SunlightFading.htmlSunlight Fading 
by: Annie Jennings 
Auralissa@aol.com 
  
DISCLAIMER: Well, let me start off to say that I have no 
control over these characters. Who here is really surprised? 
Yeah, that's what I thought. Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen 
Productions own the ones that you heard of, and anyone 
else that you meet, I made up. I have no rights whatsoever 
to use the following songs: "Strong Enough" by Sheryl 
Crow; "The World Before Columbus" by Suzanne Vega; 
"Amen" by Jewel;  "Painters" by Jewel; "Adrian" by Jewel; 
"Caramel" by Suzanne Vega; "One Headlight" by The 
Wallflowers; "In the Absence of Sun" by Duncan Sheik. 
Any comments/flames can be sent right on over to 
Auralissa@aol.com. I'll be wearing my Asbestos 
underwear. 
SUMMARY: The truth shines brighter than ever when 
Mulder and Scully investigate abductions in Fargo, North 
Dakota, involving abductees from the 1960's and 
government experiments--- but what happens when only 
one of them can see the light? 
ARCHIVERS: Ship this puppy on out! Gossamer, 
Newsgroup... all of em. Just keep my name on it. 
RATING/CATEGORY: PG-13, angst, conspiracy, 
violence, UST, MSR. 
DEDICATION: I want to dedicate this story to all those 
who are visually impaired, whose light burns bright in spite 
of their inability to see it. The rest of the world certainly 
does, and we are ever grateful to bask in its glow. This is 
for you. 
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The portrayals of the Scully family are 
written prior to "Gethsemane", when we actually caught a 
glimpse of one of the invisible brothers(gasp!). Just ignore 
every description or view of Bill Jr., and indulge in this 
little depiction... Please??? 
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"SUNLIGHT FADING" 
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Propping his feet on the desk full of messy papers and 
disorganized files, he revelled in the slight slivers of light 
that he allowed in his office. Living in a metaphoric world 
had always appealed to him, and so shrouding himself in 
darkness was a natural transition for him. He aimlessly 
twirled a pencil in his slender fingers, and finally decided 
to turn on a desk light, letting some light into his crowded 
and cramped space. 
Shadows danced in a flattering tribute across his exotic 
features, perfectly touching his profile with sharp contrasts 
of skin and darkness. He put on a pair of wire-rimmed 
glasses, and opened up the first manilla folder that awaited 
him. 
Fox Mulder had stumbled on to something wonderful, and 
his elation shone through only in his expressive and 
youthful eyes. 
The door to the dungeon of darkness that Mulder kept 
opened, and there stood a slender, petite, fiery-haired 
woman in a tailored suit and pumps, holding two styrofoam 
cups that were brimming with a familiarly scented liquid. 
"Please tell me that you didn't sleep here," Dana Scully 
said, exasperated, and he gave her his sly smile that 
instantly gave her her answer, as well as a clue that he had 
found something new to pursue. 
"That smells too good to be Bureau mud, Scully," he said, 
and she gave a short smile. 
"I figured that you would have put in a late night, and so I 
decided to take pity on you," she admitted. "It's Brazilian. 
Just the way you like it." 
Giving a low purr of contentment, Mulder graciously took 
the fresh-brewed cup from his partner, and sipped it. 
"Marry me, Scully," he growled, and she was seriously 
tempted to say, "Show me the engagement ring!" a la 
"NYPD Blue". Instead, she just gave him her small look of 
amusement, and sipped from her own cup of coffee. 
Temptation leads only to ruin, she reminded herself, and let 
the warmth of the coffee fill her body. 
"So, what do you have today, Mulder?" she asked, and he 
gestured to his desk. 
"As much as you try to tell me that I have poor 
organizational skills, I divided the files up into three piles," 
he said, and with every label, he tapped a stack with his 
finger. "The first one consists of cases that should be up in 
Violent Crimes. The second includes the one and only case 
that is worth a moment of our time. And the third stack is 
full of cases that are just too funny to miss. Check this one 
out, Scully," he said, passing her a thin manilla folder. 
Crossing her legs and perching herself primly on the edge 
of an office chair, Scully opened up the case, and arched 
her right eyebrow. "A woman claims that she was beamed 
up into a flying casino that was run by Elvis Presley?" 
Mulder gave her the smile that instantly gave away the 
punchline that he had been saving. "And this is also an 
excuse as to why she didn't file her income taxes on time," 
he said, and she groaned. 
"That's really disgusting, Mulder," she admitted, and 
shivered. "Why is it so cold in here?" Her breath shone in 
the frigid air of his crowded and disheveled office. She had 
attempted to clean it once before, but that had only ended 
up with him screwing around with it the next day. Scully 
had given up hope of a proper work environment a long 
time ago, and had learned to adapt to the one she existed in. 
He shrugged, and she stood up, walking to the thermostat. 
"Oh, my God! This is set at ninety-three degrees, Mulder!" 
Giving her a look that clearly stated that he had figured that 
out a long time ago, Mulder stood up and made his way to 
the small box that dictated the temperature of his meagerly 
adorned basement office. "The Bureau decided that I could 
live without heat, seeing as how spooks don't need warmth 
to survive," he quipped, but Scully found only minor points 
of humor in the freezing climate. "I can't wait to see my 
Christmas bonus." 
Leaning back in the office chair and using her trench coat 
to cover up her sheer stockings, she watched, both amused 
and aroused at the sight of his trim body bent over the box, 
and drank in the sight of his perfectly-formed face 
contorted in concentration as though it were fine wine. 
Upon finally losing his temper and hitting the box with his 
fist, Mulder gave up, returning to the paper-covered desk. 
"That's it, Scully," he said, and she shrugged slightly. 
"Well, Mulder, there's always tomorrow," she said. "Until 
then, what do you say to bagels and cream cheese at the 
deli? My treat," she tempted, and the inviting hint in her 
bright blue eyes was enough for Mulder to make up his 
mind. Picking up the only decent file that he had received, 
he followed her out of the door. 
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The deli that Scully frequented was a quiet, uncrowded, 
and inconspicuous restaurant in a non-descript part of 
town, so she had little trouble convincing her paranoid 
partner that no one had followed them. It was famous for 
lox and bagels, as well as fresh pastries made by a German 
immigrant named Helga. The deli was fairly near utter 
desertion when the two agents arrived, and Scully wisely 
asked for a table in the back. She assured Mulder that 
everything was kosher, knowing full well that the irreverent 
Jew would eat whatever he could with asking little. It had 
been a running joke between the friends for a while now, 
and Scully had plans on making him an actual kosher meal 
one day, just to see what he would say. 
Biting into her cream cheese filled bagel, Scully gestured 
with a swift nod of her head to the file on the table. "So, 
Mulder, what do we have here?" 
He opened it up and passed her three obscure shots of a 
snow-covered country side. Bleakly frank and blunt, the 
photographs were nothing remarkable. "This is Fargo, 
North Dakota," he said, shoving the photos to her. "Nothing 
remarkable, no sightings of UFOs, no paranormal or 
unexplained activity whatsoever. Until two weeks ago." 
Scully kept her eyes fixed on him, enjoying the usual 
drama that came with Mulder's introduction of a case. She 
had told him numerous times that he could have been a 
successful politician, but Mulder had jovially told her that 
if he did pursue such a career, then he would have to 
change his mantra from "Trust no one" to "Trust the 
government", which would go against his policy of absolute 
truth. 
Now, munching thoughtfully on a bagel stuffed with 
calorie-infested cream cheese, Scully admired the boyish 
twinkle in his brilliant green eyes and the melodramatic 
grin that played on the corners of his sensual and generous 
mouth. He continued, wrapped up in the complexity of the 
case. 
"Sixteen women, ranging from the ages of twelve to 
thirty-five, have been reported missing from their homes in 
the suburb called Fantasia," he said. "No evidence of a 
break in, nothing. But it gets even better. With every 
missing woman, another woman is returned. A missing 
woman from the 1960's to 1970's." He leaned forward, his 
eyes blazing with intense light. 
"The abductees from thirty years ago, Scully," he 
murmured. "They're all being returned for new ones." 
Shaking her head, she cocked it to the side. "Well, Mulder, 
I'll give you this much," she admitted. "This is certainly 
interesting as to how Tonya Basilwood from Hawaii got to 
North Dakota, in Yolanda Ferguson's bed. You have 
stumbled on to somthing here." 
Flashing her the infamous Fox Mulder lady-killer grin, 
Mulder leaned back in his seat, quite pleased with the case. 
"Pretty darn good," he said in a poor imitation of Frances 
McDormand's pregnant cop from "Fargo". 
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"So alone 
  And this room looks so cold 
  No one to care and no one to hold 
  Yeah the Lord knows 
  That I'm needing somebody like you, just like you 
  Can you see 
  The passion burning in my eyes 
  Do you sense 
  The rush you give my heart 
  And if you knew 
  The secret way I feel for you 
  Would you come running 
  To me or would you turn away 
"At night I pray 
  With hope and faith 
  As I lay me down to sleep 
  I pray together we will be 
  And there will come a time 
  You'll be mine, all mine 
  And I'll be yours always 
  But until that day comes at night I'll pray 
"Should I feel 
  These emotions inside of me 
  Should I reveal what's locked up in my soul 
  I'm so afraid 
  But it's something that you've got to know 
  How I want 
  To touch you every time you're near 
  I long to feel 
  Your body next to mine 
  And if you knew 
  The secret love I have for you 
  Would you come running to me or would you turn away 
"If all our prayers were answered 
  Our hearts would be enraptured 
  We would find our heaven 
  Inside each other's arms 
  This lonely room would finally see the sun shine through 
  But until that day comes at night I'll pray 
  I'll get down on my knees, I'll get down on my knees and pray" 
--Wild Orchid 
"At Night I Pray", Wild Orchid, 1996 
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Flipping off the television set, Mulder crossed his arms 
over his chest, and blew a stray lock of hair from his brow, 
twisting his mouth into a half-smirk. The adrenaline 
pumped through his body, as usual on such a case, and he 
had been burning fuel staring at a science fiction flick that 
Mulder had almost memorized. Insomnia came to haunt 
him like a personally known demon on these nights, and 
tonight was no exception. 
Tilting his head back and forth, Mulder looked down at his 
toes, just trying to find some sort of distraction in the 
barren apartment. He could do no more work on the case 
until he got into Fargo, and this was the moment when he 
felt utterly, utterly, useless. Scully always told him that he 
had a complex with truth. 
Smiling, Mulder wiggled his toes. Scully... a distraction 
and a point of ponderment that could last him well into the 
wee hours of the morning. To use the word "complex" in a 
different format, Scully was all of that and so much more. 
She could be an absolute pillar of strength, or she could be 
just as sensitive and as emotional as an insecure adolescent. 
There were times when he was unsure of whether to feel 
admiration or sympathy toward her, and then there were 
times when he wasn't sure if he was supposed to feel both. 
Well, one thing was for certain. He was definitely not 
supposed to feel what he did feel about her. Jesus, Mulder, 
this was his fucking partner, not his girlfriend. <<But that's 
just what you want her to be, isn't it...?>> 
Heaving a sigh, Mulder raked a hand through his dark hair. 
He had been wrong to try to initially deny what he had felt 
about her. It was wrong and directed only from him, he 
tried to tell himself. But just as Mulder was stubborn and 
obstinate to Scully, he was stubborn against common sense 
altogether. Over time, he had only grown to love her more. 
A small smile lingered on his well-sculpted face as he 
looked at the lines that the Venetian blinds cast on his 
mostly blank walls. There was this inner light inside of her 
that absolutely enthralled him. Just as moths flocked to 
lightbulbs, Mulder could not help but be drawn to her. It 
had been this way for quite some time now, and Mulder 
had learned that there was no use resisting the strong and 
deep emotions that he harbored towards her. Funny, but 
when he thought about the odd combination of emotions 
that created his love for her, they were quite an intriguing 
potpourri of feelings. 
Oh, there was certainly a great deal of absolute love for 
her. There was admiration, adoration, attraction... and those 
were only the A's. But tucked under those wonderful, 
glorious feelings, there was a nagging sense of guilt, 
self-loathing, and shame. Just as he had created his love, he 
would destroy it, and eliminate the both of them in the 
process. 
Mulder was the ultimate cause for the cancer that plagued 
Scully's body and poisoned her health. Due to his relentless 
crusade for the truth, he had been the one to destroy the 
only woman that he had ever loved. When she died, he did. 
Though he had believed this for quite some time, only now 
had he realized just how very true that was. When she 
passed on, he would never be the same. A broken and 
shattered man. 
He had a history of being blessed with wonderful people, 
and then having them taken from him. His sister, 
Samantha, had been one such person, and the loss of her 
had shaped his history. Scully, he had come to 
acknowledge, meant more to him than any one person ever 
had. And his losing her would be even more searing and 
hurtful. Mulder knew that she was hurting, knew that she 
was in pain, and could only watch from a distance as she 
fell in a spiral to her imminent death. 
Turning on his side, Mulder curled up, his face falling at 
the thought of her dying. How could he ever let go of her? 
There was no way possible, no earthly way to live without 
her. Without Scully, he was nothing. 
Clenching his fist in anger, Mulder narrowed his eyes. That 
was what they wanted, those men who had planned her 
abduction. They had known all along that once they had 
done away with Dana Scully, Fox Mulder was out of the 
picture. The irony in that was agonizing. Kill the innocent 
to take out the guilty. Was this the way that the justice 
system reasoned today? Perhaps that was the reason the 
government had gotten its poor reputation. 
Mulder was so afraid of losing her. It was an all-consuming 
fear that was part of the territory of all-consuming love. He 
possessed both, and both haunted him. They were specters 
that followed him where ever he went, and those were the 
wraiths that made him Spooky Mulder. 
She was a part of who he was. 
The night before he went to Fargo, Fox Mulder did not 
catch one moment of sleep, and he let his eyes wander the 
circumfrence of the apartment until dawn. 
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Scully leaned back in her airplane seat, and sipped on the 
warm cup of coffee that had been passed to her by her 
perky flight attendant, Lynda!(with the exclamation mark, 
to make it even more demeaning and irritating). Mulder, 
the lucky bastard, had managed to take a nap, a smile 
spreading across his handsome face. Lynda! had payed 
particularly close attention to the debonair federal agent, 
causing a small tinge of jealousy to possess Scully's body. 
She reasoned with herself, reminding herself that he 
certainly did not belong to her, and that he could screw any 
dye job that he wanted. 
Bitterness had become quite an interesting pursuit of 
Scully's recently, and she had revelled in the idea that she 
was a bitter old maid, as nasty and as cynical as such a 
label was. But when she thought of herself as an 
underachieving F.B.I. agent, then there was little sanctuary 
or comfort in that prospect. A bitter old maid was certainly 
a more mundane and suitable aspect of herself, and Scully 
just let herself roll in self-pity while she had the 
opportunity. They would soon land in Fargo, where she 
would have no time to feel sorry for herself. All of her time 
would be used on reigning in her stubborn and persistant 
partner. 
Speaking of which, Mulder stirred slightly in the seat in the 
aisle, drifting lightly in the soundness of slumber that he so 
rarely partook of. His insomnia aided his brilliance as well 
as his madness, and so she rarely complained. The years 
melted from his face as he let himself float away in the 
rapture of sweet repose. Lovingly and fondly, Scully 
brushed a stray lock of deep brown from his brow. Her 
sweet Fox, though it was only Scully who knew that she 
was his master. 
Mulder listened to no one, but on occasion, she could 
manage to tame him. Skinner knew this, and he had a 
grudging respect for anyone who could bear to work with a 
relentless thunderstorm of a man like Mulder. But Scully 
loved him, and the love was enough to sustain her when 
she thought that no energy was left. And, she had to admit 
to herself, the energy that had once been so abundant in her 
lithe and slender body was fading away with every passing 
day. 
Lynda! walked by, and smiled warmly at Scully. "We'll be 
landing shortly, ma'am," she said. "Please put your seat in 
the upright position, and instruct your husband to do the 
same." 
It was a common mistake, and she had grown used to the 
error over the years. Now, she did not even bother to 
correct the unsuspecting observor. What reason was there 
for Lynda! to ever guess that they were not a happily 
married couple, going to visit family in Fargo, but instead a 
pair of maverick F.B.I. agents going to investigate a case 
involving alien abductees in the snowy city? 
Hesitantly, Scully shook Mulder's broad shoulder, the heat 
of his skin burning through his dress shirt. "Mulder, wake 
up," she whispered, and the sleeping agent did not stir. For 
a moment, this amused her, and then she realized that she 
had to wake him up, whether she liked it or not. 
Finally, Mulder woke up, his thickly lashed eyes fluttering 
for a moment, breaking off the daze and euphoria of sleep. 
"Are we there yet?" was his sarcastic waking question, and 
she rolled her eyes. 
"Shut up and buckle your seat belt." 
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SUNLIGHT FADING   2/12 
by: Annie Jennings 
(disclaimer in part one) 
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"It's a bad day 
  It's a train ride 
  It's a bad day 
  And you're my medicine 
"It's a snow day 
  It's a full moon 
  It's a snow day 
"When'd you get down to my bones? 
  Where'll I find my wishing stone? 
  The beads, the records, 
  All the calls and the drinks alone 
"First by mind, then by music 
  You'll make it all less confusing 
  It's a slow dive down 
  A fast distraction 
  A strange fall forward 
  My lame reaction 
"It's a bad day 
  It's a long ride 
  It's a bad day 
  You're a medicine 
"It's a sinking feeling 
  Pulls me through the seated chairs 
  When will you come rescue me 
  Find solace, and then take me there? 
"You'll say, 'You're not too tired for this life, 
  And it's not gonna matter if you fall down twice. 
  You're not too tired for this life 
  And it's not gonna matter if you fall down twice 
"When'd you get down to my bones? 
  Where'll I find my wishing stone? 
  The beads, the records, 
  All the calls and the drinks alone 
"It's a bad day 
  Two miles to go 
  It's a bad day 
  You're my medicine 
"You'll say, 'You're not too tired for this life, 
  And it's not gonna matter if you fall down twice. 
  You're not too tired for this life 
  And it's not gonna matter if you fall down twice 
"You're my medicine 
  You're my medicine 
  You're my medicine 
  You're my medicine 
  It's a long ride" 
--Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories 
     "Snow Day", Tails, 1995 
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The bleakness and the lack of color in the Fargo landscape 
was startling and blinding. Mulder casually recalled the 
warning against driving off of the road, and was especially 
careful not to turn the car right off of the road and into the 
wooden fences. Snow liberally decorated the windshield, 
and it created a thick and beautiful blanket of white 
frosting on the metallic version of a birthday cake. He 
squinted through the haze, and groaned. "I hate snow," he 
muttered, and she shrugged, carelessly. 
"I have to disagree with you on this, Mulder," she argued. "I 
think that the snow is lovely. Look at this. It's gorgeous." 
He took a quick, fleeting glance at the material on his 
windshield, and shrugged. "Nothing special," he dismissed, 
and she rolled her eyes. He never did appreciate the finer 
and the simpler things in life. She at times wondered if 
Mulder had to see everything in black and white, without 
the fanciful edges of lace to decorate the lines in between. 
If so, she pitied him more than ever. 
Actually, Mulder often did stop to admire the beauty in his 
life. And one of the most beautiful sights was Dana 
Katherine Scully, sitting primly in the car seat next to him, 
staring with fascination at the snowy landscape. Fargo was 
known for its thick winter blanket of snow and ice, and it 
was no wonder that she was enthralled by the rich and 
blank countryside. 
The lodge that they were set up to stay in was up ahead. 
Skinner had given them more comfortable surroundings to 
stay in this trip, knowing that there was a possible blizzard 
coming up. Travel arrangements had been made with that 
fact in consideration, and Scully had packed accordingly. 
There was a thin trail of smoke that floated up from the 
chimney, adding a dash of grey to the bleak sky. "Here we 
are," she murmured, and he turned the ignition off. 
"Well, Scully, this will either be charming or terrifying," he 
said. "You know, like in 'The Shining'." He tossed her a 
devilish grin. "Redrum, redrum..." 
Playing alone, she tossed a thumb to the valet. "And 
heeeeeere's Johnny," she added. Mulder nodded, pleased 
that she was taking a humorous view on this situation. 
"Pretty darn good." 
The valet opened the door up, and gave a warm smile. "Are 
you Agents Mulder and Scully?" he asked, and Mulder 
nodded, flashing his I.D., and Scully did the same. "Oh, 
super. Your rooms are just this way. Follow me." 
After they had gotten their duffle bags out of the trunk, 
Mulder arched an unassuming eyebrow at Scully. "Jesus, 
I'm expecting William H. Macy to appear in a minute 
here." 
The lodge was perfectly decorated, and was the picture of a 
perfect little ski inn. There were guests seated around, 
drinking hot cocoa and milk, along with reading magazines 
full of trash. Scully chuckled a little at the scene, and 
shivered after walking in from the cold, Fargo weather. 
"Well, Mulder..." she muttered, and he grinned. 
"It's lovely, Scully," he said. "And if I die, this is going to 
be my personal hell." She could not help but smile at him, 
amused by his typical detestment of anything normal or 
urban. 
Scully walked into her warm, airy room with a sense of 
gratitude. The lodge might have been decorated with 
paraphernalia from the banned redneck store in South 
Carolina, but the room was beautifully garnished with 
old-fashioned merchandise. Scully gave a wry look to the 
king-sized bed. As though she would be sharing it with 
anyone... even though when the weather got cold, she 
certainly would not mind having her tall, dashing partner as 
a bed-warmer... 
Flopping down on the couch, Scully looked through the file 
that she had assembled so far. Sixteen women gone, sixteen 
women returned. They were mostly children that had been 
taken, with the exceptions of some twenty to thirty-year-old 
women. Only females. Not one male from Fargo, which 
Scully though odd. There was obviously that something 
special that a woman possessed... 
There came a knocking at her door, and Mulder stood 
there, dressed to go. "We don't have any time to waste, 
Scully," he said. "The blizzard will settle in before long, 
and I want to get as much work done as possible." 
Scully shook her head, a small smile playing on her lips. 
He was still playing the supervisor to her, something that 
she had always resented. But in this case, he had to 
recognize her advice as indispensable. She was his anchor 
when he risked sinking. It was always Scully who brought 
the wandering ship to shore. 
He had often mentally compared her to his personal light 
house. 
Standing, she picked up her thick winter coat, and shrugged 
into it, tossing her red hair over her rabbit-trimmed collar. 
Mulder shook his head at the collar with a sense of chiding. 
"It's not 'wabbit' season yet, Scully," he said in an Elmer 
Fudd voice. 
She rolled her eyes, and flicked the tip of his nose. She had 
always admired it, thinking that its' slightly overbearing 
size was cute on his exotically built face. "It's faux," she 
excused, and winked daringly at him. "Let's go, Mulder, if 
this is all so important to you." 
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The lights in Marianne Hilton's home were like beacons of 
defiant markers in an otherwise unending road of white. 
Mulder handled the car on the icy road beautifully, and did 
not let the slippery gravel intimidate him. He had dealt with 
aliens and liver-eating monsters. Let the blizzard do its 
worst. 
Marianne Hilton lived alone, a widow with her 
twelve-year-old daughter, Claire. About one week ago, 
Claire had been abducted, and Marianne had reported all 
that she had seen immediately. Mulder wanted her version 
of the story. 
The partners stepped out of the car and into the coldness of 
the Midwest winter. "Lord," Mulder muttered, wincing in 
the frigid air. "Remind me never to move here." 
Zipping up her coat all the way to her chin, Scully shivered 
in agreement. 
The front door opened when Marianne realized that she had 
company, and she quickly gestured for the cold agents to 
enter her home. "Hurry!" she called, and they hastily 
obeyed, Scully rubbing her leather-gloved hands together in 
an attempt to bring some warmth to them. 
Once they were safely inside the warm home, Marianne 
shut the door. "You must be the F.B.I. agents," she said, 
smiling. "I heard that you were coming down. How do you 
like the weather?" 
Surprised at the welcome, Mulder gave a brief smile. "It's 
lovely," he replied, and Marianne laughed heartily. It was 
startling to think that this genial Midwestern woman had 
recently lost a daughter. 
"Oh, yah, it's really something out there," she agreed. 
"We're all hoping for a white Christmas this year. We 
usually get one, but with all of the unpleasantness, it would 
be a real blessing." 
Scully had never seen a white Christmas, though that had 
never stopped her from seeing pictures in books. Her 
family had always been in warmer places, except for the 
season in Minnesota. 
Marianne directed them to a comfortable-looking sofa, and 
sat the two down. "So, you want to talk to me about Claire, 
right?" she asked, and Mulder nodded, removing his warm 
and comfortable fur-lined coat. 
"We need to ask you a few questions, especially about what 
you witnessed that night," he explained, and Marianne 
nodded back, her smile fading. 
"I had just tucked Claire into bed," she recalled. "Claire's 
my only child. My husband died just before she was born, 
so it's always been just Claire and me. We get by fine 
though. Anyway, I had gone downstairs to finish watching 
television, when I was interrupted by these screaming 
lights... It was awful, Mr..." She gave a short laugh. "Oh, 
silly me. I never asked for your names." 
Scully flashed her badge, as did Mulder. "I'm Agent Scully, 
and this is Agent Mulder," she introduced, and Marianne 
nodded, and returned to her story. 
"I felt like time froze," she said, and Mulder interrupted 
her. 
"You lost time?" She nodded. "How much?" 
She thought for a moment, then replied with a sense of 
trepedation. "Oh, about ten minutes. I got up, and went 
upstairs to check on Claire, but she was gone. It was so 
bizarre... and there was another girl sleeping in Claire's 
bed. A woman, all bruised, and crying." 
"That would be Jessica Martin," Scully filled in. 
These were the typical symptoms of an alien abductee or an 
abduction witness. Mulder found nothing untruthful or 
implicating in the Midwestern woman's monologue, and 
stood up, zipping up his warm coat again. 
"I'm sorry for your loss, Ms. Hilton," he said, and Scully 
looked up, startled by his minimal interrogation. With a 
case like this, this was particularly unlike Mulder. "I didn't 
mean to take up your time." 
She shook her head, and smiled kindly. "Oh, no, not a 
problem," she said. "I just miss my daughter so much, and 
she was all that I had..." 
Mulder nodded, wrapping a dark-colored scarf around his 
neck. "I understand," he said, quietly, thinking of the sister 
that he had lost. In his own chaotic family, she had been all 
that he had. And Scully's own abduction that had spawned 
her cancer and her... 
Pausing in his tracks out of the door, Mulder turned his 
head. "Ms. Hilton, I have a question for you," he said, and 
the tired woman gave Mulder a look that stated her 
cooperation. "Had Claire menstruated yet?" 
The question threw Scully and Ms. Hilton off, but 
Marianne quickly recovered, and answered his question. 
"Why, yes," she said. "She started her period about a year 
ago." 
Scully gave her partner a side-long look, and Mulder 
nodded, taking in this information. "And would say that her 
periods are regular?" he asked. 
"Yes..." she said, eying the agent closely. "Why do you ask, 
Agent Mulder?" 
Putting on his gloves, Mulder shook his head. "No reason 
yet, ma'am. Have a merry Christmas." 
And with that, Mulder walked out to the car, leaving a 
slightly bewildered Scully to follow his path. Once they 
had gotten safely bundled up in the car, Scully looked at 
him with a great deal of interest. "Mulder, why did you ask 
if Claire Hilton was menstruating?" she said, and Mulder 
backed the Taurus out on to the highway. 
"All of the girls and women that had been taken were of or 
near enough to child-bearing age," he said. "Even the 
returned ones from the sixties and seventies were when 
they were taken." Scully nodded, encouraging him to 
continue. "What if, and this is a pretty big what if, these 
women were being abducted for experiments involving the 
female reproductive organs?" 
Scully narrowed her eyes, and shook her head. "Mulder, if 
this did involve the experimentation of human sexual 
reproduction, then wouldn't male abductees be required? 
The last time I checked, human prolification was not 
asexual." 
Mulder gave her a look that she had now become familiar 
with. The dark, appealing, spooky-look. A favorite look of 
hers. The look that prepared her for the stuff that he had 
gained noteriety with. It was the look of Spooky Mulder, 
the one and only... and there was probably good reason as 
to *why* he was the one and only. 
"What if they weren't interested in human sexual 
reproduction?" he proposed, and she gave him her own 
patented look of "thou art insane". 
"Mulder, if you try to mate a chicken and a dog, you don't 
come out with Kentucky Fried Schnauzer," she tried to 
explain, and he tried to concentrate on something other 
than the endless white snow. God allmighty, it was bright. 
"What makes you think that extraterrestrials could replicate 
with human female women?" 
Mulder shifted gears impatiently, trying to avoid the ice on 
the road. "Well, Scully, do you have a rational explanation 
as to why seven women of fertile age suddenly 
disappeared, and were then replaced with adults that were 
missing as children?" 
She hated when he answered her questions with questions. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
"Oh, so just let me try 
  And I will be good to you 
  Just let me try 
  And I will be there for you 
  I'll show you why 
  You're so much more than good enough" 
--Sarah McLachlan 
"Good Enough", Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, 1993 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
The bellhops were bustling about when the agents returned 
to the hotel, and Mulder noticed that it was snowing again, 
heavily and steadily. "What's going on?" he asked, and a 
bellhop dressed in gold tipped his hat. 
"I'm sorry, sir, but all of the guests are checking out and 
driving home," he said. "There's a blizzard coming. The 
airport's already closed..." 
"Shit," Scully cursed, and shivered in the snow. Mulder 
winced when he heard the news, and his breath froze in the 
air. "Well, what do we do?" 
The bellhop shrugged his shoulders, and gestured to the 
hotel. "The lodge'll stay open, if you want to stay. We have 
only one other person here, and she rents an apartment, but 
I doubt that she'll bother you." 
"Are you sure?" Mulder asked, and the bellhop smiled, 
nodding enthusiastically. 
"Oh, yah." 
The lodge hall was warm and cozy, and as the day passed 
on in their first day of being snowbound, Scully migrated to 
the hall with her laptop and her files. She had work to do, 
and no distractions in which to worry over. Mulder was up 
in his room, doing his own work, and she folded up her 
jean-clad legs in a comfy chair, and opened up her work. 
The tests on the women had all come up with the same 
results that Mulder had predicted. The returned women 
were all infertile, with their ovaries and uteruses mutilated 
to the point of non-recognizable. Their ova had been 
harvested for some purpose that Scully could not put her 
finger on, but she still had her doubts about aliens trying to 
impregante these women. 
Mulder's radical theory involved recycling the women. The 
old abductees were now barren, and had no use to them. 
They discarded them and traded them in for newer models. 
Scully remarked that it sounded like a sick version of "The 
First Wives Club", and Mulder just rolled his eyes. He 
wanted the women's DNA and ova count checked, as well 
as any prior records from any obstetrician or gynecologist. 
Mulder was upstairs, checking out the stories and logging 
them, as she waded through the ocean of medical 
information. 
Just as she began to type, there was a flop on the couch 
across from her, and there Mulder sat, his lanky limbs 
dangling over the sides of the couch. His posture and smirk 
screamed, "Shut up and do me", but Scully resisted the urge 
to smirk back. He had changed out of his suit and tie, and 
opted for the more casual grey sweatshirt and backwards 
Redskins hat. His jeans hugged his thighs and calves, and 
Scully looked him over once before reluctantly returning 
her eyes to her computer screen. The view of ovarian 
diagrams was far less appealing than the one of her 
partner's butt. 
"I can't believe you," he said, shaking his head mockingly. 
"You claim that I'm the work-obsessed one, but the instant 
that we get a sudden extension, you sit down and type." 
"Mm-hm," she grunted, not wanting to make eye contact 
with those seductive and alluring eyes. 
"It's snowing, Scully. When was the last time that it snowed 
like this in D.C.?" he asked, and she did not look up. 
"It snowed last year, and we were bored out of our minds," 
she replied. "The Blizzard of '96." 
Mulder rolled his eyes, and pushed the computer screen 
down on the laptop, forcing her to start back as he leaned 
into her face. "Don't you remember how it was when you 
were a kid? You know, the first snowflakes hit the ground, 
and you run downstairs to turn on the T.V., hoping that 
school will be cancelled... It was probably the best part of 
the day." 
Scully saw that eager, adrenaline-filled child in Fox 
Mulder's eager and anxious hazel eyes, waiting with great 
anticipation for any chance to get out of school. But she 
also saw that excited child whenever he pulled up any 
evidence of the so-called impossible, bringing it to her with 
hopes that she would have no explanation for what he saw 
or what he read, and then she had watched with a certain 
amount of guilt when she deflated his hopes with her 
pin-prick of logic. 
She knew that Mulder believed that she lived for poking 
holes in his theories. He had once accused her of 
memorizing the Encyclopedia Brittanica just for that 
particular purpose. Ironically, she had at times wished that 
Mulder would always be right, so that she wouldn't have to 
be the one to let him down. 
And she would have to let him down now. 
"Mulder, the difference is that there are lives depending on 
us," she said. "Our job is to recover these missing children 
and to figure out what is going on in Fargo. I intend on 
following that job through." 
His face fell, and he slowly stood up. "Yeah," he said, and 
walked out of the room, his shoulders slumped over 
slightly, and his eyes downcast. He shoved his hands in his 
pockets, and walked away. 
Sitting alone in the lodge, Scully tilted her head, and tried 
to work again. Her thoughts drifted to the downtrodden 
Mulder, and felt that same sense of burden and shame 
come over her again. She had hated to hurt his feelings, and 
wished that she had done something better. Putting her face 
in her hands, Scully groaned to herself. Great, now she was 
willing to slack off on her work to mess around with a 
bored partner. This was going all too far. 
Absorbed in her thoughts, Scully was startled to hear a low, 
long whistle as a woman entered the room. She was tall, a 
good three or four inches taller than Scully, with a slender 
figure and long legs. There were lines on her face and smile 
marks around her eyes, with an olive complexion, friendly 
brown eyes, and long, dark brown hair that was just 
beginning to streak through with grey threads. Clad in an 
Indian-print peasant dress and sandals, the woman seemed 
a remnant of the sixties, and she held a twelve-string 
acoustic guitar in her hand. 
"Boy, oh boy, did you see one of the F.B.I. agents?" she 
asked, her voice heavy with a Southern accent and brash 
qualities. "A real hot one. Cutest butt that I've seen in a 
long time." 
Secretly amused, Scully looked over at the ex-hippie, who 
was making a warm and comfortable place by the crackling 
fire. "Really?" she asked, and the woman tossed her thick 
mane of hair behind her shoulder. 
"Oh, yeah," she said, a wicked grin stretching across her 
attractive face. "I'm telling you, if I was younger, that fox 
would be mine." 
She allowed herself a grin of her own at the woman's 
accurate adjective to describe Scully's dashing partner. 
"You don't seem that old," Scully said, and the woman 
smiled even bigger. 
"Honey, I can already tell that we're going to get along," she 
said, her voice smooth and sultry. "I'm Lily Whiteside, high 
school English teacher here at Fargo High." She extended 
her hand for a forthright shake, and Scully gave Lily her 
dainty white hand. 
"Dana Scully, federal agent," she said, and was impressed 
by Lily Whiteside's reaction. The woman laughed heartily, 
not seeming embarrassed in the least. 
"Then you know that hunk?" she said, and Scully shut the 
computer down. This could be counted as work, she told 
herself. She was, after all, interviewing the teacher of some 
of the missing children. 
"Yes, he's my partner," she replied. Putting the guitar down 
for a moment, Lily ran her hands through her long, 
coarse-seeming chestnut hair. 
"Lucky you," she replied. "So, you're investigating all of the 
disappearances?" Scully nodded, and turned her attention to 
the bubbly teacher. She was probably an excellent role 
model for these kids, and was most likely a favorite 
teacher. "What's going on?" 
Shaking her head and smiling tightly, Scully answered her. 
"Well, Ms. Whiteside..." 
"No way, call me Lily," she said. "I hate it when people call 
me by my ex-husband's name. I always feel like I'm still 
married to the punk." 
"Okay, Lily, we don't quite know what's going on in Fargo," 
she said, and picked a stray piece of lint from her cerulean 
cashmere sweater. "We don't have a lot of information to 
go on." 
Picking up her guitar again, Lily strummed it thoughtfully. 
"A lot of my students have expressed a fear of being 
kidnapped," she said. "And there are rumors going around. 
Silly stuff, like mountain men with rifles, and space aliens 
with anal probes. You know how kids are. They're scared 
silly, and parents are starting to get worried, too." 
Scully wondered if the kids and parents had reason to be 
worried. Lily crossed her slender ankles over on her knee, 
and fingered a bell-covered musical anklet. "I just want to 
be able to assure the children that there's nothing to be 
afraid of," she said. "I don't think that there's a lot of 
comfort in the F.B.I." 
Nodding in slight agreement, Scully glanced at her guitar. 
"An English teacher who plays a twelve-string?" she asked, 
and Lily laughed, her melodic voice carrying through out 
the empty room. 
"Oh, yeah, well, everyone needs a hobby." 
Scully leaned forward, clasping her hands in her lap, a cool 
look of assessment on her petite face. "I see... and your 
hobby also involves checking out my partner in the 
Bureau?" 
The wicked and sly look returned to the woman's finely 
aging face. "Oh, yeah... about your partner, is he married?" 
Scully shook her head. "Great. Is he taken?" 
Scully paused. This was an interesting question. Mulder 
was, by all terms, single, but taken away by his work and 
his obsession with the truth. She had often wondered if 
Mulder had any time or any patience for love, and the 
answer mystified her. Would she be good enough to even 
begin to satisfy his thirst for truth and his sister? The 
answer still eluded her, changing from time to time and 
from case to case. Moody and mysterious, she wondered if 
she knew her partner as well as she thought that she did. 
As Lily awaited a reply, Scully looked away, and then 
realized what kind of spectacle she was creating. The 
federal agent who was supposed to be deeply involved in 
solving a case was instead devoting precious time to 
dreaming of a man that she would never have. 
"He's single," she said, and Lily, perceptive and analytical, 
nodded knowingly. 
"But not by your standards," she finished, and Scully was a 
little taken back by the English teacher's boldness. The only 
English teachers that she had ever had had been 
mild-mannered and shy, always Republicans, always the 
kind of little home-maker that men adored. A little homely, 
a little mousy... nothing like the brassy liberal that sat in 
front of her, plucking aimlessly at guitar strings as though 
they were dental floss. 
"I don't understand what you mean," Scully said, and Lily 
looked pensively at Scully. 
"I'm sorry, Agent Scully, but I have a knack for reading 
people. I always liked to believe that I held a bit of a sixth 
sense, but expressions are easy to interpret," Lily explained. 
"You obviously are more than a little protective of this guy. 
He should be lucky, but he doesn't recognize the fact that 
you're trying to keep him safe. At least, you don't think that 
he recognizes it." 
Interested, Scully rested her jaw on her fist, sitting Indian 
style in an imitation of Lily. "I don't think that he 
recognizes it?" 
Nodding enthusiastically, she tuned the instrument. "Oh, 
yeah. He knows the lengths that you go to in order to keep 
him a little sheltered. He's sensitive. I picked that much up 
from him when I passed him in the halls. That, and he 
smells really great," she added, and went on. "He's 
definitely grateful." 
Scully was about to go on, when she realized that she was 
being thrown off track by this spiritual school teacher. "I'm 
sorry, I'm off subject," she apologized, and Lily tilted her 
head, her eyes wide and innocent. 
"Was there a subject to begin with?" 
Scully supposed that there wasn't, and the woman went 
back to playing her guitar. Picking up her computer and her 
files, Dana prepared to leave her alone when she heard the 
woman begin to sing, her sweet voice blending in with the 
sounds of the warm guitar. 
"When I tell you that I just don't care 
  When I'm throwing punches in the air 
  When I'm broken down and I can't stand 
  Would you be man enough to be my man?" 
The lonely agent walked away, back to the solitude and the 
confinement of her room. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Lying on the bed, Mulder counted the cards that he had left 
in his hand. Solitaire was the name of the game, and 
Mulder was cheating so badly that Newt Gingrich would 
have applauded him. He was bored, and he was restless. 
Becoming snowbound in North Dakota had not been part of 
his plan, and he did not want any kind of setback on this 
case in particular. 
Ordinarily, he might have shipped he and Scully off from 
this place as soon as possible, but not on this one. There 
was something underlying this case that fit Mulder's 
collection of weird cases to a tee. And that factor that 
Mulder so adored was the one of the possible return of 
Samantha Mulder. 
Samantha... Mulder had been close before, he knew that, 
but this was extraordinarily close. The women that were 
being returned were all near Samantha's age when she had 
been abducted. The odds were decidedly in Mulder's favor; 
something that had only happened on rare occasions. 
Shuffling the deck aimlessly, Mulder felt a twinge of guilt 
for keeping Scully in Fargo. She had wanted to be home 
with her family for Christmas, and things weren't looking 
too good for such an event. Mulder had no desire to see his 
mother, and the only relative worth visiting was in the 
frozen Midwest city. 
He had tried to apologize in the typically cryptic fashion 
that he was known for, but he had a feeling that he had only 
managed to piss Scully off even more. Gnawing 
thoughtfully on his lower lip, he stood up, placing the deck 
of playing cards in his back jeans pocket. Mulder had a job 
to do, and that was to make amends with his angered 
partner. He hated himself for misdirecting her life, and he 
hated it when she was upset with him... especially when he 
knew that she had a right to be. 
Knocking on the adjoining door, Mulder ran a hand through 
his floppy brown hair, assuring that he looked somewhat 
decent when he saw her. She came to the door, a slightly 
annoyed look on her face. "What now, Mulder?" she asked. 
"I'm just in the middle of doing this work that you've given 
me, and now you want to come and distract me from it?" 
Stinging from her biting and truthful words, Mulder kept 
himself from flinching. "I'm sorry, Scully," he said, his 
voice honest. She didn't move. "Look, I know how much 
you wanted to see your mom this year, and I never meant to 
keep you from seeing her. And I didn't really mean it when 
I called you obsessive, either." 
Scully was genuinely surprised. An apology from the most 
stubborn and obstinate person that she had ever known? He 
must be bored. But the unexpected apology did reach her, 
and she let down her guard. The busy work that he had 
given her was to blame, she told herself, and bunched up a 
ball of fiery hair in her fist, feeling more than a little 
foolish. 
"You have something, Mulder?" she asked, and let him step 
into her room. He looked around sheepishly, and pulled out 
the pack of cards. 
"You know how to play poker?" 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
SUNLIGHT FADING  3/12 
by: Annie Jennings 
(disclaimer in part one) 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
"Ante up. And don't be shy. 
  Who is that man who is catching my eye? 
  What's underneath all of the deadpan face? 
  Sitting so pretty with a criminal grace?" 
--Suzanne Vega 
"No Cheap Thrill", Nine Objects of Desire, 1996 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
Three hands later, Mulder was out of twenty bucks, and 
Scully was smiling, quite proud of her accomplishment. 
Every time, she had bluffed her cards, and every time, he 
had fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. Wondering if he 
was letting her win so that he could keep her playing, 
Scully presented her hand. "Full house," she said, 
triumphantly, drinking from a bottle of Coors. 
"Damn," Mulder muttered, coughing up ten bucks. "Where 
did you learn how to play poker, Scully? Prison?" 
"Yes, Mulder," she replied, the alcohol loosening her 
tongue a little bit. "I learned how to play from Switchblade 
Sally. Deal again, loser." 
He put down the cards, and chewed on a pretzel. She was 
sitting cross-legged on the hotel chair, her legs folded up as 
though she were practicing yoga. Titian hair framing her 
face with elegance and fluidity, she was extremely 
appealing to Mulder. Her close proximity did not help with 
his restraint, either. 
"We're probably going to be in Fargo for three days," he 
said, and she looked up. "That passes through Christmas. 
I'm sorry, Scully..." 
Tilting her head, she turned her attention from Mulder's 
guilt-filled eyes into the brown glass of her beer bottle. The 
odd thing about this revelation was that she was not really 
disappointed... Oh, sure, she had wanted to see her mother, 
and her brothers were coming down at last, but this meant 
that she had no choice but to spend Christmas with the man 
that she loved most: Fox Mulder. 
She knew that he did not celebrate Christmas, but also 
knew that he was not exactly the most religious man on the 
face of the Earth. Scully often wondered if his religion was 
not Judaism, but his job. Tucking a falling part of hair 
behind her ear, Scully smiled slightly at him. 
"That's all right, Mulder," she said. "Just don't keep me here 
past New Year's, and I'll make you make it up to me." 
"You name it, Scull." 
She would have a little fun with this one. "You have to 
spend Christmas with me," she said. Raising his own bottle, 
he tipped it against hers. 
"Scout's honor," he promised. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Mulder walked downstairs to get something to drink for 
himself and for Scully before the night closed to find a 
slender, older woman sitting by the hearth, guitar on her 
knee and singing softly to herself. Her voice was as rich 
and as soothing as her dark, cacao bean eyes. Filling the 
doorway with his slender frame, he watched her play and 
sing the music. 
"If your love were taken from me 
  Every color would be black and white 
  It would be as flat as the world before Columbus 
  That's the day when I lose half my sight" 
The guitar harmonized perfectly with the woman's alto 
tones, and she tapped her sandal-covered feet in time to the 
music. Mulder was fascinated by the way she sang, the way 
the firelight danced off of her ring-covered fingers, and by 
the beauty of the words that she rolled effortlessly off of 
her tongue. 
"If your life was taken from me 
  All the trees would freeze in this cold ground 
  It would be as cruel as the world before Columbus 
  Sail to the edge and I'd be there, looking down" 
The music's tempo quickened, and her fingers nimbly 
stroked the wire strings, her voice husky and soaring at the 
same time. 
"Those men who lust for land 
  And for riches strange and true 
  Who love those trinkets of desire 
  Oh they never will have you 
"And they'll never know the gold 
  Or the copper in your hair 
  How could they place the worth 
  Of you so rare" 
Mellowing out once more, the musician gently picked at 
the strings, each sound resonating in the empty hall. 
"If your love were taken from me 
  Every light that's bright would soon grow dim 
  It would be as dark as the world before Columbus 
  Down the waterfall and I'd swim over the brim 
"Those men who lust for land 
  And for riches strange and true 
  Who love those trinkets of desire 
  Oh they never will have you 
"And they'll never know the gold 
  Or the copper in your hair 
  How could they place the worth 
  Of you so rare" 
Mulder felt the urge to applaud, but had no time to do so 
before the singer stood up and brazenly put the guitar 
down, taking two swooping curtsies. Mulder obligingly 
clapped, and the older woman smiled even broader, 
causing a sly smile to stretch its way over Mulder's face. 
"Oh, thank you so much," she said, beaming at him with 
the full power of her white smile. "Usually, I have to settle 
for a pimply-faced bellhop to applaud me. Now, check out 
my audience. An improvement by far." 
Her voice was flirtatious and joking, and Mulder 
appreciated the change of pace. He gave a humbled shrug, 
and extended his hand for her to shake. "Fox Mulder, FBI," 
he introduced, and the woman arched her eyebrow. 
"How appropriate," she remarked, and flashed him a grin to 
show that she was just kidding around with him. "Lily 
Whiteside. I teach English at the high school. Call me 
Lily." 
"Call me Mulder," he said, and there was a flicker of wry 
amusement in those expressive eyes. "Did you teach any of 
the abducted children?" 
"Your partner already asked me that, only *she* didn't use 
the term 'abducted'," Lily said, her voice interested. "Can 
you tell me, Mulder, why that is that you seem to share a 
completely different point of view on this?" 
Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Mulder assessed Lily. 
She was sharp, very perceptive, which he supposed came 
from teaching public high school these days. She was also 
very suspicious and rather paranoid. Not a trait that he 
minded. And there was a definite concern for her missing 
pupils that was quite admirable. "All right, I believe that 
there is considerable evidence that points to a chain 
abduction," he said. Lily raised her dark eyebrows. 
"Abduction by who?" she inquired. 
Mulder shook his head, and turned to leave. "Abduction by 
what," he corrected, and left the woman to mull over his 
explanation as he picked up two piping hot mugs of herbal 
tea. One for Scully, and one for him. 
As Mulder carried the ceramic mugs upstairs, a dark-eyed 
busboy watched him carefully from the shadows, a slow 
smile spreading across his face. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Tylenol had become a staple in the shopping list of Dana 
Scully, and she certainly needed one right about now. 
Migraines followed her with surprising regularity, and she 
knew that this was another symptom of the growing tumor 
in her sinus cavity. The powerful pills packed a 
much-needed therapeutic touch, and she popped open the 
child proof cap. 
Just then, there was a knock at the door, and she called to 
the only person that she knew would answer. "It's open," 
she signaled, and Mulder sauntered in, bearing a warm, 
steaming mug of herbal tea that wafted across the room to 
her. 
"Brought you something to help you through the night," he 
said. "It's addictive, I swear. Worse than nicotine." 
She arched her eyebrow. "How would you know, Mulder?" 
she asked, and he gave her his usual look of boyish 
innocence in response. 
"Rumors, Scully, rumors," he said, and she gave an 
understanding nod. His sharp eyes trailed a path to the open 
bottle of Tylenol, and he met her gaze, worry lines 
appearing around the hooded orbs. "You feeling okay?" 
Hastily, Scully shook her head, using her old cover that 
never fooled Mulder one bit. "Oh, the computer screen just 
gives me headaches," she lied, and she could tell by the 
wariness in his eyes that her lies were not working in the 
slightest. But she held still to her fib, and he refused to 
break that hopefulness in her china-colored eyes. Anything 
to keep her happy. 
He put the mug on her desk, next to her keyboard, and he 
lightly stroked the side of her bobbed red hair, ruffling the 
vermillion strands with his long, thin fingers. His hand 
lingered there for a moment, and as he moved it away, silky 
strands had entwined themselves around his palm, as 
though they were clinging to his skin in magnetic comfort 
and attraction. His touch lined fire down to the nape of her 
neck at his velveteen caress. "Sleep well," he breathed, and 
walked out of the room, agonizingly peeling his eyes from 
her beautiful form, sitting huddled over the computer with 
the tell-tale bottle of medicine at her side. The sound of the 
door closing was painfully loud in the near-silent room, and 
it added a seal of finality on her lonely life. 
Reaching a tremulous hand up to the slightly mussed wisps 
of hair, Scully lightly breezed over them, hoping to kindle 
some of the sparks that his gentle touch had ignited in her 
fiery hair, smiling softly and sadly to herself. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Standing before a full-length mirror, Lily Whiteside studied 
her appearance with an astute eye. She was still slender, 
and still lovely, with chocolate-colored eyes that carried 
with them the essential warmth and comfort of hot cocoa. 
Her skin was just beginning to wrinkle pleasantly about the 
eyes and mouth, created from years of broad smiles and 
those few lines from cigarettes and marijuana from her 
hippie years. 
Turning, she admired her still taut and firm body. She had 
not permitted an ounce of flab to enter her torso or behind, 
and her breasts were still young. Lily could afford to gain a 
few pounds, and then she could always easily lose the 
weight. Of course, she was not as thin as a rail like the 
attractive red-headed agent that she had met, but she was 
still curvy and rather voluptuous. Running her hands over 
her flat tummy, Lily smiled, approving of the way that she 
looked at forty-seven. 
In her days, she had seen quite a few things happen. The 
revolution of the American youth had been a part of Lily's 
life. She had been to Woodstock, and had burned incense 
and peppermint with the rest of her flower child generation. 
Sex, drugs, and classic rock and roll had dominated Lily's 
teen years, and the last part of her former motto still 
remained with her. She had a passion for Jimi Hendrix, 
John Lennon, and the Rolling Stones, and had learned to 
play the guitar just so that she could belt out "Blowing in 
the Wind" like Joan Baez. 
It was saddening to her how much older she had gotten. 
Her twenty-fifth high school reunion had been a 
disappointment for the poor flower child, and her life had 
turned out even sadder. Her high school boyfriend, the sexy 
and dangerously cute Phil, had lost all of his hair and wore 
some sad excuse for a toupee. Lily swore that Phil had run 
over an opossum and stuck it on his skull with crazy glue. 
The life of Lily Susan Haynsworth Whiteside had been a 
wild ride, and she had stuck on the roller-coaster with the 
expectation that the drop would come later on in life. She 
had married the first man that had asked her, Daniel 
Whiteside of the College of Charleston. Daniel had turned 
out to love alcohol more than his wife, and had beaten her 
badly when she finally called it quits and divorced him. 
Growing up as a debutante in the South during a time when 
possessions were considered evil had been difficult for the 
rebellious Lily, and she had always been expected to grow 
up to become a lawyer or a business woman. Actually, for a 
while, she had been a wealthy executive, but a miserable 
one, too. Her love was for children, children that she could 
never have. One night, Daniel had come home soaked in 
martinis, and had hit his pregnant wife in the stomach with 
a baseball bat. The same wooden bat that Daniel had 
bought with the jubilation of a hopeful father for a son that 
he killed. The damage that the miscarriage had done to her 
uterus prevented Lily from ever having more children, and 
she had hated Daniel for what he had done. 
And then what he had done about her sister... Helen's last 
days... 
Shortly after her divorce to Daniel, Lily became a high 
school English teacher in Fargo, North Dakota. 
With little money to support herself after her father's death 
and her husband's lost alimony, she was forced to give up a 
formerly rich lifestyle for that of a teacher's salary. From 
princess to pauper, Lily had become a true flower child at 
forty-six. 
Such a turbulent ride had finally reached a downfall when 
the children began to disappear. The night before the first 
one left, Lily had had a nightmarish premonition about the 
consequences that might stem out from this incident. She 
had dreams of more children to follow, of someone dying 
at her hands, and of meeting two spirits to change her life 
forever. Lily had reason enough to believe that Scully and 
her partner were those spirits. 
She sat down, and ran her hand through her mass of black 
hair, shaking out every last strand until not one defiant 
tangle remained. "So much for winter break," she muttered, 
and drank from her tea until it was empty, and she fell, 
unconscious to the ground. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
The storm raged through the night, covering the ground 
with a blanket of snow and ice, ensuring that the agents and 
the teacher would not leave the hotel. All three slept 
without waking, while the storm pounced upon its prey. 
During the night, the hotel staff was evacuated, leaving 
Mulder, Scully, and Lily snowbound and helpless until the 
storm subsided. 
They were completely abandoned. 
While Mulder and Lily slept peacefully, Lily on the carpet 
of her floor and Mulder half-dressed on the easy-chair, 
Scully tossed and turned, a headache lingering and 
nightmares thrusting her thin body about the bed. Dreams 
of blinding snow, blinding snow... Of men in black causing 
blackness... Abstract images... Sunlight fading, sunlight 
fading, sunlight fading... 
Knowing not what these flashes meant, she was left to 
writhe in the king-sized bed without refuge in 
consciousness. 
Lily Whiteside was the first one of them to wake up, and 
she did so with a pounding headache. Her vision was a 
little blurry, fogged with the heavy aftermath of a deep 
sleep. "What the hell..." she muttered, pulling herself to her 
feet. The tea mug lay shattered in ceramic fragments at her 
sandal-covered feet, and she was veiled in a thin sheet of 
sweat. The room was baking her. 
Rubbing her head and discovering a slight bump from her 
fall, Lily walked to a mirror and looked at herself. There 
were tell-tale circles under her eyelids, and a redness to 
them that came with either alcohol abuse or what she was 
dreading. Her mouth was dry, and she walked to the sticky 
remains of the mug. Bringing one shard to her sharp nose, 
Lily took a whiff. "Oh, God," she whispered. 
Pacing the room, Lily contemplated her options. The drug 
in the tea was not dangerous, really... it was just a harmless 
herbal tranquilizer, one that only knocked someone out for 
ten to twelve hours. She knew the drug well from working 
on Indian reservations, but there was still the question as to 
why she had been drugged. 
It couldn't have been Dana Scully, could it? How about her 
strikingly brooding partner? No... Lily suspected something 
worse. Never had she felt so confused or so alone. Gusts of 
dusty snowflakes swirled around her window, and she 
shivered from the fear of the blizzard and of the drug. 
The next to wake up was Mulder, his gangly legs hanging 
off the side of the chair, his pants only half-way removed. 
Groaning from stiff joints, he sat up and rubbed his head. 
"Great," he muttered, and kicked the offending jeans off the 
rest of the way. The clock read ten, and the snow was 
building up outside. The blizzard was surrounding the 
lodge, providing little of a view for him. The wake-up call 
that he had requested never came through, and he noted 
this with mild irritation. Rubbing the sleep from his lashes, 
Mulder yawned slightly. He never slept like that without 
being woken up by his own subconscious. 
His mouth felt as dry as a desert, and he went to turn the 
water on. Glancing in the mirror, Mulder winced. He 
looked like hell. Stubble shadowed his face from the night 
before, and his eyes were red-rimmed and watery. There 
was sweat staining the collar and sleeves of his shirt, and 
he wiped perspiration from his brow. Shit, Mulder felt like 
hell, too. 
After a long shower, Mulder felt ten times better, and 
pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a grey cotton tee-shirt, 
as well as thick socks and Nikes. Wondering how his 
partner was, he walked across the hall to her room. 
He knocked on the door, but got no reply. "Scully?" he 
called, and tried the door. Funny, it was unlocked, too. He 
opened it up and sharply took in his breath. His heart 
skipped a beat, and the world spun around him. Mulder was 
feeling faint at the scene that was set up. 
Dana lay in bed on her side, her red hair spilling out on to a 
pillow. There, the crimson mingled with another shade of 
crimson. Scully's blood. Her entire pillow was splashed 
liberally from it, and there were small fountains of it that 
gushed from her left nostril. 
"Oh, my God," Mulder gasped, and he dashed to her side. 
The sound of the silence in the room was deafening, and it 
pounded in his ears as he shook her thin, too thin, shoulder. 
One spare thought escaped him, and it echoed in his head. 
<<She's dead, she's dead, it's finally happened, oh, no, she's 
dead...>> 
But the mouth that hung slightly open, also colored with 
her blood, was pushing out small heaves of air. She was 
alive still, and Mulder's fear lowered slightly. "Scully, wake 
up," he urged. "Scully..." 
Stirring uncertainly, she sat up, and immediately noticed 
that the front of her green silk pajamas were soaked in 
blood. "Oh, shit," she muttered, and he thrust his arms 
around her, hugging her tightly to him to her immense 
surprise. His embrace was so firm that she was unable to 
catch her breath. 
She would never understand how terrified he had been for 
that moment. As irrational as it may have seemed, he had 
thought that she was dead, and the horror of such an idea 
was too real to him. The beginning of the end had been his 
only thoughts, and he would never have forgiven himself if 
he had walked in and found her still corpse instead of her 
live body, trapped in a deep sleep. 
"I'm okay, Mulder," she protested, and he finally released 
her, uncaring of the fact that the blood that had been 
running and drying on her pajamas and collarbone was now 
splattered across the front of his tee-shirt. Keeping his arms 
loosely encircling her spine, he looked seriously and 
painfully at her. 
"Don't scare me like that," he said, his voice gruff with 
suppressed emotion. "Jesus, Scully, why didn't you wake 
up?" 
As he spoke, he was rapidly handing her Kleenex to wipe 
the blood from her face and body. "I don't know, Mulder," 
she admitted. "I never sleep in like this... Could you get me 
some water? I'm parched." 
Funny, but he never slept like that, either, and when he 
woke up that morning, he was thirsty, too. There was 
something odd going on, when he noticed that there was a 
mug of tea by her bedside. 
"Did you drink that last night?" he asked, still worried over 
her bleeding nose. When she nodded, he picked up the cup. 
He had had the same tea, and had drunken about the same 
amount. "I had this tea, too, Scully, and I fell asleep 
standing up. I woke up with the same complaints that you 
did... minus the um, well..." 
The difficulty of him saying "nosebleed" was 
heart-rendering, and she waved it off. "You mean that we 
could have been drugged?" she asked, and Mulder nodded. 
"That's an interesting suspicion, Mulder, but who would 
have done it?" 
The door creaked open, and there stood a 
colorfully-dressed and frenzied looking Lily Whiteside. Her 
eyes widened at the blood on the bed and at the tissue at 
Scully's nose. "Oh, my God, what happened here?" she 
asked, and the flustered female agent shook her head. 
"Nothing, everything's under control," Scully assured her. 
Lily was not convinced, but didn't know what else to say. 
The short-statured woman's nose was bleeding as though 
she had just finished a skirmish with Mike Tyson, and lost 
miserably. "The humidity," she explained, and this time 
there was a sharp look from Mulder. She had gotten too 
good at making excuses for something more serious than 
she let on. 
"Uh-huh," Lily said, still not thrown over by the lie. "The 
hotel staff is gone. They left over the night. I checked the 
rooms, the garage... Everyone's gone except for the three of 
us." 
Furrowing his brow, Mulder shook his head. "Why would 
they leave during a blizzard?" Mulder asked, and Lily 
shrugged, her cocoa-colored eyes wide and startled by the 
abandonment and by the blood in the room. 
"I don't know, but I woke up this morning to find that my 
tea was drugged," she said, her voice grated with irritation. 
Scully threw a quick glance at Mulder, and turned her 
attention back to Lily. 
"You say that your tea was drugged?" she asked, and the 
brunette nodded. "How did you know?" 
"I used to work on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, 
Agent Scully," she explained. "I learned a great deal about 
the medicines and herbs used to heal and to induce sleep. 
We used this particular tranquilizer as a sedative for 
injuries, like setting broken bones and such." 
Mulder's hand strayed to cup Scully's perfectly shaped 
elbow, and she gave him a quick glance, a little startled and 
embarrassed by his overprotective nature. "But why would 
Scully have such a violent reaction?" he asked, and Lily 
paused, racking her memory. 
"We once had a reaction like this," she recalled. "Kaleb, 
who also taught at the reservation, had a tooth-ache, and 
the medicine woman, Resada, used the drug on him as a 
form of anesthesia. He had a violent nosebleed, like yours, 
but that was the extent of the damage." She bowed her head 
for a moment, and the words that she spoke next filled the 
silence surrounding the two with the power and dread 
before them. "Kaleb later died of a tumor. I suppose that 
the medicine just reacted with the cancer oddly." 
Mulder noticed with a pang in his heart that her head 
dropped slightly when Lily relayed her memories, and his 
hand supporting her elbow tightened, keeping one 
supportive arm cast around her shoulder with a protective 
air. "Oh," she said, her voice low, and Lily's curiousity was 
peaked by the hushed tones in the woman's words, as well 
as the shadows in Mulder's eyes. 
Lily tactfully interrupted the tense silence with her words. 
"We're truly snowbound, guys," she said, her words 
conversational and friendly. "I don't have any plans for 
tonight, even though it is Christmas Eve. I'm what you call 
a loner, you know?" She waved her hands in a flutter-by 
fashion, and laughed heartily. Mulder found himself 
reluctantly grinning at the woman's outspoken and genial 
mood. "Look at me, going on and on like this. You've 
probably got work to do, or something that I can't see, you 
know how it is..." She gave a conspiratorial wink to a 
slightly brightening Scully, and Mulder was pleased to 
know that this bubbly woman was cheering up Scully's dull 
spirits. There was jealousy in the knowledge that she was 
doing something he had been unable to acheive, but the 
carefree and lackadaisical air was something that was not 
really Mulder's forte. 
"No, I think that we need to be close by," Scully said, 
giving a glance to Mulder and then one to Lily. "There's 
obviously someone or something out there that does not 
like our investigation, and I don't like the thought of 
somebody drugging our drinks or breaking into our rooms. 
Lily, stay in your room and don't let anyone in unless Agent 
Mulder or I clearly identify ourselves." Lily nodded, and 
gave one last concerned look to Scully. 
"Are you sure that you're all right, Agent Scully?" she 
asked, and Scully nodded, throwing away a blood-stained 
tissue. 
"Just fine," she promised, and Mulder gave her a look of 
absolute concern and sadness that Lily's heart was torn in 
two. There was something here that she had never seen 
before, and something more to both of them that she had 
never witnessed before. It was utterly and completely 
unique to them alone. Without saying anything else, Lily 
Whiteside retreated to her room with curiousity brimming 
inside of her. 
Once Lily had left, Scully felt the tension between them 
creep back in with the nearness of his body and the 
hangdog look in his sweet brown-green eyes. "I'm really all 
right, Mulder," she said, and did not try to bowl him over 
with a half lie. "The tranquilizer reacted with me, that's all. 
I've had worse." She winced mentally when she said that, 
knowing that it was the absolute worst thing that she could 
ever have said to him. Letting him into that newly found 
aspect of being Dana Scully could only serve to disturb and 
unsettle him further. 
Needless to say, Mulder's eyes were full of surprise and 
concern, and he looked over at the reddened and ruined 
pillowcase and sheets with distress. "Worse than this, 
Scully?" he asked, his voice eerily calm. Keeping his face 
so near to hers, he shook his head, mournfully. "How long 
has it been going on, Scully? How bad do they get?" 
Pulling away from his embrace, Scully stood up, and 
crossed her arms over her chest. "Mulder, I'm fine." Three 
words that he had grown too accustomed to hearing from 
her, always knowing that they weren't really true. "I have 
work to do." 
After a fleeting and pleading glance at her, he started on his 
way out as Scully opened up her computer. Just before he 
closed the door on her, she called out his name. "Mulder, 
come here!" she said, and he turned on his heel to go back 
to her. She pointed to the screen, and there was surprise in 
her eyes. "All of the files... they're gone. Someone came in 
and erased the case from my computer." 
"Shit," he cursed. "That's why we were drugged, Scully. To 
make sure that we wouldn't wake up when they came in to 
cover up their latest mistakes. There's definitely something 
sinister going on here, something more than what it appears 
to be. How much do you have left?" 
Shaking her head, Scully pulled out one blue disk. "I 
copied only two of the files on to the disk before the tea 
knocked me out," she said, regret apparent in her voice. 
"I'm waiting for an E-mail from the crime lab on pieces of 
shrapnel placed in the women's bodies," she said. Mulder 
perked some at this. 
"What shrapnel?" he asked, and she turned around to face 
him. 
"During the medical examination of the returned women, 
small pieces of what appeared to be metal were found in 
the women's ovaries and uteruses," she explained. "The 
shrapnel seemed to have some sort of serial code on them, 
and I sent them down to Agent Kerrison to have him 
determine what they meant. I'm expecting a reply soon." 
Nodding, Mulder walked away. "Wait for that E-mail," he 
instructed. "I'm going to check out the hotel staff and see if 
there were any recent employees. Make some copies of 
those files. I don't like the way that this is turning out." 
As soon as Mulder left her, Scully walked to the mirror and 
looked in it. The reflection was one that she had grown 
used to seeing. A woman with tousled hair, crusted with 
drying blood, and a ruby-stained pajama top. She had 
ruined many sleep wear shirts in this same manner over the 
course of the past few months, and the truth was that many 
of them had been in a worse condition than this one. 
Nosebleeds were a common way of life, and Scully had 
taken to carrying around a small box of tissues in her suit 
pocket, as she now thought of purses as a burden when 
working with Mulder. 
Wetting a washcloth, she began the tedious process of 
washing the rusty blood off of her face. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
SUNLIGHT FADING  4/12 
by: Annie Jennings 
(disclaimer in part one) 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Hours passed, and the storm only raged on. The power 
remained a constant that both agents and the school 
mistress were grateful for. Scully had taken a couple of 
Tylenol 3 pills, and had dozed off in front of the computer 
screen as she waited for the small "ping", letting her know 
that Kerrison had replied to her mail. 
In Mulder's room, he stretched his long and trim body out 
on the bed and read through the recent hiring files of the 
Eagle Lodge. Nothing but, as Lily had said, pimply-faced 
teenagers looking for money to buy a cheap Buick or 
Volkswagen. 
As he sorted through the files, a knock sounded at the door. 
He jumped, startled for a moment, and heard the Southern 
voice of Lily Whiteside. "Agent Mulder?" she asked, and he 
walked to the door, undoing the lock. Lily was waiting 
outside, her cocoa butter eyes focusing on his 
paper-covered bed. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Mulder, but I 
have to ask you something," she apologized, and he shook 
his head, rubbing the back of his head. 
"No, I wasn't that busy," he promised her, and Lily shifted 
her weight from one Indian-sandaled foot to the other. 
"I wanted to know... Is Agent Scully sick?" she asked, and 
Mulder was numbed by the question, thrown. "I just wanted 
to know. The nosebleed that she had wasn't from humidity, 
nor was it from the drug, was it?" 
Mulder hated giving out information about Scully, and 
respected her privacy even more than he respected his. He 
shook his head, and started to close the door on the folk 
singer. "I'm not at my leisure to release any information 
about my partner," he said. "You'll have to ask Scully 
herself." 
But with one firm and unwavering hand, she stopped the 
door from closing. Damned if *he* was going to shut her 
out. "It's brain cancer, isn't it?" she demanded. "A ferengital 
mass in her sinus cavity." 
The medical terms that flew out of the Southern woman 
were startling. She had just given the complete and cold 
medical diagnosis of Dana Scully's slow and precise 
murderer. He slowed, turning back around to her. "How did 
you know that?" he asked, his voice low. Lily's eyes 
clouded. 
"My sister, Helen, had the same thing," she revealed. "She 
had been missing for three months, and about two years 
after she returned, with only a few memories of a white 
light and syringes, she had the same cancer in her brain." 
Lily looked down, her voice growing soft and halting. "She 
died about five years ago." 
Mulder looked down with new sympathy for her. "I'm 
sorry," he said, and she looked up sympathy for him in her 
eyes. 
"I'm sorry, too," she said, and Mulder realized that Lily had 
been in the same boat that he was in now. She had lost 
someone that she had loved a great deal, and now Mulder 
was in the position to lose the only woman he had ever 
loved with a full and honest heart. Lily knew how he felt, 
and why he felt that way. 
Scully had met the Allentown women, and had known 
those in her situation. She had witnessed Penny Northern's 
death, and he had been there, trying to understand how she 
felt, and trying to offer whatever comfort that he could. All 
the time, his heart wrenched with the thought of one day 
losing her. Lily could identify with the emotional struggle 
that Mulder was going through. 
"She seems like a remarkable woman," Lily said, wisely. 
Mulder did not meet her eyes, and the beginnings of a 
small, melancholy smile curled his lips. 
"She is," he murmured, and Lily caught that strain of 
heartbreak in his voice. Putting her hand on his shoulder, 
she squeezed a muscle there, giving her support. "You're 
lucky to have this time with her, and I think that she's lucky 
to have this time with you. Make her happy, Mulder. I 
never got to see my sister before she died, and the one thing 
that I regret was that she died alone." There was a wise 
sadness in her brown eyes. "She deserved more than what I 
gave her. Make sure that Scully gets all that she deserves 
from you." 
Without anything else, Lily walked back to her room, her 
head hanging low and sad. Mulder watched after the 
woman, wondering as to how she had known everything he 
had felt from just one look into his eyes. 
Did he truly wear his "heart on his sleeve"? 
Sighing, Mulder walked back to the bed, and picked up the 
next file. The photograph drained Mulder of his color, and 
he felt like balling the paper up and burning it. "Krycek," 
he muttered, his tone low and sinister. "The son of a bitch." 
At that moment, there came another knock at the door, 
accompanied by Scully identifying herself. "Mulder, let me 
in!" she said. "I got a reply from the lab." 
He walked over to join her, and she passed him some 
printed sheets of paper. She had showered, and wore a 
flattering blue crewneck sweater. Her gold crucifix 
glittered in the hollow of her throat, and she tucked a strand 
of shining red hair behind her left ear. "The shrapnel wasn't 
shrapnel," she said, pointing to close-up photographs. 
"They were meticulously placed implants. The same sort of 
implants that Duane Barry had. The same sort of implant 
that I found placed in my neck. The crime lab can't 
determine what kind of material the implants are made out 
of, but Kerrison did say this: the implants were made in the 
United States." 
His eyes widening with every single shot, he shook his 
head, in awe. "My God, Scully, we did this to ourselves," 
he whispered. "These women were abducted by the same 
laws meant to keep them safe." 
"Mulder, we might have stumbled on to one of the most 
meticulate and best-concealed conspiracies of the twentieth 
century," she said. 
"And someone is desperately trying to ensure that we never 
uncover it," he finished, and the partners shared a long, 
powerful gaze. "So much for life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness." 
Shaking her head, she looked at the paper in his hand. "Is 
that Alex Krycek, Mulder?" she asked, stunned, and Mulder 
nodded, returning to his own find. 
"Krycek applied for a job here," he muttered. "He was the 
one who drugged our tea, and he was the one who erased 
your files. It was Krycek all along, Scully. Only this 
applicant was named Ralph Emerson, and Ralph here is 
missing his left arm. He wears a prosthetic one." 
Blinking rapidly, Scully looked down. "Oh, my God, he is," 
she remarked, and she continued to keep her eyes on 
Mulder. "What is going on around here?" 
Before he could reply, the lights turned out, plunging the 
partners into complete darkness. 
Reflexively, Mulder reached for Scully, and the lightning 
flashing outside of the hotel illuminated the room for 
seconds, allowing Mulder to catch glimpses of his startled 
and anxious partner. "Jesus!" he uttered, and scampered for 
his flashlight during the flickers of blue and gold light. 
Groping for it, he quickly switched it on, shining it around 
the room. Aura-like bursts of blue and violet flashed as the 
light danced around. Lily pounded on the door, and called 
out to him. "Mulder! Mulder, there's someone in the hotel!" 
she cried, and he rushed to the door, unlocking it and 
practically throwing her in the room. 
Her eyes were wide with fear, and he took out the gun from 
his drawer. "Take this and get in your room," he instructed. 
"Hide in the closet, lock the doors. If anyone other than 
Scully and I enter the room, don't hesitate to shoot them." 
Lily looked panicked. "But I can't shoot anyone!" she 
protested. In the background, Scully was racing around the 
room, picking up whatever warm clothing that she could 
find. Hats, gloves, scarves, sweaters... Mulder knew what 
she was doing, and was impressed by her quick reaction. 
"You'd better learn," he said briskly, and brought her to her 
room, locking her inside before leaving. 
He heard the footsteps below him. Three, maybe four men. 
His hand strayed to his gun, and he ran through the 
darkened halls to the bedroom where Scully was hurriedly 
throwing on layers of his sweaters, putting two pairs of 
warm socks around her hands. Tossing him his own pile of 
warm clothing, she pulled his Knicks cap over her smooth 
red hair. "Hurry, Mulder," she warned, and he followed 
suit, hearing the voices and the footsteps growing nearer 
with every passing second. 
"Jesus," she whispered, and the heavily-clothed agents ran 
out of the room and into the halls. "Search the hotel's 
perimeters!" 
Splitting up, Mulder braved the cold outdoors with his 
weapon drawn and ready to fire at any sight of something 
suspicious. The ice and snow blasted him, and he winced at 
the chill that coursed through his body. Covering his face 
with his arms and squinting through the white haze, Mulder 
paced his steps carefully, approaching the automobile with 
precision and drawn firearm. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Dana kept her gun raised, her eyes darting through the 
halls. The voices, hushed whispering voices, seemed to be 
coming from the direction of the kitchen. Praying to God 
that they hadn't gotten to Lily, she looked for a way to get 
down there without being detected. Out of the corner of her 
eye, she saw the perfect escape route. The dumbwaiter led 
to the kitchen, and she was just small enough to fit to into 
the cramped, enclosed area. Scully opened up the door to 
the dumbwaiter, and fit her compact body inside, crouching 
up and in the process, cramped up her muscles. 
"Shit," she muttered, and had barely enough room to keep 
her weapon drawn. Resting the Smith and Wesson on her 
lap, she worked the controls of the tiny elevator, pulling the 
lever so that she could get into the kitchen. 
Oiled well, the dumbwaiter allowed her to operate it 
without anyone hearing her, and she gritted her teeth as she 
sent herself down. It lived on electricity, and she hoped that 
the machine wouldn't break under her meager weight. 
The dumbwaiter stopped, and Scully had reached her 
destination. Yes, they were in the kitchen, and they 
sounded as though they were splitting up. Three men; she 
could hear them. Their voices were cold, and they spoke in 
whispers. 
"Check the upstairs," one man murmured. "Hit the agents' 
rooms, and the teacher's room, too. Make it fast, too." 
"Yah," another said, and there was the sound of one pair of 
footsteps exiting the room. 
"I'm going to stay down in the kitchen. Agent Mulder's out 
by the car, the bastard..." This was a voice that Scully knew 
all too well. Alex Krycek, the son of a bitch. She would 
love to kill him if possible, and hand the traitor's head on a 
silver platter to Mulder, a la John the Baptist and Salome. 
"You stay here. I'm going to go get that mother fucker if it's 
the last goddamn thing that I do." 
Her heart leapt into her throat, and she had to swallow it 
again, as always. Oh, God, Mulder had better be careful. 
She had to get out there as soon as possible, but she had 
some work to do first. 
There was the sound of Krycek walking away, and Scully 
waited for a moment before opening up the door to the 
dumbwaiter. She did so slowly, with cool and unwavering 
hands, though her heart was pounding in her chest. There 
was one man dressed in warm winter clothes, his back 
turned to her. Raising the gun, Scully aimed, and fired. 
The bullet shattered the back of the man's skull, blasting his 
brains over the kitchen counter in bloody gray remnants of 
thought. His head gushed blood like a geyser, and he 
slumped to the ground. She crawled out of the dumbwaiter, 
and took the man's high-powered firearm, complete with 
silencer, from his hand. The Sig Sauer that he wielded was 
more powerful than the small pistol that she had taken from 
Mulder's room, and she wanted to make sure that she was 
properly equipped for a raid on the small hotel. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Creeping toward the car, Mulder felt his hat blow off, and 
he did nothing to stop his steady path to his goal. His breath 
froze with crystals like frost, and he was painfully cold. 
Mulder was almost there... 
The snow that crunched beneath his boots grew only 
thicker. 
Placing his glove-covered hand on the handle of the car, 
Mulder started to open it before he heard the click of the 
hammer behind him. "You son of a bitch," Mulder 
muttered. 
"Well, it looks as though we meet again, Mulder," came the 
arrogant, snide voice of Alex Krycek. "Trying to hot-wire 
my car? Turn around, you asshole." 
Slowly, Mulder pivoted to find Krycek standing there, a 
sinister smile on his still handsome face. Krycek wielded 
the weapon with his right arm, and his left hung lifelessly 
at his side. "How you doing, Lefty?" Mulder asked, and the 
remark hit home. 
"Fuck off, Mulder," Krycek shot. "You have no business 
here. Get out of Fargo, and take that walking corpse you 
call your partner with you." 
Krycek's cruel words whipped Mulder's heart, and he leapt 
forward, knocking the gun out of Krycek's hands, forcing 
the gun to fire as it fell into the snow. The bullet hit no one, 
and the men began to wrestle in the snow as Scully ran into 
the drive. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Huddled in the closet, Lily Whiteside prayed for her life. 
How had she gotten into all of this? She had come to Fargo 
to make high hopes, a new start. She had come here to help 
the children that she loved, and to help mold an 
enlightened and intelligent future. Instead, she was curled 
up in a dark closet, wielding a gun that she had no idea how 
to fire. 
Footsteps echoed outside of her door, and she heard a gun 
go off downstairs. Stifling a scream, Lily shook with terror. 
She heard the sound of a door being kicked in, and her eyes 
widened, her skin as pale as paper. "Oh Jesus oh Jesus oh 
Jesus," she whispered, her speed increasing as the footsteps 
grew nearer and nearer to her closet door. 
Just as the door opened, Lily Whiteside, Southern high 
school English teacher and flower child of 1969, aimed the 
Smith and Wesson at the assassin and fired, killing him 
with only two shots. 
Dropping the weapon, Lily cried out softly, and tears 
streamed down her face. She had killed the first person in 
her life, and she felt no regret for what she had done. What 
kind of person did this make her? 
Jumping with sharp, jerky steps over the corpse, she 
walked to her window and looked down below her. There 
was Mulder, walking through the swirling snow to what 
seemed to be a car. Another dark shape was moving toward 
him, gun drawn. "Oh, God," she whispered, and the lights 
came back on in the hotel, flooding her room with false 
sunlight. 
Seeking a way to calm herself, Lily picked up her 
twelve-string guitar and sat on her bed, plucking out the 
notes as her fingers and voice stopped shaking, settling into 
a rhythm that she was afraid to leave. Wrapping herself in 
comfort and solace, Lily's voice rang out true and beautiful. 
"You're mothers' child 
  But night lays you down 
  Hair aflame, wild look in your eye 
  Naked belly to the ground" 
Outside, Krycek slugged Mulder in the face, but Mulder 
leapt back, dodging Krycek's good right fist. Scully ran to 
the men, but before she knew it, Krycek had taken to 
attacking her, using his prosthesis to lash the gun out of her 
slender hand. Crying out in pain, Scully clutched her 
injured hand as snowflakes attached themselves to her 
bright red hair, decorating the crimson with delicate white 
stars. 
Lily played on, her voice low and ominous. 
"A forest fire 
  Nibbles at your veins 
  Crawls up your arm 
  Runs away with your mind 
  And burns dry thoughts like leaves 
"Amen..." 
As Mulder was knocked to the snow, the chill ripping 
through his layers of clothing and biting his face, Lily's 
voice soared. 
"Eyes stare up 
  But something's in the way 
  In the Bible 
  Only angels have wings 
  And the rest must wait to be saved" 
Krycek's eyes sought something to attack the regathering 
agents with, and his calculating eyes caught sight of a pile 
of firewood. Running towards it, his arm limply flapping in 
the winds. Mulder pulled himself out of the snowdrift, the 
wind blowing his rich mahogany hair in the weather. 
"A dry tongue 
  Screams at the sky 
  But the wind 
  Just breathes words in 
  As a strange bird tries to fly..." 
Scully saw the log in his hand first, and ripped off the socks 
from her hand. With a heave, she clawed Krycek's face, 
leaving five bloody slashes down his near-perfect face. 
Howling with pain, Krycek started to swing the log at 
Scully, her eyes widening with fear and terror as the heavy 
object threatened to make a connection with her skull. 
"Amen..." 
But just before the log hit her, Fox Mulder leapt in front of 
the log, his cry of "Dana!" ringing through the desolate 
lands. The log meant for Scully hit Mulder with full force 
in the back of his head, and Scully screamed, her heart 
bleeding with the back of her beloved's head. 
"NO!" 
The last thing that he saw before losing consciousness was 
the intensity and the clarity of Dana Scully's crystalline 
blue eyes. 
Krycek saw his chance, and got in the car, speeding away 
from the scene with no thought as to the injured agents that 
he had left in the snow. 
Lily's voice grew hushed and soft, emotion swelling in her 
voice as Scully cradled her partner in her arms. 
"Pieces of us die everyday 
  As though our flesh were hell 
  Such injustice 
  As children we are told 
  That from God we fell" 
"Mulder..." she whispered, her voice hoarse and haggard. 
The threads of silken brown were mingled with the blood 
that Krycek's board had drawn, and the stickiness of it 
clung to her small palm. His head lolled back, and she 
clutched him to her, starting to cry in spite of herself. 
"Mulder!" 
The tears froze on her face, like diamonds. 
"Where are my angels? 
  Where's my golden one? 
  Where is my hope now 
  That my heroes have gone? 
  Some are being beaten, 
  Some are being born 
  And some can't tell the difference anymore" 
The snow swirled around her, creating a fog from 
star-shaped snowflakes, and it slowed, the winds calming, 
leaving a light mist of whispering snow on the weeping 
Dana and on the still form of Fox Mulder, his breath barely 
clouding the frigid sky. 
"Amen 
  Amen 
  Amen..." 
The snow fell in sad droplets of moonbeams as she dragged 
him into the hotel, glittering icicles of salty tears coating 
her cheeks and lips, and Lily Whiteside stopped playing the 
guitar as the sunlight was fading. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Urgency interrupted her, and Lily turned to see Scully 
dragging Mulder's limp body on the ground. "Lily, help me 
out here!" she said, desperation apparant, and Lily 
abandoned her instrument, going to the limp agent. 
"Oh, my God," she whispered, and Scully gave her a 
despairing look. 
"He's alive, but he was hit in the head," she said, her voice 
harried and breathless from carrying such a heavy weight. 
"They're gone, Lily. They won't come back, I don't think. 
Help me with him." 
The women put Mulder on Lily's bed, and Scully started 
removing layers of his clothing as Lily ran for a washcloth 
to staunch the bleeding in the back of Mulder's head. Scully 
sat down and braced the cloth against the wound, applying 
pressure carefully. He moaned, and she swept a hand over 
his brow. "Shh..." she whispered. "It's all right, Mulder." 
Mulder's eyes fluttered open, and they darted about, 
blankly. "Scully?" he sputtered, and she looked into the 
familiar green orbs. Her stomach plunged when she 
realized something. They were empty, vacant. Nothing was 
there. "Scully..." 
"I'm here, Mulder, I'm here," she said, her voice soothing. 
He blinked his eyes rapidly, and his breath quickened. 
"I can't see you, Scully!" he croaked, and she felt frozen 
with his revelation. "I can't see anything... it's all blank..." 
Frantically, Scully pressed her hand to his forehead, 
checking for a fever. There was none that she could tell, 
and she couldn't understand as to why Mulder couldn't see. 
Then, she thought of the wooden log that Krycek had 
slammed him with. The back of his head... Oh, God, oh 
no... 
"Lily, come here," Scully beckoned, and the woman 
followed, handing Scully a new washcloth to replace the 
bloody one that she took from Mulder's head. "Look at the 
wound on the back of his head." 
Lily examined it. "Yes..." 
"Could the hit have been direct enough to sever the nerves 
that control his sight?" she asked. Lily shrugged at first, her 
mouth open in an unspoken "I don't know", and Scully 
closed her eyes. 
"It was, oh, Jesus, it was..." she whispered, her tongue 
feeling thick and heavy in her mouth as she spoke the 
dreaded words. "Krycek blinded him, he blinded him, the 
goddamn son of a bitch *blinded* him..." 
Putting her head in her hands, she felt the room spin around 
her. What would she do? What would he do? What was 
going to happen to them? Oh, God, he couldn't be blind, he 
just *couldn't* be. 
Hearing Mulder's voice, sane, rational, and small, she was 
brought out of her nausea and her hatred. "Blind?" he 
asked, his voice no more than a whimper. Turning her 
attention back to him, she shook her head, and was stung 
again. He couldn't see the calming motion that was so often 
used to him. Stroking his hair with her hands, she pressed 
the cloth to the blood. 
"I don't know, Mulder," she said, honestly. "Just rest. 
There'll be a concussion. Go to sleep, please, go to sleep." 
Closing his eyes and entering a new kind of blindness, 
Mulder spoke to her once more, breaking her heart with his 
words. "Don't go, Scully," he pleaded, and she wished that 
there was more that she could do other than sit there, 
holding back tears like mad, her hands sweeping his hair, 
her mouth hung open. She had no words to offer, nothing 
other than the touch of her hands on his brow and the sound 
of her voice. 
"I'm not going to leave you," she promised. Silently, she put 
an addition to that sentence. <<Not now, not ever. No 
matter what, I'm with you.>> 
He fell asleep, and Lily had her hand clasped over her 
mouth, stricken and broken-hearted. She felt immense pity 
toward the sightless man and the shattered woman, and 
watched from her corner as Scully gently, tenderly, 
caressed his feathery brown hair, fingering the satiny 
chestnut strands with graceful, light fingers, her other hand 
pressed against the bleeding wound that might take away 
his sight forever. 
"He's asleep," she confirmed, and Lily walked to her closet, 
bringing out various jars and bottles. Mixing some of the 
compounds together, she made what seemed to be a pulpy 
and fragrant medicinal broth. 
"This will help with the bump and the pain," Lily promised. 
Scully took the wooden bowl, and brought it to his parted 
lips. Cupping his chin with her hand, letting the cloth rest 
behind his neck, she opened his mouth the rest of the way 
and poured the liquid down his throat. As he downed the 
medicine, she gently stroked his jaw. "I'm so sorry, 
Mulder," she whispered, but he did not hear her, 
unconscious already. 
Leaning on the wall for support, Lily closed her eyes. She 
was exhausted and drained of all of her strength. Her day 
had been arduous, and it wasn't over yet. "I'm sorry, Agent 
Scully," she said, offering the dying woman her sympathy. 
"If he is blind, what will you do?" 
Shaking her head, Scully's words were muted and soft. "I 
don't know," she murmured, still smoothing her partner's 
hair. It was so impossible to resist, and the gentleness and 
the softness of it astounded her. She was unable to keep her 
hands out of it, and the gestures helped soothe him. "I'll do 
whatever I have to do to help him. That's all that I can do." 
Retracting from the scene, Lily picked up her guitar. "I'm 
going to leave you here," she said, keeping her voice low. 
"Keep an eye on him. I need to take a nap." 
Before Scully could protest, Lily walked out of the room, 
her head bowed. Scully looked down at the handsome, 
slumbering face of the man that she had grown to adore 
more than any other man alive. He was sleeping soundly 
due to the medicine that Lily had prepared, and Scully had 
no idea as to what was going on inside of his body. With 
every second, was his vision dying, or strengthening? 
Her own eyes grew heavy with sleep and exhaustion, and 
she curled up next to her peacefully sleeping partner. Sleep 
in heavenly peace... it was a line from one of Scully's 
favorite Christmas carols. Oh, the irony of it all. She could 
have lost the control of her tears with the memory that the 
midnight had come and passed, and it was Christmas. 
Merry Christmas, Dana. The only man that you'll ever love 
will never see your face again. 
Stretching her arm across his broad chest, she muffled her 
tears in the crook of his arm. "Sleep in heavenly peace, 
Mulder," she whispered between her tears. "Sleep in 
heavenly peace." 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
"So this is Christmas 
  And what have you done 
  Another year over 
  And a new one just begun 
  
"And so this is Christmas 
  I hope you have fun 
  The near and the dear one 
  The old and the young 
"A very Merry Christmas 
  And a happy New Year 
  Let's hope it's a good one 
  Without any fear 
"And so, this is Christmas 
  For weak and for strong 
  For rich and for poor ones 
  The world is so wrong 
"And so happy Christmas 
  For black and for white 
  For yellow and red ones 
  Let's stop all the fight 
"A very Merry Christmas 
  And a happy New Year 
  Let's hope it's a good one 
  Without any fear 
"And so, this is Christmas 
  And what have we done 
  Another year over 
  And a new one just begun 
"And so, happy Christmas 
  We hope you have fun 
  The near and the dear one 
  The old and the young 
"A very Merry Christmas 
  And a Happy New Year 
  Let's hope it's a good one 
  Without any fear 
"War is over..." 
--John Lennon 
"Happy Christmas(War is Over)", Shaved Fish, 1971 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Waking up, Mulder opened his eyes, stirring from the 
darkness of sleep into the newfound darkness of 
consciousness. He could feel Scully next to him, and felt 
the small weight of her arm across his chest. The smell of 
her shampoo was near to his nostrils, and he knew that it 
could only be her. 
There was mounting fear in Mulder's heart. What had 
happened to him? He remembered only seeing Krycek 
coming toward Scully with a log and malicious intent in his 
dark eyes, and he remembered leaping in front of her, 
taking the blow for her. There was memory of pain, of the 
remarkable blueness of Scully's incredible eyes, and then 
nothing. 
Except for Scully's fright-filled diagnosis... 
Gripping her slender, slack palm with his stronger brown 
one, he needed her near to him now. He needed to see her, 
he needed to fucking *see* her. Blind? How could he be 
blind? Mulder couldn't have lost his sight, he just couldn't 
have. It was temporary, right? 
Right? 
Mulder rarely indulged in self-pity. Scully rarely allowed 
him to. But now, now he had damn good reason to feel 
sorry for himself. What if he never did see again, and the 
last sight that he saw had really been Scully's azure eyes? 
To never rest sight on her flawless face, or on her radiant 
smile was a nightmare for him. 
Using all of his will, Mulder tried his best to focus on 
something. Anything. He turned his head to where he knew 
Scully's head rested, and tried to concentrate on seeing her 
face. Lips, eyes, cheeks... Mulder did not see anything other 
than blackness. 
"Oh, God," he whispered. 
He was blind. 
She woke up, and saw that his eyes, those once expressive 
and fantastic eyes, were blank and empty. "Mulder," she 
whispered, and he shook his head, his eyes turned to a spot 
just above her brow. So close to being on target... but not 
quite. 
"Tell me the truth, Scully," he croaked. "Am I blind? What 
did he do to me? I can't see anything, nothing at all." 
Licking her lips, she couldn't bear to meet eyes that had 
once held so much emotion and so much magic for her. "I 
don't know," she said, struggling for the right words. "I 
think that when Krycek hit you, he severed the nerves that 
allow you to see. I don't know if it's temporary, or if it's 
permanent, or if it's operable." Her head was bowed, and 
her eyes downcast. "I'm sorry, Mulder. It shouldn't have 
been you. It should have been me." 
Shaking his head, he tried to grab her shoulder, but missed 
and his hands rested on the sides of her face. Patting down 
her neck, he finally found her shoulders, and Scully was 
heart-broken. He couldn't even tell where her shoulders 
were. How bad was his sight? 
"It shouldn't have been either one of us, Scully," he said. 
"Don't say that it should have been you. I'll be all right. I'm 
still alive, right?" 
Smiling a small smile, then remembering again that her 
facial expressions made no difference anymore, she pressed 
her cheek on the back of his hand as reassurance. She did 
not hide the love that swelled up in her eyes, knowing that 
that sight would remain secret, and hidden from him by his 
own blindness. 
She sat up, and checked the washcloth that rested behind 
Mulder's head. The bleeding had stopped, and she removed 
the cloth, stained with the blood that had also been shed for 
the cost of his vision. "You are definitely still alive, 
according to my expert medical opinion," she said, sparing 
him the possibility of false brightness. She knew him well 
enough to know that he wouldn't want anything more than 
the truth at this point. 
"Well, that's always a good sign," he muttered, and she 
brought the cloth to the sink, wringing the blood out of the 
cloth. He could hear the faucet turn on, and thought about 
the old saying that those who lost one sense had a 
heightened use of the other ones. He couldn't tell about 
that, but he had only lost his sight hours ago. Mulder did 
know that the scent of her shampoo and her perfume 
lingered on his shirt sleeve, and could feel the wetness of 
her tears on the wool around his elbow. 
He also smelled incense in the room, and heard the slight 
rustling of beads around the door. There was the absence of 
the rustling of wind, and he felt that the bedspread was a 
quilt, not an embroidered cotton comforter like the ones 
that he and Scully had had. "Where are we?" he asked. 
"We're in Lily's room, Mulder," she replied. "I brought you 
in here last night after you blacked out in the snow." She 
turned off the faucet, and Mulder heard her padding softly 
back to his bedside. "She took her guitar and slept 
somewhere else last night." 
Mulder sniffed the air, and caught a waft of something that 
smelled oddly disgusting. He would recognize that scent 
anywhere, after the work that he had been doing. "Scully, 
something smells like a corpse in here," he commented, 
and she shrugged. 
"I don't smell anything," she said, and she looked around, 
noticing that the closet door was shut. She opened it up, 
and out fell a corpse. Giving a short yelp of surprise, she 
looked down. "Oh, my God. She killed one of the 
assassins." 
Mulder really needed his sense of sight back. "What?" 
"Lily used the gun that you gave her. Shot him right in the 
heart. It's a mess, but she has incredible aim," she mused, 
bending down to get a closer look. "The wound's a clean 
entry. She killed him instantly." 
He started to sit up, wincing and rubbing the knot in the 
back of his head from Krycek's damned blow. "Ouch," he 
muttered, and she left the corpse to attend to her partner. 
Supporting him with her arm, she helped him sit up. 
"Can you walk?" she asked, and Mulder tried to stand up, 
wobbling on his knees for a moment, then regaining his 
balance. Looking pathetically appealing in his warm brown 
sweater and his blue jeans, Mulder ruffled his hair, messing 
up the fine strands that Scully had so carefully combed 
with her fingertips the night before. She could only smile 
momentarily, and took his hand. "I'll guide you to the door, 
Mulder." 
Grasping her warm, comforting hand, he walked behind her 
as she smoothly and slowly led him to the door. "Oops, 
duck," she said, and he swiftly lowered his head, avoiding a 
veil of love beads that Lily had hung from her ceiling. 
"This place is incredible, Mulder. It's like a scene from 
'Woodstock' or something. There's tie dye everywhere, 
and love beads wherever they can go. I used to have the 
same Sgt. Pepper poster that Lily has framed." 
Smiling, Mulder absently rubbed her hand with his thumb, 
massaging the skin with small, circular motions. "She's an 
interesting woman," he remarked, and she led him 
downstairs, using the now-operational elevator. Scully 
couldn't keep her eyes off of him, and he never knew that 
she was staring at him, though she wondered if the heat of 
her gaze was a clue that he was the focus of her attention. 
Standing before the huge picture window, staring out at the 
piles of seemingly floating snow drifts, was Lily, holding a 
mug of tea. She had slept for maybe an hour, possibly two. 
Most of the night had consisted of her sitting on the couch, 
playing the guitar, pacing the hotel, and crying. 
Scully guided her blind partner into the room, one hand 
squeezing his hand tightly, and the other cupping his 
elbow. "Lily's in here," she said. "Looks like she made tea." 
Directing this next description to both Mulder and Lily, she 
continued. "It also looks like she didn't sleep very much last 
night." 
Lily flashed a blazing smile at Scully and Mulder, and 
when she realized that the federal agent still couldn't see, 
she shook her head. "I didn't sleep very much," she 
admitted. "How are you, Mulder?" 
Mulder shook his head at her. "I can't see shit, Lily," he 
mournfully replied, and Lily broke what had the potential 
to be a maudlin moment with a bright remark. 
"Well, Mulder, shit can be pretty ugly, so don't feel like 
you're missing too much," she quipped, and there was a 
moment before Scully couldn't help but laugh, causing 
Mulder to join in in spite of himself. 
Directing him to a chair, she helped her partner sit down. 
"The storm's over," she observed. "I'm going to pack up our 
stuff and get Mulder to a hospital. I want this checked out 
as soon as possible. I want a specialist's advice." 
What she really wanted was for him to be all right. 
She knew that she might not get that. 
Lily nodded, and glanced at him. His eyes stared vacantly 
out into space, and they were fixed to a blank wall. He was 
seeing nothing, sightless, vision-impaired. She didn't know 
what Scully was going through, but she knew that she had 
to be terrified and upset. "I'll pack up everything, Scully," 
she murmured. "Take him to the hospital in Fargo." 
Giving Lily a grateful and appreciative look that was 
equivalent of a hug, Scully guided her partner away. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Crossing her arms over her chest, her hair tucked behind 
her ears, Scully looked at the doctor who had examined 
Mulder. "I don't know what to say, Agent Scully," he said, 
and the words were not promising at all. "The blow to his 
head was the reason behind his blindness. But the blow was 
so severe that the nerves were damaged to the extreme. His 
blindness is permanent, I'm afraid." 
Shaking her head, refusing to give up hope, she tried again. 
"What about laser surgery?" she asked. "There's been 
incredible progress in that field of operation. Could the 
lasers help to give him back his sight?" 
The doctor sighed. "I'm sorry, but no hospital or clinic has 
that kind of technology. It simply isn't possible. Years from 
now, we could do something, but not now. The precision 
and the science does not exist." 
Struggling to keep from screaming out every twinge of 
pain, every reaction that she had, Scully put her head in her 
hands. "What do I do?" she asked herself, and the doctor 
put his hand on her shoulder. 
"I'm sorry, ma'am," he apologized. "He's going to need a 
live-in nurse, at least for a while. Someone to help him 
learn how to move around his apartment, how to live with 
his disability, how to read Braille, how to live on his own. 
What would Agent Mulder look for in a nurse? He'll need 
someone that he can trust for these next weeks." 
Trust... it had been such a hard-earned virtue, and one that 
Scully had worked so arduously to get from him. How 
many times had he told her that she was the only one that 
he trusted? Scully thought about that one word, and about 
how much trust would matter when Mulder would have to 
learn about living without his sight. She knew what she was 
going to have to do. 
"I'll do it," she said, a little hesitant at first, and the doctor 
was surprised. 
"Excuse me?" he asked, and she repeated herself with more 
confidence. 
"I'll take care of him," she said. "Agent Mulder needs 
someone who knows him well, and someone who he can 
trust. As of right now, I'm the only person who fits those 
qualifications. I'll talk to him about the arrangement, and 
see what he says." The doctor shook his head. 
"Miss Scully, your devotion to your partner is very nice, but 
he's going to need someone who can be there twenty-four 
hours a day for the next couple of weeks. No one else but 
that person," he warned her. 
"I'll stay there," she promised. At the doctor's still-wary 
look, she leaned in closer. "Agent Mulder has a very 
extraordinary history. He has had great reason to have 
mistrust, and suspicions. He's a unique individual. Our 
friendship is very close. His mother suffered a stroke a 
while ago, and can't do this. He only has me. And I need to 
do this with him." 
Pausing, the doctor picked up some papers, and handed 
them to Scully. "These are the papers that will describe his 
medication to deal with any headaches that he might suffer 
from," he said, and Scully looked them over. "You'll need 
to make sure that he takes these every night. Do you have 
any experience dispensing medicine?" 
"I'm a medical doctor," she said. "I take pills like this 
myself." The doctor gave her a wary look. 
"These are some pretty strong pills, Miss Scully," he said. 
"You must have some severe headaches." 
She did, but her problems weren't of top priority. "What 
else is there?" 
"Braille classes and handbooks, step-counting, therapy is 
recommended." The doctor patted Scully's shoulder. "You 
must have a special friendship to take all of this on." 
Her eyes gazing away, she murmured her reply. "Yes... 
Yes, we do." 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Mulder was sitting on the edge of his bed, stirring a cup of 
coffee aimlessly. At the sound of her hello, he spoke, not 
turning to bother to face her. What was the point now? "It's 
all over, Scully," he said, bluntly. "No more X-Files. No 
more FBI. Nothing else, ever again." 
She shook her head, and watched as he continued to stir the 
coffee, not pausing to drink it. "It's not over, Mulder," she 
said in hushed tones. 
"I highly doubt that Skinner would let a blind agent work, 
Scully," he said, his tone sarcastic. "And without me, the 
X-Files go." 
Arching her eyebrow habitually, completely aware of the 
fact that he did not see it, she crossed her arms. "With me, 
the X-Files stay," she said, stubborn and obstinate. "I'm 
keeping them open, Mulder. I talked with Skinner over the 
phone, and he sends his regrets and his sympathy. He asked 
me if I requested reassignment, and I declined. I'm keeping 
the section open, Mulder, and Skinner's looking for a new 
field agent to replace me, as I am replacing you as 
supervisor." She walked a little closer, not coming too 
close to him. His paranoia had to be jumping off of the 
scale right now. "And Skinner has given me three weeks 
off." 
Mulder, finally interested, turned around. "Why did he give 
you three weeks off?" he asked, and Scully decided that 
now was the time to break all of this to him. 
"You need a live-in nurse, Mulder," she explained. "For the 
first weeks, there has to be somebody there to help you 
learn to live with this disability. You would have to trust 
this person completely. The doctor wanted a stranger. I 
volunteered to fill the position. If you want me, Mulder, 
then I'm here." 
God, he did want her. And he did need her, more than ever 
now. He felt lost, completely lost without her. He always 
had. But he couldn't make her put her life aside for his, as 
he had done so many times in the past. Because of his 
problems, she was dying. 
Shaking his head and looking down, he stirred the coffee 
without cease. "I can't burden you with me," he said, his 
tone sad and lonely. 
There was a breeze behind him, and he felt the coffee cup 
being taken gently from his grasp. The weight on the bed 
shifted, and he felt her sit down next to him, placing her 
hand firmly and yet kindly on his knee. "Mulder, you've 
never been a burden," she promised. "We'll get through 
this; you and me. Just tell me that you want me, Mulder." 
Knowing that her eyes had to be on his face, he put down 
the coffee stirrer that was still in his right hand. The words 
that he spoke were heavy and deep with emotional subtext 
that she dared not read into, and he rather wished that she 
would. "I want you," he breathed. 
The slender hand left his kneecap, and Mulder felt two soft, 
slim arms encricle his back, hugging him tightly and softly. 
"Then I'm here," she whispered, her breath tickling the hair 
on the back of his neck. "I'm here." 
Hugging her back, Mulder thought of everything that he 
had lost, and all that he had suddenly gained. Tears spilled 
from sightless, useless, hazel eyes, and fell on to her 
shoulder. "I don't know what to do," he whispered, and she 
held him tighter, stroking the grown man's back like a 
mother or a dutiful wife would. "I'm so lost..." 
Casting circles of warmth and consolation on to his back, 
Scully's heart was wrenching. The feeling of being lost 
consumed them both, but she was the light now. She was 
the moonlight in the dark sky. 
"I'm here," she repeated, and then she pulled away. Looking 
down at those blank jade eyes, shining with the glean of 
tears, she cupped his face in her hands, remembering the 
abatement that he had given her in the hospital after the 
death of Penny Northern. Closing her own eyes, she kissed 
his forehead. 
The touch of her soft, moist lips on his brow was more 
comforting and more tender than any other kiss that Mulder 
had received from any woman. Passion played too big of a 
role in those other disastrous relationships, and though it 
certainly had a place in this one, the strongest emotion that 
he felt for her was love, not desire. 
Wondering if there was a stain of the lipstick on his brow, 
Mulder consented to letting her hold him and soothingly 
rock him back and forth, her hands placed softly on his 
shoulderblades. 
"Merry Christmas, Dana," he whispered, his voice lighter 
than air, and she wanted to cry herself then. Oh, what a 
merry Christmas indeed. Pain and suffering were the 
Christmas presents that had been given to her, and each one 
had been wrapped in snow and ice. 
"Merry Christmas, Mulder," she responded, and closed her 
eyes, one tear escaping her lid. "Merry Christmas." 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
  
SUNLIGHT FADING 
by: Annie Jennings 
(disclaimer in part one) 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Learning to be his eyes, learning to be his sight, and 
learning to be his guide was not difficult for the most part. 
Their language, however, had consisted of subtle glances, 
of emotions read in slanted eyes, or in facial expressions. 
Words that had passed between them had been clipped, and 
never full of the warmth that existed. When there was now 
no chance of any such verbiage existing, other avenues 
would have to remain. Words were all that were left. 
Christmas passed them by in a hospital room in Fargo, and 
that hospital was where the two agents spent their next six 
days. Mulder went through the prep courses on how to get 
around and how to use the collapsible cane that he had 
been rewarded with. After almost ten years working with 
the Bureau, his prize was a cane that he couldn't even see. 
Margaret Scully had been stunned and heart-broken to hear 
the news. Though she had met Fox Mulder only on rather 
somber occasions, she knew him to be energetic, filled with 
life, and determined. But what truly broke her heart to hear 
was the news that her daughter was going to be the one to 
take care of him. Margaret and Margaret alone knew about 
how deeply Dana loved him, and she didn't know how long 
Dana would be able to last with the object of her desire in 
the next room every day. 
Mrs. Mulder cried on the telephone to learn of her son's 
disability, sobbing to herself when she heard that he would 
never see again. Scully had broken the news to her before 
handing the telephone to Mulder, who had kept control of 
himself quite well as she wept. As soon as the conversation 
was over, she sat down, and asked the unspoken question. 
"How will he ever tell her?" 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
"When all we wanted was to dream 
  To have and to hold and 
  Precious little things 
  Like every generation yields 
  A newborn hope unjaded 
  By their years" 
--Sarah McLachlan 
"Wait", Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, 1993 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
She stood before her mirror, looking at the reflection of the 
woman before her. She was petite, she was attractive, she 
was fetching. But she was also living willfully in the claws 
of great temptation and destroyed, utterly destroyed that 
night. 
In the next bedroom, tucked in under covers that Scully had 
bought and paid for for guests, slept Mulder, knocked out 
from the powerful headache pills that the doctor had 
subscribed for him. She had watched him curl up under 
those covers, and watched him turn on his side, falling into 
slumber. 
Dana had taken him straight to her apartment when they 
got off of the plane, and had sent him directly to bed. The 
guest bedroom had been designated for him, and she had 
promised him that they would go to his apartment and 
move some of his belongings into the apartment that they 
now shared. He had jokingly asked for his video tapes, and 
she had shot back with a remark about listening to some 
bimbo moaning. 
Changing into a clean pair of black silk pajamas and 
brushing her hair out, Scully climbed in bed, turning off the 
Tiffany imitation lamp. The room was plunged into the 
same darkness that Mulder would never wake from with 
the knowledge that the sun and the light was there. 
How would they possibly manage? They used to share a 
dream, they used to have a goal. Certainly and definitely, 
the place that they used to stand had been dangerous, barely 
balanced, and rocky, but at least it had been a place. Now, 
she felt unsure of where she stood. The dream was gone, or 
at least weakened considerably. Together, they would have 
to create a new place to stand. 
But would she be in that new place that he found? 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
The first week that Dana Scully spent with the blinded 
Mulder was one spent getting used to his disability. Scully 
had adapted to using long, drawn-out descriptions, and had 
become the eyes that he could not use anymore. She had 
driven him to his apartment, and had spent hours there, 
reading him names of papers, of classification systems that 
only he understood, and of packing up his clothing and 
putting it into boxes. CDs, pictures, and books were all 
packed away and brought down to her car with the help of 
Frohike, Langly, and Byers. 
Frohike had looked at the agents and realized that although 
they were the supposed "most unwanted", they were the 
agents that carried the most scars. One agent blind, and one 
agent dying of cancer. If one should ever doubt the 
importance of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, or the 
importance of the X-Files, then all one had to do was take 
one glance at them. 
Mulder had taken to wearing a pair of Serengeti sunglasses, 
masking blind eyes from the world. Scully still loved to 
gaze upon the color of his hazel eyes, but the blankness and 
the lack of soul in them haunted her. They were dead eyes, 
and not fitting to such a life-filled man. 
Once the possessions that Mulder wanted to keep had been 
moved, and the videos donated to Frohike with some 
melodrama, Scully had gone to work at carefully 
organizing his clothes into stacks coordinated by color and 
by style. Black pants, grey pants, blue jeans... Mulder 
would have to memorize where they were and how many 
were in each stack, with his photographic memory and his 
determination, the task was not as gargantuan as Scully 
initially thought it would be. He had already bought a 
Braille workbook and tapes, and listened to them for hours 
every night, trying to figure out which bumps meant what 
with great dedication and comprehension. 
She had learned with him, and the headaches that he 
suffered from were almost as severe as her own, and the 
winces that he gave broke her heart. She knew, however, 
that while his would fade away, hers would only grow 
worse as the tumor grew. Sweat beaded his face, and she 
spent a good number of nights at his side with a cool 
washcloth as he endured the splitting migraines. 
Skinner had been updating her on the progress surrounding 
finding her a new partner, and there were only a few 
candidates left. 
Scully walked past his room on the morning of December 
31, and looked in on him. He was lying stretched out on his 
bed, his eyes tightly closed against light that he wouldn't 
see anyway, and she leaned in the doorframe, watching his 
still form. She sighed, and tucked hair behind her ear. 
The past days had been difficult for her to stand witness to, 
although she had promised Mulder that she was all right, 
she had been suffering, too. Every fumbling, stumbling step 
was hard for her to be witness to, and every missed count to 
her kitchen or her bedroom that resulted in his hitting a 
wall made her eyes water with tears when his did not. 
Music filled his room, and she listened with sadness at the 
sounds of the music that now surrounded her ears. Music 
had become a staple in his life, and he had to have it on at 
all times. It was equivalent to sight now, and he had 
replaced vision with the images that came with chords and 
voices. 
"Eighty years, an old lady now 
  Sitting on the front porch 
  Watching the clouds roll by 
  They remind of her lover, how he left her 
  And of times long ago 
  When she used to color carelessly 
  Painting his portrait a thousand times 
  Or maybe just his smile 
  And she and her canvas would follow him 
  Wherever he would go 
  Cause they were painters, and they were painting themselves 
  A lovely world" 
Her fingers looped around the wooden frame of the door, 
and she watched him sleeping, so still that he could have 
been mistaken for the dead. Fingering one red tendril of 
hair, she marveled at how angelic and innocent he appeared 
in the blanket of sleep. 
"Oil streaked daisies covered 
  The living room wall 
  He put water-colored roses in her hair 
  He said, 'Love, I love you, 
  I want to give you the mountains, the sunshine, 
  The sunset too 
  I want to give you everything as beautiful as you are to me 
  Cause they were painters, and they were painting 
themselves 
  A lovely world" 
The song went on, describing the death of the lover, the 
screams of the woman in the orchard, the water-colored 
roses in his hands for her, and the old woman with her 
canvas, still waiting for her artist to come home. 
She mused over the ballad, wondering if she and her 
Mulder were those painters, painting themselves a lovely 
world. Painting with false reassurances, and making those 
oil-streaked daisies the words, "I'm fine". She watched that 
still, curled up body under the blankets, and wondered if 
they were the weavers of warmth and the carpenters of 
love, and if the smiles he gave her were really those 
water-colored roses. 
Startled out of the maudlin musings, Scully watched as he 
coughed and reached behind him for a glass of water. His 
hand swept the nightstand, but the cup was unattainable. 
He almost had it, but the aim was off. Breaking from her 
stance, she walked to the bedside and handed him the glass. 
Gratefully, he brought the cup to his lips, and then coughed 
again. "You can't do everything for me, Scully," he said, his 
voice hoarse. "I have to learn to do this on my own." 
She looked down at him, the blanket wrapped around his 
bare chest, and he was clad only in boxer shorts. "And you 
also have to learn that you need someone," she murmured 
back. Mulder, startled, held the glass in his hands. "You're 
not living under the same circumstances that you used to be 
under, Mulder. You're not the freelance bachelor. I'm here." 
Holding her hand, he looked up at her, and spoke the words 
that were mixed with comfort and with pain. "And I'm 
grateful that you're here," he promised. "But what's going to 
happen when you're gone?" 
They both knew what he meant, and she paused, looking 
down at the sight of her small white hand in his brown, 
larger one. "I'm not going to leave you," she whispered, but 
as though to contradict her, a small drizzle of blood 
streamed down from her nose, running onto her lip. 
Breaking away from his grip, she was intensely glad that he 
couldn't see her. 
But just because sight failed him did not mean that he 
couldn't tell when she suffered. The sound of the water 
faucet, the sniffles as she staunched the bleeding... He 
knew what it all meant. Putting his head in his hands, he 
held back the sorrow that filled his heart. She was going 
with every moment, and nothing he could do would prevent 
it. It was out of his hands now, and he was left behind to be 
a blind witness as she died with every minute that passed. 
"I'm not going to leave you," he whispered to himself, and 
she washed the blood from her face. She would be the one 
to abandon, the one to betray, and the one to hurt the only 
person that she cared about. 
Her voice echoed through his head, and he stood up, 
moving to the spot where she stood, wiping at her nose 
with tears mingling with the salty blood, and embraced her 
with tight arms as she broke down and cried for the first 
time since he lost his sight. "I'm so afraid, Mulder," she 
confessed, he held her tightly, feeling her tears fall on his 
bare skin. "I don't want to die." 
"I don't want to let you die," he whispered back, and she 
started to sob, great, hacking heaves. She nearly collapsed 
in his arms, the bloody tissue slipping from her fingers and 
falling to the floor. 
"And she sat by his side 
  And watched the years fly by 
  He looked so fragile, he looked so small 
  And she wondered why he was still alive at all" 
She fell asleep again in his arms, and he sat on the bed, her 
head resting in his lap as he stroked her hair with love and 
affection. She was still now, and in the arms of sleep. The 
body-racking sobs had left her, and she rested there, one 
last drop of blood staining her upper lip, but Mulder did not 
see it. He saw nothing, but the image of a broken-down 
Scully was fresh in his mental eye. "Why her?" he 
whispered to no one, but the eternal darkness held no 
answer for him. 
She woke up eventually, and was not as embarrassed as she 
had thought that she would be. Standing up, and smoothing 
the shirt and jeans that she had fallen asleep in, she wiped 
the last remains of the nosebleed from her lip, and she tried 
to apologize. 
"No, Scully," he said. "I'm sorry. You should have been 
able to do that for months." 
She gave a small pat on his shoulder, which had now 
become synonymous with a smile in their newfound 
language of touch and voice. "Get dressed and come on 
into the living room. I'll fix some coffee." 
*********************************************** 
*********************************************** 
  
  
SUNLIGHT FADING 
by: Annie Jennings(Auralissa@aol.com) 
Disclaimer in part one 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Hours later, as Scully was fixing dinner for Mulder and 
herself, Skinner called with news. One volunteer, and six 
selections from the Bureau. "To be frank, Agent Scully, I 
want to assign the volunteer. Her name's Renee Townsend, 
and she seems to be very enthusiastic about the position. 
She's admired you and Agent Mulder for a long time." 
Scully smiled when she heard this. "One of the few, sir," 
she said with surprising bitterness. She hated to think that 
with the departure of Mulder, the cynicism of his attitude 
had been impressed upon her. 
Skinner cleared his throat. "How is he?" he asked, his tone 
more personal. 
Stirring a pot of spaghetti, Scully glanced across the 
apartment. Mulder sat on the couch, his slender fingers 
tracing the Braille words of a Robin Cook novel and 
drinking a Coke. Music had filled the apartment ever since 
he had moved in, and for once in her life, Scully felt 
near-comfortable in it. "He's fine," she murmured, and 
Skinner was a little surprised by the warmth in her voice. 
"He's already sped through the Braille courses, and his 
headaches are still pretty violent. I think we'll be fine." 
Mulder perked at the mention of him, and stopped reading 
to listen to her. Though she tried to keep her voice under 
the sounds of the music, he could always hear her anyway. 
"No, sir, I think that three weeks is enough," she assured. 
"No, I won't hesitate to ask if I need more." 
Smiling at this, he returned to the book. He wasn't really 
paying it much attention, and enjoyed hearing the noises 
that she made while working in the kitchen. "Thank you," 
she said, and Mulder wondered what Skinner had said to 
put that breezy tone in her voice. He could tell that there 
was a smile on her face by the emotion in her throat. 
She hung up the phone, and stopped for a moment, thinking 
about the end of the conversation that she had just had with 
her boss. "Agent Scully, take good care of him," he had 
said. "He needs you right now. I'll keep you informed about 
the new partner." 
Threading her hair back into a ponytail, Scully watched 
him with her head in her hands as he stretched out on her 
couch. Such a sight was a comfort to her... Lying on her 
sofa, at home in her home, his long legs using up the space 
of the couch that she never took up with her shorter stature. 
Dreamily, she gazed at him with her full attention. "Good 
book, Mulder?" she called, and he put it down. 
"Not as good as his last one," he admitted, and she smiled 
dryly. "But not too bad. How's that spaghetti coming, 
Scully?" 
She stretched out her arms, and went over to the oven. 
"Garlic bread's done," she said. "It looks pretty good. 
Golden brown, like Mom tried to teach me to make. Funny, 
Mulder, but this is the first time it ever turned out right," 
she added. Shaking his head, he stood up. Counting the 
steps mentally to Scully's kitchen, he walked to her and 
used his nose to pick out where the pan of garlic bread was. 
She picked one out for him, and passed it in his direction. 
Biting into it, he shook his head again. "You're too good to 
me, Scully," he teased, and she ruffled his hair as though he 
were an irritating son or husband. 
"I know," she replied, and told him to go sit down on the 
couch. Obediently, he did so, and she brought out the 
dinner to him, complete with a bottle of wine that she had 
saved up. "I thought that New Year's required some kind of 
celebration," she explained at the sound of her popping the 
cork. "Do you agree?" 
"Certainly," he said, and she placed a slender wine glass in 
his hand. She looked up then, and was struck with deja vu. 
Eddie Van Blundht, sitting in Mulder's body, with that 
seductive smile on lips that did not belong to him, leaning 
in to kiss her. She remembered how she could feel the heat 
of his breath on her face, on her mouth, as he moved closer 
and closer to her, and then he was on top of her, and... 
And Mulder had come in. Mulder, with a panicked, 
frenzied look on his face, and when he saw the scene set 
before him, there was a look of shocked confusion on his 
face. Could she really blame him? But now... now there 
was no one there but the two of them, with wine and 
solitude. 
Mulder rolled the stem of the wine glass between long, 
sensitive hands. Scully started to describe the wine, but 
Mulder held out a finger. "Let me," he interrupted, and 
drank from the glass, and stopped. "Ahh... 1976 Burgandy." 
"Not even close," she said, smiling. "Not a drinker, are you, 
Mulder?" He shook his head. Alcohol made him lose 
control, and it made him feel fuzzy and not himself. Mulder 
always needed his mind to be razor-sharp, and never drank 
except on rare occasion. He considered this to be occasion 
enough. New Year's Eve, with the delectable Dana Scully 
seated beside him. 
"Not really," he admitted. "But I always have liked 
bragging in areas of which I have little to no expertise." 
"Including psychology?" she teased, and he chuckled, a sly 
grin reaching across his face. 
"But of course, Scully. I never went to Oxford, you know. I 
applied for truck driving school, but I dropped out before I 
got my air freshener," he quipped. She smiled, and passed 
him a plate and a fork. Taking his hand, she lightly 
described what was what and where it was to him, and he 
dipped his finger in the chocolate mousse. 
"Move over, Julia Child," he said, and she just picked up 
her own plate, an unseen smile and warmth on her face. 
The dinner went well, casual and calm on the light sofa, 
with music playing in the background that was sumptuous 
and jazzy. 
"It won't do 
  To dream of caramel 
  To think of cinnamon 
  And long for you" 
Taking a last sip from his wine glass, Mulder listened to the 
sounds of her pouring him another glass. He could see her 
perfectly in his mind's eye. A graceful, timed, turn of the 
wrist, pouring the red liquid into the glass, and passing him 
the glass with a smile in her eyes, though knowing that he 
could not see her. 
"You know, Scully, I haven't told you how much I've 
appreciated the sacrifices you've made for me," he 
murmured, and put the plate of food on the table. Subtly, 
she pushed the plate away from its precarious perch on the 
edge, and payed him closer attention as he went on. 
"You've meant a lot to me." 
Shaking her head, she crossed her legs on the couch, facing 
him with full attention on the face that was slightly flushed 
with the rush of the wine. "You've meant a lot to me, too," 
she breathed back, and her breath was hot and musky in his 
face. 
He realized then what he was doing. His guards were let 
down by the excitement of the night, by the nearness of her 
body, by the alcohol that he had consumed. There was 
something in the air that sang of seduction, and something 
in the wind that trumpeted temptation. In spite of his usual 
control, he was slipping out of his tight reigns, and letting 
himself become close, very close, to her. 
Giving a more self-doubting, unsure half-smile, Mulder put 
the glass on the table, perfectly on center. "I just wish that 
there was some way for me to do something for you," he 
said, and she shook her head. 
"Mulder, you've already done so much for me," she assured, 
taking his hands. "When I first met you, I was basically 
naive. I had my strict beliefs, my stubborn faith, which I 
still have, by the way, and my unrelenting philosophies. I 
was cookie-cutter Bureau." 
He spoke the unspoken words, breaking a once unsaid 
taboo. "But you were also healthy," he said, and she 
furrowed her brow, her heart reaching out to him as she 
squeezed his hands. 
"I still am, Mulder," she said. "Right now, this moment, 
sitting here, I'm fine. Everything's all right." 
There was silence as he thought this over. She was fine, 
sitting there, at that moment, with him. Everything was all 
right. But what about the next moment, and the moment 
after that... So many moments, so many right nows, and 
there would be so many present times that they were going 
to have to miss. 
Knowing what he had to be thinking, she leaned in closer, 
so close that her sweet and husky breath danced across his 
face. "But this moment is all that matters," she whispered, 
and he listened to her voice, his eyes blank but his mind's 
eye seeing, as the moment surrounded them... 
Pulling away, Scully stood up and walked to the CD player. 
"Stand up, Mulder," she ordered, and feeling a little 
disappointed and a little relieved, he obeyed. "I'm going to 
teach you a lesson that you won't learn in any conventional 
therapy." 
Raising his eyebrows wickedly, Mulder gave her an 
irresistable look. "Oh, Scully, don't take advantage of me," 
he said, and the note in his voice implied that that was 
exactly what he wanted her to do. 
The stereo blasted The Wallflowers, and she took his 
hands, leading him to the middle of the living room floor. 
"These courses teach you how to live with your disability 
on your own, but they never once mention socializing and 
living a normal life with it," she explained. "Something that 
you and I have had trouble with without your blindness. 
Now, I'm going to teach a poor man how to dance." 
"Oh, this should be good, Scully," he said. "You never 
heard of the age-old tradition involving Caucasians and 
lack thereof of rhythm?" 
Groaning at his cynical and pessimistic attitude, she stood 
before him, and directed him to sway in count to the music. 
His cool exterior didn't allow him to put his entire effort 
into the task at hand, and she sighed, exasperated. "Come 
on, Mulder. You said that you wanted to do something for 
me?" 
"Yeah," he said, hesitantly drawing out the syllable. 
"Then dance with me," she replied, and she began to 
instruct him in time to Jakob Dylan's rock and roll voice. 
"Come on, try a little 
  Nothing lasts forever 
  There's got to be something better than 
  In the middle 
"We incinerate it 
  Put it all together 
  We can drive it home 
  With one headlight" 
She ended up with her body pressed to his, her back against 
his chest, moving his arms and his hips for him with her 
hands and her torso. Laughing at his droll and darkly 
humorous asides, as well as making her own pushes at his 
expense, Scully had him dancing with an alternative grace 
that was incredibly sexy and sensual. "You're doing great!" 
she chortled, and the fast-paced songs lasted until near 
midnight, when the first slow song came on. 
"For all the good you say it does 
  It feels no better when you've had your say 
  You may believe it's just because 
  The words get colder when you've gone away" 
Looking with uncertainty at him, waiting for his reaction, 
and what he wanted to do, Scully watched his face fall 
from an exuberant, near-blissful smile into  a somber, 
unsure visage. Confusion and sudden tension filled the air. 
"Thought I understood 
  What I was to you" 
She realized that so many of her problems, so many of her 
despairs, so many of her regrets stemmed from her always 
waiting, always considering, always analyzing everything. 
She needed to forget her responsibilities, her consequences, 
and live for the moment. 
She did not have many moments left. 
And so, as the strings and the bass began to stroke the 
music, she haltingly put her arms around his neck, and 
directed his arms around her waist. The strings broke into 
the chorus, and they swayed in time to the music. 
"I don't want to feel this way no 
  I don't want to say I'm just a friend 
  I don't want to wait around here 
  Cause you don't want to feel no pain again 
  And we just lie about it 
  As we become shadows of ourselves" 
Nestling her face into his collarbone, she closed her eyes as 
their bodies moved in synchrony to the soaring acoustic 
guitars and the orchestra. The feeling of his strong, 
muscular arms around her slender, hourglass waist was 
extraordinary. They had been dancing like this since day 
one, she thought to herself, and her hands gripped his 
shoulder blades as touchstones of solace. 
"Am I dancing, Scully?" he whispered into the softness of 
her hair, and she caught her breath in her throat. 
"Yes," she whispered back. "Yes." 
"Some may fear committed lives 
  I sure am one of them without you 
  Does it come to you as some surprise 
  I laid the grounds beneath to doubt you 
"Was it ever, girl 
  Something you could hold" 
As his hands clasped one over the other in the small of her 
back, Mulder spoke to her over the chorus. "Scully, no 
one's ever going to dance with me," he said, the first hint of 
non-sarcastic pity for himself that she had heard yet. She 
shook her head, and murmured to him no. 
"There are going to be many lucky women to dance with 
you, Mulder," she replied, and she ached at the thought of 
the women who would line up to dance with him. 
He paused. "Are you lucky?" 
"And I don't want to look away 
  I don't want to be the one denied 
  It ain't no fault of mine 
  That someone somewhere told you lies 
  And we don't talk about it 
  As we become shadows of ourselves" 
The cello dramatically underlay the words, and Mulder 
spoke again. "Do you know what I miss most about sight?" 
he whispered, and she shook her head no into his chest, 
almost fearing and anticipating the answer. "I miss seeing 
you." 
"We don't talk about it 
  As we become shadows of ourselves" 
Pulling away for a moment, she stroked the side of his face. 
"But you still see me, don't you," she breathed, her voice 
lofty and tender as she lined his jaw with affection. "With 
your memory. See me with not your eyes, Mulder, but with 
touch, with scent, with sound..." 
His hands began to trace the sides of her face, from the 
sides of her mouth along to her cheekbones, and across to 
her closed, still eyelid. He slowly ran his hands through her 
hair, and smelled the aroma of her perfume and shampoo. 
As his hands went to her neck, cupping her face in slender, 
sight-seeing hands, he confided the last sense. "Taste..." 
As the crescendo of the violins, the basses, the violas, the 
cellos, and the acoustic guitars mingled with the clash of 
drums and voice, he brought his lips to hers and 
passionately kissed her, with more emotion and more love 
than she had dreamed ever existed. Yet, within the 
boundaries of that one, single, and impossibly intense kiss, 
lay all of the love in the world, and she took it with eager 
mouth and eager breath. 
The moment was upon them as the clock turned to 
midnight, ringing in the new year. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
  
SUNLIGHT FADING  8/12 
by: Annie Jennings 
(disclaimer in part one) 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Years pass by with little regard to the people that they 
affect, or the lives that they can either grace or curse. The 
simply turn and turn, such as life is meant to do, and we 
can either take each moment and each minute as it comes 
with praise to God for blessing us with the opportunity to 
live and breathe for that moment, or we can simply sit by 
and watch the moments turn from one to the other, wasting 
and squandering years meant to be cherished and 
remembered by us. 
It is always those blessed by time who take it for granted, 
and those who have so little time who see its priveledge 
and its possible rewards. Life is not a right-- it is an 
opportunity. 
Never should we waste life, for, in the end, life will only 
waste us. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Sitting up on Scully's bed, Mulder gently stroked her bare 
back, his fingers surfing effortlessly over the ridges of her 
spine, as she dozed on her belly in his lap. The New Year 
had come, and it was going. The last year of Scully's life, 
possibly. His heart ached to think of walking through a 
cemetary, his cane scampering over wilting grass, and 
having someone read to him the memorial that would mark 
the final resting place of Dana Katherine Scully. 
Silence was upon him, and he mused over the rather 
interesting couple that they made. A blind man and a 
terminally ill woman. There was such irony and such sheer 
sadness about them that it made him want to cry. She took 
care of him, and he took care of her. They were each other's 
keepers. 
But for how much longer? 
She woke up, and looked up at him, his face straight 
forward and smiling. Reaching her hand up to his cheek, 
she stroked his jaw with the back of her hand, running her 
forefinger over his smooth, silky lips. "I love you," she 
whispered, and Mulder kissed her fingertip. 
"I love you, too," he whispered. "I always have." 
He stood up, allowing the blanket to drift over her nude 
body, and pulled on a pair of boxers that he found on the 
floor. The talking alarm clock that Scully had bought for 
him told him that it was seven o'clock, and he decided to 
get dressed. Turning on the faucet, he picked up the razor 
from his proper place, and prepared to shave. 
She watched him with love-filled wonder, and then with 
pity as he brought the razor to his face and clumsily began 
to shave away at the foam that covered his jaw and upper 
lip. He was trying to do so without any sight, without any 
knowledge of which was which, and she stood up, walking 
to join him. 
Turning on the bathroom light and pulling her terry-cloth 
robe on over her bare skin, she quietly took the razor from 
his hand, and cupped his chin in her hand. Thoughtfully 
and patiently, she ran the blade over familiar planes, 
skimming the foam off carefully and lovingly, with the 
respect and adoration of a lover. He closed his eyes, 
remembering how Kristen Kilar had done the same thing, 
only Scully's act was one of complete and utter devotion, 
not possession. 
She finished, and put the blade in the sink, running the 
water over it. "Let me," she murmured, and he kissed her 
powerfully and passionately, before taking her back into 
the bedroom. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Taking the driver's seat, Scully folded up Mulder's 
collapsible cane and put it in the back seat. "It's a nice day," 
she described, looking up through the windshield. "It's 
certainly chilly, though. Better than Fargo, at least." 
Nodding to himself, Mulder reached down with scampering 
hands to buckle his seat belt. Upon locating the strap, he 
pulled it down, but had trouble connecting the buckle. 
"Fuck," he exerted, and she placed her hand over his, 
clicking the belt in place with her fingers covering his. 
Giving a gracious smile, Mulder sat up. "Thanks." 
She started up the car and pulled out. "That's what I'm here 
for," she replied. 
The sounds of the car engine and the motor quickly made 
the attention-lacking ex-agent bored and jittery as she 
drove him to her mother's house. Knowing that Scully's car 
was the same make as his own, he felt for the stereo 
system. He turned on the radio, and found the seek buttons 
after a minute. Settling on Smashing Pumpkins' "1979", he 
leaned back. "Well, Scully, you never have to whine about 
driving anymore," he commented, and she smiled. 
"That's certainly true," she agreed. "But now I have to be 
the one who fills out the car rental forms, and I hate that." 
"Poor baby," he said, and she gave him the finger. Well, 
there you go, she thought. Now he'll never see me flip him 
off. The first true silver lining about his blindness, and 
what a shitty lining it was. "So, tell me what your brothers 
look like." 
  
Acting as his eyes again, she started her descriptions. "Bill 
takes after my father," she started. "He's going bald, poor 
guy. The little hair that he has left is black, and he looks a 
great deal like Dad did. He's an uptight sort of guy, and his 
wife, Lisa, is a lawyer. I've often felt like I never measured 
up in Lisa's eyes, and she never liked me very much, 
anyway." Easily falling into talking about her family, she 
drove with greater ease as Billy Corgan sang in the 
background. "Lisa's tall, extraordinarily tall. She's about six 
foot three, and talks as though someone put a baton up her 
ass. Pardon my language, but you'll understand what I mean 
when you meet her. 
"She has graying light brown hair, and the combination isn't 
exactly flattering," Scully continued, and Mulder was 
already getting the mental picture of a woman he would 
never see. "Her family's from Boston, and Daddy loved 
them. We were always living on bases, moving from place 
to place, the entire military drill. We didn't have time to be 
the socialites that Lisa's family is. When you hear her talk, 
she sounds like some bad Buffy and Muffy stereotype. She 
constantly brags about the donations to charity that she 
makes, and I haven't spoken to her in months. 
"Charles is fantastic. We were always very close growing 
up, almost as close as Missy and I were. He's fun-loving, 
wild, very boisterous. His wife, Marie, is back in Ohio with 
her mother for Christmas, but he brought his son, Kenneth, 
and his daughters, Rachael and Laura. Kenneth is five, 
Rachael is eight, and Laura is ten. Kenneth looks exactly 
like Charles, who takes after Daddy as well. Only Charles 
still has a full head of dark hair, and dark eyes. Mom 
always says that they're dancing Irish eyes." Scully paused, 
allowing herself a small smile. "Mom also told me that I 
used to have those 'dancing' eyes. I don't see it." 
Smiling himself, Mulder relished the memory of Scully's 
sky-colored eyes. She didn't see it, but he did, and he loved 
those graceful, bright eyes. What a last memory, he 
thought, and Scully continued. Her descriptions were of a 
typically dysfunctional family, and probably would have 
been a typically dysfunctional family forever. He had been 
the one to change that, or so he thought. 
"Kenneth's a lot like his father, bright and energetic," 
Scully said, smiling at the memories of her favored 
nephew. "Rachael's very inquisitive... She likes to ask 
questions, often ones that make you question her age. She'll 
probably interrogate you to the bone before we go. She's 
maybe four feet, and has the infamous red hair that you've 
commented on so many times. She reminds me of Missy. 
Laura's quiet, and when she does speak, it's apparent that 
she's brilliant. Laura's a bookworm, and we can never get 
her to put down a novel, either Maya Angelou or Stephen 
King. She's fun to watch, and if she gets to know you and 
considers you a kindred spirit, she'll be a friend for life. 
She's the only blonde out of Charles's kids, and she looks a 
lot like Marie." 
The house of Margaret Scully was filled with light, and one 
station wagon from Ohio that had to be Charles's was 
parked in the drive. Bill and Lisa had flown in. First class, 
all the way. She knew instantly that Lisa and Mulder were 
going to hate each other. 
"I don't know how my family's going to receive you, but 
this situation will be interesting," she murmured, and 
Mulder gave Scully a soft smile. 
"You make a great pair of eyes," he said, and brushed her 
cheek with his hand, showing more affection than she 
expected from him. He felt the small tug of her lips as she 
smiled, and then the brush of hair on to the palm. There 
was a small look of contentment on Mulder's face that she 
adored, and she leaned over to kiss him amorously, her lips 
tender and soft on his. 
But Scully pulled away when she saw that the front door 
was opening. "They're coming out to meet us, at least 
Charles is," she said, and he could hear the smile in her 
voice. "God, get ready, Mulder." 
Passing him his cane and stepping out of the car, Scully 
was met by a loud cry of "Sis!", and there was her 
handsome, trouble-maker brother. Mulder had elected to 
wear his designer sunglasses, as not to startle anyone with 
his blind, rather disturbing eyes. Especially if there were 
kids. He heard the energy-filled voice of the brother called 
Charles, and Scully's laughter that was full and floating. 
"Dana, Dana, Dana," Charles teased, and lifted her up in 
the air, swinging his sister around before putting her on the 
ground. He examined her with brotherly eyes, making sure 
that his little sister was still okay. "You look great. How're 
you feeling?" 
Scully was then painfully reminded that this was the first 
time that she had seen her brothers since her diagnosis of 
terminal cancer. There was new concern in those merry 
eyes, and he handled her as though he were afraid that she 
might break. "I'm fine, Charles," she replied, and then 
broke away from a hug and kiss on the cheek to attend to 
Mulder. 
With sweeping strokes of the white cane, Mulder made his 
way across the lawn, and to the point where Scully met him 
halfway, taking his elbow and guiding the blind man to her 
brother, who was waiting with incredible patience. 
"Charles, this is Fox Mulder," she introduced, and Charles 
tilted his head at the man. He had heard a great deal about 
Fox Mulder from his sister and from his mother, who was 
the only other person in the Scully clan to meet this 
mystery agent who had become so important to Dana. 
"Mulder, this is Charles." 
This Mulder man gave a lop-sided grin to the older brother, 
and extended his hand. "Should I pull a Willy Wonka and 
throw the cane away while doing a somersault?" he 
cracked, and this remark brought a broad smile to Charles 
Scully's face. The former agent gained a few points in his 
book, and the grin brought relief to Scully's mind. Mulder 
was accepted by Charles, and that was all that mattered to 
her. Charles saw the look of relief on Dana's face, and he 
realized then that this man meant more to her than any of 
the Scullys knew. 
"Only if you want to risk falling into a puddle and ruining 
those jeans," Charles said back, and Mulder cocked his 
head at Scully, his grin widening. 
"So, Scully, you put me in jeans today?" he asked with a 
licentious and flirtatious tone, and Scully clenched her jaw, 
pretending to be irritated. 
"Don't be obscene," she said. He just flashed her a brilliant 
white smile, and this pleased her immensely. He looked 
fantastic when he smiled. 
Watching this interplay of flamboyant flirtation, the Scully 
mother walked out to see her daughter and Mulder. "Dana," 
was the soft, warm call of Maggie Scully, and Scully 
touched Mulder's shirt sleeve. 
"Mom's coming, and she seems to be bearing gingerbread," 
she briefed, and Mulder nodded. Sure enough, moments 
later he heard the sounds of clothing rustling from a tight 
embrace, and then the feeling of kind, maternal arms 
around his neck. Surprised by this, Mulder paused before 
returning the hug. 
"Fox," was the murmur of Margaret. "I'm sorry." 
"What for?" he asked, and she hugged him again. Maggie 
accepted Fox as one of her own children, and tried to treat 
this poor, troubled one with special doses of love and 
affection. 
"For all this," she replied, and he heard Charles laugh. 
"That's Mom," he said, buoyancy in his warm voice. 
"Trying to make everything all right with gingerbread and 
hugs. You'll get used to it, Fox." 
Scully had forgotten to mention her ex-partner's disgust at 
his own first name, and Mulder would have shot her a look 
of irritation and tolerance if he could only pin-point her 
location. After Maggie moved away from him, Mulder tried 
to figure out where the red-headed woman he was looking 
for was standing. Using the slender cane, he traced his way 
to the sound of her voice, and stood next to her. 
"Where're the kids, Charlie?" she asked, and Charles 
groaned. 
"Dana, honey, you had better learn to call me Charles," he 
warned, "or the kids stay in with their beloved Gramma 
before they ever see you." 
"All right, *Charles*, just refrain from calling him Fox," 
she agreed. "Mulder will do fine." 
He grinned at the chivalrous note in the fair lady Dana's 
voice, and she rubbed his shoulder, vigorously. 
Scully watched as her handsome brother shook her hand, 
and wink at her. "You bet, Dana the Pain," he teased, and 
Mulder chuckled. 
"Ooo, Scully, I'm not going to forget that one," he said. 
Charles smirked at that, and bounded into the house. 
Taking him by the elbow, Scully helped him up the steps. 
"Did you tell your family that we're together?" he 
whispered, and she hesitated. 
"These kind of announcements are the most fun to make in 
person," she whispered back, and led him into Margaret's 
house, which smelled of pine and gingerbread. It smelled 
like Christmas. Scully looked around with a smile on her 
face and with Mulder on her arm. 
Bill Scully appeared with a mug of coffee, and Lisa was 
shortly behind him, dressed immaculately in an expensive 
cashmere sweater and slacks. Lisa's eyes scanned over her 
sister-in-law's infamous partner with interest. 
Though his blind eyes were hidden by expensive 
sunglasses, the frames added to his dangerous good looks 
and his over-all untouchable facade. He was tall, and Lisa 
could tell from the way the dark V-neck sweater, leather 
jacket, and jeans hung off of him that he had a great body. 
The way his passionate lips were curled at Dana in what 
could be interpreted as either a smirk or a smile was 
intriguing, and Lisa twirled her cinnamon stick in her apple 
cider. <<How quaint.>> 
Scully gave Lisa her own wary look, as was now the usual 
whenever they met. "Bill, Lisa, this is Fox Mulder," she 
introduced. Gesturing for the married couple to come 
closer, she whispered to him. "Lisa's the one in the 
unflattering cashmere." Bill gave an uncertain look to his 
sister, and Mulder blindly reached out his hand. Bill did 
nothing, and Scully gave her brother a look that clearly 
stated, "Shake his hand or die." Finally, he shook the other 
man's slender hand, and Lisa approached. 
"So, this is Fox," she murmured, and Mulder heard the 
haughty tones of the snotty Bostonian loud and clear. He 
had grown up near and around the city, but had never had 
enough money or enough care to speak with any accent 
indigenous to any particular area. "Charmed." 
He couldn't believe that she actually said, "Charmed." He 
was tempted to flash the renowned Mulder smile, and bend 
down to lick her hand. Scully wished that she could flash 
him a warning look, but he refrained from making an ass 
out of himself and Scully. 
"Ditto," he said, and Scully stifled a laugh at the look on 
Lisa's face. 
"Aunt Dana!" 
He heard the rushing of footsteps, and giggles of small 
children echoed in the room. Children that Scully would 
never have, all because of you, his mind reminded, and he 
would have winced if he wasn't still the focus of the Scully 
family. "Aunt Dana?" he teased, and she just laughed as her 
niece and her nephew bombarded her with hugs. 
Little Kenneth attached himself to Scully's waist, and his 
sister hugged her as well, nearly knocking the petite 
woman to the ground. Their proud father watched with a 
fatherly glint of affection in his dancing eyes. The children 
loved Dana so much, and he hurt at the knowledge that he 
would soon have to explain why they would never see her 
again. 
Charles had not taken the news that she was dying well. 
Maggie had called the family with the knowledge of her 
cancer immediately, and there were tears in the mother's 
voice at the words. It was hard to think that he was going to 
lose his only surviving sister to her job, just as he had lost 
Melissa. 
Trepidation had surrounded his meeting Fox Mulder, for 
Charles had secretly believed that his sisters wouldn't be 
dead or dying if it weren't for this paranoid man. Maggie 
had stood up and vouched for him, but he had never gotten 
over that belief. "Charles, he's had a difficult life," she tried 
to explain, "more than I think Dana even knows. Let him 
be, please. Be kind, for your sister's sake." 
And Charles had been when he met Mulder, and then when 
he realized that this man had taken his own cost for the 
deeds that he did, he could be more open about getting to 
know the ex-agent. 
Rachael smiled up at her pretty aunt. "Aunt Dana, we 
missed you," she lisped, and the woman smiled at the 
absence of her two front teeth. 
"I missed you, too, sweetie," she said, and kissed her cheek. 
Laura stood in the background, a paperback edition of "The 
Eyes of the Dragon" in her hands. "Hi, Laura!" 
Laura gave Scully a shy smile, and turned her attention to 
the bespectacled Mulder in front of her. His head was 
straight forward, and the dark sunglasses concealed the 
direction in which his gaze was locked. Tilting her head, 
she thumbed the pages of her book. "Hello," she said, her 
voice lilting and innocent. 
Scully looked over at the man and the child. "Laura, this is 
Fox Mulder," she said. Laura reached out and shook his 
hand with more confidence than she had seen her niece 
with in a long time. 
"Hello, Mr. Mulder," she said politely. Mulder broke into a 
smile for the girl, charming her immediately. 
"Hello, Miss Scully," he returned, and Laura blushed, a shy 
smile on her face, which in turn caused Scully to tilt her 
head. Though he never believed it himself, he possessed 
the ability to win over any female with natural charisma 
and sex appeal. He had easily grabbed Scully's heart with 
one intense and mysterious glare in the dark light of his 
basement office, and she had never wanted to get it back 
since. 
After the initial welcome of the children, Scully was able to 
get comfortable in the dining room with Mulder, Maggie, 
Charles, Bill, and Lisa. Sitting next to him and laughing as 
Charles assumed control of the conversation, Scully wished 
that her life could be as normal as it was then. Sitting at the 
family table with the man that she loved at her side, and 
reminiscing over childhood memories with her family... It 
was a way of life that she would probably never have. 
"So, Dana and Missy figured that if they borrowed Bill's 
convertible, which, I might add, had just been paid for with 
his money from working at the college coffeehouse, they 
could have a rowdy day off of school," Charles said, and 
Scully groaned. 
"Mulder, don't listen to him," she pleaded. "It's all a lie, all 
a dirty, rotten, lie." 
Shaking his head, Mulder leaned forward, interested. "No, 
keep talking. I never get to see the wild side of Dana 
Scully," he said, and gave her a wicked grin. Lisa was 
amused for a moment before acting bored again. 
"They left for school, but instead of going there, they went 
to Missy's friend's stables, and went horseback riding with 
some senior boys," he said, and his tone was one of 
confidentiality to Mulder. "So, the boys claimed that they 
could ride bareback, right? Dana has to prove that she's just 
as good as the other kids, so she brags that she can ride 
bareback, too." Scully groaned, knowing just which part 
was coming up next. "The day was wet, the horse was wild, 
and she fell off, into the mud, breaking her arm in the 
process! But what made it worse was that Caroline, Missy's 
ditz friend, started screaming that they were going to have 
to cut it off, and Dana passed out." 
The entire family laughed as a whole at Scully's expense, 
and she restrained from blushing in front of them. "Charles, 
stop!" she begged, and Mulder laughed even louder. Her 
face flushed red, and Charles grinned wickedly at her. 
"Sorry, sis," he mockingly apologized. "But I thought that 
Mulder here should know every side of you, huh?" 
There was a nasty comment somewhere in there, and 
Mulder could have said it except for the fact that Scully's 
family was still in the dark about the two's newfound 
romantic status. 
Maggie stood up and began to clear away dishes with the 
help of Charles and Dana. Bill had left a while ago to have 
a cigar, leaving Lisa at the table alone with Mulder. Lisa 
pulled out a slender cigarette, and lit it. She blew smoke 
out at him, watching with interest as the haze swirled 
around Mulder's sunglasses as he pointedly coughed. 
"Sorry," she said, not apologizing for smoking, but 
apologizing because she was going to continue smoking 
with no regard to his preferences. 
"So, Mulder, rumor has it that you're one of those UFO 
nuts," she said, a snotty tone in her voice that grated on 
Mulder's nerves. Giving her a charming smile, he waved 
the smoke away from his face. 
"We prefer to be called flying saucer fanatics," he said, his 
tone sardonic and acidic. She smiled slowly at this 
response, and crossed her delicate ankles, completely 
aware that he was not able to see. 
"Why are you sticking around with Dana?" she asked, 
bluntly. 
"What is this, 'Singled Out'?" he replied. 
"Just making small talk," she said, innocently. "Come on, 
Mulder, you seem to be a bright guy, even if you are near 
being committed. I'm sure that she'll visit you in your 
institution." 
"And I'm sure that you'll throw many tight-ass society 
parties to benefit the poor convalescents such as myself," 
he shot back. Hoping to God that she was shocked by this, 
he continued. "I don't know what your business in all of this 
is, but I doubt that you have any right to be discussing your 
sister-in-law's life behind her back without her knowledge 
or her consent." 
"Why, Mulder..." 
"Fuck you," he replied, tired. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Scrubbing a glass of cider-stained plastic, Margaret Scully 
glanced up at her remaining daughter, who was putting 
dishes away with accustomed reservation. There was 
something about her that had not existed the last time she 
had seen her, and it lay in her small smile that rested on her 
lips, and in the glow that she emitted. Tilting her head to 
examine her usually cool and strong daughter, Maggie 
detected notes of warmth and tenderness in her eyes and in 
her cheeks. 
Looking up suddenly at the sensation of eyes on her, Scully 
reflexively swiped at her nose, making sure that she wasn't 
bleeding. Stares had become that miniature and rather 
morbid alarm for her, but this stare was one more of 
fascination than one of concern, or, from Mulder, 
heartbreak. 
"How are you getting along, Dana?" Maggie asked, and 
Dana smiled briefly, picking up another plate to put away. 
"Surprisingly well," she said, the words layered with a 
double-meaning that only Scully or Mulder would have 
understood. "Quite surprisingly well." 
Charles looked at his sister with a sly look, but kept his 
thoughts to himself as Maggie turned off the water. "What's 
he going to do when he leaves?" she asked Scully, and 
Scully cocked her head, accepting the unbeknownst invite 
from her mother. 
"Well, Mom, he's not going to leave," she said. Both 
members of the Scully family looked with surprise at the 
usually conservative Dana. "We've agreed that we're just 
going to stay together." 
Margaret walked to her daughter, sudden hope in her heart. 
"Dana, does this mean that...?" Scully nodded to her 
mother, and she hugged her, smiling. 
"Everything's going the way it should be, Mom," she 
promised, and realization dawned on Charles. Dana and 
Mulder... He just grinned a wide smile, and ruffled his little 
sister's hair. 
"I'm glad for you, Dana," he said. "Really glad." 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Bidding good-bye to her family, she escorted him to the 
car. "Your sister-in-law's the spawn of Satan," Mulder 
remarked, and she nodded. 
"The spawn of Satan who ages about as fast as Barbra 
Streisand," she added, and Mulder wondered as to how true 
that statement was. 
"Want to go horseback riding, Scully?" he asked, and she 
punched him in the ribs, smiling as she did so. 
"Very cute, Mulder," she replied, and opened the car door 
for him. He flashed her a charming smile, one filled with 
sarcasm and with devilish flirtation. 
"I'll drive," he volunteered, and she shut the door in his 
face, noting that Mulder's smile just broadened before 
treating him with a long, breathless kiss. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Renee Townsend sat before Walter Skinner with her long, 
slim, shapely legs crossed daintily at the knees. She exuded 
confidence and self-assurance, and her cat-green eyes were 
fascinated and excited at the interview questions. 
Townsend had been the only agent in VCS who had dared 
to even think of filling the now-open space in the X-Files 
division. The news of Mulder's sudden blindness had 
spread through the Bureau like wildfire, and she had been 
rather saddened to hear it. She knew Mulder to be the most 
talented profiler in the FBI, and had held a great deal of 
respect for the outcast agent and his newly ostracized 
partner. 
The paranormal and the unexplained were mysteries that 
Townsend believed to be the essence of the Federal Bureau 
of Investigation. A case entered in that no one can deal 
with, and a closed one with an answer. She had heard of 
them three years ago with the abduction of Agent Scully, 
and she had been secretly following them ever since. The 
circumstances under which she was able to work on the 
division were not pleasant ones, however, and she was 
deeply sorry for Fox Mulder's loss of sight, and for Dana 
Scully's current predicament. 
"It says here that you're married," Skinner remarked, and 
she nodded. 
"To my husband, Hugh, of three years," she said, pride in 
her voice. "He's been very supportive of my endeavors, and 
of my job." 
He leaned forward, and looked Renee Townsend in the 
eyes. "Agent Townsend, the X-Files division has not had 
the best record with safety," he admitted. "These two have 
been in the hospital more than any other agent in my 
supervision. There is a high amount of risk involved with 
this position." 
"I am fully aware of the risks involved," she assured. "Hugh 
and I have talked it over, and we're both willing to make 
sacrifices. I believe that the X-Files are highly 
underestimated as for matter of importance in the Bureau, 
and I want to make sure that in the future, they are treated 
with a greater deal of respect. I have a great amount of 
respect and admiration for Agent Scully, as I do for Agent 
Mulder." 
Removing his glasses, Skinner looked down at the file on 
Agent Renee Townsend. She had done field work, 
graduated top of her class from Quantico, and had a degree 
in criminal psychology. He noted that her skills with 
firearms were extremely high, and he also looked at her 
family history. Born in San Diego, moved to Richmond 
when she was fifteen. Graduate of Duke University. High 
school as well as college valedictorian. She had an 
exemplary record. Flawless. 
And Skinner also knew that the Cigarette Man did not want 
her on the job. He had said that Skinner's superiors believed 
her not to be a threat to the project, but that she could end 
up becoming one as time went on. He had been told this, 
but had never been forbidden to assign her to Scully. 
After a long pause and a long stare at the prestige and 
dignity in Townsend's emerald eyes, he nodded. "I'm 
sending approval for your request, Agent Townsend," he 
finally stated. "You will report to Agent Scully's office on 
Monday, and be prepared for work. She has one more week 
off to take care of Agent Mulder, and she will then return 
for work. She will be your technical superior, and you will 
be asked to submit field reports for every case. This is only 
a trial run, Agent Townsend. If I hear one bad word from 
Agent Scully, then you're off." 
With one final handshake, he sent her off with the 
information that she would need. 
Driving home that night in her convertible, Townsend 
smiled to herself. She had won, she had won, she had won. 
The truth that had eluded her for so long would soon be 
hers. 
  
All of the secrets, all of the lies, everything that the 
government denied would soon belong to Renee Dionne 
Townsend and her work, and she marvelled at all of the 
possibilities. 
And in the meantime, perhaps she could get back the 
missing ten years of her life. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Pressing toe to heel, she walked along the line in the 
pavement of her driveway in Fargo. Morgan Washington 
carefully balanced herself along the crack in the concrete, 
and walked it like a tight-rope. She was cold in her army 
jacket and baggy jeans, but the ice was beginning to melt in 
the near-Arctic city. 
There was more than the usual chill in the air, and it came 
from the absence of more than twenty people. There was a 
crisis going on in the town, and it was worrying Morgan 
more than she let on. In the past month or so, every single 
female freshman who lived in Fantasia had been missing 
for some period of time. Sometimes, it was just for three, 
maybe four minutes. Other times, it was for days or weeks. 
Morgan was the last one who had remained safe from the 
flashing lights, the stopped time, the chills, the seizures, 
and the implants. Nightmares plagued all of her friends, 
and Morgan had slept with ease. She had no computer-like 
chip placed in the base of her skull, and no bruises or no 
gashes. No early symptoms of hypothermia. 
But she was becoming scared and terrified. Her beloved 
Ms. Whiteside had told her that she would be fine, and that 
she was going to live, but Morgan had her doubts. She was 
afraid, deadly afraid. 
She was the last one, right? But what would happen if she 
was taken, too? 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
"I know it's not fashionable 
  To be this hopeful 
  ...Well laugh away 
"I didn't think it was possible 
  To be grateful 
  ...Anyway 
"I know it's not sensible 
  To be this passionate 
  ...Everyday 
"Days go by 
  I catch myself smile 
  More than you'd ever expect 
  It's been a long while 
  Since it's been O.K. 
  To feel this way 
"In the volumes of history 
  Have you ever seen anything 
  ...So pure 
"In the wildest mythology 
  Were the gods and goddesses 
  ...Ever so in love 
"In your own experience 
  Have you ever known tenderness 
  ...Like this 
"Days go by 
  I catch myself smile 
  More than you'd ever expect 
  It's been a long while 
  Since it's been O.K. 
  To feel this way 
  These are the most precious 
  Of all my days" 
--Duncan Sheik 
"Days Go By", Duncan Sheik, 1996 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Sitting by him on the couch and revelling in the electricity 
that crackled in the incredible massage that he was giving 
her, Scully tilted her head on to the slender hands that 
gripped her shoulders with masculinity and delicacy. He 
knew her flesh better than she did, and that was fine with 
her so long as he continued to give her back rubs like the 
one he was inducing upon her now. 
Nibbling at her neck with kisses, Mulder pushed his 
thumbs into her soft, good-smelling flesh, and nuzzled the 
tendrils of her hair with his nose. "Your shampoo smells 
delicious," he murmured into her ear, and she passionately 
kissed his cheek, paying close attention to the corner of his 
mouth. 
"Is that all that smells delicious?" she asked him, playing 
the coquette, and Mulder chuckled, bidding her to lean her 
back on his bare chest, and she stretched out on the couch, 
putting her elbows on Mulder's legs as rests. 
"Not in the least," he growled, and moved his mouth to 
hers. "You're delicious as is." 
"Sweet talker," she replied, and kissed him again, running 
her hands through his hair wildly and possessively. 
Just as he began to unbutton her blouse, a knock sounded at 
the door, and she pulled away. "Shit," she muttered, and ran 
a hand through her hair, fixing her clothes. She hastily 
inspected his attire, and smiled when she realized that he 
could care less if it looked as though they had just been 
fooling around. 
Which was, of course, exactly what they had been doing. 
There was a strange woman at her door, clad in an 
expensive-looking wine-colored suit, and with perfectly 
tamed and managed wine-colored hair. She was the essence 
of alcohol, and her anxious, joyous cat eyes looked at 
Scully. She was a good eight inches taller than Scully, and 
another two in the high heels that she wore. Warmly 
smiling a pleasant, innocent smile, the woman revealed 
perfect white teeth. "Agent Scully?" she asked, and Dana 
nodded, unsure of who this woman was. 
"Yes," she said, warily, and the woman extended her hand, 
eagerly. 
"My name's Agent Renee Townsend," she introduced, and 
the name was familiar to her. "I'm your new partner." 
Looking now with more interest at the agent that Skinner 
had spoken so highly of, Scully deduced that she couldn't 
be more than twenty-eight. She was young, and 
eager-faced, and naive-seeming. She was the old Dana 
Scully. 
Except that Renee Townsend could be a runway model, 
with a slender figure, long, perfectly shaped legs, flawless 
olive skin, chartreuse eyes, and dark red hair that floated 
like a cloud of raspberry silk over her shoulders. Agent 
Townsend was obviously very excited to have landed such 
a position, and Scully hoped that working on such desolate 
cases wouldn't destroy such innocence as it had destroyed 
hers in an instant. 
"I'm sorry to barge in on you, but I wanted to introduce 
myself in person," she apologized. "I wasn't interrupting 
you, was I?" 
<<Oh, no, I can get lucky any day I want now.>> "No, not 
at all," Scully assured. "Do you want to come in?" 
Elegantly and yet still eagerly, Townsend stepped into her 
new partner's apartment, and feasted her eyes on the 
famous Fox Mulder, who sat on Dana Scully's couch with a 
pair of sunglasses to shade his eyes from the woman, and 
wearing a rather sloppily put on tee-shirt and blue jeans. 
Scully noticed this with some relief, and she gestured to 
him. "Townsend, this is Fox Mulder, my old partner," she 
said, and Townsend walked to him, extending a smooth, 
manicured hand, and putting it in his. "Mulder, this is my 
new partner, Agent Renee Townsend." 
"It's an honor to meet you," she exclaimed, breathlessly, 
and Scully was almost glad that he couldn't see the 
attractive Agent Townsend. "I've admired your work for a 
while now." 
"I doubt that the membership for that fan club is 
particularly high," he cracked, and Scully gave a grudging 
smile, only for Townsend's benefit. "How did you get stuck 
down in the hell hole with Scully?" 
"Oh, and you act as though working with you was perfect 
heaven," his ex-partner said dryly, and Mulder gave them 
both a charming look. 
"Wasn't it?" he said, and she rewarded him with an 
invisible(to Mulder, at least) middle finger. Townsend 
admired the camaraderie between the two while also 
making herself aware of the sparks that flew between them. 
There was definitely lightning amongst them, and she 
wondered at it. She doubted that she and Hugh possessed 
such chemistry. 
"It's still a pleasure to meet you, Agent Mulder," she said, 
and turned her attention to Scully. "I'm sorry to intrude on 
you, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to introduce myself 
to you for another week. AD Skinner said that you still had 
a week's vacation left, so I thought..." 
"Actually, Townsend, Scully's going to be at work bright 
and early on Monday morning," Mulder interrupted, and 
Scully gave him a look of surprise. Oh, was she?  But the 
answer illuminated Townsend's perfect face, and she 
smiled with the blaring whiteness of her teeth. 
"I'll look forward to it," she promised, and shook both the 
agents' hands before leaving. "Have a nice weekend." 
Once Townsend had closed the door and left the room, 
Scully groaned and flopped down on the couch, allowing 
Mulder to wrap his arms around her slender body, rubbing 
her baby-soft skin with his hands. "Mulder, tell me that 
when you met me, I wasn't nearly that naive," she pleaded, 
and he gnawed playfully on the lobe of her ear. 
"No, darling, you were as seductive and as sexy as you are 
now," he rumbled in her ear, and she let herself smile 
before asking him to tell her the truth. He resisted from 
kissing her, and she sat comfortably with his legs 
surrounding her hips. "Scully, when I first met you, you 
were bright, you were skeptical, you were a little trusting in 
the government and the job that you had been given, but 
that's only expected of anyone. I'm not saying that paranoia 
is the correct way to live, but for the line of work in which 
we lived, it was the only wise lifestyle. You were certainly 
different from Renee Townsend." 
"Thank God," she muttered, putting her bare feet under his. 
She was cold, and she picked up a warm blanket, covering 
the two with it. Mulder paused then, tensing and becoming 
very much like the normal Fox Mulder. 
"But she reminds me of Alex Krycek in her aim-to-please 
and her enchanted words," he said, darkly. "Krycek was 
just a little too eager to become the next Mulder, and I 
hope that Townsend's not the same kind of 'eager'." 
The name of Alex Krycek had not been uttered once in 
Scully's apartment since he had moved in, and there was 
the element of sadness and danger to add to the room. 
Scully was a little afraid of meeting Krycek again. She was 
afraid that she would forget herself and kill the son of a 
bitch. 
Turning the conversation away from such a hateful topic, 
she chafed his denim-clad knees teasingly. "And what is 
this about my going back to work on Monday?" she asked, 
and he smiled. 
"You have a job to do, Dana Scully, and don't forget it," he 
reminded. "There are still missing women in Fargo that 
need you. I can't do anything else for them. It's up to you 
and Kathie Lee now." 
She turned to him and looked him in the eyes, playfully 
removing his sunglasses with her teeth. "Don't make 
decisions for me, Fox," she warned, and he smiled when he 
felt her breath coming closer. 
"Call me Fox again, Scully, and I'll deny you sexual 
favors," he warned, and she nipped his nose with a kiss. 
"No, you won't," she said in a low, husky voice. He smiled. 
She knew him too well. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
The Federal Bureau of Investigation was in quiet awe of the 
return of Dana Scully, and everyone who knew or knew of 
her watched her walk down the halls in an elegant and 
business-like pant suit. She knew that all eyes were on 
here, and all minds were on Fox Mulder, so she kept her 
head held high and coldly ignored their curious stares. 
Vultures, all of them. Fucking carrion. 
The basement office no longer read "Fox Mulder, Special 
Agent", but instead "Dana Scully, Special Agent". She had 
her desk, and the thought of that ironic victory almost 
stung. Some harsh words and sarcastic mentions of 
Bullwinkle and Battleship had passed that day. 
Bracing herself for the perky Townsend, she opened the 
door. "I'm going to miss you, Mulder," she muttered to 
herself, and she walked inside, bombarded by the images of 
his "I WANT TO BELIEVE" poster and the photographs of 
elegantly designed crop circles. 
Townsend stood in front of them, a forest green pair of 
slacks and jacket hanging perfectly from her six foot frame. 
Her red hair was held back with a matching green head 
band, and Scully felt blase in comparison. Regaining pride 
by remembering that Mulder loved her, and that that was 
all that mattered, she put her briefcase on what was now 
her desk. 
"Good morning, Townsend," she greeted, and the stunning 
woman turned around, smiling brightly. 
"Good morning, Scully," she replied, and gestured around 
the apartment with exuberant hands. "This is fascinating. I 
take it that Mulder was the decorator?" Pointing out a 
photograph depicting crop circles in Kansas, she chuckled. 
"Either this is a crop circle, or a new ad for lawn mowers." 
Scully gave a dry look around. She had thought that going 
to work without him would be easier than it actually was. 
His shadow sat in that office chair, feet kicked up on the 
desk with casual grace, a sexy and seductive smile on his 
face. She could see him, from only a few weeks ago, 
standing in front of the thermostat, his hands balled up into 
fists, pounding the reluctant box. 
Now, the thermostat hummed with hot air. 
Townsend sat down in what used to be Scully's seat and 
crossed her slim legs at the ankles, looking demure and 
polished, as well as sophisticated and demure. Scully had 
read the file on her new partner, and committed many parts 
to memory. 
Renee Dionne Kelley had been born in San Diego, 
California, to the wealthy Kelleys. Her father was a 
successful playwright, and her mother was a brilliant 
neurosurgeon, and very agile with a scalpel. She had been 
brought up in boarding schools and in raised to be a 
debutante, but the details of her life between the ages of 
four and fourteen were shady, and with little event. She had 
married Hugh Bartholomew Townsend III in 1994, and had 
been with him since then. Hugh had one daughter of seven, 
and Renee was noted to be a perfect step-mother, and that 
they were trying to have a child of their own. Renee was a 
very talented agent, with incredible profiling skills. 
Now, the elegant debutante sat perfectly across from Scully 
and smiled charmingly. "So, what's first up on the agenda?" 
she asked, and Scully picked up a thick, dog-eared file. 
"This is the file dealing with the abductions in Fargo, North 
Dakota," she introduced. 
"The same case that Agent Mulder lost his sight for, and 
the same case that I think will bring along some very 
interesting questions. The last total of females abducted 
from the Fargo area was two hundred and twenty-eight. 
Twenty-nine remain missing, and one hundred and 
ninety-nine are returned. Six casualties. All are returned 
with computer implants in their necks, near the base of the 
skull, and some return with seizures and bruises. I suspect 
sexual abuse was involved, and the range of the ages are 
eight to thirty-seven." 
Shaking her head, Townsend flipped through the files. "The 
implants are noted to have been produced and categorized 
by the United States government," she mused. "That's 
impossible, isn't it? How can the government perform tests 
on their own citizens?" 
This rookie had a lot to learn, Scully thought, and looked 
Townsend in the eye. 
"Through my work on the X-Files, Townsend, I've seen a 
lot of things, and learned more about the secret workings of 
this government than anyone should ever want to know," 
she said, seriousness invading and dominating her tone. 
"And of all of the operations that I have been both witness 
and subject to, I still do not have the answer to your 
question." 
The shadows in Scully's eyes and in her voice told her that 
that was the truth, and she shuddered to herself, thinking of 
the torture that being involved with the X-Files had 
wrought upon this petite and prestigious woman. "I'm 
sorry," she murmured, and brought herself back to Earth. 
What this level-headed woman must think of her... "What 
is this about abductees from the 1960's?" 
Nodding, Scully walked around to Mulder's desk, and 
recited what she knew. "The reports that Agent Mulder 
filed and the reports that he looked up had to do with 
reported 'alien abductees' that have been replacing the 
kidnapped girls. He has a theory that involves recycling the 
victims for new ones, and I believe that the government is 
doing the recycling without any involvement from 
extraterrestrial entities." She looked down then at Mulder's 
empty chair. Her chair now, and she was supposed to sit 
down and brief the brand-new agent sitting before her. She 
hesitated, and Townsend gave her a sympathetic look. 
"Just because he's not with you doesn't mean that he's not 
here, right, Scully?" she asked, and Scully blinked, startled 
at the accuracy of Townsend's words. "Sit down." 
Scully paused, then gingerly seated herself in the chair. 
Mulder's chair. "The task at hand is to figure out where the 
missing children are and what has been done to them," she 
said. Reading through the file's medical records, Townsend 
made her first great impression on Scully. 
"All of the deceased females were barren," she stated, and 
Scully's eyebrows shot to the top of her forehead. 
"Excuse me?" 
Pointing out the medical charts, she highlighted areas. 
"Every woman is born with a preset number of ova," she 
recalled, and Scully nodded. "These dead children had very 
few to no ova in their ovaries. They were barren, and they 
were the only ones who were killed." 
Impressed, Scully gave her a look that clearly stated her 
approval. "Good catch, Townsend," she said, and 
Townsend nearly beamed. "Mulder had a theory about that; 
about the use of sexual reproductive organs in the tests. All 
of the returned women are barren as well, and I bet that if 
we looked at the files of the new abductees, the ones that 
have been brought back would be infertile." 
"A good chance," she agreed. "I probably need to go to 
Fargo and check this out, so I reserved myself a plane 
ticket. Just for some preliminary interviews, nothing 
special. Cool?" 
Unpreterbed and quite swept away by the agent's 
enthusiasm, Scully nodded. "Yes," she replied, and 
Townsend stood up, picking up the file. 
"I'm going to copy these; be right back," the dark red-head 
said, and left the basement office. 
Scully sat in Mulder's chair for a moment more, hesitating 
to move, and picked up the phone, dialing her apartment. 
The voice that picked up was a sarcastic and bored one, 
and she was immediately comforted by it. 
"Scully Crematorium, you kill 'em, we grill 'em," was the 
droll greeting, and she played along, using a husky and low 
voice to respond. 
"This is a new customer who would like to have the body 
of Fox Mulder incinerated to go, with an order of fries and 
a milkshake," she said, and the tones of the other party 
brightened. 
"Hey, Scully, what's up?" he asked, and she sighed, running 
her hands through her hair. 
"Nothing yet," she sighed, and flicked a dead mosquito 
carcass from off of her desk. "I just wanted to call and 
check in on you. How are you?" 
"Lonely," he replied, and she chuckled. "Want to blow off 
seventh period and get lucky?" 
"Very tempting offer, but I'll pass," she said, smiling at his 
tone. 
"You sure?" he tried again. 
"I'm sure," she responded. Mulder smiled to himself on the 
line at home, and put his Braille copy of "Farenheight 451" 
on the nightstand. "It's so odd to be here at work without 
you," she admitted. 
Sighing, he leaned his head on the armrest of the couch. 
She heard soft whispers of Fiona Apple in the background, 
and could tell that he had been on that sofa for most of the 
day. In fact, Mulder had been doing push-ups and sit-ups on 
her living room floor, attempting to keep his body in shape. 
"It's going to be all right, Scully," he promised, and he had 
to admit something to her. "It's kind of strange to be alone 
in the dark without you." 
She wanted to say something more to him, but the sounds 
of Townsend's heels clicking on the cement stopped her. "I 
miss you," she said, and he smiled. 
"I love you," he said into her ear, and she saw the shape of 
the woman's feet underneath the door. 
"I love you, too," she said, hurriedly, and hung up as 
Townsend opened the door. The wine-haired woman 
looked at Scully with cool assessment, and then sat down 
again. 
"So, Scully, what do we do until Wednesday?" she asked, 
and Scully picked up a file, passing it to her. 
"Figure out what the connection to the United States 
government is to all of these women," she said, and tapped 
the folder with carefully trimmed nails. "Every last one of 
these women." 
Nodding to herself and looking down at her manicured red 
nails, she asked for the phone. "I need to call Hugh and 
Cara, and tell them that I'm coming home late," she 
explained, and Scully gestured with open hands to please 
dial. 
She only heard Townsend's half of the conversation, but the 
love in her words were quite apparent and blatant. "No, 
honey, I won't forget to eat... Be sure to read Cara the 
bedtime story that we started last night... Don't wait up for 
me, I might be here for a while... I love you, too, Hugh." 
What a normal conversation, and what Scully wouldn't give 
for that to be her life with Mulder. 
Townsend hung up the phone, and began her work with a 
cup of coffee. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
"No one said it would be easy 
  But no one said it'd be this hard 
  No one said it would be easy 
  But no one thought we'd come this far 
  Oh, and look, we've come this far..." 
--Sheryl Crow 
"No One Said It Would Be Easy", Tuesday Night Music 
Club, 1993 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
The day passed into night, and Scully sat at Mulder's desk, 
the computer that he never touched still off, and her eyes 
beginning to hurt from the strain of the desk light. 
Yawning, she pulled out her bottle of prescription headache 
pills from her pocket and popped two into her mouth, 
swallowing them dry. Townsend looked over at Scully's 
pills with interest and concern before picking them up, 
reading the label. "Scully, these are some serious pills," she 
murmured. "How severe are these headaches of yours?" 
"They can be violent," she said, her tone demanding that 
Townsend leave it at that, and the stunning red-head 
refused to do such a thing. 
"You should go to a doctor and get it checked out. It could 
turn out to be something serious," she warned, and Scully 
nearly choked on the irony. No, really? Scully considered a 
brain tumor to be pretty damn serious. Of course, no one in 
the Bureau other than Mulder knew about her terminal 
condition, and Scully was in no particular mood or position 
to reveal such information. Sympathy was something that 
she loathed, along with self-pity. 
"Thanks for the concern, Townsend," she said, finishing the 
conversation. "I'll remember that." 
The phone rang, and Scully picked it up reflexively. 
"Scully," she answered, and the low tones of the man who 
responded made her dart her eyes at Townsend. 
"I've been waiting for you, Scully," he said, and his voice 
was low and seductive. He was teasing her, knowing that 
Townsend had to be in the room, and also knowing that 
Scully did not want her new partner to be aware that she 
and Mulder were sleeping together. Bored with reading, 
and listening to music, or listening to television, he had 
decided to call her. "Do you miss me?" 
"I'm sorry that I forgot to call, Mulder, but I'm working late 
tonight," she said, and her tone was clenched with warning 
and irritability. "There's leftover pizza from the other night 
in the freezer..." 
"Are you coming home to feed me dessert?" he asked, and 
she winced, knowing exactly what he was trying to do. She 
wondered if he was trying to get her in trouble on purpose, 
or if he was just being a S.O.B. for the hell of it. "I'm 
starved." 
"Then eat alone," she said, and the subtext was there and 
easy for Mulder to read. He chuckled at the nastiness and 
spite in her voice, and continued to murmur into the 
receiver. 
"I have a craving for something else," he implied, and she 
put her hand to her forehead, embarrassed and annoyed 
with him. 
"If you're going to be this whiny, Mulder, then I'm not 
going to cook for you again," she retorted, and he arched 
his eyebrows, picturing the irritation on her face. "Get 
something 'real' to eat, and I'll be home soon." 
"Soon enough?" 
"If you leave me alone and let me do my goddamn job," she 
said, and he laughed, going into the kitchen and pulling out 
a Cola from where he knew now that they would be. "I'll 
see you later, Mulder." 
"Love you, Scully," he said, leaning on the counter and 
allowing some of the pleading to enter his voice. Sighing 
and knowing that Townsend's eyes were on her, she sat up, 
getting ready to hang up. 
"Same to you, Mulder," she said, and hung up the phone. 
Groaning, she pulled off her pumps and crossed her legs 
under her. 
"How helpless can he be?" Renee asked, and Scully shook 
her head. 
"You have no idea." 
Ten minutes passed, and Townsend's eyes widened at 
something. "Scully, look at this," she pointed out, and took 
out a red pen. "Do you have a map of the United States 
anywhere around here?" she asked, and Scully stood up, the 
chill of the cement pouring through her bare feet. She 
pulled one out, and unrolled it on the desk still messy with 
Mulder's paraphernalia. "Each victim was abducted in a 
certain order from their homes, and returned in the same 
pattern. The first woman was taken from her home in 
Pennsylvania, and she was returned home, too. They all 
follow this pattern." Using the pen, she dotted each area, 
and Scully looked at the region left untouched by 
Townsend's pen. 
"The Massachusetts area," she muttered, and put her hand 
to her head. "Fuck." Looking with surprise at Scully, she 
nodded. 
"The Massachusetts area is the next one up," she agreed. 
"We should be looking for returned abductees from the 
1960's to 1970's from this state, and within the next weeks. 
This is another step, isn't it, Scully? And the women were 
barren, all of them returned." 
Shaking her head, Scully picked up her trench coat and her 
briefcase. "Go home, Townsend," she ordered. "Be in 
tomorrow around eight o'clock, and be ready for a long day. 
I have to get home." 
"See you tomorrow," the red-head called to her, and Scully 
just walked away, temper blazing in her eyes. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
  
SUNLIGHT FADING  10/12 
by: Annie Jennings 
(disclaimer in part one) 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
The opening and slamming of the door indicated that 
Scully was home, and that she was pissed. "I can't believe 
you," were the first words out of her mouth. "You went 
down to Fargo to find Samantha, Mulder. That was what 
you did, wasn't it? You went for her. How could I have 
been so fucking stupid?" 
"Scully..." he began, but she cut him off. 
"Cut the crap, Mulder, and spare me your talks about how 
important the truth is to you," she snapped. "The truth is 
that you lost your sight over your damned quest for her. 
That's the truth, Mulder. You went over the edge; so far 
over the edge that you might not find the solid land again. 
Is that what you want, Mulder? Huh? Because you're not 
only hurting yourself with this search, you're hurting me, 
too." 
Wincing at the power and force behind her words, Mulder 
put his face in his hands. Yes, it was all truth. She was 
absolutely right. The truth was simple; the reason that he 
was blind was because of his search for Samantha. He had 
lost his sight because of her, and maybe the sight he lost 
was not only physical, but spiritual, too. Losing himself in 
his work had been a common habit for him, but losing 
himself was not right. 
"I knew going in that I might find her," he admitted, his 
voice slow and halting. "But I didn't know just how much I 
was getting into. Dammit, Scully, I didn't want to go blind. 
This was never something that I wanted. It hurts everyday 
to think that I'll never see little things, like the moon, or 
what you're wearing, or even your face. But I had to know, 
Scully... And this time, the consequences caught up with 
me." 
Losing the fury in her voice, she sat down next to him, 
holding his face in her hands with desperation to 
understand him and his ways. "Why this, Mulder?" she 
asked, her voice pleading. "I never wanted this for you, and 
I never wanted this for us. Why is it always you, or always 
me? We get the shitty end of the deal, and we get picked 
on, and stepped on, and dragged on, but we never have the 
evidence or the ability to retaliate. We always end up 
failing, and falling, and letting ourselves get set up again 
for failure. It frustrates me, Mulder. 
"I want more for us than sitting on this couch and asking 
why. I wanted more for us than sympathy and injury, but 
maybe I should just resign myself to that, because the odds 
don't ever turn in our favor." She smoothed hair from his 
eyes, and clutched his body to hers. "We gamble with our 
lives, Mulder, and we never have won. If this is our set of 
luck, then why do we insist upon rolling the dice, day after 
day?" 
He raised his head, and pressed his cheek against hers, 
contrasting the roughness of his stubble-covered face to her 
smooth cheekbone. "Because the chips that we place and 
bet include the lives of others, Scully," he whispered. 
"Because those chips are innocent human beings, and we 
are forced to gamble with their lives in order to win the 
truth." 
Knowing that he was right, she rested her head on the top 
of his and let herself cry. The hand that she played with 
always seemed to be a bad one. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Hugh Townsend held the hand of his little daughter, and 
kissed the back of it. "Happy, Cara?" he asked her, and 
Cara nodded, her gap-toothed smile adorably charming 
with her English accent. 
"Yes, Daddy!" she exuded, and pointed to an animal in a 
cage. "Look, a lion!" 
The father and daughter walked along with the rest of 
Cara's class, pointing from animal to animal in awe of the 
natural beauty involved in every single beast from Mother 
Earth. Hugh had volunteered to take his sweet daughter on 
the field trip with her prestigious private academy class, 
and was having a fabulous time with the bright-eyed 
brunette with wide blue eyes. 
Cara was the spitting image of Hugh's deceased first wife, 
Rebecca, and the pride and joy of Hugh's life, next to 
Renee. Rebecca had died in childbirth, and Hugh had 
raised Cara on his own in their charming English manor in 
the countryside. Realizing that the place held too many 
memories for the distinguished gentleman, he moved to the 
United States to raise her in the presence of more modern 
conveniences. 
That was when he met Renee Goldsmith, a beautiful, 
mysterious, and sexy FBI agent in training at Quantico. He 
had fallen for her then and there, and had married the 
woman shortly after her graduation. 
He knew that Renee's past was shadowy, and unexplained, 
and he also knew that Renee wanted to remember the lost 
decade in her young life. She could recall nothing, nothing 
at all, and that fact frightened and worried her. Wandering 
through life, Renee had little guidance and even less 
self-confidence. Hugh had supported her climb from FBI 
agent to Special Agent Renee Townsend of the X-Files 
division, and would continue to support her. 
Cara looked up at Hugh with bright eyes, and skipped along 
with her fellow pupils. "Daddy, can we feed the ducks?" 
she lisped, and Hugh stopped at a quarter machine to buy 
his princess some seeds. 
As Hugh and Cara Townsend turned away and parted 
momentarily from the rest of the second-graders, a gunshot 
sounded, then another one, and they fell down amidst 
terrified screams from schoolchildren and teachers as 
birdseed scattered from the little girl's limp hand. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Crying out at the news, Townsend turned white, and tears 
rolled down her face as Scully looked on, shocked. 
"Townsend?" she asked, dropping the files on her desk and 
attending to her partner. The phone slipped out of her hand, 
and she shook in body-racking sobs. 
"They're dead, oh, God, they're dead," she whispered. 
"Scully, they're dead..." 
Shaking her head, she held her new partner tightly to show 
support. "What happened, Renee?" she asked, and Renee 
sat up, her eyes brimming with tears. 
"My husband... my daughter... They're dead. Someone... 
some... monster... killed them, murdered them. They're 
dead!" she choked, and Scully was shocked. 
"Murdered?" she asked, stunned at the outburst from the 
slender agent. "How did this happen? Why..." And she 
realized what happened immediately. The Consortium, the 
Syndicate, whatever they could be called, had found out 
about their latest discoveries. The path of returned 
abductees, the implants... It was a ploy to keep Townsend 
off of the case. 
"If you don't mind, Scully, I have to go to the mortuary and 
identify the bodies," she whispered, and started to walk 
away. "I'm sorry, but..." 
Shaking her head, pale and alarmed at the murders, she 
nodded. "If you need to talk about it, Townsend, then I'm 
here." 
Nodding shortly, distracted and distraught, Renee 
Townsend left the room, her arms loosely clutching her tan 
trench coat to her body. 
Her hair fell in her face with rich, shining red beauty, but 
she did not bother to swipe at the loose and perfectly 
arranged curl. Shock and pain radiated with a nuclear force 
through her entire being, and she was screaming on the 
inside with grief. Her daughter, her husband... Why them? 
Sniffling back fat tears that threatened to streak down her 
cheeks, she walked to her convertible and opened the door. 
"Oh, Hugh," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Oh, 
Hugh..." 
Suddenly, there was a rough pull on her elbow, and Renee 
was pulled into her car and a gun was aimed to her head. 
"If you scream, you will join your family in the morgue," 
was the rough threat from the other person in the vehicle. 
Her eyes wide with fear, Renee turned to look at the person 
next to her. There were three men in the car with her. One 
was the driver, who sped off with her the moment that she 
was safely thrown in the car. The others were the gunman 
and a tall, older man in an expensive and non-descript suit, 
smoking a cigarette lazily, as though her discomfort and 
fear were of no concern to him. 
"Who are you?" she demanded, and the gun was pressed 
into her temple. The smoking man took a long drag from 
his Morley's, and he blew the smoke in Townsend's face. 
"We need to have a discussion, Agent Townsend," he said, 
his voice sinister and deceptively slick. 
"A discussion about what?" she asked, her voice cold and 
stony. 
"A discussion about your career and its path," the man 
explained. "You were recently placed in the X-Files 
division, were you not? Under the supervision of Agent 
Dana Scully. Working on the Fargo case..." 
"I am not answering any questions about my work or my 
career's path," she snapped. "Get the hell out of my 
automobile." 
"Why, Agent Townsend, we thought that you might 
appreciate a ride to the county coroner's office," he said. 
"Your husband waits for you with your daughter. I thought 
that you might want to see him." 
There was a sharp turn, and Renee fumbled for a moment. 
"How do you know about Hugh and Cara?" she demanded. 
The man smoked on the cigarette before extinguishing it on 
Renee's dusty mauve skirt, burning a hole straight through 
the expensive tweed. "Do you know how they died, Agent 
Townsend?" he asked, his tone conversational for such 
harsh, personal words. "They were shot in the head, 
point-blank range, execution style. Very professional." 
Her eyes widened, and she screamed at him. "You killed 
them!" she accused, and lunged for the man. Immediately, 
the gunman pulled harshly and brutally on her carefully 
curled red hair, and she cried out in pain as he pulled her 
back from the cigarette-smoking man. "You son of a 
bitch!" 
Lighting another cigarette, the man looked with close 
examination at Renee's face. "You don't have the strength 
or the ambition to replace Agent Mulder," he observed. "He 
was a fine agent. You're nothing. Just another pretty little 
paper-pusher, just like half of the other female agents in the 
Bureau. A law enforcement leech. You'll never make it, 
Townsend. Why bother to even try?" 
"Because this division has no one other than Agent Scully 
who cares about it now," she said, her tone teary and 
determined. She was a flawed angel with her mascara 
streaking inky black down her face. "And I care about it. I 
might not be as good as her, or as Agent Mulder was, but 
that was no reason to kill my family!" 
Shaking his head, the smoker turned his head, paying more 
attention to the scenery than to the upset woman in the car 
next to him. "Of course not," he agreed. "But did I ever 
state that the motive behind the murders was your ability as 
a federal agent? I'm making you an offer, Agent Townsend, 
and I expect you to listen when I speak." 
He put extra emphasis on the word *I*, leading Townsend 
to believe that the smoking man was someone more 
important than a child molester or a control freak. He was 
more than a simple assassin. There was something darker 
and more menacing than she had initially thought. 
"What kind of offer is that?" she asked, bitterness stealing 
its way into her throat. 
"An offer concerning Agent Mulder's sight and the success 
of the X-Files," the cigarette-smoking man murmured, and 
she stared at him. 
"I thought that there was nothing that any doctor could do 
for Agent Mulder," she said, shocked. "I thought that there 
was no way out for him. That he was permanently blind. 
Besides, what can I do?" 
"More than you would imagine," he said simply. "The 
Fargo case is a threat. I want the case slowly removed from 
the office. Bring me the research that he and Agent Scully 
have done, and I will set up an appointment for Fox 
Mulder." 
Shaking her head, she set her jaw. "This case could be one 
of the most important..." 
He interrupted her, his voice oily with unspoken subtleties 
of evil. "You loved Hugh very much, didn't you?" he said, 
and the question was an amused one, one that had no 
concern for her emotions. A casual statement. 
"I loved him more than anyone," she said, her voice rough. 
"And if he lost his sight, then no case would get in the way 
of his regaining his sight?" he continued. 
"No case," she said. 
"Then why should you punish Agent Scully, who loves 
Agent Mulder more than anyone?" he persuaded, and the 
reference was rather surprising. She loved Mulder? "If you 
care so much about the success and the furtherment of the 
X-Files, then one would think that you would be more 
willing to preserve the physical health of the guru of the 
unexplained." 
Her eyes closed, and she contemplated what this man was 
saying. "What business do you have in the X-Files?" she 
asked, and he blew a cloud of thick, nicotine-saturated 
smoke into her car. 
"Enough to keep my interest," he said, and the car 
screeched to a halt, the gunman tightening his grip on 
Renee. "All we want is the Fargo file, Agent Townsend. 
Give us the file, and we will give Agent Mulder the gift of 
sight." 
She paused for a moment, thinking of Dana Scully's 
shadowed and pained eyes. They were full of secrets untold 
and souls sold, and she thought about the elusive and 
fascinating reports on Fox Mulder. What would she do... 
"I'll deliver the files to the empty USA Today newspaper 
stand on Dakota Street," she said, her voice confidential. 
"Be there at six thirty. Leave the details involving the 
operation in the file's place, and I'll take it to the hospital. 
Anonymously." 
"You will not inform anyone of this conversation, including 
Agent Scully," he said, his tone droll and bored. "We have 
never met." 
She nodded, and she was thrown from the backseat onto 
the lawn of the coroner's office, dazed and afraid. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
The woman that walked through the door into Scully's 
office three hours later was not the same woman who 
walked out. Certainly, they both had that supermodel 
stature, the same bones, the same elegantly curled and 
perfectly tamed red tresses, but this woman was stronger 
and more stoic. "What happened, Agent Townsend?" she 
asked, her voice softer than a whisper. 
"They were shot in the back of the head," she said, her tone 
lifeless. "In front of school children. At the zoo." Her voice 
broke, and rose with tears. "School children, Scully! All of 
those kids, standing there, watching the animals when their 
classmate and her father were shot in the head!" 
Scully flinched when she heard that, and put her face in her 
hands, shocked and disturbed by the calculation involved in 
the murders. "I'm so sorry, Townsend," she offered. "It's 
such a tragedy." 
Raising her lowered eyes, Townsend met Scully's blue eyes 
with emerald-colored ones. "There's more," she said, her 
tone dead serious. "Three men ambushed me in the parking 
garage, and hijacked my car. One stuck a gun to my head. 
The other one, a man in a suit, told me that we were going 
to have a talk about my *career*. He told me that I was 
never going to make it as an X-Files agent, and that I would 
never live up to you or Mulder." Scully began to shake her 
head at this, but Renee shook her own head, stopping the 
protests. "He made me an offer, Scully, one that you need 
to hear." 
Tilting her head at the woman, Scully didn't understand. 
"Excuse me?" 
"A deal. The Fargo files for Mulder's sight," she said, her 
voice low. "He said that if I brought the files to him, then 
an appointment for Mulder to regain his sight would be 
made. A surgical procedure." 
Scully shook her head, and put her hands down on the desk. 
"Mulder lost his sight permanently," she whispered. "The 
technology to repair nerves so severely damaged as 
Mulder's were does not exist. How could one man promise 
to make Mulder see again?" 
Thinking rapidly, remembering that with every moment, 
the time for the papers to be dropped off was approaching. 
"Scully, there's more," she murmured. "This man claimed 
that you loved Mulder. Is that true? I'm not here to judge 
you, nor am I here to persecute you. I just... need to know. 
Do you love him?" 
This last bombardment almost made Scully blanch. She 
instead grew very quiet, and very protective of herself. 
"Yes," she whispered. "I do love him. And he loves me." 
Renee nodded. "Then I made the right decision," she 
exerted. "I agreed to bring the papers to him in exchange 
for Mulder's sight. He will drop off papers that will 
describe his operation in detail, and check Mulder into a 
hospital." 
Scully's head was spinning, and she felt dizzy. "This can't 
be... be true... How could... Renee, this would never work 
out, never at all. Who offered to you this deal?" 
Shrugging with grace, Townsend rapped her fingers against 
the side of the chair. "He never gave me his name... Older 
fellow, low, slimy kind of voice. He dressed in a 
uniform-type business suit. That damn cigarette he had left 
a hole in my skirt, though. My entire car probably reeks of 
Morley's." 
Freezing, Scully leaned into her. "This man 
chain-smoked?" she asked, and Townsend frowned. 
"Yeah, a lot. Why?" she asked, and Scully shook her head. 
"No reason..." she muttered. "Bring him the files. I'm 
making copies. Call the airline and reserve three tickets to 
Salt Lake City under my name, your name, and Mulder's 
name. The Bureau will pay for those due to the fact that it's 
an X-File. Then, make reservations to Fargo with a 
different airline for the three of us using aliases. Pay for 
these tickets with cash. Make sure that the flight time is 
after the flight to Utah." 
Renee took close attention to Scully's rapid-fire orders, and 
picked up the phone. "Great, a holiday," she murmured 
sarcastically. "I'm missing my husband's funeral for this, 
Scully. My family's dead." 
"Townsend, maybe you should transfer..." 
Townsend's reply was abrupt. "No! I have to know why 
Cara and Hugh were killed, Dana. Nothing else matters. 
Nothing. I need to know what they died for, and why I 
didn't die instead," she said, and the innocence and naivete 
was gone from her voice. Eradicated with the news of their 
deaths, a part of Renee Townsend's heart died, too. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
The plane lifted off, and Scully squeezed Mulder's hand 
with reassurance. The transactions had been performed 
with little trouble, and the two agents along with the 
blinded one were headed to Fargo to try to save the truth 
from distortion. Mulder put on headphones, and listened to 
music soon into the flight, and mulled over the news that 
Scully had delivered to him. 
The Fargo files in exchange for his sight... He was intensely 
glad that Renee had come to Scully first with the news 
about her momentary abductors, and agreed with her on the 
part that this man had to be him. The one and only 
Marlboro Man, as he had labelled him from time to time. 
To see again, to feast his eyes upon Scully's perfect face, 
and to work on the X-Files again... It would be fantastic. It 
would be heavenly and divine. 
Thirty minutes into the flight and three-quarters of the way 
through his Verve Pipe CD, Mulder felt a weight fall on his 
chest, and smiled to recognize that weight as Dana Scully's 
fine, red head. She had fallen asleep, and was breathing 
into his leather jacket, inhaling the scent of the well-worn 
leather and the cologne. Her hand slipped naturally and 
instinctively inside the coat, her fingers entwining his lapel. 
He bent down and nuzzled the top of her head with his 
cheek, and put his arms tightly and lovingly around her. 
Watching the two had been a comfort to Townsend, who 
sat across the aisle and was quite taken with the chemistry 
and magic between the two ex-partners. They were 
incredibly in love, and she remembered her days like that 
with her precious Hugh. Hugh, who she had adored and 
worshipped as her own Greek god, and Hugh, who would 
have walked on fire to do anything for her. 
She knew that she had killed him, and that because of her 
damned ambition and her selfishness, she would never be 
able to touch him, to kiss him, to see his perfect, familiar 
face again. And she would spend the rest of her life trying 
to find out why he had died. 
The operation to restore Mulder's sight was scheduled for 
the following Thursday. The instructions were simple-- 
Bring Mulder and Scully to Cisco's Cafe, and leave them 
there. Pick them up in one day. And he would see again. 
Scully and Mulder had been notified of these plans, in spite 
of the cigarette-smoking shmuck's instructions, and were 
prepared for any kind of attack. 
But there was business to be attended to in Fargo at the 
moment, and that was exactly what Renee had to do. Focus 
on work, on nothing but work, for through her work lay the 
path to revenge. 
And revenge is truly a dish best served cold. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
  
SUNLIGHT FADING 
by: Annie Jennings 
(disclaimer in part one) 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
The motel was not as posh as the lodge where Lily 
Whiteside lived, and Scully longed for the intimacy of the 
rustic inn. She also longed to see Lily again, who had been 
such a comfort and such a help when Mulder had been 
dragged in from the snow, blinded and bleeding. Scully still 
had no idea what she would have done without the 
cool-minded Lily there to help with her partner, and wanted 
to have the opportunity to thank Lily in person. 
The two lovers took a room by themselves, while 
Townsend volunteered to sleep alone. Mulder had 
protested initially, but the smooth, sophisticated, and 
almost authoritative tones of the once-giddy, now sobered 
woman had told him that he had damn well hop in bed with 
his ex-partner. Scully had no protests or qualms 
whatsoever. 
The snow in Fargo was still white as rain, and Scully hated 
that she had to drive through the fluffy white snowbanks. 
She personally hated driving through ice or snow, and 
though the scenery had once seemed enchanting and 
inviting, she could only remember the sight of Mulder's 
blood, seeping into the icicles and the snowflakes, as his 
sight vanished. 
There was only one teenager left in the entire suburb of 
Fantasia who had not been implanted with the computer 
chip, and that was Morgan Washington. The house was 
covered in floating, sloping, banks of snow, and Scully 
pulled the car to a halt in the driveway. Reflexively, she 
passed Mulder his cane, and stepped outside to gather close 
to him for warmth. There was something in the air that 
chilled her to the bone. <<Bad memories, Dana, that's all. 
Just some really, really bad memories.>> 
The front door opened, and a tall, slender, sullen-faced girl 
walked out to meet them. Her eyes were lazy-seeming, and 
she was tall and blonde, with sandy hair that fell languidly 
in her face. "Who the hell are you?" she asked, and 
Mulder was startled at the voice he heard. <<This is the 
future of our country?>> 
"My name is Agent Benson, this is Agent Toll, and the 
consultant for this case, former Agent Davis," Townsend 
rolled off in a bored monotone that Mulder could have 
applauded her for. "We're with the FBI. I'm assuming that 
you're Morgan Washington." 
"Yah," she said, and Mulder stifled a grin. Her Midwest 
quaintness contrasted sharply with the degree of nastiness 
in her tones. "I didn't do anything wrong." 
"No, you haven't done anything wrong," Scully assured. 
The wind blew snow in her face, and it clustered around 
her Roman nose and her lips. "We need to ask you a few 
questions pertaining your current condition." 
Standing with a wary expression on her pouty and plain 
face, Morgan turned on her heel and walked into the house. 
"Come in," she called, and the agents followed her, Mulder 
keeping his arm wrapped tightly around Scully as she 
helped him up the steep stone steps. 
The living room felt incredibly warm and comfortable 
compared to the cold air outside. Mulder could feel the 
warmth and the heat on his skin, not only with Scully's 
body draped around his, but with the blazing fires that sent 
heat through the house, the comfort was apparent here. 
"You wanna sit down?" she asked, and he felt Scully's arms 
directing him to a chair. 
"Right here," she murmured, and he kept a hold on her 
hand as she sat next to him. He heard the girl's voice, 
impressed and blunt. 
"Oh, phat, is that dude blind?" she asked, and he felt 
Scully's hand squeezing his tighter. He knew that she 
wanted him to be calm, not to do anything stupid. 
"No, I'm just trying to sell cheap pencils," he snapped, and 
Scully pinched his palm with warning. "Yes, I'm blind." 
<<What kind of idiot question it that?>> 
"Cool... So, like what do you want with me?" she asked, 
and from the origin of her voice, Mulder deduced that she 
was seated across from him. 
"We need to ask you a few questions about your health, 
Morgan," Townsend purred. "Is your mother home?" 
"My parents are here," she said, and screamed at the tops of 
her lungs. "MOM! DAD! THE FBI IS HERE!" He heard 
thundering footsteps, implying that the girl had left the 
room. 
Mulder groaned inwardly, and leaned to whisper in his 
supportive lover's ear. "Great, now I'll be deaf as well as 
blind," he lamented, and Scully tilted her head, breezing by 
his face with the sides of her hair. 
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice not matching her 
words. "Poor baby." 
"Kiss me and make me all better?" 
Her middle finger replied when Scully could not, and 
Townsend chortled. "Watch it, Mulder, she's getting frisky 
and making obscene gestures involving her hands," she 
described, and Scully turned the finger to her lovely 
partner. "Why, Dana, I never knew you cared." 
The sounds of footsteps approaching shushed the agents, 
and Mulder sat up with perfect posture. Scully saw that 
these parents were very intelligent, very kind-looking, and 
perfectly normal. "What's wrong with our daughter?" Mrs. 
Washington demanded. 
"Mrs. Washington, nothing is wrong with your daughter," 
Mulder assured. "We want to make sure that nothing does 
happen to your daughter, and we want to know why she's 
the only girl in Fantasia who has not been taken from her 
home." 
"We don't know," Mr. Washington said, his voice 
concerned. "We're just grateful to God that our baby girl is 
still alive, and we want to make sure that she stays that 
way. Is there anything horribly wrong with being a worried 
parent?" 
Scully's cool, calm, and soothing voice overrode the 
agitation in Mr. Washington's tone. "There is no question as 
to your genuine concern for Morgan, sir," she promised. 
"Agent Davis is just asking about how Morgan has been 
able to stay out of the target zone for these attacks." 
The interview lasted for an hour, with Townsend and 
Scully directing most of the questions and Mulder leaning 
back, thinking and comprehending. "Agent Toll, what do 
you think?" Mrs. Washington asked. "Why... Why is 
Morgan still here?" 
Mulder finally intervened. "Has Morgan ever been to a 
gynecologist?" he asked, and Mrs. Washington was startled. 
"Yes..." 
Scully and Townsend watched as Mulder leaned forward, 
keeping his status laid-back and low, and Scully watched in 
admiration as Mulder did what he did best. He was still 
brilliant; the genius of the Bureau. "Is Morgan sexually 
active?" he then asked, and Mrs. Washington shook her 
head. 
"No, she's a virgin still," she responded. 
"It's rather unusual for someone as young as Morgan to go 
to a gynecologist if she has never engaged in sexual 
intercourse, isn't it, Mrs. Washington?" Mulder continued, 
and the mother shook her head. 
"Morgan needed to go. She had problems with her 
menstrual flow. She still has not had her first period," she 
said, and Scully's eyebrows shot to the top of her brow. 
"That's certainly rather unusual, isn't it?" she asked, and Mr. 
Washington looked suitably uncomfortable when 
discussing his little princess's menstrual flow, or lack 
thereof. 
"Morgan has no uterus," she finally said. Mulder leaned 
forward. 
"Has there ever been a time when your daughter was 
missing for a period of time?" he questioned, and Mrs. 
Washington nodded, slowly. 
"When she was three years old, just a baby, she was 
missing for three weeks," she confessed. "No one knows 
about it. She was gone, and she came back. With this weird 
chip in her neck." 
"And you never told Morgan about this?" he asked, and 
Mrs. Whiteside shook her head, a little ashamed. 
"No, we agreed that it could prove to be psychologically 
damaging," she admitted, and Mulder stood up, shaking her 
hand. 
"Thank you," he said, and grabbed his cane, finding his way 
to the door as Scully stared at him, astonished as usual. He 
always managed to shock her completely with his 
deductive skills. Spooky Mulder. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Sitting in the motel with her legs crossed, Townsend was 
getting irritated as hell with Mulder's paranoia, and she 
could tell that Scully had had just enough of it as well. 
"Mulder, for Christ's sake, why would the government 
select innocent American citizens for tests when it could 
use foreign military prisoners for the same ideals?" she 
asked, and the blind man ran a hand through his feathery 
hair. 
"Because there is a military agreement stating that 
prisoners of war cannot be misused or abused," he 
explained, "and the tests would bring smaller suspicion on 
the government." 
"This is ridiculous and paranoid," she argued. "I don't know 
what you have in mind here, Mulder, but I'm tired of this 
shit. Tell us what your fucking ideals are, and then we'll 
listen." 
He cocked his head in Scully's direction, and she sighed. 
"Sorry, Mulder, but I'm in with Townsend on this one," she 
said, and she didn't sound sorry in the least. "We need to 
know what your theory on this one is." 
Sighing, Mulder folded his long legs up on the bed. "The 
women are all barren, correct?" he asked, and Townsend 
nodded. "It's all a part of hyper-ovulation. The government 
needs human female ova for the formula for hybridization." 
"Clones," Townsend stated, disbelief in her voice. 
"Clones." 
"Yes. The question here is this: are these clones human 
hybrids, or alien ones?" he posed, and the two women 
stared at him, though he was oblivious to their looks of 
absolute incredulity. 
<<He's insane. He's lost it. Jesus, I can't believe that the 
most brilliant profiler in Bureau history is literally, 
classically, insane. How can Scully sleep with this 
loony?>> 
Scully closed her eyes, and popped a migraine pill from her 
bottle. <<Oh, God, I can't believe that he's doing this at this 
moment in my life. Thank you, God, for listening to those 
prayers that I've been sending you. I really do owe you 
one.>> 
Mulder knew that they didn't believe him, and so he closed 
his eyes. "Go to bed, Townsend," he ordered, and took off 
his sunglasses, revealing his dead eyes to the pretty young 
woman. She took the sight in as a rarity, and looked at 
them with interest. They were extraordinarily beautiful, 
heavily lashed, mysterious, and hooded with shadows. But 
the brilliant hazel color was detracted from by the lack of 
light in them. They were blind to the world, and oblivious 
to all. 
"Yeah," she muttered, and stumbled into her room and back 
into bed. 
Left alone with her ex-partner, Scully looked in his 
direction. "There is one thing that you have never had in 
abundance, Mulder, and that one thing is tact," she said, 
and he smiled in an unappreciated attempt to make peace. 
"Yes, but I compensate in charm, don't I?" he asked, and 
Scully sat down, her eyes on him and serious. 
"I don't agree with your theory, Mulder, to a degree," she 
said, slowly, as to now hurt him, though she did anyway. 
"The prospect that the government would abduct innocent 
women and harvest their ova just to create clones for a 
purpose of which we have no idea is preposterous and 
offensive to the United States of America. We have no 
evidence that this is true." 
To hear that coming from her was ironic pain. He kept 
thinking back to the infertility clinic and the identical Kurts 
that were walking around. The men in the tanks of fluid, all 
alike, all living. The drawers full of ova, and the one silver 
drawer imprinted with Dana Scully's name. "These women 
are your mothers..." The phrase echoed in his mind, and he 
spoke again, hushed. 
"Scully, they did this to you as well," he murmured, and 
Scully looked up, sharply. 
"Excuse me?" she asked, and Mulder put his sunglasses 
back on, running his hands through his hair in 
now-unnerved fashion. 
"When they abducted you, Scully, they left you with brain 
cancer and barrenness," he revealed, and she shook her 
head. 
"I don't understand, how do you know this?" she asked. The 
guilty look on his face was enough, and she closed her 
eyes. "Oh, my God, Mulder, why didn't you tell me this 
earlier, for God's sake? Why did you keep this hidden? 
Why didn't you tell me?" 
The rapid-fire questions were shot out with such mental 
anguish that her soft cries were like screams in Mulder's 
ears. "Because I didn't know for certain, Scully," he 
admitted. "I know now." 
She would never have children... No more Scullys to 
continue from another daughter. The Scully women were 
through. Melissa, dead. Dana, barren and soon to be dead. 
The words hurt her greatly, and she thought of the impact 
that they left on the short fragment of her life. She was 
through, through, through. 
Mulder did not need to see the hurt and confusion on her 
face to know that she was upset. It was the only reaction 
that a woman like Scully could have, and he opened his 
arms to her. Seeking any kind of acceptance and refuge that 
she could find, Scully crawled into his lap, allowing him to 
hold her and comfort her with strong arms and small kisses. 
"I'll never be a mother, Mulder," she whispered. "That 
dream, too... Gone." 
"I'm sorry, Dana," he whispered back, and she bit back 
tears. She had cried too often in the past three weeks, and 
she felt as though she couldn't cry anymore. "I'm sorry that I 
never told you. I should have told you. I didn't want to 
believe any of it. Funny, right? Fox Mulder, not wanting to 
believe. But I kept walking on, thinking and wondering 
from time to time, and then knowing when we started the 
Fargo case. There's no other explanation." 
He told her of the red-headed men in the clinic, and of the 
tanks full of other Kurts waiting to be born, and of the 
cabinets full of ova that was from the other women 
abducted. "You do have children, Scully," he said, as 
though this was of some comfort to her. "They are out 
there, and they love you, even though they never have met 
you. They're trying to save you. They're trying to save their 
mothers." 
Now, she was crying. Sons, red-haired sons, and she had 
met only one of them, of which could have been hers. 
"Children?" she asked, and the tears welled up from her 
eyes and rolled languidly down her face. He felt them fall 
onto his neck, and he used his thumbs to wipe them from 
her cheekbones. "I have children..." 
"Yes," he promised, and she gave a small, faltering smile. 
"You do have children." He rubbed her shoulder, 
encouragingly, and she kissed his cheek, lining his entire 
face with the imprints of her lips. 
"Then maybe there is hope," she said, and he touched her 
mouth with his in a kiss so passionate that she surrendered, 
hope filled with love and life. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Nightmares raced through Renee's mind... Nightmares of 
being locked in a large, white room, with her arms and legs 
tied to a gurney. She tried to scream, and her vocal chords 
vibrated without making a sound. The screams were empty 
threats in a silent sky, and she felt the pain take her body 
again. She was just a little girl... Just a little girl... 
How old was she now? Six? Seven? She didn't remember 
getting presents from Mommy or from Daddy. She didn't 
remember how many candles were on the cake this year, or 
even if there was a cake. She had forgotten how old she 
was. But she knew that she was too little to be hurt like 
this. 
There was the teenager again. She came around to the 
littler girls, and held their hands, and told them that the 
tests would be over soon. They just had to be patient and 
wait. "Shhh..." she promised. "The doctors won't come back 
for a while, and then you'll go home to see your parents. No 
one here will hurt you for a long time, little Renee." 
Renee smiled for her, and held the dark-haired girl's slender 
hand with more bravado and courage. She had such pretty 
hands, delicate, slender, tapering fingers, but strong at the 
same time. The girl was so pretty, with dark, dark curls, 
and bright, intelligent hazel eyes. 
"'Kay, Samantha," Renee promised dreamily, before the 
darkness and the pain swallowed her back up again. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
  
SUNLIGHT FADING  12/12 
by: Annie Jennings 
(disclaimer in part one) 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
He awoke the sounds of his door being broken, and the 
sounds of the crashing and the thrashing of someone 
struggling to get in. "Dana," he whispered, but the still, 
unclothed woman with her arms wrapped tightly around 
him did not wake up. "Dana." 
The door burst open, and Mulder's eyes darted around 
nervously. Oh, he wished for his sight, he wished so hard 
for his sight... But the voice was familiar, and he 
recognized it well. 
"Hello, Mulder," Alex Krycek said calmly. "Long time, no 
see... Oh, that was a little mean, now, wasn't it?" 
Cringing at the information that Krycek knew about 
Mulder's blindness, he put his arms tightly around Scully's 
bare shoulders in a protective stance. In response, the 
deeply sleeping woman smiled and hugged him tighter, and 
purred deep in her throat as she draped her leg over his 
knee. Krycek smiled at this, and aimed the weapon at 
Mulder's throat. 
"So, how's the little woman?" he said, venom in his voice. 
"Tell me, Mulder... Is she good?" 
"Leave her out of this," Mulder said hoarsely. "This is 
between you and me, Krycek. Leave Scully alone." 
Finally, she stirred, and woke with the sensation that 
Mulder was tense and drawn. "Fox..." she murmured, and 
opened her eyes to see Alex Krycek smiling licentiously at 
her barely-covered body. "Jesus!" 
"Not quite, Scully, but I thank you on behalf," he said. 
"Nice scene that I find for me, huh? A blind man and a 
whore. Not too surprising." 
She reached under the covers and picked up her gun. "Get 
out of this room, and get out of Fargo," she said. "You 
mother-fucking son of a bitch, you did this to Mulder, and 
I'm going to make you pay for it. By the time I'm through 
with you, you'll never see the light of day." 
"Just how you like 'em, huh, Dana?" he sneered. 
"Completely without sight? What, is blindness kinky or 
something?" 
At the same moment that Mulder realized that she had a 
gun under the blankets and that Dana was ready to fire, the 
adjoining door between Renee Townsend's room and 
Mulder and Scully's room flew open, with an armed and 
wild-eyed Townsend who quickly grabbed Krycek, poising 
the gun at his temple. "One word, motherfucker, and I pull 
the trigger and redecorate this room with your brains," she 
threatened, and Mulder smiled at the steel in her voice. 
"Hear me?" 
Krycek did not utter one word. 
"I know how hard this will be to comprehend, dickhead, 
but you're going to follow *my* instructions and my 
orders," she continued, poking the barrel of the gun harder 
into Krycek's temple. "First thing is to give me the gun, 
okay?" 
He resisted, but started to hand her the gun before kicking 
her and rolling away. Renee cried out, and fell to the floor, 
clutching her knee. Scully grabbed a terry-cloth robe from 
the chair and threw it on, covering her nude body as she, 
too, entered the fray, leaving a dazed Mulder in the bed. 
Scully aimed the gun at Krycek's head, and Krycek 
hurriedly aimed his weapon at hers. "Drop the gun, 
Krycek!" she yelled, and Mulder felt desperation at the 
sounds of her panicked cry. 
"Scully!" he called, and she had no time or space for 
distraction. 
"Drop the fucking gun!" she repeated, and he refused. 
Mulder scampered around, yanking on his boxer shorts, and 
jumped out of bed. He put his now-sensitive hands to the 
floor, feeling around while being unnoticed by the others in 
the room. He felt the weapon lost by Townsend, and picked 
it up, his eyes darting about. 
"Drop the gun, Krycek!" he ordered, and his strong, bold 
voice rumbled through the room. Townsend took time out 
to notice him, and called out to him. 
"Turn the gun to the right, Mulder!" she directed. "Turn it 
further, a little higher..." Following the cautious and 
quickly given directions from her, Mulder had the gun 
aimed perfectly at Krycek's head. Krycek turned around 
quickly, and his eyes widened to see Mulder standing there, 
his blind eyes tilted above the target, but his weapon 
sharply on the spot. 
"Give it up," Scully ordered, proud and exhilerated at the 
attention her lover commanded. "It's over, Krycek. It's 
over." 
Darting his eyes in Mulder's direction, Krycek ducked as 
the two fired their weapons at the traitor's head, and he ran 
out the door, into the cold night. "Shit!" Scully exerted, and 
she led the chase outside, Townsend grabbing Mulder's arm 
and dragging him behind her. "Mulder, run!" 
Outside, there was the screech of a car's wheels as the cold 
air blew on Mulder's half-naked body, and Scully felt 
frozen solid in the scanty robe that she wore. Then, just 
before Townsend could call out her inquiries as to Krycek's 
whereabouts, there was a searing flash of light, and Mulder 
and Scully ducked to the sounds of Renee's screams. 
Seconds later, the screams were gone, and Mulder was left 
crawling, lost, in the snow, inches from where Scully 
shivered in her robe. "Mulder?" she asked, and she covered 
his bare body with her terry-clad one. "Jesus, what the hell 
was that?" 
"What was it, Scully?" he asked, his teeth chattering. 
"It was... a flash of light," she said, her voice detached and 
unsure. "I think it was, at least... I don't know. Renee? 
Townsend? Townsend!" 
She looked around, still crouched in the parking lot, but 
Renee Townsend was nowhere to be found. "She's gone," 
Scully breathed. "Mulder, she just disappeared!" 
But there came a rustling from the snow, and Scully looked 
up in time to see a thinly-clothed, dazed, and bleeding 
woman emerge from a snow drift, as though she were a 
living, breathing snow angel. "Hello?" she called, and her 
voice was ragged, confused, and she was shivering. "Is 
anyone here? Hello...?" 
Scully watched, bewildered, as the woman approached 
Dana. Standing, keeping her arms tightly wound around 
Mulder, she looked at the brunette with alarmed hazel eyes 
who stood before her. "Where did you come from?" she 
asked, and the woman shook her head, snow falling like 
glitter from her long, auburn hair. 
"I came from somewhere," she murmured, her tones 
confused. "I don't know where I came from. Where am I 
now?" 
"You're in Fargo, North Dakota," Scully informed her, and 
Mulder coughed. Jesus, he could catch pneumonia like this. 
So could Scully and this mystery woman. "Come inside 
with me. My name is Agent Dana Scully. I'm with the FBI." 
Keeping her eyes on Mulder, who was flinching against the 
bombardment of snowflakes on his face, the attractive 
woman crossed her arms over her chest. "Samantha 
Mulder," she called, and Mulder passed out. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Scully shifted her weight, uncomfortably, in the small 
waiting room in Georgetown Medical Center. She was 
nervous and anxious over the return of Mulder, and she 
wanted nothing more than to storm into the operating room 
and demand to see him. 
Three weeks had gone by since the death of Renee 
Townsend, and Scully was still grappling with the 
aftermath of her passing. Townsend's body, bleeding, 
broken, and bruised, had been found in a ditch three days 
after she had vanished. Scully was baffled as to what had 
happened to her, and Mulder had found out why she was 
dead. It turned out that when Renee was four years old, she 
was missing for three years. No explanation, nothing. She 
had been buried and declared dead after eight months of 
fruitless searches, and then she was put in her parent's bed 
one night, safe, sound, and sleeping. From the ages of 
seven to fourteen, she would disappear for weeks at a time, 
and once for another year. She had a computer chip in her 
neck as well. 
The missing ten years of Renee Townsend's life had been 
spent in the same facility with Samantha Mulder. 
This was the one and only Samantha, with her dark, 
cascading curls, and her green-brown eyes so similar to her 
older brother's. She had been captive for twenty-five years, 
and was now back to her brother's. The siblings were 
shocked to know each other, and Sam had been 
heartbroken to discover the life that her brother led. "Oh, 
Fox, you should have moved on without me," she 
whispered to her blind sibling. "That's what I would have 
wanted for you." 
The tears that had been shed from Mulder's eyes had made 
Scully near crying herself. 
Seven of the girls were missing still, but Morgan 
Washington remained untouched. Her friends suffered 
nightmares, and medical emergencies, and most of them 
were in the hospital with cancer that couldn't be treated. 
Morgan was left to be the survivor, and pick the pieces 
when they would die. 
Before Mulder, Samantha, and Scully left Fargo for good, 
Lily Whiteside paid them a last visit. She had brought 
something for Mulder with her. It was her autographed 
picture of John Lennon, and she handed it to him with 
some regrets. "I really loved that shot, Mulder, but he was a 
big help for me when I went through Helen's illness. I kept 
thinking of that song, you know the one. 'Imagine'. It's such 
a breathtaking song, don't you think?" 
And Mulder kept the picture by his bedside, waiting for the 
day when he could see it. He had been in the hospital for a 
week now, waiting for the doctors to take the bandages off. 
But now Scully was left in the hospital, waiting for the 
results of Mulder's surgery. Would he see? Would he know 
her face with the same familiarity that she knew his? She 
could only hope so, and pray that Renee's dying act was not 
a farce, or a lie. She couldn't stand to think that she had 
died in vain, and that the end results would only end up in 
betrayal and deceit. 
Samantha sat next to Scully, her eyes full of worry and 
concern. "How much longer will they keep us here?" she 
muttered, and Scully patted Sam's hand. 
"It won't be much longer," she promised Mulder's 
dark-eyed sister. "I promise." 
She gave a smile that was tight and rarely used, so like 
Mulder himself. "You've been such a godsend, Dana, to 
him," she whispered. "Without you, I don't know how Fox 
would have turned out. He certainly wouldn't be anywhere 
near the man he is today. He's happy with you, really, truly 
happy. I thank you so much for that." 
Impulsively, Scully reached over and hugged Sam, and a 
surgeon entered the waiting room. His eyes were wild, and 
he was in disbelief. "Agent Scully?" he asked, and both 
women stood up, Scully stepping forward. 
"How is he?" she asked, getting to the point. "Can he see?" 
"We're going to remove the bandages," he said. "It's 
incredible... the surgery was so advanced. His vision was so 
badly damaged, but the lasers used were timed perfectly. I 
believe that he'll be all right. He requested to see you 
immediately, ma'am." 
As though in a dream, Dana followed the doctor down the 
halls, her pumps clicking on the floor faster and faster as 
she approached his room. He sat in bed, eyes covered in 
gauze, and an eager look on his face. "It's me," she 
breathed, and he smiled at her. 
"I want to see you first, Dana," he promised. "You and only 
you." 
The nurse stepped forward, and unwound the bandages, 
layer by layer of white surgical gauze falling from his head. 
The cloth fell onto his lap, and she walked closer, waiting 
as Mulder opened his eyes up. 
Foggy at first, shapes moving, and he caught the red in her 
hair. He focused on that, blinking, and then he smiled, 
broadly, his eyes crinkling in the wideness and the joy of 
the smile. He knew her, he saw her, the anxious and loving 
look in her blue eyes, and he met her eyes. "I can see you, 
Scully," he whispered, and she broke into tears, hugging 
him with all of her strength and all of her love. "I can see 
you!" 
She laughed then, her laughter bringing smiles to the faces 
of the doctors and the nurses, as well as bringing tears to 
Samantha Mulder's eyes. Her brother had grown up. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
"Imagine there's no heaven 
  It's easy if you try 
  No hell below us 
  Above us only sky 
"Imagine all the people 
  Living for today 
"Imagine there's no countries 
  It isn't hard to do 
  Nothing to kill or die for 
  And no religion, too 
"Imagine all the people 
  Living life in peace 
"You may say I'm a dreamer 
  But I'm not the only one 
  I hope someday you'll join us 
  And the world will live as one 
"Imagine no possessions 
  I wonder if you can 
  No need for greed or hunger 
  A brotherhood of man 
"Imagine all the people 
  Sharing all the world 
"You may say I'm a dreamer 
  But I'm not the only one 
  I hope someday you'll join us 
  And the world will live as one..." 
--John Lennon 
"Imagine", Imagine, 1971 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
Lights laid low, and the music that once sustained Mulder 
and now lived with him playing, Mulder caressed Scully's 
cheek with his gentle touch. Her eyes were lit up with 
beauty and love in them, and she kissed his eyelids. "You're 
so much to me, Mulder," she whispered. "You mean so 
much to me." 
"When I lost my sight, all I wanted to see was your eyes, 
and the love in them for me," he whispered in her ear, and 
he luxuriated in the brilliant red of her hair. "That was all 
that I wanted to see, Mulder." 
"Oh, Mulder, you didn't have to wait to see that," she 
murmured back, her eyes closed as she felt the sensuality of 
his touch and his kisses in the back of her hair. "The love 
was always there, from Day One to now." 
As he kissed her neck, and moved his hands down the 
length of her svelte body, she bent her head to kiss his 
collarbone, and felt the blood spurt from her nostril onto 
his bare skin. "Oh," she breathed, and sat up, her hand 
flying to her nose. 
He saw the blood on her upper lip, and she was 
embarrassed. Her eyes could not bear to meet his, and she 
looked around, anywhere but those bright hazel orbs. 
Anywhere else. Just as Mulder reached to wipe the blood 
away with a tissue, she was struck by the stabbing pain in 
her head. Another migraine was coming on; a bad one. She 
felt nauseous already, and Mulder knew from the grimace 
on her face that she was in serious pain. "Dana," he 
whispered, and she shook her head. 
"It's all right," she croaked. "Just a headache. I need to go to 
bed." But before she could stand up, Mulder had swept her 
up in his arms, and she shook her head, protesting. 
"Mulder..." 
"No," he gently denied, looking with pain and love at the 
blood on her face. It hurt him as much as it hurt her. "You 
spent the last weeks taking care of me. Now, let me take 
care of you. Because it's always going to be you and me." 
She knew that he needed this more than she did, and put 
her arms behind his neck, allowing Mulder to carry her into 
her bedroom, draped in his arms. "I love you so much," she 
murmured, and he nodded. 
"I know," he promised. "And I love you." 
He put her in bed, and pulled the sheets over her slender 
body, watching as she turned on her side, pain racing 
through her head with the energy and persistence of a train. 
Lying down next to her, he stroked her hair with 
tenderness, and he kissed her to sleep. 
************************************************* 
************************************************* 
  
"You're the bravest of hearts 
  You're the strongest of souls 
  You're my light in the dark 
  You're the place I call home 
    You can say it's all right 
    But I know that you're breaking up inside 
  I can see it in your eyes 
  Even you face the night 
  Afraid and alone 
  That's why I will be there 
"When the storm rises up 
  When the shadows descend 
  Every beat of my heart 
  Everyday without end 
  Every second I live 
  That's the promise I make 
  Baby, that's what I'll give 
  If that's what it takes 
  If that's what it takes 
"You can sleep in my arms 
  You don't have to explain 
  When your heart's crying out 
  Baby, whisper my name 
  Cause I've reached out for you 
  When the thunder is crashing up above 
  You've given me your love 
  When you smile like the sun 
  That shines through the pain 
  That's why I'll be there 
"When the storm rises up 
  When the shadows descend 
  Every beat of my heart 
  Every day without end 
  I will stand like a rock 
  I will bend till I break 
  Till there's no more to give 
  If that's what it takes 
  I will risk everything 
  I will fight, I will bleed 
  I will lay down my life 
  If that's what you need 
  Every second I live 
  That's the promise I make 
  Baby, that's what I'll give 
  If that's what it takes 
  If that's what it takes 
"Through the wind and the rain 
  Through the smoke and the fire 
  When the fear rises up 
  When the wave's ever higher 
  I will down my heart 
  My body, my soul 
  I will hold on all night 
  And never let go 
  Every second I live 
  That's the promise I make 
  Baby, that's what I give 
  If that's what it takes 
  If that's what it takes 
"If that's what it takes 
  Every day 
  If that's what it takes 
  Every day..." 
--Celine Dion 
"If That's What It Takes", Falling Into You, 1996 
*********************************************** 
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THE END