I've got a subpoena for the phone records, and the phone company is doing them now and faxing them to the precinct. You can look at the computer stuff at the same time." She rapped her knuckles on the Formica table top. "But guys, I just want to know: have I got a kidnapping, or have I got a homicide?"

"If Vicky knew she was in imminent danger, would she have told her father? The phone records may tell us how often they talked. If she was just worried, would she have told her mother? There's no diary, is there?" Frank asked.

"I didn't see one when we boxed up her room. What do you think, Mulder? I've got a judge who would have no problem signing a general warrant."

"Oh, so Ginny's already refused to talk?"

Detective White stopped smiling. "Yeah, she's already clammed up."

"Fuck it, then," Mulder said. "Pop her." He shifted his weight in the seat, wincing at his sore legs. The dream of Vicky haunted him, but he wasn't going to let it influence him. The last time he followed a hunch, he did save a young girl, but he had put that young girl in danger in the first place. Not again.

Saturday Afternoon.

Ginny, as Mulder could not help but think of her, could have been twenty-one, instead of thirty-one, but for her hands. But who looked at her hands? She was wearing what Mulder recognized as off-the-rack designer casual; perfect for District Junior League meetings. When she moved, her clothes emitted discreet whiffs of cologne. She was money.

Next to her, Detective White looked old, faded, too heavily pregnant, wearing shabby maternity clothes. Every flick of Ginny's lashes showed that she was comparing herself to White, the only other woman in the room, and enjoying the contrast.

But even twenty-one was too old for some tastes. The Director had finished with Ginny at twenty. Since then, she had, no doubt, found several protectors who paid the bills that Vicky's money didn't cover.

Such a grimy room, with a glass door and a mirror on one wall, battered metal chairs, a scuffed wooden table with a single manila folder resting on top of it. A pregnant detective with dark roots showing through her blonde hair, and two former federal agents in wrinkled shirts.

Detective White, leaning back in her chair with her hands clasped over the mound of baby, was explaining the subpoenas to Ginny. "We have to examine everyone who is in contact with the family," she said smoothly. "There's been no demand for money, no contact with the family. That rules out a kidnapping for a ransom. So then, we have to look at either an abduction by a total stranger, or by someone who knew Vicky."

"Why aren't you looking for a stranger? Why do I have to let you crawl all over the house?" Manicured fingertips tapped on the Coach handbag. White's non-response was a response in itself.

Mulder had a flash of the house, devoid of any sign of a child's presence, except for the actual bedroom and bath. Who was Ginny trying to live like? Where was she from?

"It's called victimology," Black said. "The investigation has to look at the victim, and try to see what attracted the kidnapper."

"Oh, don't try that Hannibal Lector stuff with me, Mr. Black. I know that Vicky's father hired you. Why isn't he here?"

"We've talked to her father," White said, her voice careful. "We were forced to consider any national security implications. But he states that he doesn't visit Vicky in your home. He has some limited contact with her. No one, and no group, has contacted him and made threats or demands."

"So we need to look at your acquaintances," Black said. "Have any of your dates come to the house?"

"Of course they have," Ginny snapped. "None of my friends would take Vicky."

"There's no one who takes particular interest in her?" Mulder asked, from the end of the table. He wasn't even looking at her; he was looking at his reflection in the two-way mirror.

"None of my friends would do that," Ginny repeated, still looking at Black. He opened the manila folder, and showed her a copy of the phone records. There were several highlighted calls to a number that was an escort service. Ginny bent her head to look at the numbers, her eyelids flicking down and then back up.

"What about your clients?" Mulder asked, pushing his chair back from the table. He raised his head to stare at her. "If they were completely average businessmen, they wouldn't hire an escort, would they? They wouldn't need special services. Did any of those men come to the house?"

Ginny raised her chin and tried to stare Mulder down. This would be the moment in a novel, where the call girl's good looks faded, he thought. Where she looked hard. Instead, Ginny looked as dewy-fresh as ever.

"I want my lawyer," she said. And her voice was still a sexy coo, even as she opened up her leather card case, and tossed a business card on the table. "Call him."

"What kind of mother is that?" Detective White asked, looking ill. Frank came back the vending machines, with three cans of cola. She took it, gratefully. "I mean, really? I've busted crack 'ho's who were more involved in their kids."

"I don't know what you've found out about her," Mulder said, staring at his palm as if he was reading the words there. "She works for a escort service. She's supposed to be thirty-one, but she could have met the Director at a lot younger---she could have come to Washington very young, herself. If she started selling herself, very discreetly, as a teenager, then she'd think she was being practical. She doesn't strike me as being connected to Vicky like a mother is connected."

"What about the hysterics? The patrolmen on the scene said that was real---her housekeeper made her take her Xanax."

Frank cleared his throat. "Fear of being found out. Fear that her friend had moved too fast, before she had all the payments. Whoever it is, is only aroused by very young girls. Or by virginity, and that's harder and harder to guarantee. Vicky goes to a girls' school. She has a father who doesn't involve himself with her. She could be expected to have a desire for a father- figure."

"He says he doesn't involve himself, but does he? How old are his kids?" Mulder asked.

Frank stopping drumming his fingers on the table. "He has a daughter at Miami, and his son is here in Georgetown."

Bingo, thought Mulder. "So she hasn't heard from her friend, at least not on the house phones, because you've got a trace on them. Of course, she could be talking on a cell, and we'd never know."

Detective White shifted in her chair. "I need those bank statements. I got the phone records from her phone company, but I need more to go in and look through all of her bank transactions. The checkbook we copied just has deposit amounts, not where they're from. We need to verify that she has no visible means of support. I checked the city directory; she put 'model' down for her profession."

"Never mind that," Frank said. "She realizes we know what she is. We need to know her motivation. And we need to know if she's already sold Vicky to someone who decided to close the deal." He picked up the business card. "I think we can find out who is paying for her lawyer."

A patrolman stuck his head inside the door. "Hey, White, the guys say that the Clark woman is driving home, do you want them to hang around and see if she goes any where?"

"No, but see if the local news has sent their raw video over yet." White nodded at the two men. "See if any pervs show up in the footage, just in case some stranger grabbed her."

"Good. Mulder and I will borrow this, if we may, and see if we can find out who is paying her attorney fees."

Early Saturday Evening

The assistant Director had been playing golf that afternoon. He left word that he would meet them in the country club library. Mulder wandered around the room, looking at the unopened donated books, while Frank sat, staring out the French doors at the rolling lawns. It seemed like Frank was quite accustomed to meeting gray-haired men of power, in the quiet leather-cushioned libraries of the rich. In the foyer, in the hallway, preparations were being made for dinner; ladies' bridge games were still being played in the next room. Dusk was falling, and the grass just outside the doorway gave off the perfume of summers past.

This was the class that Mulder's dad aspired to...may have become, for all Mulder knew. He never took Mulder to play golf with him, but Mulder found old golf clubs in both of his father's homes. That's why he didn't like Vicky's dad; he reminded him of Bill Mulder.

Mulder stood still, waiting for the familiar emotions of shame, longing, fear, and grief to wash over him. But they didn't. His father, dead on the bathroom floor, shot by Alex Krycek. He felt numb. Remembered it had happened, but he didn't get that sickening jolt of guilt he was so accustomed to feeling.

Hey, They must have leached those emotions away. Yes: he was sorry his dad was dead, but that long horror of estrangement and lies just wasn't lurching out of the memory chest, rattling its chains and smelling of the grave. Mulder half-smiled. He'd have to get his high school yearbooks out, and see if he still cringed at the sight of---

The French doors opened and Vicky's dad came in.

"Sorry I made you wait. I kept this golf date because I wasn't able to concentrate on anything else. What have you got?" he asked, crossing to the leather sofa beside the empty fireplace. Mulder studied him. There were still traces of the college quarterback the man had been. "The chief has forwarded me Detective White's reports, and said she was letting you have full access. Has she?"

Black unhurriedly sat down in a chair facing him, Mulder standing behind Frank. Mulder shoved his hands in his jacket pockets.

"Detective White has been very cooperative. It's the case; it's rather odd," Black said, in his uninflected monotone. "At first, we thought it could have been a stranger abduction. But Vicky would have put up a struggle. So, while still pursuing that, we also looked into her mother's background."

The Director sat up. "Ginny," he said, his tone unpleasant.

"Are you aware that she currently works for an escort service, apparently on a part-time basis? Or rather, she's associated with an escort service?"

"I'm not surprised. I should have had her investigated, but frankly, I did not wish to use Agency resources in a personal matter, and then have it come back to bite me. She's always resented it that Vicky's trustees make her account for how the money's spent, and that it ends when Vicky goes to college." His face hardened. "Do you think one of Ginny's dates was stalking Vicky, and kidnapped her?"

"No," Mulder said, from behind Frank. "I think Ginny was using Vicky as bait in some way. I don't know if this man would have married Ginny to get to Vicky, but her mom was dangling Vicky out there." He walked around Frank's chair, and pulled one closer to the Director before he sat down. "We see it, you know, all the time. The Lolita syndrome. Older man marries woman to get to her daughter. These guys are very patient, but they have a preferred age. The man that Ginny was seeing would have had enough money to skip all that, though. Poor men have to marry to get to their stepdaughter."

"Rich men buy them," the man said grimly. "Have you talked to Ginny?"

"The police tried to, but she got a lawyer." Frank handed him a business card.

The Director looked at it. "I'll tell you who hired him," he said.

"Can you find out soon?" Mulder asked.

"Son, I'll have it for you tonight. But where is Vicky? Is she..."

Mulder leaned forward, his hands loosely clasped. "You have a very smart girl, sir, and she has practical smarts. She knew something was up. She left clues for us. For you, probably. She's a kid, she probably thought you'd have your agents over there. So I think she ran away."

The Director's shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. "So you think she may be safe? She went to a friend?"

Frank cleared his throat. "Has she ever met her brother? The brother who goes to Georgetown?"

Mulder discovered that his heart could lurch in shock, after all. Frank was going to have to stop reading his mind.

But the Director stiffened, and then, oddly, his face relaxed. "He knows about her. They all know about her. Ginny tried to blackmail me, a long time ago. But Tommy is back-packing in Maine."

"Can we have his cell phone number?"

"Certainly. You don't think Tommy's in any danger?"

Black gave him a very direct look. "Not unless you think so."

The Director stared back. "No, I don't think someone's snatching all my children."

Saturday Night, late

Mulder kept thinking about those few times he and Scully had sex. Like they were the different squares of a Rubik's Cube, and he would try to see if the new pattern enlightened him. If he could remember the night they had made the baby. Gaps. Gaps in his memories, from before he walked into a cone of light.

Like the first time together, after he had come back.

It was one of those days where Mulder felt dead inside. Left to his own devices, he would have gone home and listened to his Pink Floyd collection, or watched television, or just gone running until he couldn't hobble straight. He didn't know why he even went to the office. He barely knew this fecund partner of his, this goddess of fertility. He didn't want her not to be pregnant, no, not at all, in any way, but he guiltily missed his Scully. The one who would walk around the Mall with him. The one who didn't have to be near the restroom all the time.

Scully kept talking about the crib, and the crib being delivered, and Mulder took a message from Skinner, to the effect that he was sending a runner down with a "Vise-Grip".

"A Vise-Grip?" Mulder repeated stupidly.

Kimberly sighed. "It's pliers, Agent Mulder. Assistant Director Skinner thought she needed one to put together her new crib. He says for her to keep it, he had a couple in his SUV."

"Kinky," Mulder said.

Kimberly didn't sigh, as she used to do. Her tone grew confidential. "Actually, Agent, if he didn't have a service dinner to go to, he was going to go put it together for her."

"I'm going to take care of it, Kimberly," Mulder found himself saying.

"Good," Kimberly said. She hung up, and Mulder stared at the phone receiver for a moment. So it was like that, huh? Redheads. Can't live with them, they won't let you stay buried.

Scully walked in, and said, "Mulder, you talk into it. Wonderful invention, the telephone." She sat down, and clicked the pliers at him.

He replaced the receiver, and swiveled in his chair. "Scully, can I put together the baby's crib for you?"

She bit her lip. "Do you know how to do that kind of thing?"

He shrugged. "I put together all my bookcases, and a futon for - for a friend, one time. They have instructions."

She said, "Okay, but I'll cook dinner. No take-out."

Mulder sat in the floor, and rocked the frame of the crib. Seemed to hold.

Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea. He thought Scully would have kept him company, or something. This kind of project left him with plenty of free disk space for depression. When he was by himself, and with nothing to listen to, he started wondering if he was really dead inside. He was alive, but was he really? Had he really come back to life? Sometimes he felt like he had lost his inner compass. Scully and her make-work and her conniving with Kimberly to get him over here.

Jeeze, he was going to start singing the songs from his old eight-tracks in a minute.

"I'm lost," he said softly. He put his finger in the spring pliers, and waggled it. Well, some sensation. He opened it, and tightened the screw slightly. He was about to pinch his lip with it, when the door opened.

"What are doing, Mulder?" she said.

He shrugged. "I wanted to see if it would hurt."

"Yes, it will," she said forcefully. "C'mere, Mulder. I need you." She went out, and shrugging to himself, he got to his feet, turning out the light. When he emerged, she was in the bedroom, in the closet.

"I can't reach that, Mulder. Would you get it for me?" She was pointing to a shoebox on the shelf. "I'm kind of scared to get on a stepstool," she said.

He got the shoebox, and stopped. "This is my size," he said. She nodded, and he opened the box. "Hoop shoes," he said. "Good brand, too. What's up?" he asked, already dreading the answer, already dreading the tears that glittered in her eyes.

"I got you a present," she said. "They were on sale, and I thought---these are perfect for Mulder." She moved back, and sat down on the side of the bed. "And then I forgot about them." He didn't know how she did it, but she managed to make her tears vanish. "Try 'em on," she said.

"Okay," he said. He sat down on her chair, and began fumbling with the laces. She had threaded the laces through the holes. He pulled off his shoes, and put the new ones on. He laced them, and stood up, bouncing a little. "Nice," he said, sitting back down and untying them, "really nice of you, Scully. They had to set you back a lot." To his own horror, he felt his throat tighten. He put the heels of his hands to his eyes, and breathed in deeply.

"I guess I need to go, Scully," he said. "My eyes are killing me from reading those instructions." He straightened up, and gave her a half-smile. But she was looking at him, perfectly calmly and seriously, from the bed, and he stood up in his stocking feet, and crossed to give her a kiss on the cheek.

Or so he intended. She turned her face as he bent over, and caught his mouth with her own. He kissed her on her lips, and her mouth opened under his.

Stop, Scully, he thought. I haven't had...God. She was slipping him the tongue, and he discarded his shoes and kissed her back. This was so familiar, but he couldn't remember when they had done this, he had been here before, here on this bed, with Scully hot and wild...or slow and sweet and sad? The memory was gone.

She was sliding her hands under his shirt and his tee shirt. "Mulder," she said, against his neck, and he felt her touch all the way to his groin. Shit. He was wearing dress pants, she had to feel...he tilted her gently back on the bed, one foot braced on the floor and her breasts were there, what had she done, taken off her underwear? She undid the sash of her robe with one hand, the hand that wasn't raking her manicure down his back.

He shuddered. Don't think. Don't think, and he rolled on his elbow and they both pulled his trousers off, and with a touch that felt almost familiar - Scully sure had no qualms - she guided him inside her. His knees were protesting, but he only had time for a few strokes before Scully came, clenching hard against him, and yanking the sleeve of his shirt from its seams. When he felt her, he lost it and came.

Scully pulled him up on the bed so she could cradle him in her arms, not bothering with the wet spot. "Mulder," she said, "You were missed."

He hid his face in the collar of her robe so she couldn't see his expression.

Vicky came to Mulder in his sleep, perching on the sofa at his feet. She was wearing her plaid skirt and blue blazer, and she flipped a pigtail back over her shoulder. "Pretty silly, huh? My Mom likes to see me dressed like this. She likes to have me around to attract the pervs. They gave her a lot of money for the chance to see me bouncing around in this stupid uniform. Then she puts on her uniform and...and they do yucky stuff, Mr. Mulder. I don't want to do that stuff. I'm just a kid! I wish I could live with Daddy, but he won't leave his wife." She picked at a thread on her skirt. "I met my big brother once," she said. "He's great. He's known about my mom and me for years."

Mulder tried to say something, but couldn't. He was frozen in his dream state. He felt a sudden pressure, as Vicky put her hand on his foot. "I don't want to go back to her," she said, "but I don't to get Ginny in trouble." She squeezed his toe. "That's what I call her. Ginny. She's not really a Mom, y'know? She had me when she was nineteen." With a sudden movement, she stood up beside him and pulled both rubber bands out of her hair. "I'm not with the pervert. I ran away from the pervert. The one my mom doesn't believe would hurt me. But she started the same way, didn't she? She's not very smart."

Vicky turned away and start to walk into the darkness. "You've got really big feet, huh?" and she tweaked his toe through his sport sock.

Mulder woke up with a jolt, and sat up, feeling his foot. Half-seriously, he looked around for a red dot. "That's never happened before," he said.

He pulled his face out of the pillow. His cell phone was ringing.

"Mulder," he croaked.

It was Frank. "I've got a name. Apparently, the Director decided to use a little off-the record influence. Ginny Clark is seeing a widower, a lobbyist, for several chemical companies." Mulder tasted acid in the back of his throat. "And Tommy is out of cellular range."

Sunday Morning.

Who would save you but your brother? Mulder thought. He was parked outside Detective White's station, waiting for Black and White. He couldn't believe he hadn't noticed those names before.

Okay. So Vicky found her brother or he found her and they had a relationship. Cellular range or not, Mulder had faith that he would be found closer to home than Maine.

He could see Tommy leading his sister by the hand to their father. She had to be with Tommy. He could see it.

What an optimist. This could be the biggest mistake he had made since Roche got away from him.

Mulder wiped his sweaty palms on the knees of his jeans. A car pulled up beside his, and Detective White scrambled out with unbelievable quickness. She put a hand out to rap on his window, but Mulder had already lowered it.

"The brother is bringing her in," she said. "He had her in Maryland. We just got the call from the dad. He wants us all to meet him at his house."

Mulder squinted hard up at her, and she patted him on the shoulder. "I called the chief, and he's going to hold off any announcement to the press. I told him that I felt we didn't just want to sign off on a runaway returning home."

"What does the Director say?" Mulder asked. "We were hired to find her, and I'm not a federal agent anymore."

"I want to bust Miss Ginny," White said, her voice hard. "I want to get her for pandering, or abuse of a minor, or something. And I would appreciate your insight." They both heard the vehicle approaching, and turned their heads to see Frank's Jeep.

"All right," Mulder said, his teeth almost chattering with the relief. Right. He was right. Maybe he could make a living outside the basement, after all. Frank had walked up by now, and he put his hand on Mulder's doorframe.

"Let's ride out to Foxhall Road," he said, in that gravelly voice. "I hope there's not some catch to this. I'm not used to happy endings." He straightened up, so Mulder could open his car door.

"Neither am I," Mulder said, and got out of the car.

There was nothing discreet about the Director's house. It proclaimed that a man of wealth and status lived here, and Mulder could fully appreciate the grimace Detective White gave him, as her scuffled loafers touched the flagstones of the front entrance. Frank, in masterful indifference to his old barn jacket and hiking boots, just raised his eyebrows, and waited for someone to answer his ring.

A tall, slender young man, with the same dark hair and eyes as Vicky's photographs opened the door. "Mr. Black?" he asked. "I'm Tommy. My dad said you were coming." He held the door open for them, and after closing it, led them down a hallway to a den.

Vicky was sitting on the couch with the Director, wearing shorts and a shirt. She was eating a Pop-Tart and in earnest Conversation. Mulder stopped so suddenly his sneakers squealed on the hardwood floor. Vicky stopped in mid-bite, and looked across the room at him, her eyes widening for a second in almost recognition. Then she looked inquiringly at her father. "Am I in big trouble?"

Her voice was the same voice from Mulder's dream.

Sunday Afternoon.

Mulder, White, and Black returned to Ginny's house to tell her that her child had been found. She opened the door to them, and stood, one hand on her hip. "What now? When are you going to actually look for Vicky?"

"Vicky's with her father," Detective White said, and started to walk through Ginny, who involuntarily stepped backward. "You're surprised?" White followed Ginny through the foyer and into the living room, with a Scully-like relentlessness that gave Mulder a pang. "You were expecting her to be with someone else?"

"Who were you expecting her to be with?" Frank asked, also pursuing. Mulder closed the door and slowly followed in their wake.

Ginny had her cell phone, and was stabbing at the buttons with complete concentration.

"Calling your lobbyist friend?" White asked in the friendliest of tones. "That's fine. We want to ask him about some e-mails he sent your daughter. And some pictures he sent your daughter. And some cards he sent your daught---"

Ginny threw the phone at her. White dodged, but barely. "Gosh, that's assaulting an officer. I'm going to have to take you in, Miss Ginny."

"Fuck you," Ginny said. "I want my lawyer."

"Oh, you get the lawyer later," White said, taking handcuffs out of her pocket. "If we want to ask you questions. But you just assaulted me, so I don't have to read you your rights. I get to arrest you."

"We already know the answers to the questions," Frank said.

Ginny still looked beautiful, even with her lip curled in disdain.

"So when did you turn your first trick?" White said.

She and Frank were in a standard interrogation room with Ginny. Mulder stood behind the two-way glass with the Chief of Police, the Director, and a thoroughly intimidated assistant district attorney.

"She was Vicky's age," Mulder said. "That's why it doesn't bother her."

"You were eleven," Black said, looking up. "But you weren't forced, were you. It wasn't the first. Was your mother in the life?"

Ginny stiffened. "No, it wasn't my first time. My cousin raped me when I was eight. He was fourteen. My mother worked in a mill, and I stayed with my uncle and aunt. But the mill closed, and she had to make money somehow. It was my idea. The johns paid twice as much for me as for her. I was helping her. She was sick already, and she died when I was fifteen."

"But what I don't understand is, if you had to turn tricks, why did you---"

"Look, you know everything. You know my entire life. I don't have to explain myself to you. Charge me with something and let me apply for bond. I don't need this shit."

"She was probably sexually abused throughout her childhood," Mulder said, his arms crossed. "It's a common dynamic. She treats her daughter slightly better than she was treated, and thinks she's done a good thing. Using Vicky as bait for the pedophiles."

"I didn't see it," the Director said.

"She concealed her history from you," Mulder stated. He felt flat, exhausted. Like there should be more of a payoff than this interrogation.

You really thought Vicky recognized you, didn't you? You really thought you were in the world of the unseen again.

"I'm very impressed with how well you and Black worked with the detective." The Director said, but he was still watching his former lover.

"I was an idiot," he said now. "That woman is evil."

Mulder didn't look over at him, but he wanted to say, You helped make her what she is today. She was underage. She was a child.

On the other side of the glass, Ginny looked up, past Detective White, and straight at Mulder. She smiled.

Sunday Night

Mulder left Frank and drove to Scully's apartment. He felt as bad, as if they hadn't found Vicky. She had saved herself, or Tommy had saved her; Mulder couldn't even tell Scully that he had done any good. Earned a little money, though. The Director seemed well-deposed towards him. Maybe he had joined the wrong federal agency, long ago.

He wanted Scully. He wanted to tell her about it, like it was an X-File, and let her second-guess him, and tell him he was irrational. It would be like old times. He wanted to decompress.

But when he let himself in, the living room was dark. He almost tripped over a shopping bag she had left beside the door. Her bedroom door was closed, in mute reproach.

He sat down on the couch, not sure what to do next.

I'm too old for this shit, Mulder thought. We've had sex. She's having my baby. She's been my partner for eight years. Scully knows me better than anyone possibly could know me. Isn't that what you've wanted? To know and be known? To hold and be held?

If he wasn't so old, and so tired, and not a Lifetime Channel type of guy, he could have wept.

Should he wake her up? "Scully, I know you've probably been driving up all day, and your feet are swollen, but we have to talk."

And then he would end up asking her what baby names she had thought of, like the fucking coward that he was.

His eyes hurt, and his shoulders ached. He wished he could go to sleep. He wished he could go to sleep with Scully, like some regular guy with his pregnant partner. He wished he could take life for granted.

She didn't even have a drawer for him to keep his sweatpants and socks in. If he didn't have a gym bag, he wouldn't have any place to disturb the symmetry of her condominium. All feng shui'd...He smiled. Scully, you little believer, you. You sneaked all this Eastern mystical shit on me. Who'd of thought a trip to the crop circles would have....he almost remembered something, but it was gone.

Why couldn't They have removed some of the rotten memories, like the time he had to guard the goddamned burned house? Or about how he felt when his mom...they could have scooped that shit out, and he'd been grateful.

His chest hurt. He was too old to feel like he was seventeen. Too old for this. He sat, elbows on knees, head in his hands.

He heard a noise, and raised his head just as Scully put her hands on his shoulders.

"Hey, I know I hog the entire bed, but you can push me over," she said, her voice rough with sleep. She gently massaged his shoulders. "You're stiff. What are you doing in here? The TV's not even on."

Mulder closed his eyes and let his head fall back against her belly. "I didn't want to wake you up," he murmured. She pressed her strong fingers into his neck, and he almost purred.

"What's on your mind, Mulder?" she asked, her voice warm and intimate.

He covered her hands with her own, stopping the massage. "Scully," he said, his voice raw, "Don't you love me?"

"God, Mulder," Scully said, sounding shocked, and his eyes stung.

"Tell me you love me, Scully," he said. Mulder pulled away from her hands and lurched to his feet, facing her. "Tell me."

Scully put her hands on his chest. "Mulder. I love you. I do," she said, and burst into tears.

The Song of Wandering Aengus 
by William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood, 
Because a fire was in my head, 
And cut and peeled a hazel wand, 
And hooked a berry to a thread; 
And when white moths were on the wing, 
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
 I dropped the berry in a stream 
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor 
I went to blow the fire aflame, 
But something rustled on the floor, 
And some one called me by my name: 
It had become a glimmering girl 
With apple blossom in her hair 
Who called me by my name and ran 
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering 
Through hollow lands and hilly lands, 
I will find out where she has gone, 
And kiss her lips and take her hands; 
And walk among long dappled grass, 
And pluck till time and times are done 
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Notes and acknowledgments: It's been a long time since I was in D.C., myself, and after reading the Haven boards, I feel terribly amateurish. I didn't look up anything, except my own little notes on representing deviant sexual offenders, and all the errors are my own. The Yeats poem is straight from one of the pages devoted to poetry on the Internet.

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