Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000

Title: MEMOIR: YEAR ONE
Author: Laura Castellano
e-mail: laura@ddgallery.net
Rating: PG-13
Keywords: MSR, Character Death

BIG OLE FAT WARNING: Mulder and Scully are both dead--you find that
out in the first paragraph--but the story is written entirely from
Mulder's POV. This part has spoilers for just about every Season One
ep, as well as Je Souhaite--it assumes Scully died immediately after
Je Souhaite and nothing after that episode happened.

Distribution: Sure, but I'd like to know where it goes.

Disclaimer: Not mine, never were, never will be.

Author's note: I'm aware that the date given in the Pilot episode
is 1992 rather than 1993, but it seemed silly to me that Mulder
and Scully didn't work together for almost a year between the Pilot
and Deep Throat. I have treated each case as if they happened
sequently according to the way the episodes aired, and moved the
date of the Pilot ahead a year. I'm sure that '1992' was just
a clerical error ;)

_____

MEMOIR: YEAR ONE
by Laura Castellano

Dear Mrs. Scully,

As you know, after the death of your daughter, Fox Mulder
named me as executor of his will. In going through his
things after his death, I was surprised to come across this
memoir. He had made a printed copy, and the final page was
dated just a few days before he died. I have no idea how
long he worked on this, but there were stacks of old case
files all around his desk when I went to his apartment the
day of his death. It must have been quite a project, and yet
apparently none of us knew it was in progress.

Since Mulder has no family left, and because the things
written herein concern Dana as much as Mulder, I thought you
might like to have it. I found the file on his computer,
and made a copy for myself, and will do the same for Byers,
Langly and Frohike if they wish.

I haven't read the entire contents, but I scanned enough to
know what it is--apparently Mulder started at the beginning,
when Dana was first assigned to work with him, and wrote the
story of their lives up until the night she died. There are
some frightening things contained in the text, many of which
you probably knew nothing about at the time of their
occurrence. I would certainly understand if you chose not
to read this record at all, but again, I feel it should
rightfully go to you. You were always a true friend to
Mulder, and I know he thought highly of you.

With sincerest regards,

Walter S. Skinner

------------------------------

It was forever ago. Forever ago since I lost her and only
five minutes since they sent her to me.

*They* sent her to me, and that was irony at its most basic
form. She was supposed to be my secret enemy, to spy on me,
discredit me, perhaps even to have a hand in ruining my
career, but they made an enormous mistake. In trying to use
her, use what they thought was her naivete, they
underestimated her integrity.

In other words, Blevins told her to use her best judgement,
and damned if she didn't do just exactly that.

How it must have galled him, to know that his tool was
working against him, that instead of weakening me he had
made me stronger, created a true partnership, an entity that
could never be dismantled.

He had created a monster, you see, but it was months before
he realized that. Then he tried shutting us down,
separating us, they even took her away, but no separation
could destroy us, not with a love like ours.

Funny, I think we both were in love long before either of us
realized that fact. Oh, I knew she was important to me--and
while she was missing I was wracked not only with guilt, but
with absolute, soul-wrenching loneliness for her--but it was
even years after that before I was able to admit, to her or
to myself, that she was the only thing that really mattered.

My life had been all about my sister for such a long time,
and even after it became all about Scully, I didn't realize
it for years. There is none so blind as he who will not
see, they say, and I fit that saying perfectly. I refused
to see, *refused* to admit how much she meant to me, as if
by denying it, I could ward off the absolute hell that I
knew would come with losing her.

There is a beginning to this story, though, and I should
start there.

We were both so young then, so young and innocent it breaks
my heart to think of us now. She walked into my office
confidently, trying to hide her dismay at the numerous UFO
stories and pictures I had plastered to the walls and
bulletin board. Her eyes took in the mess that was my desk,
the chaos that was my office, and then she smiled and we
began.

I knew she was coming--Senator Matheson had warned me that
she would be assigned as my new partner. I'd been
functioning on my own since Diana left, and I preferred it
that way. The way I saw it, if I didn't have a regular
partner, I didn't have to trust anyone. After the way Diana
left me light a bolt of lightning when her career beckoned,
I wasn't really up to trusting anybody anyway. Not yet.

I'd done some background research on this Dana Scully
person, and I was more than a little impressed with what I
had discovered. She was smart, if still a little green, and
it was easy to tell she'd be an intellectual match for me. I
was pleased about that, anyway. The snob in me was happy I
wouldn't be completely bored while I did all I could to
drive her away.

That was my initial plan, you know. Gross her out, weird
her out, freak her out--whatever was required to get her
out. Out of my office and out of my life, so I could be
left in peace for a little while.

Of course, I didn't know, then, that Diana was a Consortium
spy--hell, I didn't even know there *was* a Consortium, I
only knew there were those in high positions in the
government that didn't care for my snooping around. I
didn't know, then, the lengths to which they would go in
order to stop me. I didn't know, then, that they would go
as far as murder.

Diana was a Consortium spy that went wrong, somehow--or
right, as the case may be. I've never fully understood what
happened there, except that I do believe, deep in her heart,
that Diana truly loved me in her own way. Perhaps that was
her mistake--maybe she couldn't be the cold-hearted bitch
they needed her to be, although she gave a damn good
imitation at times. In the end, I think--although I've
never been certain that was her intent--that she sacrificed
her life for me.

But that was years down the road, after I'd long since
learned that there was no boundary at which they would stop.

So Diana was out, and presumably, Scully was in. Maybe they
figured they made a mistake with Diana, letting her in on
the plan from the beginning, but they made an even bigger
one with Scully. I believe to this day that they chose her
because of her sincerity, her innocence, the fact that she
trusted almost everyone, and truly believed that the
government was what it presented itself to be. Instead of
letting her in on the secret, they tried to play off her
innocence and make it work for them.

Their mistake was in equating innocence with stupidity.
Scully may have been uneducated in the ways of the evil
world, but she was one smart cookie, and a damn fast
learner. We'd been together less than six months before she
learned that no, the government wasn't always benevolent,
and yes, they would spy on their own agents, if they found
it necessary.

What an eye-opener it was to her. To me, too, really--I
mean, even though I knew I had enemies, at that time it was
still almost a game, in my mind. One of those games played
out so often in life, where one throws up stumbling blocks
in the face of one's adversary, but never does any real
harm. I learned the hard way that real harm, something I
found so difficult to comprehend at that time, was
inconsequential to them.

Scully got her baptism by fire, literally, on our first
case. She knew she was there to report on me, keep me in
check, so to speak, but she still believed they had assigned
her to be my partner so we could solve cases together, and
that was exactly what she set out to do.

No matter how difficult, or how odd, she kept the goal of
solving the case in mind, and that, I think, was something
they never anticipated--her single-mindedness and
determination. To Scully, my methods of investigation or
personal beliefs weren't so important when she kept sight of
the fact that people were dying, and it was our job to stop
that. That was what she believed when I showed her the
slides of the dead teenagers, and that was what she believed
when we left for Bellefleur, Oregon the next day.

Contrary to her later accusations, I did not arrange for the
exhumation of Ray Soames' body just to drive her away.
Although I must admit to hoping that would be the end
result. Hey, she was a pathologist--I had no real illusions
that a corpse was going to have much effect on her. She had
to have a strong constitution to get where she'd gotten.

I also did not personally arrange for our car to wig out on
the highway, although I will admit to playing up the orange
spray painted 'X' for dramatic effect. Shrugging her off
when she demanded to know what the hell I was doing, tossing
the can back into the trunk as casually as if it was
perfectly routine for me to stop and paint markings on
public roads. Poor Scully. I still chuckle when I remember
her expression. She didn't know whether to run away as fast
as she could, or kick my ass.

I did rib her about her findings on the case, calling her
discovery that Dr. Nemmen hadn't done the most recent
autopsy the "easy part," but in truth, I was a little
impressed. It was a small fact, easy to overlook, and had
apparently been missed by the previous investigative team
sent to Oregon. Or maybe they had been too busy enjoying
themselves to pay much attention--after all, it didn't look
like a matter for the FBI, really. A string of apparently
unrelated deaths--odd that the victims all belonged to the
same class at Bellefleur High School, but it was a small
town. Oddities happen. It could have been coincidence. The
case was only consigned to the X-files because it was,
technically, "unexplained," meaning that nobody had been
able to concoct a plausible sounding explanation, so they
had given up trying.

It was the marks that caught my attention. If it hadn't
been for those, I might not have delved into the case at
all, but I had seen them before. Because of that, I quietly
began asking questions, and when Senator Matheson told me I
was getting a new partner, I even booked a flight for her to
Oregon. I knew in advance I wouldn't be going alone.

She wasn't squeamish, either, another detail that earned my
grudging respect. She gave the body we found a thorough
examination, and although she clearly didn't want to bother
with the tests I asked for, she went ahead and had them
done. Maybe it was just to prove me wrong, which of course,
ultimately they did, but she could have refused.

One thing I have to say for Scully--she never let me
intimidate her. She would stand toe-to-toe with me, arguing
her point until I managed to convince her to at least give
mine a chance. At least that's the way it usually went.
Occasionally she pulled me around to her way of thinking,
but most of the time, she let me have my way. At least to
some extent. Maybe she thought it was better to let me get
it out of my system, in the hope that my investigations
would prove my own theories to be faulty, but she never
allowed me to rush headlong into situations where I would
get hurt.

Not to say I didn't manage to find a certain amount of that
on my own, but it was never because she didn't try to stop
me.

I suppose these recollections shouldn't be solely about
Scully, but she was such an integral part of my life for so
long that there simply isn't any way to remember it without
having her play a large part in the memories. For so very
long, she *was* my life, you see. Even before I realized
it, as I've already mentioned.

It's hard, telling the story of our lives in sequential
order, but I'll try. Memories pop up here and there and
demand to be acknowledged, but I'll do my best to keep them
in their proper order. It's bound to be less confusing that
way, and our lives were nothing if not confusing anyway.

It was obvious to both of us, on that case, that Nemmen and
Miles were keeping things from us. They weren't even subtle
about it--they never really denied the fact, they just told
us to go the hell away, as if we were nothing more than
pesky flies. Only we didn't go away, we kept poking our
noses in where we weren't wanted, and they stayed one step
ahead of us--barely.

They knew we'd find the oddities with Ray Soames' body, they
knew we'd find the implant, there was no way to stop us. All
they could do was try to erase our findings, and they did
that pretty effectively with the stealing of the other
bodies and the fire in our motel rooms. It destroyed all
our evidence, except for the implant, which Scully then, in
her trust, turned over to Blevins. It disappeared,
naturally, never to be seen by us again. It wouldn't have
mattered, though--if we'd kept it, they probably would have
only stepped up their campaign against us sooner, and we
might not have had a chance to form the bond we did.

Two thoughts went through my mind simultaneously when Scully
came to the door of my motel room in her bathrobe--"Down,
boy!" and "Sexual harassment!"

She was beautiful, perfectly formed and tanned when she
dropped the robe and gave me a first-class view of her body.
It took me a second to focus on the marks she wanted me to
see, because I was fighting down the natural reaction any
red-blooded man would have in that situation. Once I
identified the marks as nothing more insidious than mosquito
bites, and she threw herself against me in what I later
realized was genuine relief, I was sure they were trying to
set me up.

It wasn't the impression I'd formed of her so far, that of
seductress and game-player, but I'd known her less than
forty-eight hours, and I have occasionally been a bad judge
of character. I did allow myself to get sucked into
relationships with both Phoebe and Diana, for instance.

On the other hand, there was something about Scully, an
honesty that neither of those women had possessed, and it
didn't take me long to realize that she was truly
frightened. She covered herself up as soon as I'd told her
what the marks were--more importantly, what they were
*not*--and there were no more displays of her shapely body
that night. If she had tried to get me into bed, I'd have
turned tail and run. It was obvious to me even then that
Scully was not the type to sleep with a man she barely knew.
If she'd attempted to seduce me, I'd have known it was a
plot to bring me down.

Instead, she talked to me, and she listened to me. She
asked me questions, but never flinched from the answers,
even though they weren't what she expected to hear.

That was a quality she maintained with me throughout our
years together, and while at times it drove me absolutely
crazy, it also made me feel secure with her; my partner
might have believed I was insane, but it was her own private
knowledge--she would defend me to the death against anyone
else. The most frustrating thing about Scully was her need
for proof, not just once, but time and time again, and her
ability to convince herself after the fact that she'd never
seen something that was right in front of her nose. I asked
her once if she needed an alien to come and bite her on the
ass before she admitted their existence and, stubborn to the
end, even then she didn't give in. Some things were just
too hard for her to believe in, I think, and while her
logical, rational mind could accept the idea of absolute
corruption of men, she couldn't quite grasp the concept of a
species superior to us. Anything superior to mankind was,
in her mind, God, and the idea that God might be anything
more than a benevolent spirit of goodwill was beyond her
acceptance.

She was a little less naive after our visit to Oregon,
especially after the "coincidence" of our two rooms being
the only ones completely destroyed in the fire, but it took
her a long time to lose that natural trust in authority that
had been bred into her throughout her life. I think nothing
in Scully's upbringing ever truly hurt her, nothing prepared
her to be hurt, and the realization that there were those
who would toy with us for their own amusement was a
difficult one for her. Once she came to grips with the
idea, she was more fierce in her distrust of them than even
I, but she did have her blind spots. We all do. One of
them seriously tested our relationship.

But that was far in the future past our meeting, and I'm
trying to be sequential.

After that first case together, she bounced back and forth
between my office and Quantico for a few months. I think
they really didn't quite know what to do with her; I wasn't
investigating anything that threatened their secrets at that
point, but they still wanted her available to keep an eye on
me, in case I was carrying on some secret snooping of which
they were unaware.

When I dug up the case in Idaho, I couldn't wait to share it
with her. I'd requested the 302 in both our names, and to
my surprise, it was granted. I should have seen that as a
clue that I was on to something big, but I didn't. I had my
own brand of innocence then; I was more jaded than Scully,
but not by much. I knew they would try to stop us, but I
didn't know how far they would go. I didn't know, then,
that they would kill us.

And as it turned out, we did their work for them, or more
specifically--I did it for them.

I know I shouldn't feel guilty that Scully is dead. Logic
tells me it wasn't my fault, that there was nothing I could
have done to prevent it, but my heart tells a different
story. If only I had let her stay, had let her have her way
that night...but I was talking about the beginning, wasn't
I? Back to happier memories, before it all came crashing
down around us, before our careers were left in tatters,
before we knew just how evil pure evil could be.

I believe I was in the midst of vehemently denying that I
had set up our first case to drive Scully away. Didn't
arrange for the exhumation for that purpose, didn't arrange
for the car to go all wonkers on us...

I also swear to this day that I did not specifically arrange
for the belt holding Ray Soames' coffin to break, causing it
to roll down the hill and bust open, although again, I admit
to feeling an evil inner glee at the event. 'Take that,
Scully,' I thought with just the right amount of derisive
satisfaction as I opened the coffin and drew back from the
horrible smell.

Naturally, I was totally professional in my outward
demeanor, aside from one tasteless joke, but hey, that's my
defense mechanism against shocking situations. And I was
just as shocked at the event as anyone, although I tried to
play it cool. Let's just say I've never had that happen,
before or since that case. Coffins do not, as a rule, pop
open to reveal small mammalian creatures buried where a
human body ought to be.

Turned out it wasn't Ray Soames in that grave at all,
but--as Scully so delicately put it--"possibly an
orangutan." And, oddly enough, the corpse had an implant in
its nasal cavity. A big one. Much larger than the implant
Scully ended up with, but I suppose they had refined their
engineering by the time they took her to be less obtrusive.

We never did find out what happened to the real Ray Soames,
or to his body, if he was really dead. All we knew at the
time was that we had gotten close--too close--and they had
destroyed our work, or done their best to destroy it. Scully
did still have the implant in her pocket, but she ended up
turning it over to Blevins.

I knew, anyway, that we had gotten close, and that we had
been stopped deliberately. Scully was still completely in
the dark back then, and I didn't see any need to enlighten
her further. It was evident to me that her sincerity was
genuine; she truly did not realize what a pawn she was in
their game. I did, but in my own innocence, did not realize
that they would sweep both of us off the board with complete
ruthlessness if the game turned against them.

So, we emerged from that first case more or less unscathed.
The Bureau replaced Scully's laptop computer that had been
destroyed in the fire, and handed each of us a reimbursement
check to cover what clothing and personal effects had been
lost. The files on our case in Oregon disappeared, but when
I tried to discuss it with Scully the day after we arrived
home, she clearly did not want to hear my theories.

She'd never had her own government thwart her efforts to do
good before. She honestly did not recognize the
"coincidences" for what they were. Oh, I think at first she
had an inkling, just as she realized that Jay Nemmen and
Detective Miles were lying to us when they said they had no
knowledge of what was going on with those kids in
Bellefleur, but time and distance always had a way of
blurring Scully's memories into something more comfortable,
something her scientific mind could live with. Besides, she
reminded me, just because Nemmen and Miles were dirty didn't
mean they were part of a conspiracy reaching into the
highest levels of government. Since I couldn't produce any
proof to the contrary, I had to let her have her way. I
dropped the subject, but neither of us ever forgot.

I guess it was easier for her that way. God knows, it drove
me crazy, but it was also part of the charm she held for me.
It became almost a game with me, over the years: goad her
until she admitted that *something* unexplained had
happened, and then never let her forget her words. She was
good at the game, too--she never came right out and admitted
to me, face to face, that she had seen anything I claimed we
had witnessed.

That was in March of 1993. Once that case had
evaporated--because it was certainly never wrapped up--I
went back to the mundane daily tasks that consume a large
part of an FBI agent's days, even those of us who worked on
something as fascinating as the X-files, and Scully, as I
said, bounced between my office and Quantico. She hadn't
really been assigned to me as a permanent partner at that
point. I think Blevins and the boys above him were hoping
I'd get discouraged after the Oregon case, and back off in
my investigations.

I guess they underestimated me, too.

It was later that summer, May, I think, when the case of
Col. Budahas came to my attention.

I was always on the lookout for cases that had what I
described to Scully as a "certain paranormal bouquet," and
boy, had I found one in Idaho.

Ellen's Air Base, which Scully didn't even know existed, but
I did because of my UFO studies, had drawn my attention
before. It was reportedly one of the bases where the
wreckage from the Roswell crash had been shipped in 1947,
and there had been a lot of interesting rumors over the
years concerning what our government had done with the
recovered technology.

Scully had dropped into my office the night before I
informed her about the case, to tell me she'd been assigned
to me permanently. I didn't know whether to be angry or
amused, to tell the truth. We'd had some minimal contact
over the past few months, but nothing more than an
occasional greeting in the hallway at work, or a quick, "how
ya doing?" phone call. Wait, I remember now--we did have
lunch together in the cafeteria once. I was sitting alone
at a table, going over some files, being carefully avoided
by and carefully avoiding my co-workers, when a shadow fell
across the papers in front of me. I looked up at her,
carrying a tray with a salad and a bottle of water, flashing
that megawatt smile at me, and couldn't help responding in
kind.

Scully didn't smile easily. She certainly had more to smile
about back then, of course, but even then she was somewhat
reserved. I suppose being a woman, and a fairly small one
at that, in what had traditionally been men's
professions--medicine and the FBI--had cultivated a certain
shell around her, a cool exterior that most people never had
the privilege to breach. She seemed to have a soft spot for
me right from the beginning, though. Maybe it was because I
looked so damned pathetic, grinding away there in my
basement office, shunned by most of my peers...Scully always
was a sucker for a lonely stray.

At any rate, she politely asked if she could sit with me,
ignoring the stares of the few people around us, and I had
to admire her courage, if not her choice of friends. I
shoved the papers back into their folder and indicated she
should sit down, and we had the kind of casual chit-chat
over lunch that two people will share when they don't know
each other very well, but are far more than casual
acquaintances. We briefly mentioned our trip to Oregon, and
she told me about the recent visit she'd had with her
brother and his wife. It wasn't a memorable conversation,
but it left me with a pleasantly warm feeling that stuck
around for the rest of the day. It was nice to know that
not everyone in the Bureau thought I was a loser.

So anyway, when she poked her head into my office on a
Tuesday afternoon, I thought it was nothing more than a
friendly visit. As I said, I was partially amused,
partially angered by their clumsy attempts to shove their
spy into my life again. Oh, I wasn't angry with her, for
she was as honest as ever about her intentions. Blevins and
his bosses knew, obviously, that I'd been poking into the
Budahas case. It was clear they thought I needed reigning
in again.

My personality being what it is, I had no choice but to
accept the challenge.

"I'm glad to be working with you again," I lied, shaking her
hand formally. "I'll be busy tomorrow morning making some
arrangements, but if you'll meet me for lunch, I'll tell you
all about the case we'll be investigating."

She agreed, never suspecting how soon she would be wrapped
up in intrigue again, and we parted company.

I was late to our meeting, and found her sitting at the
restaurant's bar studying some papers of her own. She
seemed pleased to see me, at least, even if she did rib me
about my offer to buy her a drink. She also poked a little
fun at me when I presented the case to her, telling me she
thought I only liked those "paranormal-type" cases. That's
when I gave her the "bouquet" line--it was just too good to
pass up, and I made a quick exit to the men's room in order
to maintain my air of mystery.

Considering the fact that I must have looked like a ghost
when I emerged a few minutes later, I think the effect was
ruined, but Scully was kind enough not to mention it.

Deep Throat was a fascinating man. I never knew his real
name until after he had died and I unobtrusively "attended"
his funeral. It was interesting, the people gathered around
his grave. My father was one of them. That puzzled me, at
the time. I knew my father was involved in something
secretive, of course, but I had no idea the magnitude of the
conspiracy, or of the role he played in it. I remember
drawing the conclusion then that Deep Throat had helped me
because he was a friend of my father's. As I said, I had my
own special naivete.

Deep Throat was also a man of humor, unlike his successor,
and always enjoyed a good joke. I think that was the reason
he pulled the appearing and disappearing act he did on our
first meeting.

I stepped up to a urinal, convinced I was alone, did the
necessary business, washed my hands, splashed some water on
my face--I had been up late the night before, and was
feeling the effects of too little sleep--and when I raised
my head there he was, standing behind me. I saw his
reflection in the mirror even though I hadn't heard a sound,
and whipped around quickly.

I often wonder, now that sitting and thinking are my main
activities, what would have happened if I'd taken Deep
Throat's advice that day and walked away from the case. It's
a fruitless endeavor, I know, but I find myself asking that
question about so many forks in our respective roads. What
would have happened if we had stopped here, or here, or
here, just turned back and investigated no further? Would
my mother still be alive? Would Deep Throat? Would Scully?
There are no answers to these questions now, of course, but
I think it's safe to assume my father wouldn't have been
murdered, nor would Scully's sister.

On the other hand, my father had a lot of enemies. He might
have found himself on the wrong end of a gun in any case. As
for Melissa...well, her lifestyle was not conducive to long
life and happiness. She was a nomad, and nomads always seem
to die young. Maybe the end is already predetermined, and
no matter what path we choose, it will inevitably lead us to
our appointed finality, regardless of our efforts to change
things.

If Scully and I had walked away, if we had given up our
careers with the FBI and gone off to be "normal" people,
living "normal" lives, that drunk driver could have still
found us. If we had parted, going our separate ways
entirely, perhaps we would have run into each other at the
grocery store, or the video rental shop, done the "hey, I've
missed you, how are things?" routine...decided to go for a
drink or dinner to catch up, old friends getting
reacquainted...and heading down Aberdeen Road, still been
hit head-on by a teenager who'd had a fight with his
girlfriend and chased his sorrows with half a bottle of
bourbon.

Who knows? Who even cares? Scully's still dead, and I'm
still what I am. There is no going back. We made the best
decisions we could at the time, both of us, and if Scully
stuck by me, it wasn't out of any sense of duty or response
to coercion on my part. It was because she was a woman of
integrity, who wanted to find the truth as badly as I did.
She was simply searching for a different truth, I think.
Once she was taken, and her sister killed, my quest became
Scully's as well.

I'm getting ahead again. I need to slow down, take some
deep breaths, and remember why I'm doing this. I could
pay--or have my insurance company pay--for expensive therapy
to deal with the demons that haunt me, but why? I know
everything they would tell me to do, everything they would
say, everything they would try to get *me* to say. I know
all the tricks for dealing with emotional trauma, and some
of them I've employed over the years. A few worked and more
didn't, but one of the things that always helped me was
getting it off my chest.

Occasionally I would keep a journal, but mostly I just
talked to Scully. I still talk to Scully, and even though
the folks passing by at the cemetery probably think I'm a
loony old guy in a wheelchair, I'm never going to stop
talking to her until I join her. The really scary part is,
sometimes Scully answers me. She told me to do this--write
it all down, Mulder, from the very beginning. Examine it,
take our lives apart piece by piece. She thinks I'll
expunge my guilt by doing this, but Scully doesn't
realize--never did--the level of guilt I carry around.

And her death is my fault. I was driving. She wanted to
stay and I insisted she go home. She had to get up early
the next morning, and I knew if she stayed, I'd keep her
awake half the night making love to her. As tempting as
that was, I was trying to be responsible in our new
relationship. So I insisted she leave, and I went to drive
her home, and she died.

I still can't watch 'Caddyshack.' I tried once, thinking if
I could force myself to get through it, I'd have gained some
small victory over depression. I ended up throwing the damn
videotape in the garbage. All I'll ever think of, if I
happen to come across that movie again, is that the last
thing Scully and I did together was share popcorn and a
stupid movie. We could have done so much more that night,
*would* have done so much more, if we had known it was our
last.

I'm becoming maudlin, and that was something Scully would
never have tolerated. She'd have made some subtle joke to
bring me out of it. I can hear her voice now, teasing me
back into a pseudo-good humor. Unfortunately, I can't make
out the words.

End part 1 of 4
--

"Consciousness is that annoying thing between naps..."

Subject: [MTA_Stories] MEMOIR: YEAR ONE - PG-13 2/4

Deep Throat. I was talking about Deep Throat. I whirled
around and there he was, that little smile on his face,
regarding me with careful amusement as I looked him up and
down.

"Leave this case alone, Agent Mulder," he suggested gently.

I was too taken aback by the fact that he knew my name, and
that he'd apparently appeared out of nowhere, to consider
his words. The Budahas case was a turning point for us, I
think. I can't remember a lot of what happened out there,
but Scully filled me in on most of it--what she knew,
anyway. Deep Throat warned us away from that case, but he
never told me to give up the work entirely. In fact, he
told me that by dropping the Idaho case, I would avoid
jeopardizing the future of my work. At the time I thought
that was a bit of a scream. The future of my work? I could
have told him, even then, that I had no real "future" and
hadn't had ever since I had insisted upon being transferred
to the X-files.

They had to give me that assignment--and it galled Blevins
to no end--because Senator Matheson pulled some very long
strings. It wasn't often I would ask for a favor from him,
certainly not one of that magnitude, but I was becoming
desperate. I'd been with the VCS for a couple of years, and
it was wearing me down fast. I'd seen what the stress could
do to a man like Bill Patterson, whom I admired greatly,
even though I never liked the sonofabitch and he hated my
guts, and I had no desire to end up like him.

In fact, Bill spent seven months in a mental institution
after his last case, and when he emerged, although sane
enough to live out his life in relative peace, he never
worked for the Bureau again. I sure as hell didn't want to
end up like that, although the thing with Patterson hadn't
happened at the time I was begging Senator Matheson to get
me out. That came later, after I got Scully, and even she
was frightened by the way I immersed myself into profiling a
killer. I could see Bill was heading for a bad end even
then, years before it happened. I just didn't guess exactly
what that end would be like.

I'd discovered the X-files by accident, and there they were,
just sitting in a couple of file cabinets, being completely
ignored. Shouldn't there be, I persuaded the Senator,
someone investigating these cases, no matter how unusual
they might seem? Didn't the people who called for help
deserve at least the courtesy of an investigation? He
didn't agree because he wanted me checking out vampires and
werewolves, I know that now. He agreed because he wanted me
to bring the bastards down, and he knew if anyone was
stupidly single-minded enough to do it, it was little Fox
Mulder, the boy he'd encouraged to seek his own answers
after his sister had disappeared.

The Senator had been a friend of my father's, too, you see,
although I never really knew just how deeply involved he was
in the whole sordid affair. I think he was more of a fringe
element--he knew what was going on, but wasn't directly
involved in many aspects of it. He did, however, see the
corruption that had taken over, and wanted to stop it if he
could. Not to the point of sacrificing his career or his
life, oh no, the Senator wasn't that altruistic. But when I
presented myself in his office, begging him to help me by
making them assign me to the very things he wanted me to
delve into, he must have felt as if a ripe plum had dropped
into his lap. I offered myself up as a martyr and never
even knew I had done so.

Doesn't matter now, anyway. They didn't manage to martyr
me, after all.

Anyway, as soon as I was ensconced in the basement, I knew
my career was, essentially, at a standstill. I didn't care.
I was happy with my files, intrigued by the information
contained there, and I was never one to climb the ladder
anyway. I didn't want to get promoted, I just wanted to be
able to pay the bills.

But Budahas--he was something special. I didn't know it, of
course, at the time. I was amazed at the way the case had
been shoved to the back burner, and the little details
piqued my curiosity; I certainly never thought it was a
routine kidnaping, but neither did I suspect I was poking
into a secret so carefully concealed and jealously guarded.
I didn't realize that until we were well into the case. I
just thought it was a great chance to snoop around in the
vicinity of Ellen's Air Base and maybe find out what had
happened to the missing Colonel. In truth, I suspected he
was dead.

I should have taken a clue, I guess, when I realized they
were tapping my phone the night before we left. They
weren't very subtle about it--the clicking in my ear while
talking to Scully was obvious, and the unmarked white van
outside my apartment window might as well have been sporting
a neon sign proclaiming it a surveillance vehicle.

They had to realize I knew what was going on when I ended my
conversation with Scully so abruptly, and for a long time
after that I smugly thought that I had scared them off. I
was such an idiot, such a fool. They didn't stop listening
to us, they only became more cunning in their methods.

So we went out to Idaho, and we tried the regular
investigative techniques at first--visited with Mrs.
Budahas, tried faithfully to make an appointment with
someone at the base who would talk to us. After being given
the run-around for several hours, I was tired of playing by
the rules, but I didn't know where to start breaking them
yet. I looked up the address of they guy whose assistant
had given Scully an appointment we both knew would never be
kept, and we decided to try a more direct approach. We
waited outside his house until he arrived home from work and
then, fairly respectfully, I thought, tried to talk to him.
He told us in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of his
yard and his life.

Scully says--said--the so-called reporter who "just happened
by" at that moment was one of the bad guys, but I really
don't remember. I recall him subtly pumping us for
information, but neither of us were inclined to talk to him,
so he left us alone. Or so we thought. I wasn't as subtle
in my requests for information as I tried to be either, and
it had to be clear to him, once we left, that we were
investigating more than the disappearance of an Air Force
Colonel.

I think Scully was embarrassed when I asked the reporter,
whose name I can't remember for the life of me, where I
could find some "UFO nuts." I know she was irritated with
me in the diner, even though she had to hide her amusement
from both me and the waitress who insisted she had taken a
picture of a UFO. The fact that I paid twenty dollars for a
copy of a large, black triangle in the sky caused her plenty
of laughs for years afterwards.

She was less than amused when I drove us out to the
perimeter of the base and left her sitting in the car while
I climbed a hill to look for whatever I could see. She was
welcome to come with me, I was sure I'd made that clear, but
by then her irritation had grown into anger, and she
refused. She climbed into the car, and hours later, after
dark had fallen and the amazing lights in the sky had been
mystifying me for at least half an hour, I woke her up to
show her the sights.

She was suitably impressed, but I don't think she believed,
even later on, that they were aircraft. She thought they
were the reflections of some type of lights on the ground,
and no argument I could make would convince her. It didn't
help that my memories of that time were fuzzy, although
they're a bit clearer now than they were back then. Maybe
whatever they did to me doesn't have a permanent effect.
Maybe one of these days, I'll recall what happened between
the time those men strapped me to that gurney and the time I
found myself in the car, riding beside a very concerned and
angry Scully, and asked in confusion how I'd come to be
there. Maybe someday, but not yet.

I don't know what all went on--I remember a couple of kids,
and I know they're the ones who took me to the fence and
showed me where to sneak onto the base, but I don't remember
where I met them in the first place. Scully said we found
them when we were being chased off the base by a helicopter,
but I have no memory of that at all.

I do know that Scully had to do some pretty intense
ass-kicking, both verbally and physically, in order to save
me from my own stupidity on that occasion. We'd barely
become partners and already she was saving my life. It was
to become a pattern that would repeat itself over and over
again. Maybe that's why I feel so guilty now. She saved my
life again and again, and in the end, I was responsible for
taking hers.

Here I go again, and writing these memoirs was supposed to
rid me of the guilt. Oh well, I've only barely started. I
wonder how many kilobytes of space I'll eat up on my laptop
before I'm finished. It doesn't matter. It isn't as if
anyone is ever going to read this except me. And it isn't
as if I use my laptop for a lot of other things these days.
The occasional magazine article, infrequent lectures at the
FBI Academy and a few Universities where my kind of
experience is beneficial to the students. Other than that,
I pretty much live on my pension and disability checks. I
have some money I inherited from my parents, not a mint, but
enough so I'll never have to worry where my next meal is
coming from. I have a nurse come in once a day to make sure
I haven't fallen out of my chair or taken a knife to my
wrists, and other than that, I'm pretty much left alone. Oh,
the guys come by to visit, and Skinner, and even Scully's
mom on occasion, but most of my hours I spend here by
myself. I was always a loner before I met Scully. I didn't
mind it then, but now...now I miss her. I miss her voice
and her laugh and her arguments...there will never be
another person in my life like her. I know that now. A
love like ours comes once in a great while--I was lucky to
have known it at all.

Scully came away from Idaho a changed woman, in a way. She
lost a little bit of the trusting manner she'd had before,
but only a little bit. Inherently, Scully was an honest
person who always expected others to be honest, and it took
years, really, for life to chip away that expectation from
her mind. She knew the people in Idaho had been "bad guys"
but she still didn't realize we were surrounded by them
every day.

I think she wanted to verbally kick *my* ass all the way
back to DC, but instead, she let me sleep. They'd given me
some type of drug, and I was still feeling the effects of
it, so once we were on board our plane, I leaned my seat
back and closed my eyes, hoping to avoid her angry stares.
She must have forgiven me, at some point, because when I
woke up just before we landed, she had leaned her own seat
back and was resting her head on my shoulder while she
napped. She used to do that a lot. It's one of my most
precious memories of her.

-----

For the next two months, things were normal. By "normal," I
mean we solved a few minor cases, lent our opinions to a
couple more, and in general wrapped up paperwork and the
like. I tried organizing my files a little bit, but no
matter how often I attempted that particular task, I
eventually gave up in despair. I knew where everything was,
and that would just have to suffice.

Ironically, our next really unusual case came from Scully,
or, more accurately, from a former friend of hers.

She was having lunch with a man she'd gone to the Academy
with, while I was nibbling on seeds at my desk,
surreptitiously watching the clock and wondering how long
she'd be gone. The office was drab without her even then, I
had discovered, although I told myself it was merely the
novelty of intelligent conversation that made me crave her
company. She'd invited me along but, feeling like a
third-wheel, I had politely declined. I assured her I had
important business to take care of and didn't have time to
stop for lunch at all that day. I was lying, and I think
she knew it, but she didn't press me on it.

When she came back, she was brimming over with news she
hoped would shock me. It didn't, but only because I'd heard
of such before. I was surprised, however, to find that
Agent Colton was working on a case that fit in so well with
one of our X-files.

She told me they'd like me to take a look at the crime
scene. I did it as a favor to Scully, not Colton. I didn't
know him, but the idea that he was reluctant to speak to me
himself about the case told me something about his
character. My suspicions were confirmed the moment we met.
He shook my hand and immediately began the "little green
men" jokes. Oh I tried to save the situation, and I could
tell Scully was biting back laughter when I blandly informed
Colton of the inflated price of liver and onions on
Reticula. Asshole didn't know whether to believe me or not,
that was the really funny part. He'd obviously heard rumors
about me, and I knew I wasn't a popular guy, but I really
had no idea, until Scully told me, that I had a
"reputation." If I hadn't had her as my partner, I might
have actually cared what those other agents thought, but she
was all I needed; I found Colton's words and actions more
tiresome than anything.

The difference between Scully and the rest of the world was
again made clear to me when I showed her the fingerprint,
and told her about the previous cases involved what was
probably the same perpetrator--cases I had in my files.
Colton and his cronies had obviously judged me as insane,
based on my "reputation" and the fact that I attempted to
take prints off an air vent that no normal human adult male
could have crawled through. They conveniently ignored the
fact that I actually found something.

Scully, on the other hand, listened to what I had to say.
She didn't like it, and she didn't necessarily believe it,
but I could tell her curiosity was piqued. I promised her
our investigation wouldn't interfere with Colton's, and in
true Scully fashion, she gave it all she had.

It was easy to see she was torn by her loyalties on that
case. She wanted to be true to me, her partner and friend,
but these other people, these *normal* people, had known her
when she was a normal person as well. They'd been friends
of hers longer than I had, and she wanted to juggle us all.
I could tell she was appalled by Colton's behavior toward
me, and well she should have been. He was rude and
obnoxious, regardless of our differences in opinion. Scully
was also less than impressed when he informed her that he
would "see about" her being permanently assigned to the
X-files. Even as I glared at him, inwardly I was turning
cartwheels--nothing got Scully's dander up more than a man
insinuating she needed "taking care of." The minute Colton
said that, I knew he'd lost her.

Sounds like a competition, doesn't it? Even Scully accused
me of acting territorial on that case, and really, I was. We
hadn't been together long, but I didn't realize how much I
enjoyed working with her until I was afraid our relationship
was threatened. If Colton had offered her a position with
his department, she might have just taken it, too--I could
tell the entire notion of profiling fascinated her. Colton's
mistake was in attempting to arrange Scully's life for her.
Nobody did that. Not even me. Luckily, I was a quicker
study than Colton.

I was impressed, too, when Tooms showed up where she said he
would--I really didn't think he'd come back to that place.
Of course, it was a true coincidence that one of the workers
reported...what was it, a dead cat?...in the vent, but I'm
sure Tooms jumped at the chance to remove the animal's
carcass.

Then, of course, the bastard passed a lie detector test and
the idiot in charge let him go. I could tell from the
results of the test that he was probably our guy, but the
questions I had made them ask Tooms weren't "normal" and
were therefore useless in their eyes. That was when Colton
acted so badly--called me 'insane' right in front of me, and
pulled his "I'll see what I can do about that" act. She
would have been irritated at his rudeness toward me--she was
livid at the way he treated her. I cheered her inwardly; I
knew she wouldn't let Tom get away with that attitude, and
she didn't. She ended up later on telling him she hoped
he'd fall on his ass as he climbed the career ladder. I got
a good chuckle out of that one when she repeated it to me.

She impressed me again when we explored Tooms' apartment
building. All the girls I'd known in the past would have
avoided climbing down into that black pit like the plague. I
even offered her the chance to do so--"What's down here?" I
asked, waiting to see what she would do. To my surprise,
she holstered her weapon and announced, "Let's find out."
Then she proceeded to do that very thing, climbing down into
the coal cellar without a second's hesitation.

What we found down there convinced me that grossing her out
or freaking her out would not run her off, ever. Surely
nothing is more disgusting or weird than finding a nest
composed of old newspapers and bile, and realizing that
something akin to a human being hibernates in it for years
at a time. She didn't even argue with me when I told her
what I thought it was, she just accepted my theory, agreeing
to participate in the stakeout. Maybe deep down, she was
hoping to prove me wrong, but one of Scully's most wonderful
qualities was that she was kind. She never tried to
embarrass or humiliate me, not even when we were alone. Oh,
she'd tease me, but there's a difference between teasing and
ridicule. She never ridiculed.

She also never gave up. She was a fighter to the end. She
wouldn't give up when she was wracked by the cancer, or when
she was lying in the hospital on life support after her
abduction, and even in the ambulance on the way to the
hospital after our accident, they tell me she fought hard
for her life. Some battles are just too big to win, I
guess. She certainly fought Tooms that night for all she
was worth. He managed to get into her apartment, and was
going to dine on her liver--sans fava beans and a nice
Chianti, I presume--when I burst into the place and pulled
my gun on him. I couldn't shoot, he was too near Scully,
but she did her best to kick his ass. He was bigger than
her, and stronger, and she was unarmed, but when he
abandoned her and came after me, she still managed to cuff
him to the bathtub pipes, thus saving my life yet again. Oh
maybe not, maybe I could have fought him off--I was a better
match for him than she--but I certainly would have sustained
some type of injury. As it was, we both emerged from that
case with nothing more than a few bruises.

I think Scully thought it would always be that way--unusual
cases, to be sure, but nothing like the Budahas one. She
probably figured that was an anomaly, and maybe she thought
Blevins wanted her reporting on whether or not I was wasting
taxpayer dollars by investigating the paranormal. It didn't
take her long to decide I wasn't; the cases may have been
odd, but they were clearly valid. And we did manage to
solve a fairly high percentage of them. Our "only saving
grace," as Skinner once so delicately put it.

-----

It was getting harder and harder to remember what came
first, especially all those years ago, so I took a few days
and organized my old case notes. I always kept copies of
them at my apartment, and although I'm a cripple, I can
still get around my own place. It's just a different place
nowadays, one that's arranged so that nothing's above
waist-level for a person standing on two feet. You see, I
can't stand. Never will again.

Jesus Christ, I'm only forty-one and I'm never going to walk
again, or run or swim or play ball, or any of the things I
used to do to keep my body in shape and my mind sane.
Sometimes the knowledge of that hits me like a ton of bricks
and it's all I can do to keep from using my pocket knife for
some creative carving on myself.

You know what really stops me? You guessed-'er, Fester.
Scully. I have found, after all these years, that I do
believe in an afterlife of sorts. I'm just not sure what
form it takes, and I have no real desire to pursue the
knowledge further at this time. Maybe I'm afraid I wouldn't
like what I'd learn, but the truth is, I'd rather think of
Scully as waiting for me on the "other side" than to think
of her as gone completely. And if I know she's waiting for
me, I have to believe she can see what I do. And if there
is an "appointed time" for all of us to go, and I check out
earlier than intended, Scully will kick my ass. Even if
it's only a ghostly ass.

So I keep on, every day, wheeling myself through life,
trying to keep myself occupied so I don't go mad...which is
what got me started on writing this stuff in the first
place. That, plus the fact that Scully told me to. I know,
you think I'm crazy. Get in line. I guess the thing that
really makes me look crazy right this minute is that nobody
but me will ever read this, so I am, in effect, typing to
myself. What the hell, though. It's better than carving.

Anyway, it took me three days to get the notes in the order
I wanted, what with stopping to read and remember and
occasionally shed a few tears when I would think of
something Scully said, or how she reacted to a certain
incident. You know, I can still hear her voice in my mind,
plain as day, which is how I'm able to recall so clearly
some of the things she said to me years and years ago. For
instance, I'll never forget her saying to me, "I'm not going
to ask if you said what I think you said because I know what
I think you said is what you said," or something to that
effect. Hey, it was confusing at the time, too. I don't
even remember now what we were discussing, but I suspect it
will come back to me as I work my way through our history
together.

There was so much to our lives that was never recorded in
these files, and yet, we were inextricably entertwined with
them as well. Everything important that happened to us
happened because of one of these files. There's quite a
stack here on my table, several stacks, in fact. Some of
the cases were weird, some were never explained, some were
even downright boring, but all of them involved both of us
in some way. Even when she was missing, she was still such
a part of me that--

But I'm getting sidetracked again. She wasn't missing, not
yet. We'd barely gotten started.

After we wrapped up the Tooms case, I really hoped we'd have
a break, but we were hit with the next oddity almost
immediately.

Darlene Morris. I was vaguely familiar with her name, and
after digging around a little in my files and my memory, I
realized why. That girl scout troop--she was one of the
girls who witnessed the "weather balloon" back in 1967. Not
that I was aware of it in '67, of course, I was much too
wrapped up in my first year of real school to worry about
such things. Besides, even though I did read early, I did
*not* read tabloid publications until I was an adult.
Really. Well, maybe once in a while as a teen.

Anyway, Scully suspected from the outset that I had chosen
the case because it reminded me of Samantha, but she was
wrong. I suppose Blevins put that idea in her head--she
told me he'd shown her the X-file I opened on Sam--but the
truth was, I thought of Samantha only as a side note to the
case. Yes, it reminded me of her--how could it not?--but
that wasn't the reason I chose it. I chose it because when
a girl in 1967 claims to have seen a UFO, and then almost
thirty years later claims her daughter was abducted by a
UFO, that's going to make a person like me sit up and take
notice.

I still believe Ruby Morris was abducted--hell, I *know* it
to be true--but I could never prove it. Darlene wouldn't
let me talk to Ruby, and there was nothing we could do about
it. But, like Darlene Morris, "I know what happened." Ruby
was abducted, tested, implanted, and then returned. It
would interest Scully to know that today, Ruby Morris has a
son of her own, two years old, and that the little boy is
being raised by Darlene because Ruby's health is too poor to
care for him. Cancer will do that to a person.

Yep, it's true. I checked. I have spies everywhere. Well,
not really, of course, but I do have friends who are quite
skilled at turning up information. Ruby Morris was
diagnosed with the same cancer that afflicted Scully, and
all the women in Allentown, and countless others across the
country that we don't even know about. She probably has
less than six months to live as I type these words. I wish
I could have told her not to remove the implant, but at the
time I knew Ruby, I didn't know she needed warning. I
didn't know what to warn her about. And it's too late now,
because I sure as hell won't be breaking into the Pentagon
and stealing anymore microchips. Those days are long gone.

I guess that case was the first time I felt real anger
toward Scully. She told the NSA guys who busted into our
motel rooms where the bunch of numbers Kevin Morris had
written down came from. Naturally, she neglected to mention
that Kevin was receiving these ones and zeroes from a blank
television screen, but I'm sure she chalked that up to
childish imagination. I must confess to experiencing
flashes of 'Poltergeist' when Kevin pointed at the snowy
screen and told me, "It's coming from there." The
difference was, I believed him.

I was pissed at her, but it didn't last long. I could see
later on that she wished she'd kept her mouth shut, and
neither of us was ever the type to rub the other's nose in
it when we made a mistake. She didn't say she was sorry,
and I didn't *make* her say it--we both just knew.

She reigned me in on that case, more than once. When we
found that grave in the woods, and again when she accused me
of chasing after my sister. I was hurt by her remarks, and
denied them, but deep down they rang true. I didn't want to
give up the search for Ruby because I felt that if I did, I
would be letting Samantha down. I couldn't do anything to
help Sam; maybe I could help Ruby. Vicarious atonement,
although Scully always assured me I had nothing for which to
atone. She never did understand my load of guilt, as I've
already said.

We didn't really solve that case, it solved itself. Or
should I say, those who took Ruby solved it for us, when
they returned her. Missing person, no longer missing, case
closed. At least that was the official word.

Scully went back to the motel to get some sleep, because we
had an early flight out the next morning, but I needed to be
alone. I walked through the darkened town for a long time
before I came upon the church. It was a small church,
altogether, but the sanctuary was larger than I expected,
and the biggest wonder was that the door was unlocked.

I'm not a praying man, not even a religious man, and if you
asked me if I believed in God back then, I'd have given you
some intellectual crap answer, but in reality, I've just
never been sure. I don't know if I believe in God or not.
How's that for self-certainty? At least I'm not too proud
to admit it, and as I mentioned earlier, I've only recently
come to believe there's any kind of life after death.

Anyway, I went into the church because I was seeking peace,
and it was quiet, and empty, and a beautiful place. I sat
down in a pew, rested my arms on the back of the one in
front of me, and lay my head upon them. I don't know how
long I had been there when I heard the footsteps approach,
but they even sounded non-threatening, so I didn't move.
They stopped beside me, and a moment later I heard a man's
voice.

"Life is sometimes very painful," he said gently.

I looked up at him--he was old enough to be my grandfather,
his head almost completely bald, a set of wire-rimmed
glasses perched on his nose. Just writing the description
of him, it sounds like I could be talking about Skinner,
except for the age thing, but he looked nothing like
Skinner. He had a bit of a belly, he was shorter than I--I
could see that without even standing up--and his face
was...kind. He had the look of a clergyman, someone who
dedicated his life to doing good. He'd obviously chosen the
right profession.

I tried to answer him, but my voice choked up. All I could
do was nod.

"Have you lost someone?" he asked.

"My sister," I whispered. "Long time ago."

"I'm very sorry." Then he leaned over and put his hand on
my shoulder for a minute. "Let God comfort you, young man.
He can help you through the hardest times, if you'll let
Him."

He left me then, went on his way about his business, and I
pulled out the picture of Samantha from my wallet. As I
stared at it, I suppose I should have been thinking of God
and the possibility that there even was a God who could help
me, but I already knew, or thought I did--in my twelve year
old opinion, God had allowed my sister to be taken from me.
The words I heard in my head were my own, the ones I said to
Dr. Werber on my regression tapes.

I said that I thought Samantha would be returned to me one
day. I leaned forward again, clutching the picture to
myself as I finally let the tears come. I don't cry often
or easily, but I did that night.

If Scully hadn't been with me when we learned about
Samantha's fate, I really don't know what I would have done.
She was always a calming influence on me, especially when I
needed it most. Not that she was always able to stop me
jumping feet-first into trouble, but she always tried.
Usually she made me stop and think; then sometimes I'd do it
anyway, but not because I hadn't thought about it.

I let Scully listen to the tapes, after that case. I wanted
her to understand just how much of myself I had poured into
finding Samantha, how deadly serious I was about the quest
for information about my sister. She listened to them all,
she said, and though she never directly discussed with me
the things on the tapes, she did seem to have a greater
understanding of me after that. I can only remember offhand
one other occasion when she accused me of being blinded
toward evidence because of my feelings about my sister. She
was wrong then, too, of course, but that was later in our
partnership, when I knew she cared about me--it wasn't so
important to me then that she see me as a stable person.
She'd known better for a long time.

That was a joke. I'm stable. I really am. If I wasn't, I
wouldn't have been wheeling myself through life for the past
two years. I'd be with Scully.

-----

I hadn't felt jealous about a woman since Phoebe. Not even
Diana evoked that emotion in me, which doesn't say a lot for
our relationship, does it? I cared for Diana. I even
thought I loved her. I thought I loved Phoebe, too. It
wasn't until I recognized my true feelings for Scully that I
realized how shallow my love for the other women in my life
had been. I never needed anyone to the depths of my soul
before Scully. I don't think I ever will again. She was
one of a kind, and so was our relationship. Even if I
thought I was ever approaching that type of love again, I'd
back away from it in fear, because of what I know. Nothing
lasts forever, and when you lose a great love, it leaves an
enormous pain. There were times I would wake up, before I
got out of the hospital, with a crushing weight on my chest,
restricting my breathing, making me feel as if I was going
to die at any moment. I always hoped I would, but it never
happened. The doctors and nurses all assured me that what I
was experiencing were panic attacks, completely normal
considering the circumstances, but I knew better. What I
was feeling was utter, heartbreaking grief.

The knowledge that Scully was gone would hit me like a
lightning bolt, and I would stop in mid-sentence if I was
talking--that's how fast I would go from thinking everything
would be all right to remembering that what was left of my
life was in tatters. I could almost forget it for a while,
if I tried hard enough, if I had a distraction, but sooner
or later I would remember, and that crushing pain in my
heart would return.

We'd only been together a few months--I think it might have
been early September of our first year together, and I'm not
inclined right now to dig up the case file and check the
date. It was after Ellens Air Base and the Tooms case, but
before we met up with Brad Wilczek, I do know that. I think
it was before the Howard Graves ghost case. I'll check on
it later.

Right now I want to talk about jealousy. It's a weird
thing, sneaks up and bites you when you least expect it. I
certainly didn't expect to feel it for a woman I'd known for
less than six months, and never had a date with. Granted,
we saw each other nearly every day, and we'd already
exchanged apartment keys, but that was merely a precaution.
Neither of us had any trusted friends who lived near us, and
we knew we could count on the other to take care of things
if we had to be out of town or anything. She'd feed my
fish, I'd water her plants...that kind of thing. Not
uncommon among partners in the law-enforcement profession.

Somewhere along the way, I gained the reputation of a
connoisseur of pornography. I don't know why. I've seen my
share of it, like most men, but not an outrageous amount.
Okay, yeah, I do have a subscription to Celebrity Skin, and
I have been known to rent the occasional dirty movie, but
really--I don't have an apartment filled with porn flicks
and copies of 'Hustler.' Maybe a couple of issues of
'Penthouse' but that's it. Really.

And when Scully caught me in the office that day checking
out the centerfold of 'Hanky Panky' magazine, I really was
looking at the blurb where the model in question claimed to
have been abducted by aliens. Someone had slipped the
magazine under my office door that morning with the center
page marked, as a joke, no doubt, one which I found highly
amusing. I never did find the culprit. I think it's a safe
bet that it wasn't Tom Colton.

Anyway, Scully again tried to spring a case on me that would
shock me, and again she failed. Oh yes, I'd heard of the
Jersey Devil--and you can imagine her face when I brought
*that* old story up--but I had no idea he was currently
attacking tourists in Atlantic City. How I'd missed that
story, I'm not sure, but I was probably busy wrapping up the
Morris case. I'm pretty sure, now that I think back, that
this one came right on the heels of that.

End part 2 of 4

--
Subject: [MTA_Stories] MEMOIR: YEAR ONE - PG-13 3/4

Scully was pissed at me when we left the Coroner's office in
Atlantic City, because she claimed I could never get along
with the local officials when we were on a case. Bear in
mind, at that time we'd investigated how many out of town
cases? Four or five? Not many, and I definitely hadn't
antagonized most of them on purpose. I was angry at the
Detective in Oregon, because it was clear to both of us that
he was covering up what he knew. Ellens Air Base--well,
let's not even get into that one. I got along great with
the guy who'd been investigating Eugene Tooms before his
retirement--what was his name? Biggs? Briggs? I'll look
that up later, too. I'm pretty sure it was Briggs, anyway.
Besides, I can't help it if a lot of the people we met up
with were assholes. And sometimes, if I was preceded by
that "reputation" Scully insisted I had, I never had a
chance with them anyway. I didn't care. Their opinions
didn't matter to me. Hers did.

We were in Atlantic City, it was Friday night--I saw no
reason to race back to DC in rush hour traffic. Why not get
a couple of rooms, I suggested, have dinner, relax for a few
hours? I wasn't asking for anything inappropriate, and
Scully knew that. What she didn't anticipate was my
reaction to the news that she was busy.

She was almost laughing when she told me she had to be at
her godson's birthday party. I wonder how big that kid is
now? He was six then, I think, or was it nine? At any
rate, he'd be almost grown now. He'll graduate from high
school soon, if he hasn't already, and get married and have
kids of his own, and Scully won't be there to see any of it.
And that's my fault, too.

I've always been curious about the homeless. Not that I
don't have compassion for them--I do, especially on cold
winter nights. Curious, though, as to how they came to be
where they are. Sometimes I think it's making bad choices,
but sometimes it's just plain old bad luck. That's the way
it was with the guy I gave my motel room key to that night.
I wondered, when he walked away, if I'd find all my
possessions looted, but really, he was very nice. I hunted
him up before I left town, and he handed me back the key
with a broad smile and a thank you. We talked a little bit;
his wife had thrown him out of the house after finding him
making out with her sister in their kitchen. Okay, that was
a stupid thing to do, I'll agree, and maybe his wife was
perfectly within her rights, but the poor guy lost his job
the next week, and had nowhere to go. The wife's sister
wanted nothing to do with him, since she was trying to mend
her familial relationships, and he found himself on the
streets within a couple of weeks with nobody he could turn
to for help. He slept at a shelter when it was really bad
weather, but found he preferred the streets most of the
time. Also, I discovered, the homeless people have quite a
network among their communities. They know each other. They
protect each other.

Anyway, as I wrapped myself in that filthy blanket and
settled down to wait for the Devil to show his face, I
wasn't thinking about my possessions back at the motel.
There was nothing there I couldn't replace, anyway. I had
my badge and gun with me, and everything else was
impersonal--toothbrush, clothes, etc.

Little did I know I'd find myself spending the weekend in
jail, but that's exactly what happened. One of those local
law enforcement people that I routinely pissed
off--according to Scully--found me, arrested me, and made me
spend the weekend in the drunk tank. I wasn't even allowed
to make a phone call before Monday morning, which I could
have raised holy hell about, but when you're behind bars
it's not always a good idea to make threats. I knew it, and
he knew I knew it, but he wasn't going to budge, and what
could I do? He never said anything, but his pointed glance
at the guys across from me said it all; I was afraid if I
kicked up a fuss he'd put me in that cell with the two
enormous fellows who were paying me way too much attention
as it was. The last thing I wanted was to find myself the
object of a tug-of-war between those two. So instead, I
kept quiet and waited out the weekend, and as soon as they
let me near a phone I called Scully.

"The drunk tank!" she exclaimed loudly, and I winced, hoping
she was in the privacy of my office and not in the middle of
a crowd of interested listeners. It was the interested
listeners, I found out later. Oh well.

She came down, bailed me out and took me to breakfast. I'd
given the homeless man the last of my cash, and my atm card
was back at the motel--untouched by him, I feel I must add.
In fact, I found the entire room in basically the same state
as when I'd left. I was glad I'd had the foresight to tell
them at the front office that I wasn't sure how many days
I'd be staying. They'd kept the room in my name and
continued to tally up my bill.

We were eating--rather, *I* was eating breakfast when she
told me she had a date that night. I stopped cold for a
second. It took me by surprise, all right, but I think I
regained my equilibrium fairly quickly. Then I nearly blew
it by asking her if she could cancel. She informed me that
she wanted to have a life, and I got the message loud and
clear. Our relationship is a working one only--don't bring
it home. Unless it involves feeding fish and watering
plants, of course, or the occasional late night phone call.

I could have gone home that night, watched a movie, had a
beer, relaxed, visited friends, I could have done any number
of things, but instead, I hung around the office. Somehow,
it was like having her close, and I eyed the telephone
jealously, wishing for an excuse to call her, knowing she'd
have my head if I interrupted her date without a good
reason.

And then, lo and behold, the reason presented itself. I got
a call, a lead on the case, and that was work, right? So I
called her beeper. I was afraid she wouldn't phone me, or
that she'd rip me a new one, but she did neither. It was
with a kind of selfish glee that I realized she wasn't all
that upset I'd interrupted her. Apparently 'Mr. Divorced,
One Son' wasn't as interesting as she'd hoped. Or maybe, as
I liked to tell myself, his mundane career as an investment
attorney just couldn't stack up to our work on the X-files.

For whatever reason, she ditched him and came with me. We
went back to Atlantic city that night, and by morning we'd
solved another case. Although the suspect was dead. It was
the asshole Detective who killed her, the one who threw me
in jail and silently threatened to turn me into a 'weekend
woman' for his two largest prisoners if I made trouble.
Yeah, he was a bastard. The shoot-first-and-ask-questions-
later type, obviously. Only he didn't even care about
asking the questions.

The guy, the date, called her again the next week. I was
still in a funk about the woman being murdered by the
Detective, but Scully was as chipper as ever. She brought
me the news that the woman had probably had a child, and I
was on my way out of the office like a shot, stopping only
to answer the phone.

"For you," I told her, concealing my disdain as I left the
room. I couldn't let her know the idea of her having
another date with him was upsetting to me--even I didn't
understand why. I think I might have been falling in love
with her as far back as that first year, but I didn't know
it. I would have denied it, had anyone accused me of those
feelings toward my partner. We worked well together, I
liked her, and she seemed to like me. That was all.

Yeah, right.

-----

Flipping through my notes, I see that the Jersey Devil case
was in late August and early September of 1993, and the
retired detective on the Tooms case was named Briggs. I
don't remember the name of the homeless man who I let sleep
in my motel room in Atlantic City, and apparently I didn't
write it down anywhere. I remember his face, though, very
well, and I sometimes wonder if he ever got his life
together or if he's still on the streets. Or if he's even
still alive. I'll bet he'd be surprised to see where I am
today.

Then came the Howard Graves case, which was nothing really
memorable when you do the kind of work we did for seven
years. Yeah, I still maintain that Howard Graves' ghost was
protecting his former secretary, Lauren, and Scully wrote
her notes up to make it appear as if we'd singlehandedly
rescued a terrorism case. She made us look good, I have to
give her that, but we would never have found the evidence we
used to convict Dorlund if it hadn't been for the assistance
we received from Howard Graves. Another evidence that there
is *some* sort of afterlife.

I realized, while working that case, just how seriously
Scully took her career. I'd given up on mine, and I really
didn't care, but she still longed for respect and
advancement at that point. I never knew if she voluntarily
gave them up to stay with me, or if, in deciding to stay
with me, she inadvertently surrendered them. She was much
more highly regarded than I, that's for sure. At her
funeral, it was SRO. Mine will probably consist of a
graveside service with Skinner, the gunmen, and Scully's
mom, if she's still alive when I finally kick it. Her
brother Bill might show up later to dance on the grave, but
he sure as hell won't be among the mourners. He blames me
for his sister's death, you see, and for once in our lives,
we are in total agreement.

After the Graves case, our lives went back to boring for a
little while. Paperwork here, solve a commonplace case
there, give a lecture at Quantico, assist the VCS on a
couple of profiles...that was what got me involved with Deep
Throat again.

I hadn't seen him since the Ellens Air Base fiasco. I'd
tried my best to find out who the heck he was, but I'd had
no luck at all. The man was no fool; he covered his tracks
well.

An old partner of mine, Jerry Lamana, brought up one of the
VCS profiles I was asked to assist with. It was a weird
case, turned out to be a case of a too-smart computer, but
the really frightening thing was the case behind the case.

The government, naturally. They had great need, it seemed,
for a super-computer that could willfully commit murder.
Jerry was an asshole at times, but he was my friend. Yeah,
he ripped off my profile that day, and I was pissed at him,
but we had a lot of good memories together, too. And he'd
been under a lot of strain. He was desperate to make
himself look good. I could understand. I wouldn't have
done it, but I could understand.

Wilczek was no dummy, either. Not only had he programmed
the particular computer in question, he was expecting us
when we showed up at his door. I guess it didn't take a
really high I.Q. to figure out that he was the logical
suspect in the first murder. Talking to him, though, I
became convinced he was innocent. I'd seen a lot of
murderers by then, and Brad Wilczek didn't have
"it"--whatever the "it" is that separates a murderer from
the rest of the people. I told Scully once, there is no way
to tell who will become a murderer, and I still believe
that. Even the best of men and women can be driven around
the bend by circumstances. However, after a murder has been
committed, sometimes the perpetrator exudes the "it" - the
feeling, the aura of a murderer. Not always, of course, or
the job of law enforcement would be laughably easy. And
sometimes, even if you know a person is guilty, you can play
hell trying to find proof. In a premeditated murder, it's
easier to spot the "it." Brad Wilczek didn't have it.

Scully was convinced, though--and in truth, so was Jerry.
And it was logical, I had to give them that. When it turned
out that our real murderer was nothing more than a highly
functioning machine, I could hardly blame them for trying to
pin the crime on Wilczek. Most people would have done the
same.

I felt a loss at Jerry's death, and a bit of guilt as
well--when do I not feel guilt?--because I'd allowed him to
go to the Eurisko building alone that night. On the other
hand, as Scully reminded me, Jerry was a grown man, and he'd
asked--he'd practically *begged* me to allow him to be the
one to arrest Wilczek. I did not have a hand in the death
of Jerry Lamana. But I still felt responsible.

All that aside, I began to get another glimpse into the
inner workings of the conspiracy that surrounds our
government every day.

I'd contacted Deep Throat--something he'd requested I not do
except in the case of a dire emergency--and to my surprise
he agreed to see me. He all but told me Wilczek was being
set up to give the government leverage against him--they
wanted the technology he'd developed for the defense
department. At first I thought Wilczek was nothing more
than a blind pacifist, but I realized later that he was only
trying to live with himself.

I assured Deep Throat that Wilczek wouldn't deal with them,
and he assured me that Wilczek would. I never found out the
results of that endeavor--I had very few opportunities to
see him, and before the time was right to ask what had ever
become of Brad Wilczek, Deep Throat was dead.

I've always wondered if Wilczek gave them what they wanted
in exchange for his freedom, or if they took what they
wanted from him and then killed him, or if he's rotting away
in a prison somewhere because he refused to talk. I'll
never know. I suppose I could find the answers, or the
gunmen could, if we tried hard enough, but I don't care to
go digging into it at this late date. Some questions are
better left unanswered, as Scully would say.

So Scully had gotten me out of jail once, and she'd saved my
life already early on in our partnership, but I guess it was
almost Christmas of that year before I realized how fiercely
loyal she could be. I was surprised and pleased at the
revelation, because we truly didn't know each other all that
well at that point, in spite of having worked together now
for most of a year. Neither of us was the type to reveal
things about ourselves easily, and so far we'd not developed
that "you and me against the Consortium" attitude that
permeated the last few years of our relationship.

It was a surprise, then, a pleasant one, to find her
defending me when we were in the Arctic. Of course, she did
lock me in that storeroom, but I think now that it might
have been for my own protection as much as anything. She
couldn't convince Dr. Hodge that I hadn't killed Murphy, and
there's no telling what he might have tried to do to me--to
both of us, maybe--if she hadn't agreed to the quarantine.

At the time, though, I was naturally pissed. I sat in that
room, petulantly turning out the light, for what must have
been hours. I know it was hours, I just don't know how
many. I probably could have told you, at the time, but all
these years later, I just know I sat there with a cold
feeling in the pit of my stomach. Scully was the only one
in that whole bunch I could trust, and if she turned on me,
I would be at their mercy. They'd taken my weapon away and
locked me up. If the three of them decided I was a
danger...and the hell of it was, I *knew* I wasn't, I *knew*
I hadn't been infected. The trick was getting them to
believe me, and I had, after all, pulled a gun on my
partner.

When she opened the door and crept into the storeroom all
alone, I deliberately towered over her. I was angry, and I
was determined not to make it easy for her. Instead of
cowering, she spoke to me calmly and rationally, and I found
myself submitting to an examination against my own best
intentions.

Her exam confirmed what I already knew--I wasn't
infected--but I wasn't letting her off that easily. As she
turned away from me, I grabbed her and roughly jerked her
back. She could have pulled away from me, but she didn't,
and for the first time ever, I found myself having
non-partnerly thoughts about Scully. I rubbed my hands over
the back of her neck, checking for the spots that indicated
contamination by the odd life-form we'd found, and I
couldn't help noticing how soft and warm her skin was.

She quietly allowed me to check her, then turned and nodded
to me, as if to acknowledge what we both knew. Then we went
together to face the two remaining scientists. We tried to
explain to them that since neither of us was infected, one
of them must be, but naturally, they weren't really
receptive to our theory.

I should have seen the attack coming, but I didn't--it was
one of my stupider moments, I think. Before either of us
knew what had happened, Scully was locked in the storeroom
and I was being held down while Dr. Da Silva tried to
introduce the last of the worms into my body.

Imagine having a good-sized earthworm crawl into your ear,
and you'll know what I was expecting to feel as they held me
down on the floor. I kicked and fought them, but Hodge was
a big man, bigger than me, and Da Silva was sitting on my
back as well.

I'd be dead right now if Hodge, that bastard, hadn't seen
the worm in Da Silva, crawling under the skin of her neck.
Yeah, he was an asshole, but he was an honest asshole. He
didn't trust Scully or me because we worked for the
government, but he didn't wish us harm, either. He knocked
Da Silva away from me, screaming to me that she was the one
infected, but all I could think of, once realizing I was
free, was getting Scully out of that closet.

Well it all had a relatively happy ending--two of our people
died, yes, but we were able to save Da Silva, and the four
of us went home alive.

I wanted to study the new life-form--I mean, how often do
you get the chance to do something like that? I was
surprised when Hodge informed me the lab had been torched as
soon as we were out of there. At the time I'd been too busy
overcoming a case of the shakes--I've always been one to
react to stressful situations after the fact. I'll be cool
as a cucumber while my life is threatened, and fall apart
later. I usually do it in private. This time only Scully
witnessed it, but she had seen it before.

Hodge clearly didn't believe me when I told him I didn't
know anything about the lab being burned, but Scully knew I
was telling the truth. She could see how angry I was at
evidence of something so significant being destroyed, but
Scully was never one to risk sacrificing lives for
knowledge.

"Leave it there," she said grimly when I reminded her that
more of these things were probably down below the ice.

I stared after her as she walked away, pissed off that she
didn't share my outrage, but now I understand how she felt.
Sometimes, the desire to know is not enough to justify our
actions, and...say it with me now...some questions are
better left unanswered.

-----

I finally went to bed last night, a little after midnight.
My nurse, Katie, will be upset if she finds out I've been
staying awake late writing on this memoir, but I don't care.
I may be a cripple, but I'm still a cognizant person, and I
can still make decisions, thank you very much. My mommy
hasn't given me a bedtime since I was nine.

This morning, after a couple of cups of coffee to get myself
jump-started, I flipped through the next few cases Scully
and I investigated.

At the time, it seemed to me that the government
conspiracies were omnipresent, but now, in retrospect, we
had a lot of cases that had nothing at all to do with the
Consortium. Of course, there are various conspiracies, and
not all of them are related.

There was the case where we went to Houston for the Space
Shuttle launch, for instance. That didn't involve the
Government, not really, just a government employee. There's
a difference. Colonel Belt wasn't himself anyway, and
hadn't been for a long time, but we didn't know that at
first.

It was a shame when he died, but I still believe in the end
he killed himself in order to kill whatever being had
possessed him.

Scully says--said--I acted like a star-struck teenager
around Colonel Belt, and I suppose to some extent she was
right. It was an awe-inspiring experience to meet the man
I'd admired since boyhood, and terrible to see the end he
met. We never did figure out exactly what had happened to
him out there in space, but whatever it was, it died with
him. I think.

Then, as soon as we'd closed that case, the Consortium
reared its ugly head again. Of course, we didn't call it
that back then, nor did we realize just how organized they
were. They were still what I considered "shadow government"
people, those who operated outside the law and outside the
public eye.

I really thought I'd lost myself my job that time. Deep
Throat may have been the one who saved it for me, I'll never
really know. I do know he's the one who got me involved--he
called me to tell me to get my ass over to Wisconsin as fast
as I could to investigate a crashed UFO. Naturally, I
didn't wait for a second invitation.

I got in trouble--busted again, Mulder!--and naturally,
Scully came to my rescue. She was more than angry this
time, she was absolutely furious. I wasn't sure if she was
more upset that I'd gotten caught again, or that she'd been
specifically sent to haul my ass back to DC for an OPC
enquiry. After all, she was my partner, and if I was fired
for unprofessional conduct, it would have to reflect badly
upon her, even though she wasn't involved in the fiasco that
landed me there.

I ignored her anger--I knew it would burn itself out, and
sure enough it did. By the time she'd spent an entire night
trying to save the lives of some wounded servicemen and I
took her to examine Max, she was too tired and depressed by
the whole situation to be mad at me. She was really afraid
I was going to be out of a job, however, and so was I. The
only difference was in our reactions to that belief. She
was upset, I was sure I had nothing left to lose so I might
as well make the most of it while I could.

As it turned out, she couldn't examine Max--he'd been
abducted again. Or rather, in this case, he'd been
summoned, and we tracked him down at just about the same
time the military did. They weren't really after Max, they
were after what was after Max, but what it all boiled down
to was this: Max was abducted and I was arrested yet again.

It didn't gain me a bit of sympathy to appear before the OPC
board with a badly sprained ankle, and I ended up walking
out of the meeting in a fury--another example of the belief
that I had nothing to lose. I knew I was being railroaded,
and they were going to get rid of me anyway, so why not
point out a few home truths before I was tossed out on my
ear?

Only, to my surprise as well as Scully's, I wasn't tossed
out. In fact, the meeting was never officially reported on
at all--it was as if it never happened. That's why I think
Deep Throat had to be involved; he's the one who sent me
into the lion's den. I'm sure he never intended me to lose
my job. Remember, he didn't want me to jeopardize "future
work" way back when I first met him. That man had plans for
me. Unfortunately, I never got to find out exactly what
they were before he was killed.

-----

We had a dry spell then, boring cases, boring paperwork, up
until right after Christmas. Then things started happening
fast again.

We came up against more secrets and lies--the Litchfield
Experiment, genetic engineering, the Eves--nothing really
solved there either. We knew what was happening, and we
locked away the girls, but they disappeared the next day. I
suspect there was another of the Eves out there that managed
to rescue them, but in the end it was just another
unresolved case that we'll--I'll--never know the ending of.

As soon as we got back to DC after finishing that case,
Phoebe arrived. I hadn't even had time to catch my breath.
It was two days after we returned, and we'd spent the day in
court testifying against Bob Dorlund--remember the Howard
Graves ghost case? The terrorism one? That one. We were
both worn out and not really as observant as we should have
been. Normally I'd have been alarmed that the car was
unlocked--I *knew* I had locked it that morning--but I was
too tired to find it anything more than a puzzlement.

By the time we realized something was up, Phoebe Greene was
in my face for the first time in ten years. Literally in my
face--she reached up and kissed me, and I could tell from
Scully's expression that she was none-too-pleased about
that. Yes, I realized with a bit of smug pleasure, for the
first time, Scully was being territorial about *me.*

I loved her reaction, but I did not like having Phoebe so
close. Phoebe was like a drug to me...something I knew was
bad for me, but that I'd once been so addicted to that I now
doubted my ability to turn it down. I gave Scully a polite
brush-off because I was sure, before the case was over, I
was going to end up back in Phoebe's clutches, and I didn't
want Scully to get hurt. Oh, I didn't think I'd be in her
clutches forever--Phoebe was never one to play for keeps. I
figured I'd be her barely-willing plaything for a few days
and then she'd go away, and maybe, just maybe, if I could
keep Scully in the dark about it, we could take up our lives
and go on.

I swear, when Phoebe told me she'd taken a room at the hotel
in Boston for the night, my stomach dropped to my shoes. I
knew, you see--I knew she intended to "have her way with me"
so to speak, and that I wouldn't have the strength to fight
her. I knew that I would be spending the night with Phoebe
that night, even though my brain told me it was a bad idea.
Old habits die hard, and Phoebe was a ferocious habit from
my past.

I would have done it, too, I have no doubt, and then had one
more thing to beat myself up about, only L'Ively got in the
way. He started a fire that interrupted the dance Phoebe
and I were engaging in, the one that had already led to one
kiss and would surely lead to more. Hell, be honest,
Mulder. You would have spent the night letting her fuck
your brains out--Phoebe was *always* on top, figuratively if
not literally--and in the morning you'd have wanted to put
your gun to your head.

Okay, yes, that's how it was. I didn't want to be with her
but I couldn't stop myself--I felt like a boulder rolling
down a hill, gaining momentum as it went, with no way of
stopping until it hit bottom. And sleeping with Phoebe
would have been hitting bottom, it would have damaged my
self-respect in a lot of ways.

Once again, Scully saved me. She saw us kissing, though,
and I know that upset her. But, like the trooper she was,
she never mentioned it. She just informed us that there was
a fire upstairs, and that broke us apart rather quickly. We
were there to protect that family, after all, and the kids
were in danger. I was so embarrassed at what I knew she'd
witnessed that when the firemen brought me downstairs and
Scully tried to hover over me, I brushed her away.

I was a shit. If she'd left right then it would have been
no more than I deserved, but she didn't. She helped me
upstairs, helped me strip down to my boxers and got me into
bed, then sat beside me while I slept. She was there when I
woke up, and she didn't even flinch when my first question
was, "Where's Phoebe?" Asshole tendencies, I tell you, I
have them in spades, although I usually manage to keep them
under wraps.

She was good, though--she didn't say anything about it, just
answered my questions and then helped me get back on track
again. She was so wonderful, even then...I can't imagine
why I was ever attracted to a woman like Phoebe when there
were women like Scully in the world. Maybe the problem is
there aren't enough women like Scully in the world. There
certainly weren't any others like her in my life.

Seeing Phoebe kissing Lord Whatzisname not twenty-four hours
after I *knew* she intended us to spend the night together
sort of brought me up short. It was like a dash of icy
water in my face, if you want the truth. I think I might
have actually gotten over her in just that instant. You
have to understand that, although I was aware Phoebe was
seeing other guys while we were together, I'd never actually
caught her in the act. To *see* the evidence for myself
seemed to make all the difference. It's like not being able
to grieve properly for a loved one if you never see their
body at the funeral--as soon as I saw Phoebe in that man's
arms, our relationship became truly dead to me. A ten year
old rotting corpse that stunk to high heaven. One I wanted
nothing more to do with.

I think Scully was proud of me when I told her I hadn't
listened to the tape Phoebe sent me. I was a little afraid
to listen, but mostly I was uninterested. I know, the big
question is, how can a person with a curiosity like mine
leave such a thing undone, but I really had no desire to
find out what final barbs Phoebe had left for me. One thing
I am certain of to this day--there was nothing on that tape
that would have made my life better. Nothing she had to say
that I needed to hear.

I don't even know what happened to the tape--it disappeared
that afternoon and I never saw it again. I assume Scully
gave it a proper burial.

Burial. Scully. Now why did I have to mention those two
words in the same sentence?

I was in the hospital for several days before they finally
broke the news to me. I think they were all afraid that if
I knew she was dead, I'd lose my will to live as well, and
it was touch-and-go with me for a while. Once they'd
decided I was going to stay a while longer, they told me.

Skinner told me, actually. By rights I suppose it should
have been Mrs. Scully, but I doubt she could bring herself
to do the dirty work. She always did have a soft spot for
me--she was one of the few people I allowed to call me
'Fox.' God knows I nearly jumped down Scully's throat the
one time she tried it.

Anyway, there I was, lying in my hospital bed staring up at
the ceiling. I couldn't do anything else--at the time I was
in a neck brace. I could barely move my fingers, I was so
covered in bandages and plaster.

I could talk, though, and I hadn't stopped asking for Scully
since I'd regained consciousness. When Skinner came into
the room, he had an uncomfortable look about him. He moved
over to the bed and sat down, but I asked him to stand. I
couldn't see him if he was sitting, and I sensed he had
something difficult to tell me.

Actually, I was afraid he was going to tell me I'd be
paralyzed for the rest of my life. That was the news I
expected him to deliver, and I'd already come to terms with
the possibility. It's funny, they broke that to me *after*
they told me Scully was gone--information I could *never* be
prepared to hear. I knew living out my life in a
wheelchair, or worse, a hospital bed, was going to be
difficult, but with Scully to help me through it I would
survive--just barely.

And then Skinner told me she didn't make it.

To say I was in shock would be an understatement--I believe
I was approaching catatonia at first.

I didn't believe him. Not that I thought Skinner would lie
to me, I knew better than that, but I really, honestly
believed there had been some mistake. No way could Scully
die and leave me alone, not so soon after we'd finally
confessed our feelings for one another, begun to at last
*show* each other how we felt. It was impossible. We had
wasted years--therefore, we were owed years. The few paltry
months we'd had simply wouldn't suffice.

After a while, after Maggie had visited me and confirmed
what Skinner said, I began to believe. That's when it got
bad. Not only was I going to be a cripple for the rest of
my life, but I was going to be alone. I got angry at
Scully--how could she leave me like this?

Oh hell yes, I know all the stages of grief, and if you'd
pointed it out to me I'd have even had to agree which one I
was in, but nobody bothered pointing that out. The one time
I probably could have really used a therapist was then,
right after I'd learned of her death, while I was still flat
on my back in the hospital, but nobody suggested it, and I
was in no condition to ask. Later, after they did think to
suggest therapy, I was well enough to resist.

Speaking of death--not that I want to speak of death any
more, but going with the chronology of our cases I
must--Scully's father died just a few days after Phoebe left
for England.

I knew she adored him. She'd spoken of him often enough. I
knew he was career Navy and that she'd grown up in a
military family. I knew he worshiped the sea, and Scully
worshiped him.

We already had another case lined up for us, but when I
learned of her father's death I didn't think she'd be coming
along. I expected her to take a few days off, spend some
time with her family, and grieve.

Scully had other ideas; she insisted on coming to Raleigh
with me to interview Luther Lee Boggs.

I shouldn't have let her go--she was vulnerable, and Boggs
was an animal--but I never did know how to reign Scully in
once she made up her mind to do something. I knew I
shouldn't have let her go and I was right; Boggs ate her for
breakfast.

Her grief was so obvious, so raw, that he played her like a
violin, and Scully was defenseless against him. I tried to
warn her, I pointed out all his tricks, told her how I
thought he was coming by his knowledge, but I could never
give her the proof she always demanded.

I couldn't, and neither could Boggs, but somehow she fell
under his spell. And then, damned if I wasn't wounded and
out of action, so I couldn't protect her from him. I lay
there in that intensive care ward, frightened to death by
the knowledge. I knew if Boggs dangled just the right bait
in front of her now, he'd have her on his line before either
of us could stop him.

I still don't know how Boggs did what he did, but I don't
believe he was a true psychic even now. Scully did--at
least for a little while. After a few weeks, when she'd had
time to heal a little over the loss of her father, she was
less inclined to believe. She was always like that.

I was awfully egocentric back in those days. Sometimes I
wonder how Scully managed to put up with me. The best
reason I could come up with for what Boggs was doing was
that it was my profile that had put him away, and he was out
for revenge. He'd gotten partial payback when I was shot,
but I was still alive, so getting my partner would be his
next goal, I believed. All about me. Scully even told me
once that not everything was about me, but there were times
when I was the most self-centered bastard on the planet, and
the Boggs case was one of those times. Oh, I told myself I
wasn't, because I truly was sorry she'd lost her father, but
I never even once stopped to consider that maybe she was
right and I was wrong. I was so certain I was the expert in
all things paranormal that I simply discounted her feelings,
her opinions, and her experiences.

Scully forgave me for that, though, without even forcing me
to apologize. She was an incredible woman.

-----

Ah, good old green-eyed monster jealousy again. It reared
its ugly head to me on our next real case. I was confined
to desk work for a while, recovering from my gunshot wound,
so once they cleared me for active duty, I was raring to go.

We went up into the woods of Maryland, that time, in search
of a religious cult that turned out to be alien.

I know, I know, I could never prove it. Scully could never
disprove it either, though, and I took some comfort in that.
We had a few heated debates about the origins and fate of
the Kindred, but neither of us ever gave an inch.

When I saw her in that bedroom, lying on the bed with that
glazed look in her eyes, I wanted to shoot that bastard. I
didn't, of course--there was no good reason--but if he
hadn't backed off when I yelled at him, I might have just
managed to concoct one. The sonofabitch was practically on
top of her!

I calmed down once I realized it was an artificial effect
those beings had upon humans. Scully wasn't really
attracted to old Brother Andrew, she was just drugged.
Really.

But then, almost as soon as we got back home, an old
boyfriend appeared.

I was beginning to obsess about Scully quite a bit by then.
Oh, I still wasn't ready to admit that I was in love with
her, but I certainly couldn't deny how much I craved her
company. The thought of her with a man like Jack Willis
made me shudder. I kept reminding myself she was younger
then, and less experienced, but the idea that Willis gave
her some of the experience she had kept me awake nights.

Again, I knew I was right about what happened on that case,
and again, I couldn't fully convince Scully of it, although
I did force her to admit that the printout showed two
heartbeats...well, not really even that. She admitted that
it *looked* like two heartbeats, but was completely
satisfied to blame it on instrument malfunction.

When Dupre--Willis--whatever you want to call him--when he
kidnaped her, I really went frantic. Even called her
'Dana,' which was something I'd only done a few times...most
recently when her father had died. Once Dupre let me talk
to her, and I knew she was still alive, I was determined to
find her no matter what.

It was easy to get the search started, even if the officers
participating weren't really thrilled about the area of
ground we had to cover. Law enforcement takes care of its
own--you mess with an FBI agent, you're going to have two
hundred more FBI agents on your ass. Thus it was with
Dupre. We had an extremely organized search, and we were
able to locate her fairly quickly. I wish it always worked
that well.

I was so grateful to find her in once piece that I didn't
even mind that she practically ignored me to holler at
Willis. I didn't mind until late that night, when I was all
alone and thinking back over the event. I remember being
angry at myself for feeling hurt. She was just my partner,
I told myself firmly. She was someone I had a
responsibility to protect, and that was why I'd been so
upset at finding her in danger. That was all.

I've always been lousy at lying to myself, and I really
sucked at it then. I'm still not great, but these days I
have more practice. More things to lie to myself about. I
didn't believe for a minute all the things I was telling
myself, but to admit they were lies would be to admit that
my feelings were...more than I wanted them to be. I sure as
hell did not want to get involved with another woman at that
point, least of all my partner. It would be a sticky
situation, one I could do without. I moped around for a few
days, almost convinced myself they were just my imagination,
these feelings I was having, and then, on our next case, all
my lies were blown away and I had to admit the truth to
myself.

I loved her, and I could not lose her. She was the most
important thing in my life then.

-----

I've received commendations for bravery in my profession,
but the truth is, I'm just a man. When my life is
threatened, I get just as scared as anyone else. I'm just
better about keeping my cool during a crisis than most
people. If people want to call that bravery, I can't stop
them, but I know--it's really just a matter of controlling
my nerves.

Anyway, my life was threatened next. My life as well as the
life of everyone else I knew, just about. My old friend
Reggie died--he was my first ASAC, and a man I respected
greatly, and more than that, he was someone I could call a
friend. I didn't have that many people who fit that
description.

I hated John Barnett for killing Reggie, and I feared him
because I knew I was threatened, but when Scully was put in
danger, my focus narrowed down to a black determination to
get Barnett before he got her.

Of course, I had to drag myself though the waters of guilt
one more time, visiting the little league field where Steve
Wallenberg's son was playing football. Another death I
could have prevented, if I'd only acted on my instincts. But
I was a young agent, still concerned about my career at that
point, and I didn't want to break the rules.

Since then, I've done little else *except* break the rules,
and it hasn't turned out too badly. I was following the
rules the night Scully died. If I had broken them then, the
rules we'd set for our relationship, let her stay...but I've
been over that a million times. I didn't break the rules, I
insisted she go home, and she died. What more is there to
say?

That was a frightening case all around. Not only was
Barnett out to get me, but our government, according to Deep
Throat, was perfectly willing to grant him immunity if they
could get the research he'd stolen from Dr. Ridley. It was
no surprise that they didn't care if *I* died, but the fact
that they knew John Barnett was killing innocent people and
they did nothing to stop him really floored me. I was still
able to be amazed at their actions, back then.

Of all the fear I felt, it was the worst when I knew he was
targeting Scully. We simply had to catch him, there was
nothing else we could do, and since she was his primary
focus then...it was only logical that we use her as bait.
The agent in me had to agree that it was the best move, and
I knew Scully was as ready to sacrifice her life for the
good of the citizens as anyone--it was part and parcel of
the job. Deep inside me, though, I was screaming in terror
at the possibility of losing her. I knew if John Barnett
killed Scully her blood would be on my hands, and I could
never live with that.

End part 3 of 4
--

Subject: [MTA_Stories] MEMOIR: YEAR ONE - PG-13 4/4

When I saw her go down, although I knew she was wearing
kevlar beneath her clothing, it was all I could do not to
run to her. Instead, I managed to maintain enough
professional demeanor to order the agents near her to see to
her while I chased Barnett into the auditorium.

It was Steve Wallenberg all over again when he grabbed the
woman on the stage and put his gun to her head. I'm sure
that's what Barnett intended. He didn't realize he hadn't
managed to kill my partner, and now he wanted to take as
many people down as he could. He was insane toward the end,
I believe, or at least drifting toward insanity.

He taunted me as he held the gun to her, knowing I would
panic, knowing I would refuse to shoot if it might endanger
the woman's life.

Fortunately for all of us, everything Barnett thought he
knew about me was wrong. I'd developed a little more
backbone over the years, and I had spent enough time on the
firing range to believe in my ability to shoot straight.
Also, a nagging voice inside told me, Barnett had every
intention of killing the woman in his arms. Did it really
matter if I killed her by mistake, if I could take Barnett
out too, and prevent his killing other innocent people?

Of course, there wasn't time to form that into a coherent
thought--it was more of an impression in my mind, but I
raised my gun, took careful aim, and refused to let Barnett
rattle me.

It was one of the most accurate shots I've ever delivered.

I often wonder what happened to the research he'd hidden.
It's still out there somewhere. Someday, someone is bound
to find it, and then what will become of us?

We got to skate for a while then--easy cases, boring cases,
paperwork which I always hated but did anyway because it was
required. Things were pretty routine until I received word
that a trucker in Tennessee had reported seeing a UFO flying
overhead. He'd shot at it, missing of course, but we went
out there to see what we could see.

There had been a UFO there, I could tell. At least, there'd
been unusually high levels of radiation, and the two
stop-watches I had with me weren't functioning properly.
That's usually a fairly good indication that all is not what
it seems, but naturally, it wasn't enough for Scully.

We'd barely begun to question the truck driver before he was
released and we were thrown out of the police
station--gently, but ordered out, nonetheless. It was
obvious that our investigation was upsetting to the local
PD, and I thought I knew why. It wasn't difficult to see
that someone had threatened them in some way if they didn't
get us the hell out of there.

We left--there was really nothing else we could do at that
point--and went home.

That was the first time Scully ever met the gunmen. It's
funny, you know. They're my friends, and I know them as
three separate entities, Byers, Langly and Frohike, and yet
when I refer to them in the collective, it's always "the
gunmen." I wonder how many other groups of friends could
claim such a distinction? At any rate, I wanted to talk to
them about what we'd learned, and I dragged Scully along for
kicks. I knew she'd enjoy meeting some people who were
stranger than me, although Byers insisted it was the other
way around.

Her face, when Byers ripped the end off her twenty-dollar
bill to show her how the government was tracking her
movements through the cash in her purse was just priceless.
It's one of my favorite memories of Scully even now. Of all
the things she expected to happen when she handed Byers that
twenty, that was probably not even on the list of
possibilities. He replaced it of course, tucking the ripped
one into his own wallet and handing her a crisp new one, but
Scully was more than a little miffed. I think it was the
whole idea that someone could be spying on her that bothered
her the most.

She was certainly in for a surprise. We both were.

Remember when I said I was sure that after I made it clear I
knew they were tapping my phone, I was safe from all that?
Well, I was an idiot.

That case was so dangerous that even Deep Throat tried to
steer me away from it, although not so bluntly as he'd tried
with the Budahas case. Instead of just telling me to stay
away--which he had discovered simply didn't work with a
stubborn bastard like me--he gave me false information in
the hopes of steering me in the wrong direction. I still
believe he did it for my own protection and not to jerk me
around, but at the time I was more than a little pissed.

After we'd seen the gunmen, we went back to the office, and
Scully was trying to write up her report on our visit to
Tennessee. That was before computers were used for
everything under the sun, and she was still doing her
reports by hand, at least some of them. The ink in her pen
dried up, so she grabbed another cartridge from my desk
drawer and opened up her pen in order to replace it. I was
looking at something on the wall--photographs, I think, of
something, and remember her suddenly going very quiet and
still.

I turned around and she was holding the pen, looking at me
like some kind of confused little girl. I was a little
alarmed; a reaction like that was completely unlike the
Scully I knew. I went over to the desk, and when I saw what
had stunned her so, I went cold all over.

There was a bug in her pen--someone had been listening to
us. For how long? We had no idea, but Scully finally
remembered loaning her pen to a woman at the rental car
agency that morning. Our best guess was that the pen was
switched then.

You know the really frightening thing? I remember that
woman. She had a toddler with her, and looked like a
typical, harassed mother trying to keep it together until
she got herself and her kid to their destination. She would
have been the last person in that office I'd have pegged as
a Consortium spy. That scared the hell out of me, because
if you can't trust a woman with a little kid, believe me,
you can't trust anyone.

We hadn't truly learned that yet.

I thought of it that night when Deep Throat told me nothing
is what it seems. I'd signaled to him that I needed to see
him, and we'd met up at a park bench after dark. I remember
now that a camera flash went off while we were talking, and
he turned away quickly. I remarked that it was only a
tourist, and that's when he told me nothing was what it
seemed. I wonder now if it truly was a tourist, or if he
was being followed. Did that meeting with me mark the
beginning of the end of his life? Did they take a picture
of the two of us together, only to show it to his superiors,
who then ordered his murder? I'll never know, but hey, as
long as I'm wallowing in guilt, why not add that piece, too?

Anyway, Deep Throat gave me a packet of information, which I
took to the office and studied all night long. I was still
there when Scully came in the next morning, and I showed it
to her, excitedly certain we were this close to finding
evidence of UFOs. Scully told me the truck driver was not
what he had seemed, and that seemed to confirm my
suspicions, until she showed me that the photo was faked.

The photo--he was waiting in my apartment when I arrived
home, and handed it to me. It seemed clear proof, just what
I needed, and I thanked him for helping me before he left.
Thanked him. And then I took the photo to Scully, where she
pointed out to me that it was faked.

I didn't want to believe her--he'd never lied to me, at
least not that I was aware of--but when I took the picture
to the photo specialists at the Bureau, they confirmed what
she'd said. Deep Throat had tried to throw me off track.

That was the first time Scully ever said she admired me for
what I was. It came as a bit of a shock to me--I was used
to being ridiculed, although never by her, but rarely did
someone find anything in me to admire. It made me feel
good, deep inside, and less angry with her for pointing out
my blind spot, but I was still embarrassed to find she'd
been right about the photo.

"The truth is out there, Mulder, but so are lies." Such a
true statement, and one I'll never forget her saying. I can
still see her, leaning earnestly toward me, doing her best
to make me understand that she was on my side, really, even
when she had to give me difficult news.

She was always on my side, no matter what, no matter how
angry I made her, no matter how badly I treated her. Scully
was one of those people who are loyal to a fault, and once
she decided I deserved her loyalty, nothing and no one could
have shaken it. If she was still alive, she'd be right here
beside me, even though I'm confined to a wheelchair, nothing
like the man I used to be. And she wouldn't be here out of
pity, either. She'd be here because she loved me and it was
where she wanted to be.

God, I miss her so much. It hurts even more, knowing I'll
never have another friend like her. There will never be
another person in my life that I will be able to trust with
the deepest parts of myself, never again. All those secrets
are mine alone now, until I am with her again.

When I met with Deep Throat next, I was angry. He let me
know, in a very subtle way, that he'd tried to steer me off
course for a reason, but I wasn't in a mood to listen just
then. He did tell me he wasn't responsible for them
planting the bug, and I believed him. When he said they
could still hear us, I went home and ripped my apartment to
pieces.

I wasn't thinking all that clearly--I even smashed light
bulbs, afraid there might be something inside them. I found
the device eventually, of course, and later on we discovered
another one in Scully's apartment. Neither of us were ever
completely comfortable having personal conversations in
either home after that. I think that was one reason we
waited so long to become lovers. By the time we did, we had
both decided we just didn't care if they knew. Sometimes,
too, I wonder how long they would have allowed us to go on
if I hadn't killed her.

I was shown evidence of extraterrestrial life during that
case, and again came away with nothing to show for it at
all. I could go on for hours about the twists and turns of
that particular case, but this record is not meant to be
about aliens. In truth, this record is about Scully.

If our child had lived, I'd give it to him or her as a way
to show what a wonderful person Mommy was, but alas, it's
just me. I'm truly all alone now, except for my few
friends--no family left at all. I surround myself with
memories and try to forget about loneliness.

Samantha was such a beautiful little girl. She was a
beautiful fourteen-year-old, too, if what I saw in
California can be believed. I never had any trouble
believing I'd seen Sam's spirit, held her, been comforted
and reassured by her. Scully did of course, but that time,
I really didn't care what Scully thought. That time was for
me and Samantha alone. How could I have ever believed that
there was nothing after death? Once more I was a fool.

I wonder if Scully and Sam are together now? I know she
missed her father terribly--I suppose she had a happy
reunion with him. My mom? Well, they never got along all
that well, but they were civil to one another.

What the hell am I babbling about, anyway? I don't have a
clue what's on the other side of death, I only know that
Scully must be waiting for me, she must. We needed each
other too fiercely to be apart forever.

Religion was never my thing, that was Scully's area of
expertise. Although for the first few years of our
partnership she was pretty casual about it. She told me once
that she was raised a Catholic, but she didn't actually go
back to church until the time of her cancer. After that,
she became more regular at attending, but even then she was
never devoted to it. Not like her mother.

It's funny that I should think of religion now, because
flipping open the next case folder, I see that's what we
were dealing with. It was the boy healer...Samuel
something. What was it? It's here somewhere...Samuel
Hartley. That's right. The father preached and the son
healed. Apparently he did actually have some kind of gift,
although Scully and I never personally witnessed a healing.
We were too busy witnessing murders, but Samuel wasn't the
one doing that, it was Vance, the man Samuel had supposedly
brought back from the dead. Brought him back in rather less
than superb shape, which is evidently what the old man was
disgruntled about. Seems life in a severely scarred body
was worse than no life at all to Vance, and as a result, he
wanted revenge upon Samuel.

He got it, and the death he craved as well.

I'll be honest, I was a little concerned at the beginning of
that case that Scully might go overboard. We'd never
discussed religion up until then, but I couldn't miss the
gold cross she wore all the time, and I assumed she wore it
because of her faith. Turned out, when I queried her about
it later, that it was a gift from her mother. That's why it
was so special to her.

It became special to me as well, over the years. I wore it
when she was missing, as a way of keeping her close to me.

I wear it now.

I wanted to bury it with her, because I figured that's what
Scully would have wanted, but Maggie insisted I keep it. She
fastened it around my neck just before the funeral, ignoring
the tears rolling down my cheeks, and kissed me on top of
the head.

"She'd have wanted you to have it, Fox, to remember her by,"
she whispered before walking on to take her seat with her
family in the front pew. I realized, then, that Maggie was
right. Scully would have given it to me if she could. If
she'd known.

Maggie had invited me to sit there next to her, but I
couldn't. Bill would be there, his cold, accusing eyes
trained on me, and I had killed his sister. I didn't
deserve to be with Scully's family.

I sat a row behind them instead, my wheelchair parked in the
aisle beside a tight-jawed Skinner--Skinner doing his best
not to cry, imagine that!-- with Langly, Byers and Frohike
directly behind me.

I have always hated funerals, and Scully's reminded me of
why. Grief should be private. It's too personal a thing to
parade in front of a crowd of onlookers. Why should
Scully's mother have to mourn her youngest daughter while
the world looked on? And why should I?

I've already decided, the next funeral I attend will be my
own. I've already told my friends--I care for you, you mean
a lot to me, but I simply can't go through that again.

Anyway, I needn't have worried that Scully would let the
religious overtones of the case influence her thinking. If
anything, I was the one influenced--I saw my sister.

More than once on that case, I saw Samantha, just as she'd
been before she disappeared--a beautiful little eight year
old girl. I still don't know if I saw her due to Samuel's
influence, or because I wanted to see her so badly. The
case had nothing to do with little girls who'd been
abducted, not like the Ruby Morris case, so why it should
have triggered visions of Sam I don't know. And Vance swore
that Samuel had raised him from the dead. Maybe the kid was
the real deal, and it was the effect of being near him,
something in his aura perhaps, that made me able to see my
sister.

We'll never know. The sheriff had the boy killed.

-----

The cases I always enjoyed the most were the ones dealing
with the monsters of our childhood. Not human
monsters--those were awful cases--but the monsters that are
supposed to be myth. Werewolves, ghosts, vampires...this
was the stuff I thrived upon, especially in those early
years on the X-files.

Right after Samuel died, I managed to finagle it so we were
sent to Montana to investigate the death of a young man--a
member of the Trego Indian tribe. There was a land dispute,
and a rancher had shot the boy, apparently by mistake, but
with that kind of bad blood flowing, who would believe it
was a true mistake?

I knew the story of the Manitou--hell, that case was
carrying on a piece of history, and I had the proof with me.
The very first case ever classified as an X-file--even old
J. Edgar didn't know what to do when confronted by a
Manitou.

Scully, of course, was a bit skeptical. Yeah, that was
meant to be sarcasm. Scully is the most skeptical person
I've ever met in my life. It was one of the reasons I loved
her--how could I resist the constant debates? Nobody else
has ever been an intellectual challenge to me the way she
was.

Life is somewhat boring without her.

I took great delight in showing her the piece of skin I
found on the ground--weird things like that always put a
certain expression on her face, and I used to love to coax
it from her. If she'd been there when Ish told the story of
when he saw the monster as a kid, I'd have had enough of
that expression to live on for a year. It makes me laugh
even now thinking of it.

There is so much death in the world, so much death in our
past. We did our best on that case, but again, solved
nothing. Oh, I knew it was a Manitou we were looking for,
but we didn't catch it. And Mr. Parker and his son both
died, along with Joe Goodensnake.

I always felt guilt. I always wished I had worked faster,
or smarter, or whatever was required to save the lives that
were lost. Funny, I never did think of all the lives that
were saved when we did stop a killer, I only thought of
those I couldn't save. Maybe that's a place to begin
eradicating some of the guilt I feel. And it's a good idea,
but in the end, it really doesn't help.

I still killed Scully. She wanted to stay and I wouldn't
let her. It was nobody's fault but mine that we were on
Aberdeen Road that night.

When I think of all the times I almost lost her...you'd
think all that would have been a dress rehearsal for the
real thing, that on some level I'd have been at least
marginally prepared for the loss. I wasn't. Every single
time I watched her dying, it broke my heart all over again.

I'll never forget the sight of her after that case we worked
concerning the missing loggers.

You know, every time Scully was injured I was at least
partially to blame; I almost always chose those cases. This
time it was all me. I had to fight for this one, because on
the surface it seemed like plain and simple eco-terrorism.
Not our department at all. I knew there was something more
afoot, however--I'd seen the file on the missing WPA
crew--and I was the one who told her we'd have a nice trip
to the forest.

I knew more than a little about handling myself in the
middle of nature, and we'd be with experienced loggers as
well. I wasn't afraid. Yeah, there were things out there
that were dangerous, but with the proper precautions we'd be
fine.

I didn't know, then, that there were things out there that
could kill us, things we didn't know how to prepare for, but
I should have. I should have known, based on my past
experiences with the X-files, what type of enemies we could
run up against. I was still not prepared to think of us as
being in danger every minute, and for that I blame myself. I
thought because we weren't going up against drug dealers and
kidnapers, I could drop my guard.

I was an idiot.

On the other hand, I was only kidding when I suggested she
look for a boyfriend up there. By then I was completely
wild about her, although I still wavered between denying it
to myself and wallowing in the knowledge of how much she
meant to me. It was my secret. Nobody else could know.
They'd sent her to me, the fools, but if they knew how much
I needed her they would take her away.

They did, of course, but that came later.

We discovered the oddest thing up there in the forest--an
insect that sucked the moisture from the body of its
victims. It had apparently been lying dormant inside the
trunk of some of the trees until the logging crew cut them
down, releasing it and causing it to, in effect, wake up.

I'm still not sure how those tiny bugs managed to get a man
up into that cocoon we found--the log it was attached to was
suspended between two other trees like a giant campfire--but
somehow they did. Not only that, but we never located the
bodies of the other missing loggers, nor was there ever a
trace of the WPA crew had gone missing found. Perhaps the
insects eventually consumed the entire body.

I did do one thing right on that case--well, two really.
Scully and Moore were pissed at me for letting Doug Spinney
take the last of our gasoline, but somehow I had known he
was sincere when he said he'd come back for us.

Scully ripped me a new one over that. In her quiet,
understated way, naturally, but she had never been more
angry with me. And frightened--her fear obviously increased
her anger, but I could rarely remember a time at that point
when she openly chewed me out. Even then it was subdued,
but I knew her well enough by then to read the words behind
the words. I heard everything she wanted to say but didn't,
believe me. Not a single inflection of voice or arched
eyebrow was lost on me.

Anyway, the other thing I did right was to fix the radio and
begin broadcasting our situation. I wasn't able to give our
coordinates out over the waves before Moore cut us off, but
apparently I gave them enough information so they were able
to locate us. Just in time, I might add--they told me at
the quarantine facility in Washington that if Scully had
been there much longer, she wouldn't have made it.

It was touch and go with her for a while as it was, and I
stood watch over her like a sentinel, at first afraid that
if I turned my back she would slip away.

I suppose I could congratulate myself for sending the
message that ultimately saved our lives, but I won't. I
can't, because who sent us up there on the case in the first
place? Let's say it all together, kiddies: Special Agent
Fox Mulder.

Special Agent. Those are words I'll never use again to
describe myself. My days of 'Special Agent'ing are long
gone. I would say I'm sorry, but it's no more than I
deserve. Why should I be blissfully carrying on my career
when Scully is gone?

She didn't want to leave me, I know that. She hung on for
several days, clinging stubbornly to life before her little
body just couldn't fight any longer.

I was making my own fight for life at that point, and was
unaware of how valiantly Scully struggled to stay with me.
She always was loyal to a fault. The things I put her
through, the situations I got her involved in, all because
of her loyalty to me...

Scully is the only person in my entire life that I can say
never let me down. Even when she disagreed with me
vehemently, even if she thought I was a fool or a lunatic,
she never wavered in her support.

She'd go to bat for me, too, against anyone--Colton, Boggs,
even Skinner.

Ah yes, Assistant Director Skinner. A good-hearted man, but
one unprepared, at first, for the levels of deception that
surrounded our lives. I'll say one thing for him, he's a
hell of a fast learner, and although at times in the
beginning of our relationship I didn't always trust him,
he's proven himself to be one of my truest friends.

Hell, he's the one who broke the news to me about Scully,
he's the one who talked Maggie into putting off the funeral
for a few more days, he's the one who got me out of the
hospital on a temporary pass so I could attend...yeah, I
guess you could say he's a good buddy of mine.

And he has as many good memories of Scully as I. Sometimes,
when I'm feeling particularly down, the two of us will sit
and drink beer, (which I'm not allowed to have, but he
sneaks in to me anyway) and talk about her for hours.

It helps me cope. And I can remember her now without tears.
It was a long time before I reached that point.

We were assigned to report to Skinner not long before Eugene
Tooms was released from the Sanitarium where he'd spent the
better part of a year. Remember, he had attacked Scully,
intending to rip out her liver to feed his sick need, and I
would have gladly put a bullet in him as retaliation, but
that's not the way it's done.

Anyway, Blevins had apparently had his fill of me and my
cases, and had pushed me off into A. D. Skinner's division.
Cancerman was pulling his strings back then, or at least
attempting to, so it wasn't any real surprise that he went
through Scully to try and reign us in. She was called into
an impromptu meeting, at which Cancerman was in attendance
naturally, just as I was taking the stand to try and prevent
Tooms' release.

I knew my testimony wouldn't carry any weight once they
heard it--not only was I Scully's partner, and thus
presumably out for revenge on Tooms, but what I had to tell
them was insane. Unfortunately, it was also true.

There was no way to make it sound more plausible, so I went
for broke, figuring Tooms would get out anyway so I might as
well tell the truth. The doctor who had been treating Tooms
was looking at me with entirely too much interest while I
spoke, and I'm probably damned lucky he didn't get a court
order to have me locked up in his facility for evaluation.

Okay, that's a joke. It's not *that* easy to get a person
declared mentally incompetent, but I did strut my stuff
right in front of a judge. If you're gonna do it, do it up
right, I always say.

Anyway, Scully did her best to defend me in front of
Skinner, keeping her voice painfully prim and polite, I've
no doubt, while she slid verbal bamboo beneath the poor
man's fingernails. Neither of them has ever told me exactly
what transpired, but I can imagine. Scully is the most
subtle kind of machete at times, she could slice your head
off before you even knew you'd been attacked. Was. Scully
was.

That was the time she called me 'Fox'. The only time, that
I can recall, unless she was introducing me to someone, and
even then she almost always called me 'Agent Mulder.' I
introduced myself as 'Fox Mulder' more often than she did.
Guess I scared her off.

Hell, I damn near bit her head off over the name. It was a
shock, you see--I'd been doing my best to keep her at arms'
length. I was already in love with her, although not quite
ready to admit it, as I've mentioned, and it was just going
to be more difficult to lose her when the inevitable end
came. I could tell they weren't going to let us work
together much longer, especially after transferring us to
Skinner's command. We were too good together. Scully even
reminded Skinner that we had a much higher solve rate than
the norm. That wasn't what they wanted when they sent her to
me. They wanted to shut me down, in a way that I couldn't
go crying to Senator Matheson and get reopened, I presume.
If they could claim to have closed the X-files because it
was ineffective, or a waste of taxpayers' money, there would
be little the Senator could do to help me.

Instead, between Scully and me, we managed to close the book
on about seventy-five percent of our cases. Might not sound
like much, but believe me, it is.

But I was talking about her loyalty, how incredibly strong
it was.

When Tooms broke into my apartment and tried to make it look
as though I'd beaten him, we were called before Skinner
right away. Scully sat there, cool as a cucumber, and
informed him that I could not have assaulted Eugene Tooms
because I was with her at the time of the attack.

That was a blatant lie--I was asleep on my couch when he
came into my apartment, I realized later. I was still
asleep when the police arrived to take me down to the
station for questioning. Scully was probably at home
dreaming in her own bed, or watching one of those old movies
she always used to enjoy. The only place I know for certain
she was *not* at the time of the attack was with me.

Skinner didn't believe her either, but he could hardly call
her a liar to her face, not without any proof, so instead he
dismissed her and tried to bully the truth out of me. He
didn't get it, in fact I said very little, but I could tell
he was angry at more than just me. He tossed a couple of
disgusted glances toward the smoking man, but basically told
me to get the hell out of his office and stay away from
Tooms.

An order which I promptly ignored, of course.

The smoking man was around often in those days, always in
the background, usually silent. After Scully's
disappearance, when I put a gun into his face, he wasn't
quite as obvious about his influence. Oh, he was still
around all right, but he was no longer pulling Skinner's
strings. Skinner cared a lot for Scully too, and once he
realized Krycek and the smoker were in league together, and
that they had arranged for her to be taken, I have a
suspicion he told the old man to either kill him or get the
hell out of his life. I know Skinner was never as
influenced by him after that.

The smoking man--C.G.B. Spender, for lack of a better name,
although that was just one of hundreds of aliases, and I
still think of him as Cancerman--had been a friend of my
father's when I was young. I didn't remember that at first,
because he had changed quite a lot from the last time I'd
seen him, and after Samantha disappeared, I was pretty much
in my own world anyway. I hung out at school or in my
bedroom as much as I could; the atmosphere around my parents
was terrible, as one might imagine.

I didn't realize, during that first year with Scully, that
he was focused on me and my work. I knew he was around, as
I said almost always in the background, but I didn't realize
that his "official" capacity went much higher than I could
have imagined. This man didn't answer to the President of
the United States, had watched them die, as he once
sneeringly told me. I think at times he had delusions of
being the most powerful man in the world, but even so he had
his enemies, and they tried to kill him more than once.

I don't know if he's still alive, and I really don't even
care. Scully's gone, and I'm no longer a threat to him, so
if I'm lucky I'll never have to see his sorry ass again as
long as I live.

-----

After Tooms died, we got to delve into a couple of the cases
I loved to spring on Scully--spirit possession. One of them
a young girl who had been born just as a murder victim died,
a cop killed by some of his colleagues, actually, and the
case of twin brothers, one of whom was dead but not quite
dead--his body had been destroyed in a car accident, but his
brain preserved through a freezing technique. The supposed
dead brother was taking over his mentally handicapped twin's
body in order to finish the work he'd started. It was
weird, but we solved it, and prevented the last death that
would have occurred.

Actually, Scully prevented it--I was talking to the dead
brother, calling him "Arthur, Arthur," when she pushed me
aside and appealed to the living man.

"Roland," she said firmly, "we need you to help us."

She got through to him, and he was able to shut off the wind
machine that was about to suck his brother's colleague to
his death. Maybe I had solved the case, but Scully saved a
life.

And then we got too close to the truth again.

It's funny, you know--in all those years I claimed to "trust
no one," I never really stopped trusting. I guess I was
like Scully--I expected people to be honest with me because
I was honest with them.

Stupid, wasn't I?

Anyway, the beginning of the end, our end, our first end,
came when Deep Throat called me late one evening. It was a
Sunday, I remember that, because I'd spent a long weekend
away from Scully and was looking forward to enjoying her
company again on Monday morning.

Deep Throat asked me if I was watching a particular channel,
which I wasn't, and then he hung up. I flipped the tv over
to find a news report focusing on a suspect who had
mysteriously disappeared while the police were chasing him.

It didn't seem anything out of the ordinary--not really--but
I shoved a tape in the VCR anyway and pushed 'record.' I
figured there had to be something Deep Throat wanted me to
see, and I was right.

Of course it took a little time, as well as Scully's
assistance, for me to figure it out.

She accused me of enjoying Deep Throat's tactics, and that
really pissed me off, but thinking back now, I believe there
may have been a little truth to what she said. It gave the
whole deal an air of mystery, of danger, that elevated
me--in my mind anyway--from the level of pesky fly to
serious rodent problem to the powers that were. And we
were, we were a serious pain in the ass to them, but what I
underestimated was the lengths to which they would go to
stop us. And I shouldn't have. I should have known.

In spite of being irritated by her words, I was also a
little stung by them, so I went home, deciding that if Deep
Throat wanted me to investigate further he'd have to give me
something more to go on. He was waiting for me outside my
apartment building, and he ripped me. He claimed I was too
dependent upon him, but I wasn't really. I mean, I
certainly managed to find enough trouble on my own after he
was killed, although X had to steer me in the right
direction a time or two. I'll admit, after Deep Throat was
murdered and Scully and I were separated, I was drifting for
a while there.

That was the case when we first learned of Purity Control.
The flask full of amber liquid, which Scully warned me had
better not be monkey pee, turned out to contain a bacteria
with extraterrestrial DNA. Naturally, Scully couldn't just
come out and admit what it was, but she did agree that it
had never been seen before.

During the time Scully was learning about Purity Control, I
was discovering what they were doing with it. What I saw
was only the tip of the iceberg, I know now, but at the time
I felt I'd found a goldmine of information.

Humans, grown in tanks, able to exist underwater for long
periods of time. Not human, really. Alien-human hybrids.
If Scully had been able to examine a sample of DNA from one
of them, I'm certain she would have found the fifth and
sixth nucleotides Dr. Carpenter discovered in the flask of
liquid present in their bodies.

We learned then just how good they were at covering their
tracks.

Of course, the files on our first case together in Oregon
had disappeared after we left, but I always considered that
something Dr. Nemmen and Detectives Miles had done. It
hadn't occurred to me until this case that perhaps there was
something much larger going on. I had no idea how large.

When I took Scully back to the warehouse to show her the
hybrids, the entire place was empty. It looked as if it
hadn't been used in years, when I knew for a fact that less
than twelve hours earlier it had been full of tank-grown
beings. Deep Throat was there waiting for us, and he told
me they were destroying the evidence, but even he was
surprised at how fast the clean-up operation had occurred.
Maybe he should have been suspicious that he was left out of
that loop, but he didn't seem to be.

Not only had they made all the physical evidence in the
warehouse disappear, but the flask and all the test results
were gone, too. And Dr. Carpenter...the only one besides
Scully and me who could testify as to what that flask
contained had been killed in a car "accident" along with her
entire family, just that day.

What a coincidence.

I went back to Dr. Berube's house then, to try and locate
Secare. He was one of the hybrids, and I knew I had to take
him into protective custody before they destroyed him as
well. I found him, but too late. Even as I was assuring him
I would protect him, that man with the crew cut, whose name
I've never learned, appeared and shot Secare.

If he'd been human, it would have simply been a dead body at
my feet. Since he was half extra-terrestrial, the substance
that passed for blood nearly killed me. It was like
breathing in fire--my eyes, nose and mouth all burned at
once, and I couldn't get air. Just before I passed out, I
remember thinking that the man who'd shot Secare knew this
would happen; he was wearing a gas mask.

When I regained consciousness, I was lying on the floor with
my hands duct-taped behind my back. I couldn't open my
eyes, and my whole face felt as if it had been dipped in
acid. My cell phone was ringing, and I knew it had to be
Scully trying to locate me.

I'm not sure of everything that happened while I was being
held hostage by the guy with the crew cut, but I do know
that Deep Throat contacted Scully and told her the only
chance of getting me back alive was to "abduct" something of
theirs, something valuable enough to trade me for.

Deep Throat gave her the proper credentials to get into the
building at Fort Marlene, and he told her where to go, but
she said later that he never mentioned a password. Whether
he didn't have the password, or deliberately left it for her
to figure out, we'll never know. It's not likely the
requirement of something as important as a password just
slipped his mind. He liked to play.

At any rate, Scully, her heart pounding and her palms
sweating, she told me later, took her best guess--"Purity
Control"--and it's a good thing for me that she guessed
right. I'm sure they'd have killed me if she hadn't.
Because she did, she was able to take the original alien
fetus from which they'd been getting their DNA.

Needless to say, they wanted it back. Deep Throat made the
arrangement, and they agreed to trade me--alive--for the
fetus, but it cost him his life. They must have known by
then that he was helping me, because there was no
hesitation, Scully said, when it came time to kill him. They
took the fetus, shot him, shoved me out the back of the van
and they were gone, leaving the three of us alone on that
bridge in the middle of the night.

I do know Scully checked me for a pulse, because I remember
feeling her warm fingers against my throat, but I was in bad
shape anyway, and I'd just hit the pavement pretty hard.

Deep Throat was dead, or dying anyway, when Scully went to
him. She said he stayed alive long enough to tell her,
"Trust no one," and that was it. His final words were a
warning to us.

Scully half carried, half pulled me into her car, drove me
to the hospital, where she concocted some lie about a
chemical accident. I was barely conscious at that point.
They treated my face as they would chemical burns, and I
guess it was the right method--I didn't have any permanent
scarring. At that point I was just grateful to have my
eyesight, but later on I was happy that my face wasn't
marred.

Didn't want to live out the rest of my life drawing pity
from others.

And look at me now. Oh well, pity is something I have more
than enough of, but I don't get it from the ones who mean
anything to me. My friends are supportive, but if I start
acting like a shit to them, they're all just as likely to
slap me upside the head and tell me to snap out of it. Which
is just exactly what I need at times, I'm afraid.

It was a while before I was cleared to go back to work, and
when I did get back to my office, we were in limbo. Skinner
refused to allow us to take on any new cases while our
"actions underwent review." I'm not sure who reviewed
them--we were never called before an OPC committee at that
point--but I'm sure the smoking man was the final word. He'd
finally found a way to get rid of us, or so he thought.

Skinner called me late one night, about two weeks after Deep
Throat was shot, to tell me that the X-files were closed and
we were being reassigned to other divisions. We wouldn't be
working together any longer, he said, and while he never
gave any personal comment, his voice was tinged with just
the tiniest hint of what I thought might be regret.

I thought it was over. I called Scully right away and told
her it was over, but even then I knew I couldn't give up on
my quest for the answers that always seemed just out of
reach. Somewhere out there, I believed, lay the clues to
what had happened to my sister, the answers to the mysteries
that had surrounded my family for all those years, and the
truth about extra-terrestrial life on our planet.

I knew I'd find the answers if I kept looking long enough,
but now I was alone. They'd taken Scully from me, and I
felt enough of a sucker-punch from their maneuver that, for
a long time, I didn't do anything except blindly work on the
boring cases they assigned me.

Senator Matheson was the one who ultimately got me going on
my quest again.

End Memoir: Year One
Coming soon: Memoir: Year Two
--

"Consciousness is that annoying thing between naps..."

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