Keywords: None XxXxXxXxXxXxX Chapter Twelve XxXxXxXxXxXxX Mulder stalked the basement halls of Sanctuary House with Sheriff Seaver on his heels. Their flashlight beams crossed as they walked. "Explain to me again what the heck we're doing back here?" the Sheriff asked. "We're looking for evidence." "Evidence of what?" "Alien activity," Mulder said as he entered the room that had contained Rentham's files. The Sheriff stopped in the door. "You expect to find a UFO parked out back, Agent Mulder? Or how's about ET hiding in the closet?" Mulder barely listened. The jokes he'd heard before. He opened one empty file cabinet after another, slamming them shut again when he saw there was nothing inside. The Sheriff leaned against the doorjamb. "Only aliens we got around these parts are the wetbacks. You want to chase them, be my guest, but Jared Rentham was as white as they come." Mulder pushed past him back into the hall. He went to the next room, the one that had been Rentham's personal quarters. There was a bed, a dresser, a desk, and not much else. Mulder rifled through the drawers as the Sheriff looked on. "I'm beginning to think you're crazier than he was." "He wasn't crazy," Mulder said without halting his search. "He was a hybrid." "A what?" "Half human, half alien." "Pshaw. That's bullshit. Jared Rentham was a pissant little faggot who thought he saw lights in the sky. Chet Appleby did the world a favor when he shot him in the head." Mulder did not answer. He started feeling his way across the wall, looking for loose bricks. Plaster crumbled under his nimble fingers. "I repeat," said the Sheriff, "I don't know what you're really expecting to find here. No one has seen hide nor hair of Rentham since his body went missing from the morgue." "Medical records," Mulder said, pushing on another loose brick. "If he was conducting tests on these people, there would be evidence of it somewhere." "What tests?" The brick came out, and Mulder stuck his hand through the dark opening. His fingers brushed against what felt like a short stack of folders. He dragged them out. "What the hell is that?" the Sheriff demanded, coming into the room at last. The top one was the file Mulder really wanted: Miriam Rentham, his dead wife. Underneath, there were records on all the women who had lived at Sanctuary House. "You sonofabitch," Mulder whispered. "These people weren't your rapturous followers. They were your lab rats." XxXxX They used a stark conference room instead of Clark's homey office. He sat at the head of the long table, legal pad in front of him, while Scully sat to his right in a swiveling chair. The blinds were mostly drawn over the large windows to prevent the late afternoon sun from blinding her, but Scully felt the glare all the same. Clark was prepping her for questions that Nora Bellamy might ask. "And that's when you called 911 from your cellular phone, is that right?" "Yes," she said, fighting the urge to rub her head. They had been at this for three hours. "What happened next?" She took a breath. "Two officers arrived about five minutes after I made the call. One stayed with me while the other entered the wooded area in pursuit of my attacker." "Whom he never found, is that correct?" "No one was arrested that night, no." "You participated in a police lineup some days afterward, did you not? A group that included my client?" "Yes." "And did you identify him as your assailant?" "No." "Why is that?" Scully paused. "I never saw his face. The night I was attacked, I mean. He wore a mask." "Your assailant wore a mask the whole time?" "Yes." "Ms. Scully, why didn't you tell the 911 operator you'd been raped?" Her mouth went dry and she clutched the arms of her chair. "What?" "When you called you made no assertion that you'd been raped. Why is that?" "He held a knife to my throat, pinned me down and raped me. All three are covered under the definition of 'assault.'" Her words became more clipped as she continued. "I didn't mention the knife either, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen." "Hey, easy." He leaned toward her. "I'm still on your side here." "I know." She forced the word out: "Sorry." "Yeah," he acknowledged softly. He drummed his pen on the pad. "It's getting late, and we've been shut in here for ages. Why don't we stop for now?" Her heart sank at the words "for now." "You mean there's more?" "Fraid so. Bellamy's tough. We need to be ready for her." He started gathering his papers. "But we're done for the day. You're doing great so far, Dana." "Yeah," she said, lifting her fingers from the chair and letting them fall again. "Great." "No, I mean it. I wish all my witnesses were as collected and articulate as you." "I've testified before," she replied. He looked at her. "Not like this." "No." She looked at her lap. "I suppose not." He reached over and squeezed her hand. "You're going to do just fine." Scully relaxed back in her seat, exhaling away some of the tension of the past few hours. "I will just be relieved when it's over." "On that point, we agree." He smiled and they both rose. "Are you headed out now? Do you time for a drink or maybe a bite to eat? Somehow I missed lunch today." "I--" Mulder's apartment was only a few miles away. She could feel it radiating out to her like a homing signal. She imagined him drawing her in with a smile, imagined sitting with him on his low flat sofa as they talked about plants that lived to be a thousand years old and whether leprechauns brought good luck or bad. "I'd love to," she said to Chris. "But I have somewhere I have to be." XxX Scully knocked and bit her lip while she waited. No footfalls came from the other side. She rapped again and then used her key to enter. His apartment was warm and stale, no windows open and the A/C had been off for quite some time. The fish tank burbled in one corner but otherwise the room stood still. Scully walked in slowly, stopping to touch his wall, his coat rack, his smooth dining room table. The Washington Post spread out in front of the couch was dated three days ago. His leather couch heaved a sigh as she sat down. She stroked the scratchy Indian blanket and wondered where he'd gone. There had been no excited late night phone call this time, no slideshow of desiccated corpses or lights in the sky. She did not know whether to be dejected or relieved. Her stomach rumbled. Scully leaned way back against the couch and stared at the cracks in Mulder's ceiling. If she were lucky, he would have a Hot Pocket frozen to the floor of his freezer. She dug out her phone. "Hi, Chris?" she said a moment later. "It's Dana Scully. Are you still interested in that drink?" XxX They took thick gourmet sandwiches and a bottle of cheap wine to his greenhouse, where they ate sitting on over-turned crates with their bounty spread out on a towel in front of them. "You're sure this is okay?" he asked as he poured more wine into plastic cups. "We could always go somewhere more respectable." "This is fine." She looked around at the shoots and stalks, the hanging flowered vines, and the baby green leaves now at eye-level. "Are these the same ones we planted last time?" she asked with surprise. "Yeah, can you believe it? They change a lot in a few short weeks." He smiled and reached out to touch his glass to hers. "To growth." "To growth," she agreed. After a sip or two of wine, she asked, "So is this a working visit, or are we just here to admire the scenery?" "Depends." He gave her a lecherous grin. "On?" "If you feel like getting dirty." Scully felt her face warm. "Just what did you have in mind?" "Those gladioli by the door need to be repotted. Really, they needed it two weeks ago, but I haven't had much of a chance to get down here lately." He kept his words light, but Scully noticed for the first time the tired lines around his eyes. The weight of the case wore so heavily on her, she sometimes forgot it was not hers alone. "We shouldn't keep them waiting, then," she said, taking a final swig of wine. Dusting the crumbs off her pants, she began rolling up her sleeves. "You'd better lead. They'll scream if they see it's just me coming at them." Chris laughed and stood also. "Plant horror movies? 'It Came From the FBI!'" "Yes, well, Mulder and I nearly got eaten by a plant last year. These days I look at even my mother's geraniums with new suspicion." He handed her terracotta pot. "You're joking." "About the geraniums? Yes. About the other? Sadly not. Here's a tip: if you ever visit North Carolina, don't order anything with mushrooms." He laughed and asked her more about it, and over dirt and flowers she told him about some of their colorful cases. Chris put big band music on the radio, Sinatra belting out the occasional tune as they talked and worked. Scully's tension drained away with each clump of dirt she packed into the pots. She left her fingerprints in the dirt and fluffed up the leaves. Chris shared some of his trial stories and told her more about growing up with a southern lawyer father. "Instead of grace, he used to give opening arguments at dinner: why the turkey should be spared." Scully smiled at the right places and focused on the plants. She let his chatter fill her up like tiny bubbles. "All of Me" came on the radio, and Chris brushed the soil off his hands. "I love this song," he said. "We must dance." "I'm covered in dirt." "So am I," he said, taking her hands. "Who cares?" Rigid and self-conscious, Scully let him twirl her around in the narrow aisle. He hummed along with the song and pulled her to him again. His hand was warm at her waist. Scully gamely followed as he led them past a hibiscus plant. He kept smiling and humming and pretty soon she had no choice but to smile too. "I don't know that anyone has told you this," she said, "but you are a just little bit crazy." He grinned and dipped her. "Ever seen the movie?" he asked. "All of Me?" "No." "Oh, you should. It's quite funny. Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin trapped in one body." The song changed then, to an instrumental version of "Strangers in the Night." Chris slowed. "I feel that way sometimes. Like two people trapped in one body." "How do you mean?" He gave a half shrug. "I love what I do. I wouldn't trade it for the world. But in some ways, this is never how I pictured my life would turn out -- forty years old and still living alone in an apartment. By the time he was my age, my dad had a wife, two kids and a mortgage. Me? I have a cat and an excellent deal on renter's insurance." "You have a cat?" "Rusty. He probably weighs as much as you do. I have to work sixty hours a week just to keep him in Kibble." She smiled. "I hope he's properly appreciative." "No, he still feels entitled to play hockey off my bedroom door with his toys every morning. Despite intensive training, he has yet to grasp the concept of 'Saturday.'" "Probably a lost cause by this point," she agreed, and he squeezed her hand. He was staring down at her, and she felt her ears warm. "What?" she asked. He said nothing for a moment, still swaying them gently back and forth, and then he shook his head. "You know, it's probably not my place to say this, but Mulder is a fool." Her chest tightened. "Excuse me?" "Not to want to see you tonight." When she said nothing, he continued, "I mean, I assume that's the reason for my good fortune here, right?" "Mulder's away." "Oh, on a case?" She had no answer. Scully stopped dancing, and Chris sighed. "I'm sorry. Forget I said anything," he said. She tucked her hair behind her ear. "No, it's okay," she replied, when it obviously wasn't. Chris leaned against the closest table. "When I was in college, my girlfriend was raped." She looked at him, and he nodded. "Yeah. Sherry. It was finals week, and she wanted to go to this party, but I had a history exam in the morning. I said go without me. This guy we both sort of knew, Rob, he brought her drinks and hit on her. Sherry said no. When she went outside for a smoke, he followed her out there and raped her." "What happened?" "Sherry told me and I went and beat the shit out of him." He shrugged. "She never reported it. I begged her to, but she said no. We broke up after that. Sherry, well... she had a hard time, and I'm ashamed to say I didn't handle the whole thing very well. I dumped her right before Spring Break." Scully wrapped her arms around herself. "So this is what? Penance?" "No." He stood. "No, never that." "Then what?" "I just wanted to say I have some idea what it's like, and if Mulder is being a dick right now, it's certainly not your fault." She shook her head. "You don't understand." He hesitated and then held up his hands. "No, you're right. You're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have butted my nose in where it doesn't belong. Forgive me?" She nodded, mute. They stood there awkwardly for another minute, and then she drew a deep breath. "I think you should take me home." "Yeah," he said quietly. She hung back, stroking one velvety leaf while he gathered up their picnic in silence. Neither of them said much in the car on the way home. "Well," he said when they reached her apartment. "Here we are." Scully looked at her hands in her lap. "It's not Mulder who's the problem," she said. "It's me." "What do you mean?" She shook her head, not looking at him, tears in her eyes. "You can't blame him. No one can blame him." "Dana..." He rubbed her arm gently. "No one is assigning blame." She looked at him, lips pursed to still their trembling. "He's a good person. Through everything, that is one thing I am still so sure of." "I believe you." He smiled sadly. "And I'm sorry if I upset you. It's the last thing I ever wanted to do." "No. I know." She sniffed, settling back. She took a breath and forced herself to give him a smile. "You're a good person too." He touched her cheek. "So are you. Don't forget that, okay?" "You don't even know me," she said ruefully. "I know enough." She searched his face. "Chris," she said. "You keep asking me to dinner. You keep taking me out. Why?" He shrugged. "You keep saying yes." XxXxXxXxX Mulder walked the lonely streets of New Orleans. On a Tuesday night, away from raucous Bourbon Street, the city was heavy, silent, and dark under a clouded sky. The pavement was wet but there was no rain, just impossibly humid air. He could smell the Mississippi. A film of sweat formed on the back of his neck as he walked out of the main city, past the cemeteries to where Miriam Rentham had died. Lit herself on fire, the police report had stated, but now Mulder had a better idea of what had happened that December night over four years ago. Memories of the Ruskin Dam flooded back, charred flesh and stark terror as he'd run through the bodies. There had been over a hundred people there. Why, he wanted to know, had Miriam died alone? The occasional passerby eyed him with suspicion. Mulder didn't know whether that was due to his out-of-town dress or the gun that bulged at his back. Each one stared at him a moment and then retreated into the shadows before Mulder could say a word. He felt them out there, though, still watching. It was a crawling feeling that rippled his skin and made him quicken his step. Mulder stopped at a street corner and squinted down the road in either direction. Scully teased him sometimes about his navigational intuition, but the truth was he never knew how he felt until first she offered her opinion. Without her, he was lost. He took a few tentative steps up one way, plunged in darkness. Something rustled in the alley. Mulder reversed direction swiftly and began walking up the road the other way. He passed doorstep after doorstep, until a hand shot out and pressed a knife to his ribs. "Wandered a bit far from home, have you," said a low voice behind his ear. "My wallet is in my back pocket," Mulder said, and the voice laughed. "You think I want your money, Agent Mulder? You think a few bills could help me out?" The creeping feeling intensified. "Rentham," Mulder said, identifying his assailant at last. The knife pressed in. "You don't sound surprised." "I've known your kind before." "You know nothing of my kind." "I know you're a collaborator, a willing slave to an alien race." The flat of the knife slid along his ribs. "You know nothing," Rentham repeated softly. "Even after all these years." Mulder jerked, and Rentham laughed. "That's right. I know you. I know you and your partner." "What do you know about Scully?" "I know..." He paused. "I know she's not here to save you." "You leave her alone." "Oh, spare me the grand gestures, Agent Mulder. I have no interest in your partner. You either, for that matter, but the problem is you won't seem to return the favor." "You hunted those women, you lied to them and took them in just to further your own monstrous agenda. If you know me as well as you claim, I think you'll understand my continued interest." "Fox Mulder, always looking in the wrong places for answers," Rentham said with disgust. "You can't split the lark to get the music." "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" A car roared past, headlights illuminating their dark stage. Rentham shoved him forward to the next opening between the buildings. "The gun," he said, breathing hard. "Give it now." Mulder handed back his weapon. The knife eased away. Slowly, Mulder turned and faced his opponent. He was bald and white as remembered, but there was a puckered scar over his left eye. Below the scar, the pale eye no longer saw. It sat fat and blank in the socket as its mate sized up Mulder from head to toe. "You're more trouble than you looked," he said. "You're less dead than you looked." Half of Rentham's mouth lifted in a wry twist. "Ah, were it but true." "Those women at Sanctuary House," Mulder said, "what were you doing to them?" "Exactly what I said: rescuing them from a terrible fate." "Which fate? Yours?" Rentham looked at the ground and shook his head. "Everything you think you know is wrong." "So enlighten me." "We're more alike than you believe." "I am nothing like you." "You hope so, don't you?" Rentham smiled. "I never misrepresented myself to those women. I was only trying to help them." "They're all missing now. Tina Appleby is dead. What do you have to say about that?" "Not my doing." Mulder snorted. "Convenient." "The truth often is." "What do you know about the truth?" His million dollar question. Rentham did not say anything for a stretch. "I loved my work," he began at last. "As you do. I fought as you do. I believed as you do." "Your DNA says otherwise." Rentham continued as if Mulder had not spoken. "I served my time. Miriam hers. But they wouldn't let us go. Let's just say I gambled everything and lost. Make no mistake, Agent Mulder, you're following a dead man. And if you don't back off, you'll end up just as dead." If Rentham meant to kill him, Mulder figured he would have been dead already. "Who?" "You know them. They killed Miriam. They probably killed all the other women too. My filxes are gone, all of them. My whole life..." "Who?" Mulder said more harshly. After seven fucking years, he wanted a name. "You know them," Rentham said again. "They're the ones who took Scully." Mulder rushed him, knocking the gun to the ground and pinning Rentham up against the building. Rentham sputtered and coughed. "What do you know about Scully?" Mulder demanded. Blood roared in his ears. "Answer me, you sonofabitch!" "Let me... let me go." He coughed again and blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. Mulder just crushed him tighter. "I... I can't help you. No one can." "She knew you," Mulder accused. "You were there." "Doesn't matter." He shook his head weakly. "All the data, lost..." Mulder relented a little. He stared at Rentham as the other man's head lolled back against the brick. "Not all," he said. Rentham's good eye glittered as he waited. "I found the ones hidden in your room," Mulder said finally. Rentham seized up with a sudden, fierce energy, startling Mulder and upsetting his balance. "You have my files? You have them here?" "Not on me," Mulder said, stating the obvious. "They're mine. I want them back." Rentham did a slow advance. "You don't have the knowledge required to interpret them anyway." "But you could give it to me." Rentham hesitated. "What are you proposing?" "I'll give you the originals back," Mulder said. "You'll tell me what they mean." His heart pounded. "And you'll tell me what they did to Scully." Rentham shook his head. "You don't want to know." "You'll tell me," Mulder said. "Or there is no deal." He had come full circle, bargain for Scully again. "What if I told you she would hate you for it?" Rentham said. "What then?" Mulder said nothing. Eventually Rentham sighed. "Meet me at Miriam's grave in two hours. You know where it is?" Mulder nodded. He'd been before. "Good. Bring the files, all of them." Rentham looked Mulder over one last time. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know." XxXxX Mulder sat on a crypt with the files in his lap. His eyes had long ago adjusted to the dark, but still he could make out only vague shapes. The moon hid behind thick, rolling clouds. Trees wafted around him, night creatures singing their song, and Mulder clutched his bounty closer. He chewed his nail. "What if she would hate you for it?" Rentham had asked. I'd never tell her, Mulder thought. But it didn't ease his mind. After what seemed like ages, Mulder heard someone coming through the cemetery. A flashlight came on about twenty yards away, and Mulder stood. The light shone in his eyes but did not advance farther. "I brought the files," Mulder said, and something hit him from behind. All went dark. XxXxX End chapter twelve. All feedback welcome at syn_tax6@yahoo.com