Thank You for Not Smoking
by Hth


	"Wh- Hmph? H-hello?" Scully reversed the cordless phone so that she was 
speaking into the correct end. Rolling over, she tipped back her alarm clock 
so that she could read the display. Six thirty-six in the morning. Must be 
Mulder.
	"Scully! I knew you'd be worried, so I called to let you know that my red-eye 
landed sweet and soft in Mexico City. I'm A-OK, I've got my luggage, and I'm 
in an Aztec mood. I'm good to go. You going into the office?"
	Scully flung one arm over her face, resisting the urge to say, *No, I worry 
when *I* fly, Mulder; you flying is not a problem for me.* "Of course. It's 
Wednesday." My God, there was light coming in the window. The sun apparently 
did *not* rise at 6:59, immediately before her alarm went off.
	"You sound like shit, Scully."
	The sound of her neck creaking as she sat up in bed bothered her a bit more 
than the frog in her throat. *Thirty-four, Dana. The body's beginning to think 
labor rights, hazard pay, benefits. Next come the slow-downs, then the 
strikes.* "A little head cold, I think."
	"True story -- an X-File from the pre-Scully era. A man from Pasadena calls me 
and says he answered his front door, and what does he find but -- no shit -- a 
six-foot cockroach, which proceeds to beat the living fuck out of this poor 
bastard and scuttles off."
	"Sell it to someone else, Mulder."
	"True story! He drags himself inside and calls an ambulance. Of course, he's 
telling me all this days later, and this is before you, so I get the name of 
his attending physician in Pasadena, and just as a jumping-off point, I ask 
him, you know, What did they say in the ER when you told them what happened? 
Guy says, Oh, they didn't seem that concerned. Just said there was a bad bug 
going around."
	Scully sighed. Fox Mulder, the lunatic angel of shaggy dog stories. "Mulder, I 
have to get ready for work."
	"I thought you were going to take some time off?"
	"I'm taking Friday. Today is Wednesday. They said *you* were experiencing 
stress episodes, not me." Scully knew she sounded smug, but -- hmm, well, 
they'd discussed phone calls before seven a.m. before; Mulder was a morning, 
noon, and night person, but she needed the occasional eight hours.
	"Oh, gimme a break, Scully! You *know* they were vam--"
	"Mulder, I'm getting ready for work now."
	"Are you still...upset? Over that thing we -- we talked about during the 
holidays?"
	*Slow down, Mulder; I don't take these conversational corners like I used to. 
Hmph. From the six-foot cockroach to the six-foot rat.* "We agreed we wouldn't 
discuss it anymore." Scully padded into the bathroom, turned on a light, and 
immediately regretted the necessity. Someday, she was going to master the 
skill of applying makeup in the dark, and she would never need to face her 
first-thing-in-the-morning reflection in the bathroom mirror again. Scully 
turned on the tap and dangled her fingers under the water, waiting for it to 
warm. "And I'm not upset. It's just early."
	"You know it's over. It was a mistake, and it won't happen again."
	"It never should have *happened* at all," she rapped out, and regretted that, 
too. This was exactly why she hadn't wanted him to bring it up; Scully was in 
no way impartial, and yet she didn't want to be pushed into passing judgement 
on what was, after all, Mulder's personal life. Alex Krycek possessed by 
unknown lifeforms was business, X-Files business, Agent Scully's business. 
Alex Krycek naked in Mulder's apartment was *Mulder's* business. No one paid 
her to have an opinion on that.
	Although she did have an opinion. But that was neither here nor there. Why 
couldn't he just *shut up* about it, anyway? Why bring it up now, when she was 
sleepy and vulnerable and hadn't even brushed her hair yet?
	He had taken offense; she could hear the injury in his voice. "I didn't have 
to tell you about it, you know."
	*Oh, then why the *hell* did you?* "I have to go."
	"Whatever. See you Monday."
	"See you Monday."
	With one ruthless twist, Scully pulled her hair away from her face and secured 
it with a cheap plastic clip. In high school, this and a coat of mascara would 
have seemed sufficient preparation to go almost anywhere. She might even have 
worn this t-shirt, an oversized Les Miz shirt with the waif peeling and 
flaking off the front. In those days, she'd required less costuming. A less 
elaborate screen against the world.
	You couldn't compare, though. In those days, she'd been simply herself, all of 
her selves -- brainy, jaded, sexy, naive, secretive, anything and everything 
she could imagine, sometimes in the same day. She had played soccer, been 
captain of the debate team, driven her father to apoplexy each time her 
speeding tickets nudged up their insurance rates. Made out with a cheerleader 
named Hayley at the junior prom, read every book on anatomy in the library, 
smoked behind the Fine Arts Annex with disaffected drama club students. Gone 
to confession every week. Refused to trade in her glasses for contact lenses. 
Dyed her hair brown once. Written terrible poetry. Swiped the X-acto knife 
that her brothers used for their model airplanes and used it to carve a fine 
network of hatches on the pale skin of her inner arm. Wanted to be a surgeon.
A hundred years ago. Now it took more effort to be herself. Cleanser, facial 
scrub, moisturizer, two kinds of foundation. Professional, elegant, composed. 
Year by year, she had shaved away one Dana Scully after another, paring down 
to essentials. First to go was the poetry, then the cigarettes, and eventually 
soccer and speeding tickets and confession. No longer naive. No longer jaded. 
No longer sexy. Got the contact lenses. Ditched neurosurgery for forensic 
pathology. Grew up.
	*This is you, Dana Scully. Stripped down and sold for parts.*
	She had been ambitious once. When that was taken from her, when her career had 
been derailed and turned into a heap of twisted, smoking metal in a Hoover 
building sub-basement, she had discovered that the work thrilled her for its 
own sake. That she was a natural investigator.
	She had been a romantic once, a nice Catholic girl saving her heart, if not 
exactly her virginity, for the right Catholic boy, the love of her life. When 
that was scalded away, when she had fallen hard for a manic-depressive 
parapsychologist with a skewered sense of humor and a Christ complex...and 
realized that she could never love him, any more than she could ever love 
anyone who wasn't him.... Well. She'd learned a lot about herself there. She'd 
learned that friendship was a sweeter, more sacred pleasure to her than 
anything she'd fantasized for herself back in her romantic days.
	Once, she had been self-satisfied, felt that she, Dana Scully, was wiser and 
more noble than most people, unselfish, skillful, and brave. Only when she 
faced death and became resigned to her own fated end, did Scully realize that 
her life had been an empty tangle of beginnings without endings, questions 
without answers. It made her humble. Smaller, but more real.
	The heteroglossia of self from her past was gone, honed into one tight, lithe 
personality: Scully. Affirmed, defined, sacrificed to every morning in front 
of this bathroom mirror. Rebuilt from the essentials up, with the clockwork 
craftsmanship of eyebrow pencil and lipliner, concealer and blush.
	Scully opened the drawer under her sink and examined the tools laid out as 
neatly as scalpels. Such time and patience, morning after morning, duplicating 
herself. Preventing herself from straying into unfamiliar, unsanctioned 
alternatives, from looking at the world through extreme eyes.
	To hell with it.
	She had a surgeon's hands and a detective's eye for pattern and design. She 
brought the plum of her eyeshadow further up on the inside corners. smudged it 
beneath her lower lashes -- cat's eyes, bruised eyes, strange eyes. All right, 
so it was a small thrill, hardly a rebellion at all. But it fed a hunger that 
was beginning to be so much a part of Scully that she could barely feel it at 
all.
	Not one, but three layers of dark eyeliner; Scully feathered it out beyond her 
eyes a bit, the subtle hint of a Cleopatra curlicue. She chose a lipstick she 
never wore, a bloodtide color, and as Scully smiled very slightly at her 
reflection, she saw something predatory and unpredictable in her own familiar 
features. Her hand jerked, reaching for a tissue to wipe off the lipstick, and 
only sheer will quieted it.
	When would she have this chance again? A quiet day of paperwork in the office, 
no field assignments, no *Mulder*("Ooh-la-la, Scull-ee! *Dig* that Queen of 
the Damned look.") A boring, wasted, businesslike day. But Scully could feel 
her pulse, heavy in her veins, and she felt sleek and stark and hungry -- 
aware of her hunger. How many times, in the hospital, had she regretted the 
sterility of her life, wished she had more time to crack her own existence 
between her teeth, taste its salt and grain? *Ante up, Scully. If you're going 
to regret something on your next deathbed, at least have something new to 
regret.*


	She played Ella Fitzgerald all the way to the office, sat at Mulder's desk, 
left her shoes on the carpet. Cross-legged in his chair, humming out of tune, 
going over months' worth of data sent down from other departments and then 
marooned on Mulder's Island. Penciling the case they addressed, putting them 
aside to be filed --tedious work, but she enjoyed the tedious every once in a 
while. Mulder treated follow-up work like wolfsbane; once a case was over, he 
couldn't drop it fast enough, always jittery until the next big lead came 
along. Sometimes she forced him to come in on a Saturday with her and clean 
out the backlog; casual clothes, cartoons on Mulder's portable 
black-and-white, a box of Fig Newtons and a six-pack of Brisk to split between 
them. This time, however, Scully preferred to do it herself.
	Someone knocked on her office door, but entered before she could respond. 
Well, there wasn't much you could say to the Assistant Director if he felt 
like breezing right in, but she gave Skinner a narrow look. "Where's your 
partner?"
	*Hm, *good morning* to you, too, sir. Speaking of stress episodes....* "I 
believe you required him to take his vacation time. Sir."
	Skinner frowned. "I did. Goddammit. Bring her in, let's go," he added over his 
shoulder, and half the FBI tracked into the office that Scully had, only 
moments ago, been enjoying in rare privacy.
	Fine, really only four people in all. Two wore FBI badges; she recognized the 
younger black agent as Garvey from the Child-Abduction and Serial Killers Unit 
down at Quantico, and a third man was West Virginia highway patrol. There was 
a freshly-closed wound underneath his eye, still swollen, and he was pushing a 
woman in front of him, a woman in handcuffs. She seemed to be limping, until 
Scully noticed that she was wearing expensive boots -- leather, like 
everything else she wore -- and the high heel had broken off one, unbalancing 
her severely.
	"Who's this?"
	"Beats the hell out of us," Agent Garvey admitted, tossing a document pouch 
onto Mulder's desk. "Bitch won't give us anything."
	"Until I see my lawyer, I'm not even giving you the correct time." She had a 
low, throaty voice, but rich with the burgundy tones of a cultured upbringing. 
Old money.
	The patrolman shoved her into a chair, and the woman spared him one glance -- 
dismissive, yet somehow threatening at the same time, a look that clearly 
said, *I'll get to you later.* She tossed sleek, dark hair back from her face 
and favored the whole room evenly with a white-hot look of tightly-leashed 
hostility. "Says her name is Parker," Garvey continued. "We're trying to reach 
her lawyer now."
	"I don't understand. Why are you bringing this person to me?"
	Skinner ignored her question completely. "Can you get your partner on the 
phone?"
	"I think so. What--"
	"Just tell him I'm pulling some strings to put this in his jurisdiction. I'm 
running on credit and my sunny smile with CASKU, and he damn well better get 
his ass back to Washington and look into this."
	"Is she a serial killer, sir?" Scully flattened her voice out, hoping that 
Skinner would catch a goddamn clue and explain this.
	He looked puzzled, but at least he seemed to be looking directly at her for 
once. *I guess I am on the list, when there's no Mulder nearby to fixate on.* 
"What? No."
	"Not yet," the woman said, arching a look at the highway patrolman that 
unsettled him visibly. Scully couldn't quite fault him for that.
	"Get him back here. McGrath, Garvey, let's pursue this from my office; Parker 
will be fine in custody here for the time being."
	"Wh--? *Sir...*"
	"She's an X-File as of now. Officer Volk, just turn over the arrest reports 
and feel free to go on home. Thank you for your help."
	Feeling dazed, Scully took the report. He leaned closer as he handed it over 
and said, "Keep your eyes on her. She's a fighter."
	Scully made one last try as Skinner opened the office door, about to vanish, 
along with his retinue, as suddenly as he had appeared. "She was arrested on 
what charges?"
	"She's a suspect in three kidnappings. Do you look... different?"
	On second thought, Scully was just as happy that they were all leaving. "I'll 
make that call. I'm sure everything is in the arrest report."
	Slowly, watching her unexpected guest warily, Scully reached for the phone, 
picked an outside line, and dialed Mulder; thank Christ for satellite 
technology. Parker was simply observing, her expression granite. She extended 
one long leg, her leather jumpsuit creaking loudly, then crossed the other leg 
with it at the ankles. She looked indecently comfortable, for someone with her 
hands cuffed behind her back.
	After so many rings that Scully was about to give up, she got an answer. 
"Mulder."
	"Yeah, it's me. I'm holding a prisoner that Skinner's just had reassigned to 
the X-Files. He has requested your personal attention. Here."
	"Skinner said that? He's the one who told me to go away! Take my vacation 
time, he said, someplace warm, someplace with no relationship to work. Not 
Roswell, he said. Leave the country, he said."
	She was annoyed at Skinner; Scully knew that, but it was so much more 
rewarding to be annoyed at Mulder. "I'm afraid I can't speak to that. But I'm 
stuck here with a woman who appears to be from a lost episode of *The 
Avengers,* and I'm not dealing with this by myself. The Assistant Director 
said quite specifically that she's in *your* jurisdiction now, so I suggest 
that you get on a plane."
	"Fine."
	"Fine."
	"*The Avengers*?" Parker repeated, arching an eyebrow at her as Scully hung up 
the phone with a little too much enthusiasm.
	Scully picked up the arrest report, began to scan down it. "Unless you prefer 
*Batman.* Maybe it's my line of work, but I don't see many catsuits on a 
day-to-day basis." Picked up for trespassing in a --trainyard. Outside of 
Perkey, West Virginia. The name prickled along Scully's scalp, and she frowned 
intensely at the report. What had Skinner seen? What was the X-File here? "You 
want to tell me what you were doing in a boxcar in Perkey, West Virginia?"
	"When Sydney gets here, you two can both talk until you choke on your own 
tongues." She lolled her head from one side to the other, loosening her neck. 
She seemed almost bored, and Scully had the urge to apologize for Mulder's 
absence. How inane.
	Something about this woman, though, seemed to demand an apology. She was too 
rangy, too athletic to be kept chained up, and God knew how long she'd been in 
those cuffs -- sorry, sorry. She sizzled with aristocratic outrage; how dare 
law enforcement fail to treat her with due deference? Sorry. Being arrested 
was an inconvenience, a detour, and she had business to take care of. Sorry, 
we'll find your lawyer, we'll get Mulder here as soon as possible, sorry we 
can't expedite this a little. *I'm sorry,* Scully had the urge to say, *that 
the world has no love for any of us, that people deceive and betray and die, 
that they hurt us, that they leave us. It's not my fault. I'm sorry.*
	Strange. Strange reaction, but this woman was a nuclear warhead of diamond, 
deadly pain, beneath her brazenly insincere serenity. She 
was...disconcertingly Mulder-like, when Mulder was at his absolute lowest, a 
gun that could go off at any moment, a walking murder-suicide in the making. 
She even had his beauty -- lank, physical, mummified in Paris-runway clothes 
and an empty, inscrutable expression, with eyes like raw and bleeding wounds, 
and a mouth--
	Enough of that. Mulder's mouth was a *verboten* topic in the orderly salon of 
Scully's mind, and this woman's mouth--Well, it hadn't been about this woman; 
she'd been thinking of Mulder.
	Her lipstick was a mod, silvered shade of ice-lilac. For an instant, Scully 
saw the artful overlay of color, the Gothic bloodstain on her own mouth 
smeared across that pale watercolor....
	Scully turned away. This was unacceptable. She was Dana Scully. She was not 
Mulder, and she did not fuck felons. Mulder did, Mulder had-- it did not 
*matter.* That was Mulder, and she had nothing to do with it, and it had 
nothing to do with this Parker woman. Goddamn him. Goddamn him, anyway. 
*Where's your partner? Can you get your partner on the phone?* Oh, yes, *sir.* 
Shall I reserve you two a room, while I'm making calls? While I'm his fucking 
receptionist for the day? *Scully! I knew you'd be worried--* I'm not 
*worried,* Mulder. Leave me *alone.*
	*I need to tell you. You deserve to know.*
	Fuck you, fuck you, I don't *deserve* this.
	*...The way I feel about him -- it goes back -- I don't know how long. Since 
before I knew about your, the, um, your medical, ah...*
	Go to hell.
	*...slept with him...*
	Go to hell, Mulder, you *traitor.* *Hate* you....
	She was crushing the arrest report in her fingers, seeing nothing but red. 
Three kidnappings -- where was that in the report, why couldn't she find it? 
Not *here.* Just trespassing. Mother of God, Skinner, help me *out* here. What 
did you see? I'm only human. Not *Mulder,* after all.
	The voice behind her was a surprise because unexpected, a shock because it 
caught and fractured, failing to live up to its former glossy arrogance. 
	"Mulder?"
	Scully whirled, eyes wide. "What did you say?"
	"Agent Mulder...."
	"No, I...what do you want?"
	Parker licked her lip once, then bit at it, as if to negate whatever 
gentleness she might have shown, even toward herself -- perhaps especially 
toward herself. *Don't analyze, Scully. That's not your job.* "My bag." She 
nodded toward the document pouch on the desk; Scully had actually forgotten 
about it. "I have cigarettes in it."
	Aha. Being held in custody by the FBI wasn't getting to her; the break in her 
control had been the addict's unease. "You said -- Mulder. Why?"
	"Aren't you Fox Mulder?"
	What an astounding thought. "Me? *No.* No, I'm--Agent Scully."
	She looked irritated at her own mistake, or maybe at Scully for refusing to 
conform. "I assumed this was your office. The sign says--"
	"I know what the sign says. It *is* my office." Something else she could blame 
Skinner for. To hell with the desk; six years in the same office, and the 
Federal Bureau of Investigations couldn't tack a brass plate to the door? Fox 
Mulder, Special Agent.
	Fox. A relatively androgynous name. It was reasonable that she would 
assume.... It made Scully think of that Pam Grier movie, what was it? *Foxy 
Brown.* You'd have to be the right kind of woman, to pull off a name like Fox. 
Tall, with Spanish eyes, wavy hair, a Julia Roberts sort of smile. You'd have 
to have unshakeable cool, be more Pam Grier and less...Dana Scully. To make 
*Fox* work on a woman.
	"My cigarettes?" Arrogant again, imperious.
	"I'm sorry. I'm afraid you can't smoke in the Hoover building." Shouldn't that 
be obvious, in 1998? You couldn't smoke in McDonald's anymore, let alone a 
federal facility.
	"Serial killing begins to look good."
	Scully was more amazed than offended. "Is that a *threat*?"
	"Do you find it threatening?"
	"*No.*"
	"Well, then."
	The document pouch was leather as well; it looked hand-tooled, with a silver 
buckle as its clasp. Scully picked it up gently, enjoying the texture. It was 
monogrammed with an *MP.* "What does *M* stand for?" She hadn't really meant 
to get into a conversation here, but...it was odd, sitting in dead silence 
with a complete stranger.
	"*Miss,*" she said coldly.
	Unwittingly, *Miss* Parker had punched a big, flashing red button in Dana 
Scully's psyche. A moment ago, Scully couldn't have cared less what her name 
was. Now it was something being concealed, deliberately concealed from her 
specifically, and Scully knew that *MP* would drive her slowly insane until 
something else even more mysterious came along. God *damn* it. "Madeleine," 
Scully grumbled under her breath as she opened the pouch. "Miriam. Monica. 
Meredith. Meredith, that's nice. Not a Melanie, not a Molly, not a Margaret. 
Marie. No. Maya." She happened to glance toward Miss Parker, who was eyeing 
her suspiciously. Scully gave her a bland, innocent smile. *M* for Michelle, 
*M* for Moira. Meredith was still a pretty name. *M* for Emma Peel.... Scully 
steeled, trying to force the obsessive throb of names out of her head. Stop 
stop *Marta Miranda* stop. *Stop.*
	Three file folders inside the bag. Joanna Carroll --Michael Eisenbath -- Jasen 
Morisaki. Scully flipped them each open in turn; now *this* was more 
interesting than Miss Parker's name. Medical records. IQ and aptitude test 
scores. Report cards. Medical records on family members. Joanna Carroll, born 
1989. Michael Eisenbath, 1985. Jasen Morisaki, 1991. Scully picked up the 
phone and placed a call to CASKU to have them fax over whatever missing 
persons reports they had on those three names -- to AD Skinner's office. It 
would give her an excuse to go up there and take one more stab at getting 
information from Skinner. For the first time that day, she really wished 
Mulder were here; *he'd* have no trouble getting the AD to part with his 
information. Scully wouldn't be surprised if Skinner confessed to the Jack the 
Ripper killings, if he thought it would advance Mulder's career. *Ah, ah. 
Catty, Scully. Very catty. You should be *thrilled* that Mulder's found a 
friend. Or whatever.*
	Prudently, she went back to the files before this line of thought could take 
on a life of its own. An IQ of 260? "Jasen Morisaki is a bright boy." 
Eisenbath -- 290. Carroll -- 275. "These are all bright children."
	"I've never met them."
	"Then why were you carrying files on them?"
	She seemed about to deflect the question with another remark about her lawyer, 
but then she paused. "It was a set-up. I'm just not sure who was being set 
up."
	"Can you explain that?"
	"Can I have a cigarette?"
	The pack was indeed right here in the bag, along with a lighter and four 
rolled-up fifty-dollar bills. "You can wait. It's not good for you anyway."
	"Who are you, my doctor?"
	"Well, not yours, per se," Scully answered mildly. Miss Parker rolled her 
eyes.
	There was something surreal about going back to work as though nothing unusual 
had happened this morning, but...she had started this back paperwork, and 
Scully hated leaving a task half-finished. Given an hour or two, Skinner would 
surely be finished with the CASKU people; she could go upstairs and make 
another bid for his attention. By then maybe this AWOL lawyer Sydney would 
surface, and the case could move forward a square or two.
	She could feel Miss Parker watching her work. Scully tried not to let it get 
to her; what else was the woman going to look at, after all? There was a muted 
thump thump thump jsut on the edge of Scully's hearing -- Miss Parker's intact 
heel picking out an irregular but repetitive pattern on the carpet, like a 
trick metronome. Work lasted about fifteen minutes, until Scully's sanity 
broke cleanly in half. Her head shot up, fixing Miss Parker with a 
firing-squad look. "What the hell is your name?"
	Miss Parker smiled for the first time -- more ironic than amused, but 
definitely a smile. She let her dark eyes widen, tipped her head down and to 
the side, shifted in her seat to set off her body, a long, unraveled ribbon of 
leather and sinewy muscle, dropped carelessly after the Christmas presents had 
all been unwrapped. "What would you like it to be?" she sing-songed, her voice 
just one grade off from its former throatiness, round with breath.
	In spite of herself, Scully grinned. Well, Catwoman had a sense of humor, 
anyway. She looked bored as hell, very much like a cat who, accustomed to 
mousing for herself, has suddenly been put on a strict diet of Nine Lives. 
Scully could sympathize; she'd been on Nine Lives all her life, and that 
wasn't really a picnic either. Especially when everyone else assumed she 
was...*domesticated.* What was with Skinner, anyway? Mulder was on vacation; 
why did he have to come back? Why was this so fantastic a case that Scully 
couldn't check into it on her own? Sure, she probably couldn't come up with 
Mulder's working theory. But Mulder's original working theory was very rarely 
right. Coming at it from a different angle, it wasn't so impossible that 
Scully could have an insight of her own, was it? Or did they all really think 
she was that...pedestrian a thinker? So well-fed and tame and complacent that 
she needed *Mulder* to be the brilliant one, the creative one. Well, she'd let 
it go on long enough; delegated so much of the creative work to Mulder, simply 
because it was expected, that now Scully was *bored,* too. She was bored, and 
she worked in the X-Files; something was definitely amiss with that scenario.
*Okay, *Miss* Parker. You want to play? I can play.*
	Slowly, knowing that slowness would hold her attention better, Scully stood up 
and moved around the desk to perch on the corner nearest Miss Parker. "I don't 
know." She picked up the unopened box of cigarettes and pounded them against 
the heel of her hand. Scully did not look at them, but it was all too obvious 
that Miss Parker was looking. "Meredith is a good name. What about Melody? 
Morgan? You look like a Monica." She opened the pack and, unhurried, drew out 
one cigarette. She set it between her first two fingers, shifting them back 
and forth slightly so that the end of the cigarette tapped against her thumb, 
lightly and quickly.
	With the air of a woman making a tremendous concession with as much grace as 
she could possibly manage, Miss Parker said, "All right. You can have one 
too."
	"Thank you. But I don't smoke."
	Miss Parker raised an eyebrow. "You handle them very well. Is it a natural 
aptitude? Or maybe you're just good with phallic symbols. No.... No, I don't 
think that's it."
	Her first instinct was denial -- *I don't know what you mean.* But she did 
know. She just didn't know why.... Was Miss Parker (odd how naturally that 
name adhered to this woman) -- reading something off of Scully, picking up on 
-- on some half-conscious...? *Scully, listen to yourself. You don't set off 
*anyone's* gaydar, never have. You lived with Clarice for a *year,* and 
everyone knew she was gay; they still made all the wrong assumptions about 
you.*
	"Well," she began, "I -- did. Smoke. But I quit years ago." Mostly quit. 
Except when she was at the very end of her rope, exhausted and scared, and 
everyone in her life, the good guys and the bad, was scrutinizing her, 
watching for the tiniest tic, one hairline fracture in her strength, control, 
reason, judgement, sobriety -- her *Scullyness,* Mulder called it, as if she 
held the patent on moderation. In this office, she supposed she did. On those 
days, when she could feel herself bottoming out, Scully would buy cigarettes 
at the nearest convenience store and drive somewhere outside of town, 
somewhere she could park and smoke the whole pack, one after another, letting 
her chains burn to ash and be discarded.
	It sounded really good right now, actually. She hadn't had a cigarette in ages 
-- not since that debacle in New Hampshire, when Mulder had been such an 
absolute bitch to live with, and hellbent on laying a sexual veneer over 
everything he did, *sniffing* her, for God's sake, then getting half-blitzed 
in the middle of a case and tongue-fucking with that bleach-blonde detective. 
Not that it wasn't Mulder's right to -- with whomever -- well, not *whomever* 
-- she'd been so *irritating,* not Alex Krycek, but definitely not good enough 
for Mulder -- but drinking was inappropriate -- *sniffing Scully* was 
inappropriate -- blaming it all retroactively on Jupiter aligning with Mars or 
*whatever* was just insulting.
	Before she realized it, Scully was lighting the cigarette.
	"Okay. What do you want to know? I'm a Capricorn. I like sushi, Patti Smith, 
and *Buffy the Vampire Slayer.* I've never been abducted by aliens, and I 
wanted to be a ballerina when I grew up." There was something mocking in the 
narrative, but Scully couldn't tell if Miss Parker was bantering with her, or 
punishing herself for this display of neediness. Under the circumstances, 
though, Scully decided to table the name issue.
	"Why do you mention aliens?"
	"Are you sure this is your office? You have had a chance to look around, 
right?"
	Point taken. Scully exhaled another thin line of smoke; no drug could ever 
carry with it this reckless taste for Scully. Tobacco was the ultimate in 
mindless brutality, more addictive than cocaine, with no rewarding 
side-effects, no mind-altering properties. It didn't do a damn thing for you, 
but God help you if you didn't have it. There was nothing in the world less 
logical, which explained Scully's fascination with it. Alcohol might actually 
dull the pain, hallucinogens might give her something new to think about, 
sleeping pills would make some sense. Only a pack of cigarettes was truly, 
dangerously, deliciously futile. And, Scully thought with rare philosophy, 
like irrational behavior, smoking was universally deplored, and pervasively 
practiced.
	"I ask because I think you were brought here...for some reason associated with 
alien abductions. My partner studies them, and there's a -- connection here. 
To that trainyard in Perkey. I don't know what it all means, but I thought you 
might."
	"If those children were abducted, Agent Scully, I assure you it wasn't by 
aliens."
	"By whom?" She was almost moved to pity Miss Parker, who was still fixed with 
animal focus on Scully smoking her cigarette. "You said this was a set-up."
	"The police were tipped to my location. But...it might have been someone else 
they were expecting."
	Scully tipped over the brass nameplate on Mulder's desk and used the back of 
it for an ashtray. "Where did you get those files?"
	"An...acquaintance sent them to me. Don't bother to ask me his name. He goes 
by Jarrod. At least, I thought they came from Jarrod. Now I'm not so sure. 
This may have been false information, meant to lead me into this. Or...it may 
have been leaked to Jarrod, to trap him. It would be so *Jarrod* to screw 
someone's plan totally by accident, because he gave away his tips."
	"You think you're being framed for kidnapping? There's no real evidence 
linking you to--"
	"Not yet," Miss Parker said darkly. "And if this was a trap for Jarrod, then 
the whole thing's blown to hell by now. But if it was about me all 
along...then you'll get your evidence. They'll make sure of that."
	Wonderful. A conspiracy theory. "They?"
	"*They,*" Miss Parker said with finality. "Margot."
	"We call them -- Margot?"
	"We call *me* Margot. That's my name."
	She seemed extremely mellow about this revelation, for someone who had refused 
to answer the question so many times. "Really?"
	"As far as you know."
	Scully tapped off another edge of ash. "I prefer Meredith."
	"And I preferred Fox. Life is cruel."
	"Now, now," Scully said dryly. "We learned in my cancer support group that 
viewing yourself as a victim is self-defeating."
	"Yeah? Well, my doctor says that ignoring the fact that your ulcer has started 
to bleed is fucking stupid. Which is a metaphor, as far as I'm concerned." She 
paused. "You have cancer?"
	"It's in remission." Miss Parker nodded. For one disorienting moment, they 
could have been old college friends, meeting for coffee to catch up on the 
last decade or so. Scully put out the last of the cigarette, and suddenly 
there was nothing friendly about the look Miss Parker was giving her. "You 
have an ulcer?"
	"I prefer to think of it as a pet. It feeds itself, which is nice."
Scully heard herself chuckling. She liked this woman's... unpredictability, 
liked it that she wasn't following any social script. It was hard to imagine 
anyone else lounging handcuffed in the FBI headquarters, giving off this 
particular mishmash of hostility, flirtation, humor, and shrewdness. Miss 
Parker -- Margot? Scully doubted it somehow -- was an utterly renegade 
personality, from catsuit to conspiracy to the pet ulcer and the *Miss* that 
Scully was beginning to believe *was* her given name. Scully lit another 
cigarette, took a drag on it, and held it in her fingers. "Come on."
	Miss Parker sprang up, and vainly tried to look blase as she staggered over to 
the desk on her one high heel. It was a strangely intimate act, holding the 
cigarette delicately as Miss Parker put her lips around it, pulling the 
carcinogens down into her body with her eyes closed in feral pleasure. When 
her dark eyes flickered reluctantly open and she drew away, giving in to the 
oxygen addiction much more grudgingly than she had to the nicotine, Scully 
found herself unwilling to break their eye contact. What amazing eyes -- what 
a rare person they indicated. Brutal, vulnerable, a cynic, a seeker, the vain 
and selfish stepsister from a fairytale crossbred with Mary Magdelene on the 
day between the crucifixion and the resurrection. A soul inclined to large 
vices and immortal loyalties, petty cruelties and mute generosity. She was 
like an elaborate Russian novel, the kind that kept Scully awake nights, glued 
to it in breathless suspense even on the fourth reading. Scully was dying to 
know what happened next....
	It began as a kiss in the hollow of Scully's collarbone, and became a bite, 
low on her throat. Scully hissed, but not in pain. She let her head drop back, 
and Miss Parker moved with lips and tongue up the bared throat; Scully took 
one last smoke and put out the cigarette. "*Bitch.* That was *mine.*"
	"No smoking in the Hoover building." It was a risk, but it paid off. Miss 
Parker bit her again, just below her earlobe, and though it was hard enough to 
hurt, even to distract Scully a bit, it was followed by the slow glide of a 
tongue up the edge of her ear. Scully braced her hands behind her on the desk, 
the pleasure slowly reshaping her into a taut bow of awareness.
	Conscience knocked incessantly behind Scully's eyelids. *Can you say, 
*unethical*? If anyone were to see this -- you wouldn't have this career, or 
any other career -- and anyway, you don't *know* this woman -- you don't know 
that she isn't a kidnapper, or worse --you *do* know that she's a prisoner in 
your custody -- this isn't you, Dana, you don't do this.*
	She wondered...God, she didn't want to, did *not* want to go here...but she 
couldn't help wondering, was this how Mulder had felt? Cut loose from reality, 
from law and truth and knowledge, arrowing upward into some sky-bright 
wilderness where nothing was certain except that this person, this dark and 
faithless, *beautiful* person, made him -- made her -- feel -- new.
*...I can't explain it, Scully. It's how I feel --with him -- I can't explain 
it, it defies.... Would you just *listen*? I'm trying to tell you 
something....*
	*No. No, I won't listen. I don't want to hear it, Mulder. Mulder -- stop. I 
said *be still,* Mulder. This is over. We're finished with this....*
	*...Why won't you...*
	*Because it's not right!*
	*Don't you think I know that? It's all different. When he's there. There are 
no rules....*
	*There are rules. If you choose to ignore them, it doesn't mean that there are 
no rules.*
	But maybe, Scully thought, as she laid hesitant hands on Miss Parker's arms, 
let them slide down the butter-soft leather of her sleeves, maybe Mulder had a 
point. Not that there were *no* rules, but...that sometimes this was a rule. 
Change, after all, was the underlying scientific principle of the universe. 
And this was changing her. This was...quantum.
	Their bodies collided lightly, Miss Parker's breasts pressed beneath Scully's 
as she chewed on the back of Scully's neck. Scully's fingers sank into her 
arms, just above the elbow. "Not..." Scully pulled in her breath hard, felt 
her torso scrape along Miss Parker's, the shirt beneath Scully's suit jacket 
riding up off her stomach. "Not here. Too dangerous."
	"Unlock me." She snapped the chain on her handcuffs with a loud chink.
	"Pam Grier wouldn't," Scully mumbled.
	"What?"
	Scully met her eyes, and a small smile arched her lips. "I said ... no."


	AD Walter Skinner was thumbing through paperwork as she talked, but he 
continued to shoot Scully looks over the top of his glasses -- looks that 
straddled the fence between suspicion and simple puzzlement. "Are you sure 
about this, Agent Scully?"
	Scully reclined slightly in her chair, projecting nothing but quiet, conscious 
calm. "Sir, we can't be certain of anything yet. But Miss Parker very clearly 
believes that her life is in danger, that she has ties to some sort of 
conspiracy involving the abduction of children they believe to have 
extraordinary mental faculties. If she can help us identify...." Scully closed 
her eyes. She had seen Mulder handle this man a hundred times; she did not 
have Mulder's... advantages, but she had his savvy. Putting her hand to her 
hair in a half-hearted gesture, Scully opened her eyes and gave him a 
softly-focused, wistful look, the look that Mulder always used to drive home 
an argument. *No one but *you* can help us, sir. You will, won't you, sir?* 
She leaned in, setting her fingers to the edge of his desk. "Sir, I know we've 
all been down this road before. But this woman is not Alex Krycek, and Blevins 
won't be responsible for this -- we will. You and I and Agent Mulder." *Mulder 
Mulder Mulder. Abracadabra.* "But we need to move on this, before they know we 
have her."
	"Do you agree that her life is in danger?"
	"I think that unless she remains in our custody, they can reach her. The last 
thing I want is another Cardinale."
	Skinner heaved a sigh, a familiar *I expect to regret this* sigh, and returned 
to his paperwork. "You want to move her again."
	"Neither you nor I believe that Section Chief Blevins was the only spy they 
have in this office, sir."
	"All right. Where do you plan to hold her?"
	Business accomplished, it was time for one sharp needle of revenge. *This is 
for the plate on the door. Sir.* "I've considered that. I think it's best that 
Miss Parker and I go to Crystal City, sir. Your home."
	His head snapped up so quickly that Scully expected it to bob zanily like a 
sprung jack-in-the-box. "*What?*"
	"The most paranoid man I know chose it as a temporary hiding place for the 
most wanted man I know. Frankly, sir, that's recommendation enough for me." 
Skinner was turning an interesting roseate color; Scully could hardly wait to 
hear him explain how that case was different from this one.
	"Agent Scully," he finally said, "my home is not a holding cell for felons."
	"Miss Parker is hardly a felon, sir. She was arrested for trespassing, and the 
evidence for her connection to these kidnappings has to be stretched even to 
be considered circumstantial. Fingerprinting has turned up no criminal record. 
We don't know anything that would suggest her involvement with contract 
killings or espionage."
	His mouth twitched slightly as he accepted her points scored. "It seems 
unprofessional."
	"I no longer trust the professionals. Only you and Mulder." *Mulder Mulder 
Mulder.* "I trust your committment to finding these men, and I suggest this 
only because I appreciate how important it is to you to handle a potential 
source like this *personally.*"
	Skinner turned such an odd color so quickly that Scully was momentarily 
concerned that she'd given him a stroke. "Whatever you're implying--"
	"Implying? I'm not sure what you mean, sir."
	"Get her out of here." It was as much a growl as speech. "Make sure she stays 
cuffed; I don't trust her. Call Mulder and tell him to meet us there as soon 
as he lands." Skinner pitched a keyring at her, and Scully caught it in one 
hand. "I'll be there by six."
	"Thank you, sir."

***

	Scully buckled her prisoner into the passenger seat. "What did you tell Ward?" 
Her voice glinted and spun like a flipping coin; right now she was bright, 
alert, but what goes up must come down, and Scully knew this could all come 
falling to the earth without warning. There was a grisly inevitability, in 
fact, to the idea that this charged state of conspiratorial simpatico would 
never last. Or maybe it was just Scully's cynicism talking.
	"That you were going to give us a statement about your conspiracy."
	Short, almost inaudible laughter took Miss Parker in its teeth and worried at 
her for a moment. "You believe that?"
	"I'm sure you can tell us something. You've already told me--"
	"I didn't tell you shit. Do you think we're having some sort of... 
cops-and-robbers slumber party here? You'd like an affadavit out of me in a 
game of Truth or Dare?"
	Scully took a slow breath, reminded herself to be calm. "I consider you a 
potential witness."
	"No."
	"Even if they framed you for kidnapping?"
	She stared out the passenger window. "I'll handle it on my own. I've played 
this game with Raines before, and I've always handled it."
	"Raines?"
	Miss Parker glanced over at her, frowning. "You have a nice ass, and I like 
the redheaded thing, but you're beginning to fucking annoy me anyway. I may 
not be the Centre's favorite child right now, but I *am* still Centre. We 
handle our problems internally."
	"*Sorry.*" After a moment, it wasn't enough. "Someone brought in the FBI to 
handle you," she reminded Miss Parker.
	Her irritation faded more quickly than Scully anticipated, and she quirked 
something humorless, and related to a smile. "They would have had to. The 
Centre wouldn't dare push me beyond another T-board, not openly. You know what 
would really upset me? If I find out that someone tried to turn the FBI loose 
on Jarrod. Jarrod is *my* assignment."
	"What's a T-board?"
	"Torture board." Miss Parker's tone discouraged Scully from even speculating 
about that one.
	At a stoplight, as Scully was wondering what exactly had happened in the 
office, and what had changed since then, her cell rang. "Scully."
	"A-agent Scully?" It was a man's voice, one she didn't recognize. "I was given 
this number -- an Agent -- ah, Director.... Mr. Skinner. I'm looking for Miss 
Parker?"
	*Are you or aren't you?* Scully wanted to ask, but he sounded confused enough 
as it was. "Who is this?"
	"Can I talk to her? Can you tell her it's Broots?"
	Was that a name, or something intended to describe the situation, some 
peculiar shadow-government slang for "urgent" or "top secret"? "Broots?"
	Miss Parker sat forward. "Give me the phone." Traffic being as light as it was 
in the middle of the morning, Scully felt confident driving with one hand; 
with the other, she held the phone for Miss Parker. "Have you found Sydney? 
... That's the *wrong* answer, Broots. ... You could tell me he was on a 
pilgrimage to Tibet and I wouldn't cut you any *slack* on this. I have been 
fucking well *arrested.* You *find* him. Cut you some *slack.* If I have to 
cut you anything, Broots, I promise you that it will scar. ... You *find him.* 
... Yeah, either that or you'd better start planting some evidence yourself, 
because you don't ever want me to get out of jail. ... Not yet. Not at all, if 
I have a chance to work with Sydney on this. ... You've already *tried.* Now 
start doing it." She leaned away, and when Scully pulled back the cell she 
could hear a dialtone.
	"You must be a joy to work with."
	"Broots is such a tragically small little person."
	"Is he your secretary?"
	Miss Parker shrugged. "No, he's some computer genius. We pay him good money to 
find things, but of course now he can't even find Sydney, who's usually all 
too present for anything that makes me look ridiculous. Poor Sydney. He'll 
absolutely cry when he finds out I was detained by a rent-a-cop in Pussy, West 
Virginia and he wasn't on the scene to smirk."
	"Who's Jarrod?"
	"I don't know."
	Scully had expected any snide, snappish, or defensive answer to that question 
-- anything but *I don't know.* "What do you mean, you don't know?"
	The look Miss Parker gave her was unusually devoid of venom; she had become 
suddenly all business, the consummate company woman. "I mean, I don't know. I 
know what he looks like. But *who* he is.... He's whoever and whatever he 
wants to be. You plan your little investigation, if it keeps you busy and 
happy. But forget Jarrod. You'll only find him if he wants to be found."
	Ever since she had joined the FBI, Scully had met scores, maybe hundreds, of 
men and women who could adopt this kind of remote, mechanistic facade as 
easily as they put on their dark suits in the morning. It was a defense 
against horrors that no sane person would willingly seek out, a studious, 
cultivated insanity to be used and discarded as required. But somehow on Miss 
Parker, the look was more foreign than familiar to Scully. It wasn't a wall -- 
she could feel that. Her glistening, provocative glibness, the black words she 
fired off like semi-automatic rounds, *that* was her facade. This was Miss 
Parker, and Scully was amazed to realize what a dark, noiseless emptyness she 
contained. Pain and desire alike were the stone and crystal of a vast cavern, 
deserted except for business, obligation, the ceaseless, passionless trading 
of facts and favors.
	How often had Scully wanted that for herself? She'd had a recurring nightmare, 
at Quantico, about autopsying herself -- making a tidy Y-incision, splitting 
herself open, prying out the insides. And it had been strangely welcome. 
*Exhibit A, Scully. This is what you wanted to be when you grew up -- 
yourself, only less so. How does it look, now that you're well on your way?*
"My name is Dana," she said, unsure why it seemed important.
	"Spiffy."


	"This isn't your apartment," Miss Parker announced as Scully uncuffed one of 
her wrists and tethered her to the refrigerator handle with it.
	"You don't think I can afford it?"
	"No -- how would I know what you can afford? It's much too male. You strike me 
as the throw-pillows and spice-racks type."
	Scully smiled slightly. "I suppose you prefer naugahyde and ceremonial Klingon 
weaponry."
	"Oh, a *Star Trek* fan."
	"Mulder's influence. But I must say I've never seen *Buffy the Vampire 
Slayer,* so obviously you have a lot to teach me about quality television."
Once more, the pendulum seemed to have swung. Miss Parker's eyes were 
glittering in wolfish pleasure. "Let me guess. You watch...*Ally McBeal.*"
	"Occasionally. I don't think my career would go very far if I wore skirts like 
hers, however."
	After a puzzled moment, Miss Parker shrugged that away. "You never know. You 
must already have some personal privileges --you know, perks of the job?"
	"Perks? *My* job? Which perk would that be? Would that be getting run off the 
road by black government sedans? Putting up with the whole VCU's asinine 
remarks about my partner's intelligence and/or his ass? I know, I know. The 
*perk* would be having my dog eaten by an alligator, or perhaps being drugged 
by vampires and dumped in a graveyard."
	"So everyone in your office hangs out in the boss' apartment and goes through 
his cupboards?"
	She was going through the cupboards, wasn't she? "I was...looking for coffee. 
You think this place is--?"
	"Just a hunch."
	"Well, you're right. But I don't hang out here. Actually, I've never been here 
before. But it is one of the places Mulder and I picked out as rendezvous 
points in case of emergency. I have no coffee. I have Lipton."
	"Christ. What kind of faggot do you work for?"
	Scully twitched a smile. "I'm not familiar with the taxonomy."
	"Really? You seem like kind of a fag hag. Snappy dresser, mildly funky, in a 
serious-professional kind of way, but you don't look like the type who wants 
the hassle of drool on your lapels. You're gorgeous, so women all hate you, 
and straight men are right out. Of course, that means that you're so happy 
when any woman will even have lunch with you that you're willing to give the 
bisexuality thing a go, and if a good-looking man who's seen the inside of a 
gym and wears matching socks smiles at you without a cheap proposition in the 
first five minutes, it's the answer to your prayers. Too bad he's gay. It was 
kind of a cutting-edge, touching story in the early eighties, but it's 1998, 
and you're a type. Don't you hate that?"
	"Duck," Scully said tersely, and threw the freezer door open without waiting 
to see whether or not Miss Parker obeyed. Miss Parker chuckled. "Speaking of 
misdiagnoses. I always pictured Skinner as a Rocky Road man."
	"What's he got? Cookies'n'cream?"
	"Neapolitan."
	"How low the mighty have fallen."
	"Pizza?"
	"Whatever." Her voice was distant, uninterested. Even Scully, accustomed to 
Mulder's mood swings, was amazed at the way Miss Parker could bait her with 
one breath and forget her by the next. She turned to look at her, and 
graduated to a new level of amazement. Miss Parker was concentrating on 
touching Skinner's hanging light fixture with her toe; Scully was a limber 
person, but her muscles ached in empathy with the leg that Miss Parker had 
extended upward at an improbable angle, stretched out to brush the wooden arms 
of the fixture with her pointed toes. It was rather a beautiful sight to 
behold, like watching a panther at play, and it took Scully the length of a 
few deep breaths to realize why her hand was going numb and remove it from the 
ice cube pan. "You must have made at least a token effort toward that 
ballerina goal."
	"Twenty years."
	"Twenty *years*?"
	"Started lessons when I was four. My father barely talked me into college; I 
was ready to run off and start my career. After I graduated, I danced for a 
year with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Then I quit."
	"Were you injured?"
	"No more so than every dancer, no."
	"Then why--"
	"I quit. I went into business."
	"And look where that got you."
	"Shackled to a major appliance in a Virginia condo as sexual prey for a 
federal agent."
	Scully's eyebrows shot up. "Somehow I can't picture you as prey. I think you 
just enjoy making a production of everything."
	"I might be in a more sunny mood after another cigarette or three."
	"I somehow doubt that," Scully muttered. *Thank God.* Scully doubted she'd be 
half so attracted to this woman if she weren't so poisonous. It was a game, 
and Scully understood the rules instinctively. Miss Parker would never waste 
three words on someone she didn't find interesting. She wouldn't play with 
Scully --flirt with her, specifically -- if they weren't connecting on some 
level. And that hadn't happened to Scully for a long time.
	She was toying with the ice cubes again; one was half-melted in the warm 
cradle of her palm, the size and shape of a chocolate Easter egg. Scully took 
it like a specimen between two fingers and touched it to Miss Parker's 
earlobe. "What the fuck?" Miss Parker said, but in a messy, fumbling way, not 
as though it were a question she wanted to ask, but more of a stock phrase 
that came immediately to mind when she wanted to say something but had nothing 
to say. She sketched down Miss Parker's long neck with the ice, loops that 
started out abstract but quickly became a weird vertical kind of cursive 
writing, a stream-of-consciousness essay written in shining water down Miss 
Parker's skin. *xfiles dana perkey hot foxy mexico love emily doctor crystal 
meredith* Down her neck, across the hard, ridged texture of her collarbone, 
the slope of her breasts. Scully had never been good at abstract. She let the 
thin thumbnail of ice, almost melted away to nothing, drop down the front of 
Miss Parker's catsuit, between her breasts. Miss Parker's hips jerked 
slightly, and she murmurred, "Bitch," in a voice that was casually 
affectionate. Sastisfied, Scully visualized the ice melting to a thin brook of 
cold water that traced down her abdomen and her pelvis, winding lazily to 
become lost in the marshlands between her legs, where the water was steamy and 
hidden. The scientist in Scully was unable to shake the knowledge that such a 
small amount of ice would not reduce to enough water to reach all the way to 
Miss Parker's cunt.
	That was the kind of thinking that made most people consider Scully something 
of a professional killjoy. Mulder was so much more interesting. Speculative, 
creative, eccentric; even people who thought he was insane found Mulder 
*interesting.* He was damned interesting that he put Scully in the shade, just 
by being there.
	*Scully. Scully. He's not here. He's not here, is he? And as far as Miss 
Parker's concerned, he's irrelevant. You're the only one forcing yourself to 
make these constant comparisons....*
	She stepped away, and after a moment of silence, followed Miss Parker's eyes 
down to where her fingers were wrapped around Miss Parker's forearm, just 
above the ring of steel. "I want everything to be clear between us," Scully 
began, in the blankly soothing voice she had learned to use at work, half in 
imitation of Mulder and half in defense against him, "in terms of--"
	"I'm hungry. Are we going to eat that ice cream or not?"
	*Starve.*
	*Pay attention to me.*
	*You started this.*
	*I should have taken my day off.*
	"I'm actually not hungry yet. But you'll be the first to know." Scully stalked 
out of the kitchen in search of a bathroom.
	She found one at the top of the stairs and closed the door, more for 
psychological than physical privacy. Skinner's bathroom, like the rest of 
Skinner's apartment, had the spartan elegance of a luxury hotel, well-stocked 
but devoid of anything truly personal or revealing. She wondered if Mulder had 
ever been here, aside from the one time.
	*With Krycek. Scully, what are you doing here --honestly? This isn't you. You 
can recreate the scene, practically perfect in every detail -- the prisoner, 
the condo, the information, even the attraction -- and it won't make you 
understand what happened to Mulder. And it won't bring the two of you closer, 
and it won't make any of that Mulder magic rub off on you.*
	Scully cast aside her jacket, then crossed her arms over her body to pull off 
the shell underneath. Caught by the sight of her own reflection, Scully ran 
light, examining fingers over her ribs and stomach. She was so much thinner 
than she had been six years ago. Hard living, she was tempted to say, but that 
wasn't the whole story. Though her work was admittedly arduous, and though 
fear and bottled rage had made her train hard ever since Duane Barry, the bulk 
of the weight loss had been over the last year. The illness or the chemo or 
something else entirely had robbed Scully of the appetite her family used to 
tease her about; even the things that used to be her weaknesses --barbeque, 
fajitas, fudge, lobster -- left her cold now, and she existed mainly on ramen 
noodles and graham crackers, with only the occasional delivery pizza to up her 
calorie intake. She was usually hungry, but somehow the idea of eating was 
worse. Scully had been unaware, until now, how plainly it showed in her body; 
it was a private disorder, something she had even underplayed while talking to 
her doctor. Maybe, like the autopsy nightmare, she enjoyed it on a mysterious 
level, a Catholic inclination toward mortification of the flesh, or the 
resurfaced pain of a bookish, pudgy thirteen-year-old with a willow-thin and 
universally-loved older sister.
	She finished stripping down and turned on the shower. The first thing she did 
was wash her face. Stupid, juvenile conceit, to think that a trick with makeup 
could change anything. Could change who you were. Scully. Just Scully. When 
did she stop being Dana? Yes, obviously she'd adopted the prep-school form of 
address for Mulder's sake, to put them on an even keel, the level field of 
strong partnership. If he was Mulder, she had to be Scully. But even in her 
own thoughts? Had she changed that much to suit Mulder? No. Something else had 
happened.
	*Don't call me Fox. *Miss* Parker. Scully.* She wondered what exactly the Fox, 
the Dana, the elusive M-name meant to each owner, what the three of them 
pushed away when they tore their names in half and disowned the part that had 
been carefully, lovingly chosen for them individually, retaining only that 
which was determined by society and custom.
	*Three severely unbalanced people. We truly are.*
	She dried off with the still-damp blue towel on the towel rack. It had a 
heavy, warm smell to it -- Skinner's. Scully couldn't help but feel a little 
guilty; this was a definite invasion of her boss' privacy, using his shower, 
his soap, his towels. As if all of this wasn't an invasion of his privacy to 
begin with; too late now. Wrapping herself in the towel, she crossed the hall 
and found Walter Skinner's bedroom.
	There was more here that was personal than in the rest of the apartment. 
Skinner's stereo, and his CD collection --eclectic, but charmingly 
unfashionable all through -- some old Patsy Cline, Neil Diamond, The Mamas & 
the Papas, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Reba McEntire, Bonnie Raitt, They Might Be Giants. 
They Might Be Giants? She smelled one of Mulder's infamous Christmas shopping 
fugues. His bookshelf, fully stocked with Civil War nonfiction and what looked 
to be everything Stephen King had ever written, with a little Tom Clancy on 
the side. Scully stopped herself from noticing any further details. This was 
obviously the heart of what personal life he had; there was trespassing, and 
then there was trespassing. (Trespassing. Ha. Get it? Perkey, West Virginia. 
Crystal City. There was something wonderfully literary here, some grand 
metaphor. Scully had never liked metaphors.)
	Scully found a navy blue FBI t-shirt in a drawer and put it on; though she did 
genuinely regret the invasion, she had no intention of putting her crisp black 
suit back on, not yet. If this were Mulder's place, she'd borrow a pair of 
boxers, too (after all, she did mostly buy them to begin with; the first time 
she'd had to stay overnight at Mulder's, she realized that his expensive 
tastes in fashion did not run to underwear. Maybe it was none of her business, 
but she'd found that it bothered her to work alongside him knowing he was 
wearing ragged Hanes that he probably bought in the 1980s. So she stocked him 
up on tasteful underwear, and renewed the gift every year or so. It said 
something about Mulder that he seemed to regard that as perfectly normal; 
Scully didn't know what, but she was grateful for it.) Mulder was Mulder, 
however, and even if she was making free with Skinner's personal effects 
today, that was much too far.
	She knew the number for her own local Papa John's, and she dialed it from 
Skinner's bedside phone and let them transfer her call to the branch nearest 
this condo. Scully ordered pepperoni, on the vague assumption that everyone 
liked pepperoni, but the choice of crusts stumped her. Scully wanted to laugh 
at her own consternation; she wondered if Mulder and Skinner had ordered pizza 
for Alex Krycek -- if they had all sat around debating the merits of thin 
versus original crust. She decided on thin.
	A knee-jerk paranoiac reaction to the pizza guy made Scully throw a 
five-dollar tip at him and practically shove him out the door -- maybe it was 
the fact that her last pizza had been full of tranquilizers and delivered by a 
vampire, or maybe just the possibility that he would venture far enough in to 
notice the woman handcuffed to the refrigerator in the next room and notify 
the police.
	The woman. The woman had to be dealt with; Scully couldn't hide upstairs 
forever, listening to "Sweet Home Alabama" and thumbing through *Carrie.* So 
far, Scully preferred the movie.
	The refrigerator handle at least afforded her some vertical mobility; Miss 
Parker was seated cross-legged on the floor, her arm raised in a languid, 
almost Grecian crescent by the demands of the short handcuff chain. She did 
not look at Scully as she entered, nor did she particularly look away.
	By Miss Parker's free hand, as carefully as if she were dressing an altar, 
Scully laid out the open pizza box, with Miss Parker's cigarettes and lighter 
in the lid. While Miss Parker hesitated between sustenance and nicotine, 
Scully went to the sink to tear off a few paper towels. She heard the lighter 
behind her and smiled slightly. If you could trust anything in this world, it 
was the passion with which people adhered to their irrationalities.
	Scully sat on the floor, knee-to-knee with her captive, and reached for a 
piece of pizza. "You changed," Miss Parker commented.
	"Well, since I'm taking a de facto day off...."
	"While we wait for your elusive partner."
	"And your elusive lawyer."
	She made a complex gesture in the air with her cigarette before tapping out 
the ashes into the pizza box. "Sydney's not actually my lawyer. But he's the 
only person I...trust." She said the word grudgingly, as though it were a bad 
habit she had made a tenuous peace with. "What the fuck is it that you do, 
anyway? Why is it so crucial that I be transfered to you? Do I look like I 
need a doctor?"
	"You weren't transfered to me." Scully wondered if she really sounded as 
bitter as she thought she did. "You were transfered to Mulder. And he's not a 
doctor; he just collects conspiracy theories. Skinner thought you might have 
one to share."
	"You do, too. Think that."
	Scully shrugged. "I just work here."
	"So that's what your partner does? He's paranoid professionally? Here, finish 
this for me; I'm starving."
	Scully took the cigarette from her. "Yes. He's paranoid professionally. He's a 
-- an expert on UFO and abduction lore. We're the FBI's parapsychology arm. 
Such as it is."
	"All both of you. How priceless. What are you, the faith healer?"
	"The skeptic." Scully blew a thin stream of smoke up at the ceiling. 
	Occasionally, she could see the humor in the whole situation. Not often, but 
occasionally. "It's on my business cards. I do parties, too. People hire me 
out to debunk the magician."
	"All that and you get to carry a gun, too."
	"It's good work. Pepperoni okay?"
	"Little fucking late now, isn't it? If you're not going to ask before you 
order it, why bother at all?" Miss Parker paused to suck the tomato sauce off 
her fingers. Scully was enchanted by the sight.
	Funny -- she'd brought Miss Parker here on some half-conscious attempt to get 
inside Mulder's head, and now...she was completely on her own, and the power 
was heady and electric. Mulder had made his choices alone, because he'd known 
they were his choices, not Scully's. Maybe for once in her life Scully could 
tell herself that she had the right to choose something for herself and really 
believe it. Not her father's choice, or Mulder's, or Skinner's, or Duane 
Barry's, or even God's. Only hers. God, how she had craved that for the past 
year -- privacy, freedom. Space.
	It felt good. It fleshed her out, fed her, and suddenly she was a creature of 
appetites again. She *wanted* -- wanted the pizza, and fudge, and the sooty 
taste of Miss Parker's mouth. Wanted everything --or at least too many things, 
all in a wild jumble, to sort out at once. It was, possibly, enough for the 
moment. It was a lot to get used to.
	"I have to tell you why I brought you here. I was trying to hurt someone, I 
think, someone who isn't even here. Because he had an affair that -- that hurt 
me very much, and you remind me of -- of the man.... It's a long story. A 
ridiculous story, and actually, I'm not even sure it had anything to do 
with...anything. I have no idea. But what I've been doing, all day today, is 
not me. It's not who I am. All I really want is your help, because if your 
Centre is affiliated with the men who abducted me and caused my daughter's 
death, then I have to know that. Please. We may not be friends, but I want you 
to consider helping me, because I think there's a part of you that wants to 
very much. Just ... consider it."
	Scully chose to exit the kitchen on that line, half out of calculation and 
half just because she didn't want to know it yet if she was wasting her 
breath. She sat down on Skinner's couch and used Sunday's paper to catch the 
ashes she flicked off the end of her cigarette. It was the right decision, the 
best decision. Mulder was the one who let his desires run away with him in 
tow, and she was not Mulder, and it was her decision. *Mine, mine, mine.* She 
had the hunger now, and that was what she had really wanted all along, all her 
life. Not the satisfaction, particularly. Just the desire.
	"Dana?"
	Treading carefully, as though through a pile of sleeping snakes, she returned 
to the doorway of the kitchen. "Yes?" Scully said quietly.
	"I have a question, something I've been thinking about a long time, but I 
didn't know who to ask." She was firing off words like shrapnel now, the 
hostility impersonal, splattering everything indiscriminately. "Look at you -- 
you're an FBI agent, you obviously work with a dangerous lot, swim with the 
sharks, all that. So if you care so much, if you care about the whole damn 
world and you put yourself out there to save everybody, I just have to ask, 
*why?* Why have a child? It's so treacherous -- anyone could turn on you and 
you'd never see it coming --never have a chance to protect yourself. Is it 
just biology, just genetics? Of all people, why do you do it?"
	*I had no choice,* Scully began to say. But she realized the lie concealed in 
that truth, and she stopped. "I've always wanted children. Yes, it may be 
biology, in part. We're equipped with a drive to continue the species. You 
never wanted children?"
	Her head jerked, denial and recoil. "Never. Never. I think it ought to be a 
*crime.*"
	Scully took a deep breath, obscurely certain that she was standing on the edge 
of Miss Parker's emotional precipice, her own personal Skyland Mountain. "I 
can't tell you why I wanted a family, before. But I can tell you why I wanted 
Emily with me, once I had her. If you want to hear the story." Miss Parker 
shrugged, her shackled hand balled into a tight fist, and Scully sat down on 
the floor and put out her cigarette, while Miss Parker lit one for herself.
	"Several years ago, my older sister Melissa was shot and killed. The shooter 
was there for me; I guess in the dark we must look alike, though I certainly 
can't see much resemblance. But because of the circumstances, I felt very 
responsible. Melissa was...a rare, wonderful person. Even as a teenager she 
was, I don't know, *wise.* Very spiritual, very generous. Mulder used to call 
her a fluffy crystal bunny, but even he couldn't help liking her. I used to 
get annoyed with her, because she was always trying to sell me on some new 
pseudoscience, touch therapy or reiki or whatever, but I have to admit, she 
did have all the instincts, the soul, of a healer, maybe more than I do. She 
was a vast source of love. She loved everyone, and instead of tiring her out, 
it seemed to energize her. It was very hard for me, thinking--feeling that I 
was responsible for taking all that out of the world. I thought Emily was my 
best chance to restore what I had taken -- if not Missy, then all 
that...amazing Missy warmth and care."
	"Did it work?" Miss Parker chewed and spat out her words in the half-mocking 
tone of one who knew the answer.
	*Did it work?* Scully posed the question to herself, with clean, laboratory 
objectivity. "I learned a lot. In part, I learned that Melissa and I had 
different purposes in the world. Giving that much of myself was -- hard for 
me. I felt infringed upon." Scully smiled thinly. "I'm better designed for 
taking care of the whole planet and really loving...an extremely limited 
number of people."
	"I hate you, you know." Her tone was conversational, a trivia voice. "Nothing 
personal. Sydney says I have a lot of misdirected guilt, but I think he's full 
of shit. He's a quack, a sadist in a good suit who raised Jarrod as a lab 
animal and now wants to be a father figure after the fact. I really do hate 
everyone but me. I happen to think I deserve better than this miserable 
fucking reality."
	Scully raised an eyebrow. "Life is a bitch, and then you die?"
	"I'm not afraid to die. But I can tell you what won't happen to me: I won't be 
a hero, then leave a child behind when my idealism gets me eliminated."
	She moved slowly, honey-slow, knowing that Miss Parker would never submit to 
impulsive affection. Scully's hand touched her face, slid back into her hair. 
"You and I. You and I both. They can carve it on our tombstones: *At least she 
never set her sights very high.*"
	"I can think of worse epitaphs."
	"Can you?"
	A voice like a collision -- the cry of overtaxed brakes, the macabre origami 
of disfigured metal, the aria of shattering glass and bones. "*Beloved wife 
and mother.*"
	She kissed Miss Parker as though Scully was in herself the entire cast and 
crew of a death -- the EMT on the scene, the priest bestowing extreme unction, 
the medical examiner making a Y-incision, cracking her open.... Not to remove. 
To hold the pain jointly, contained in the slick, pulsing hollow of their 
coupled mouths.
	Miss Parker did taste like ash, like soot. She tasted like saliva, meat, 
breath. Scully's eyes were sealed shut as she devoured this mouth, her fingers 
dug deeply into Miss Parker's hair and holding her in.
	*Melissa had been all grace and charity. Wide, heart-brimming eyes and a 
slight, fine body -- like Snow White with the poison in her comb and her food 
-- like Rapunzel among the thorns. Selfless, kind, giving. Dana watched her 
pick over her food and refuse it and she knew, just knew, that the saints had 
all been this way, too. Full of love, with thin, neglected, suffering, 
beautiful bodies.*
	*Saints, princesses, martyrs, angels, heroines. They gave, like Missy. They 
denied themselves. They were not like Dana, and even God could not understand 
or abide her constant hungers, the cravings for food, for knowledge, for 
orgasms, for fame, for revenge, for cigarettes, for high speeds, for 
immortality. Not of the soul. Of her ravenous, needy, messy, female body.*
Some emotional ripcord had been pulled, and Scully was rushing in two 
directions, dropping through space even as the air currents caught her mind 
and billowed it, lifting her as she unfurled. Thought was out of the question, 
and as soon as Scully gave up on it, she realized how many memories her body 
had preserved, hidden discreetly away through the years until she should need 
them again. She unzipped Miss Parker's broken boot and cast it aside, setting 
her lips to the arch of the foot within. Her stockings were silk, of course. 
This was not a nylon woman. Miss Parker made a strangled sound, and her toes 
popped softly as they curled and uncurled.
	*Slowly, day by day, shaving off one self after another. Jettisoning her 
habits, hungers -- allowing only what was required. Food could stay, because 
food was medicinal; sex and fame, luxuries. Without purpose, because life 
could be sustained without them. Revenge, speed, dangerous. Liabilities. Two 
names were excessive, when one would serve, could stand for one tight, lithe, 
*necessary* person, powerful in her self-denial. Scully.*
	She nibbled in the hollow behind Miss Parker's anklebone, and foot and ankle 
turned and dipped with a dancer's urgent poetry. "Stand up," she mumbled, 
rubbing her face against Miss Parker's leather; she loved it, just as she 
loved Mulder's black leather jacket, because it was leather -- organic, 
arrogant, pleasant to the touch even as it forced its wearer to live 
skin-to-skin with the proof of another animal's death.
	Shaky from more than just the lopsided engineering of one bare foot and one 
high heel, Miss Parker stood. "Get this off me," she ordered, rattling the 
handcuff chain.
	Instead, Scully turned her captive by the shoulders and unzipped her jumpsuit 
at the back. Her skin looked surprisingly fragile; Scully had almost expected 
Miss Parker to be made of something less...mortal, dissectable, vulnerable. 
*Breathe, Dana, come on. It hasn't been that long....* Except that it had. And 
she had always loved the sight of a woman's bare back, especially today; Miss 
Parker's back was pale and lovely, nestled in a V of opened leather, fringed 
by the dark hair that seemed looser and more touchable now. Scully put her 
fingers between Miss Parker's shoulderblades; it seemed to Scully, medically, 
that the spine was the true centerpiece of the body, the axis. She could 
remember Melissa trying to teach her to meditate, saying that the key was a 
straight spine, because kundalini power moved like a snake up the spine. Yeah, 
Dana had said, that and every electrochemical-- Dana. Don't be difficult on 
purpose. Sorry. Snake power, sit up straight, okay.
	Missy would have laughed, but Scully could almost feel her fingers drawing 
something up Miss Parker's spine. Power, serpentine, slithering, primitive. 
She put her lips on Miss Parker's neck, found it flushed and hot, and her 
silent laugh of pleasure drew hair against her nose and mouth, suffocating 
her. Scully shook free, and water droplets from her own hair splattered Miss 
Parker's bare shoulder.
	Scully's hand roamed down the gathering wrinkles of Miss Parker's sleeve, and 
came to rest on the steel bracelet on her wrist, her fingers curling around it 
as one pinky brushed the veins on the back of Miss Parker's hand. Her other 
arm draped over Miss Parker's shoulder. "I want you," Scully murmurred. She 
had no doubt that Miss Parker already knew this, but it needed to be said. 
When had she -- had she *ever* actually said that to anyone? Not that Scully 
could immediately recall.
	"I will not betray the Centre for sex."
	She hid a smile against Miss Parker's cantering pulse. "Relax."
	"Relax," Miss Parker repeated, and frowned. She tried again. "Relax. What do 
you find relaxing about this? You're the one who's fucked on the highest level 
if anyone were to find--"
	"That's right. And if I'm relaxed, you should be, too." Not that Scully was 
entirely relaxed. She was exerting long years of discipline to control an 
impulse to fidget, to twitch, rocked by the chemical reaction of fear mixing 
with desire. She was not concerned with being caught; Scully would have 
wagered her life savings -- was wagering her career -- that Skinner would see 
nothing so cataclysmic about the Parker case that he would feel compelled to 
leave the office early. But it had been a very long time since her sex life 
had consisted of anything but idle fantasies about her best friend, the 
occasional Saturday morning Internet porn wallow, and erotic dreams involving 
some combination of the cast of *Friends.* This was different. This was real.
"What the fuck ever. Get me out of these goddamn handcuffs."
	Scully smiled, thinking of her earlier refusal to do so. Wanting to be someone 
else, again. *Very tenth grade, Dana. Very tenth grade. Don't choose, don't 
decide. Just do what you want to do.* She wanted to free Miss Parker from the 
handcuffs, and did.
	Miss Parker rotated her wrist, testing it, and Scully caught her arm and 
kissed the reddened mark on her wrist. Miss Parker's hand remained curved like 
talons; there was a certain vulnerability to the sensation of Scully laying 
her soft lips against the bone and stress of that hand. *She's a fighter....* 
"What did you do to Officer Volk?"
	"Tried to put my heel through his eye. Missed. Ruined my shoe."
	There was a certain vulnerability, come to think of it, to doing this at all. 
There were no rules now, Mother of God, Mulder had been right. She was sprung 
from the trap of humanity; Scully no longer perceived herself as flesh and 
organs, but like clear and sparkling champagne, like feathers, like incense. 
Such undefended substances, easily spilled, torn, snuffed by a woman with this 
strength in her hands, this rage in her heart. Scully placed a slow kiss in 
Miss Parker's palm, but when her fingers moved to close and hold her chin, 
Scully slipped easily away. Like light, like smoke and champagne, she was 
impossible to grip and hold. She was bright and alive and though she might 
give herself, she was never to be kept.
	With the advantage of surprise, Scully pulled Miss Parker's arm behind her 
back, holding it bent and pinned between their bodies. "I am not," Scully 
murmurred, her voice deceptively demure, "someone who will use you or harm 
you. And I will not be used. However powerful you think you are."
	Miss Parker was as still as a mannequin, and though the muscles in her forearm 
moved subtly, flexing to fight Scully away, she did not. She dipped her head 
slightly, her fingers curling in, and then carefully spreading, flat and open. 
"Funny. I didn't figure you for a closet dominatrix."
	"I'm not."
	"Then let go of me."
	"Escape."
	Slowly, she shook her head. "I don't...what is this? You're hurt-- Fuck you! 
Let me go!" But she did not move.
	"This is your game, Margot. But you can't follow through with it, can you? I 
think you're much emptier than you want me to believe. I think the anger is 
just a smokescreen." She'd known that in the car, but Scully had wanted to 
test her theory. Now she was sure. She released Miss Parker's wrist, and Miss 
Parker pulled her arm away slowly, as though afraid that any sudden movements 
would make Scully notice that she was escaping. "No games, and no tricks. 
Don't give me anything that even you can't believe."
	Miss Parker looked back at Scully over her shoulder, and her dark eyes were 
both respectful and somehow saddened. "I should have pegged you for a control 
freak."
	Lightly, Scully touched her waist and smiled at her, a mirrored reflection of 
that respect and that regret. "Probably. I'm very flexible about many things, 
but not about the truth. Upstairs."
	Miss Parker's gait, with one shoe gone, was a long-striding, self-possessed 
stagger. Broken and lopsided, she radiated ability, poise. She was about as 
handicapped as a dragon with a broken nail. Unzipped and disheveled suited 
Miss Parker, Scully decided as she climbed the stairs behind her prisoner. The 
juxtaposition of bareness and inaccessability.
	At the side of Walter Skinner's bed (a large bed for one man, even one large 
man, Scully's investigative mind noticed; was it the bed he used to share with 
his wife -- did he have company here often, even with his brutal schedule -- 
was it just a personal indulgence --did he sleep restlessly?), Scully put a 
hand on Miss Parker's shoulder and finished lowering the zipper to her waist.
"This is your boss' apartment?"
	"Yes."
	"He has a picture of you by his bed."
	Scully looked around her at the framed photo Miss Parker was reaching for. 
"Oh. That's not a picture of *me.* That's a picture of Mulder." Her and 
Mulder, in point of fact. At the office Christmas party -- 1995? Or '96. God, 
how the years blurred together. Scully took the picture from Miss Paker's 
hand.
	It was a decent shot. Nice. Scully on a folding office chair, looking bemused 
at her coffee cup. Mulder with a casual hand low on the back of her neck, his 
lack of a jacket emphasizing the length and sweep of his build, clean lines 
running from ribs to waist to hip down his leg. He was grinning at God knew 
what, something outside the frame of the shot.
	Not 1995. That winter had been bad for them; she remembered how they'd squared 
off that fall, polarized by the discovery of Dr. Ishimaru. They'd fought about 
the stigmatic boy, fought about the cockroaches, fought about *everything* in 
New Hampshire. It had been a grey, rainy winter, and though she didn't quite 
remember Christmas, she was sure they wouldn't have looked so easy together.
1996. She did remember now. Mulder had just been given OPC's absolution for 
John Lee Roache, when none of them thought he'd be able to survive that one. 
The party had been in mid-December, just before Betts. She'd waited until the 
28th to see a doctor, waited until after the holiday. That week or so, between 
Mulder's OPC reviews and her first nosebleed...they'd been happy that week. As 
happy as they'd ever been together. How fleeting those moments were, their 
work being what it was. And someone had caught it on film -- Scully playing 
with the idea of a smile, Mulder looking as though he'd just been given the 
Nobel prize instead of having kept his job only by the skin of his teeth.
Scully laid it carefully back on the nightstand. "Christmas party, '96."
	"So that's Fox Mulder."
	"The same," she said tersely.
	Miss Parker stared at it a minute more and sniffed. "That's a nose you could 
mine coal with."
	"I guess it's not his nose that interests Skinner."
	"Are they screwing?"
	"Not...that I know of." Funny response, that. She knew damn well they weren't; 
if Mulder was bold enough to tell her about Alex Krycek, he wouldn't hesitate 
to tell her that. Maybe it was a kind of mercy, an impulse to soften the *no,* 
even if Skinner wasn't here to hear it. *Poor Skinner. Always the right song 
in the wrong key. His agent about to fall into his bed, but the wrong agent. 
The right agent here in the middle of the night -- except with someone else in 
tow.* That had been November of '96 -- not long before this photo was taken. 
Who would know, looking at Mulder's picture? Even Scully, knowing what she 
knew now, could not see Krycek in Mulder's face, however hard she searched. *I 
know, I know, Mulder. It's not my place to see it, or understand it. Only to 
love you, with or without it. I'm trying, Mulder.*
	Her arm closed around Miss Parker's shoulders from behind, Scully's lips on 
her neck. Here, right here, so solid, a living human who intrigued and aroused 
her. Someone who would shortly be gone. With neither future nor past, their 
relationship could be as perfect and necessary and temporary as food to the 
hungry -- or a cigarette to the addict, agasint the rules, 
self-destructive...temporary, necessary, perfect. She rolled with Miss Parker 
onto the bed.
	The act of stripping away the leather from Miss Parker's warm, sweat-moist 
body felt like curling her fingers under a top layer of skin and ripping it 
back. Maybe it was because, whether she should or not, she had Clarice on the 
brain, the only other woman Scully had ever made love to. Through that first 
case, the Buffalo Bill case, Clarice had taught Scully everything she knew 
about looking at a body skinned, devoured, mutilated, used and never letting 
it show in her eyes. Steel on the job, coming home raw and horrified, to 
scream and sob and break their dishes against the wall and fuck Scully with 
desperate, pleading carnality. Clarice -- how could she not remember now? How 
had it been so long since she'd thought of her first love?
	*Whose photo will you turn and stare at in the dark, Dana Scully? You float 
like a feather through everyone's life, and even your memories of them go up 
in smoke. Jack, Clarice -- you thought you loved them, until you just...moved 
on.* At least Skinner had that much. One picture of one dream that he kept for 
himself.
	Though her hands fluttered over the flesh of Miss Parker's breasts and 
nipples, Scully's mouth sought deeper, sought the slickened, hot place between 
them, and the bone underneath. Human bone, so easily broken, all that kept us 
standing, moving, alive, ourselves. In cultures across the earth and through 
time, bone had been ornament, weapon, tool, relic. Miss Parker's back arched, 
and she parted her legs, lifting her hips up against Scully's.
	Scully knelt up, her thighs pressing Miss Parker's legs apart further, the 
tailored fabric of her slacks slipping minutely against Miss Parker's satin 
underwear. "Take off your shirt," Miss Parker ordered breathlessly.
	She pondered that a moment before saying, "Thank you for the advice, but I'm 
fine." More deliberately now than before, Scully took one of her nipples, 
rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger gently. Miss Parker threw her head 
to the side, but Scully slid a hand into her hair, turning her face back 
towards Scully. She didn't mind if Miss Parker wanted to keep her eyes closed, 
but she liked the tension in that lovely, patrician face, the quivering of her 
mouth, the twitch of her stony jaw. She had a tiny nervous tic, twitching her 
nose quickly before taking a deep breath. Scully kissed her nose, mostly to 
see what would happen. Miss Parker made an inarticulate noise, part roar and 
part bark, all annoyance. Scully chuckled, the noise swirling somewhere in her 
chest, behind her own breastbone.
	As she bent to lick Miss Parker's nipple, the woman ground hard against 
Scully's thighs, and the broiling desire in Scully sent out a gout of flame, 
straight up from her clit and into her stomach. She bit at the nipple, and 
Miss Parker cried out, one hand clutching Scully's t-shirt near her waist. Her 
legs were trembling, and Scully soothed her thigh with one hand, silk and 
garter and skin. A finger buried underneath the garter's elastic and rested 
there a moment. Miss Parker opened her eyes. "Waiting for something?"
	"Savoring. This part is good, don't you think? Wanting?"
	"Getting's better."
	Like wine, like water, like desire, Scully ran and flowed down the bed, and 
gently bit the flesh of Miss Parker's stomach where there were no bones, only 
tissue and nutrients and motion, dozens of organs moving things this way and 
that, into the woman who might or might not have been named Margot Parker, or 
out of her. The sacrament of medicine, the mystery of sustenance. Beneath her 
open mouth, Miss Parker's body pulsed and tensed and hungered and aged, 
turning like graceful, hot, visceral clockwork. It fired Scully's mind as well 
as her own body; though she had no more than a nascent, tentative appreciation 
for Miss Parker as a person, she was hopelessly, eternally in love with her as 
a human, as an example of the species. So perfectly designed, operating 
lyrically, efficiently -- strong, flexible, fragile, textured, commanding and 
commanded by the hidden hallows of her brain. Scully worshipped her way lower, 
recalled to the almost religious ecstasy she'd first found in those anat & 
phys textbooks years ago. *How fine a thing. How precious we are, what works 
of genius....*
	Her tongue traced the edge of Miss Parker's bare skin, at the waistband of her 
panties. The look of amazement in Miss Parker's eyes seemed almost religious 
in nature, too, rapturous and doubting at the same time. But to dance for 
twenty years, surely you would have to have a fascination and familiarity with 
the body just like any true physician. Miss Parker had been in the profession 
of mastering her own body by craft and will, just as Scully was in the 
profession of mastering others'.
	Mastering Miss Parker was amusingly simple. Each flick of Scully's tongue as 
it pricked and tested its way under the narrow, silky black cloth made her 
twitch, sent a slow ripple down her body like a sound wave.
	She, too, was hard to hold, Scully noted, but in a different way. For a 
chain-smoker, Miss Parker was distinctly unsmokelike. She surged with 
serpent-power gone out of control, not a lazy boa or python, but a striking 
rattler or copperhead. A fighter, a fanged thing, struggling against the hard 
kiss of Scully's mouth, in full, fiery rebellion against the pleasure that 
Scully could taste, salty between her lips, the heat that threatened to melt 
Scully's now-cautious tongue. Scully wrapped her arms around Miss Parker's 
hips, trying to hold her still, as she would with someone too panicked and in 
pain to allow necessary medical treatment. Scully kissed deeper, letting her 
mouth speak words as random and meaningless as those she had earlier written 
on Miss Parker's skin. *Sorry believe yes true body brain you want you want 
you*
	"Yes," Miss Parker said, and though her body was in chaos, her voice was 
preternaturally calm. Scully closed her mouth, focusing on Miss Parker's clit, 
capturing it and sucking gently --gently enough that Miss Parker's orgasm was 
not a further explosion of violence, but a true release. Only her throat 
worked in ceaseless motion, trying and failing to produce a sound, or trying 
and succeeding to suppress one. Either way, by the time her climax faded, Miss 
Parker laid silent and passive on the bed.
	Scully sat up, wiping her mouth on the back of her arm, sucking the rest off 
her lips. It had been so long since she'd brought anyone, male or female, to 
orgasm that way that Scully had forgotten how tiring it was. She felt heavy, 
lazy, her desire run to low tide, a not-unpleasant throb between her legs. It 
was in this state, enjoying her lassissitude and still riding the slow river 
of her arousal, that Scully usually fell asleep in her own home, before the 
strange, electrocution energy of a climax. She kissed Miss Parker, pleased to 
note that Miss Parker seemed tired herself, and slow to respond.
	But it was a bad time, the worst time, to drift off. Reluctantly, Scully sat 
up. She needed to move around, try the Neapolitan, call Mulder. She had a life 
to live, after all.
	Miss Parker sat up as well and grabbed the t-shirt at Scully's shoulder with 
graceless fingers. "Hey."
	Lovely fingers. Scully couldn't help running one of her own fingertips along 
the bone, from lowest to center knuckle. The grip on Scully's shirt loosened, 
and Scully could feel the air, the slant of the bed, disturbed by motion, and 
instinctively she raised her own arms to protect herself, to block away a 
touch or embrace.
	The brief confusion of kinetics and confusion ended as quickly as it began. 
Like ivy up a trellis, Miss Parker's arms wove around Scully's, as limber and 
elegant as Scully's were stiffened and defensive. "You have a lot of problems, 
don't you?" Miss Parker seemed almost impressed by the idea.
	Scully twisted her wrist, reaching back to cup a hand against the mussed back 
of Miss Parker's hair. "I don't often give it any thought, actually."
	"Are you Catholic?"
	"What?"
	"Or is this a non-sectarian, generic middle America guilt problem?" Each word, 
so close to Scully's ear, wore the shape and texture of Miss Parker's tongue 
-- violated Scully's privacy in the blunt, heavy, delicious way that her 
tongue violated Scully's mouth. She squirmed slightly, neither closer to nor 
farther away from Miss Parker. Suspended, hung between...the smoke and the 
smoker.
	"God. My *God.*" She laughed shakily, drawing one arm in closer to her body, 
and Miss Parker's along with it. "Do you flirt like this with everyone?"
	"Via religious stereotypes?"
	"You know what I mean."
	"Dana, I don't think *you* know what you mean. Are you really having ten 
conversations simultaneously all the time, or do you just sort of come across 
that way?"
	"Yes. I find that it's easier to schedule in department meetings that way."
	"Come back to the Centre with me. You can be my trophy wife."
	"Your moll?" Scully raised an eyebrow, finding herself oddly charmed by the 
idea.
	Miss Parker was almost manic in her splintered good cheer again. "I'll let you 
wear my handcuffs. You'd miss your work at first, but you'd grow to love 
bridge, and fundraisers for MS and the Humane Society. And there's no law that 
says I couldn't shoot someone occasionally for you to autopsy."
	Her first giggle was more of a hiccup, but after a few false starts, Scully 
realized that she had not entirely left her ability to giggle behind in high 
school. "I think there may be."
	"Oh, well, there are a lot of laws. I can't be expected to know every single 
one off the top of my head; that's why we have professionals like you." 
	Amazingly, Scully found herself lolled comfortably against Miss Parker's 
shoulder, indolent and giggling in dying fits and chortles. Maybe she could 
compare notes with Mulder. *I find that the best part about taking unrepentant 
criminals to bed is their sick sense of humor -- don't you agree? No, Scully, 
I'd have to say definitely the hot sex. You would, Mulder.*
	She was aware of the stretch and manuevering of each muscle as Scully eased 
down, lying across Miss Parker's lap. She was wild again, with nerves -- 
*could I possibly be doing this?* -- and with pride --*it's me she wants, for 
once it's about me* -- but before and above all other things, she was a 
scientist. She believed in what was real, and measured reality by experience. 
Experience becomes reality becomes belief becomes truth becomes truth becomes 
truth. The only rule. The only thing Scully honored anymore.
	"You have a *tattoo*?" Miss Parker said as she worked the pants off Scully's 
hips. "I never would have dreamed."
	"Hmmm. You think you know someone...."
	Those strong fingers probed into Scully without hesitation and without 
weakness. Bone rode hard over bone, pressing the wet and sensitive flesh 
between the hard planes of Miss Parker's hand and Scully's pelvis. It was 
remorseless, romanceless, and Scully arched to it, craved it. She had so much 
hunger, fifteen years of denied and discarded wanting. She needed *getting,* 
like a transfusion, like food, knowledge, cigarettes, pleasure, attention. 
Immortality.
	Alive. It settled into Scully, and at last what had only been information 
became experience. She was alive, and the cancer no longer devoured her. She 
had sunk so deeply into the idea of her own death that it was an exotic and 
wonderful thought -- *alive.* Experience became belief, and once she believed 
it, everything was different. Quantum, and incense and champagne. Scully rose 
into the casual touch of Miss Parker's thumb over her clitoris with a body 
finally in accordance with itself, no longer leashed and muzzled by the idea 
that it was invading and threatening itself. The sensation rose unobstructed 
through her abdomen and chest and into her skull, and nothing in Scully was to 
be resisted or denied any longer. That part of her life was over.
	Experience became belief became truth. The orgasm that passed through her like 
a summer thunderstorm was real, and it banished the last of Scully's fear that 
she was choosing this for some strange and foreign reason, that it was not 
*her.* Nothing could have belonged to her any more than this. Nothing could be 
more *Scully* than the need and desire to lie in bed listening for once to the 
voice of her own body. Scully's eyes fluttered open, and she watched the eerie 
serenity of Miss Parker's lovely face. How appropriate, that it would be a 
dancer who brought out in Scully the art of being embodied. Of forgiving your 
body for ruling and endangering you, for making you both hungry and mortal.
Her hands were no gentler than ever, but Miss Parker put them against Scully's 
hair and smoothed it back from her forehead, a gesture that hovered in limbo 
between clinical and caring. Scully could smell her own juices on Miss 
Parker's hand. She returned the favor, pressing her fingers into Miss Parker's 
hair, and this time she did not raise her arms to prevent Miss Parker's 
nearness, but to fold over and around her and close her in against Scully's 
body. She was half-aware of Miss Parker's hands pushing her t-shirt up, 
stroking her breasts, and the touch was so good, so soothing, that at first 
she could think of nothing else, and then she could think of nothing at all.


	Scully was too well-trained to do what she longed to do, which was to ignore 
the perky chirrup of her cell phone. She sat up, and was briefly disoriented. 
She felt warm and damp and untidy, and she was lying diagonally across a bed 
she did not recognize, but she knew that ring, would know it on her deathbed. 
Cell phone, which meant work, work or Mulder, and usually both. It was to be 
obeyed, always. Even on her deathbed. The image made her smile sleepily -- 
ninety-nine years old, frail and brittle, lifting the phone to her ear and 
uttering, "Scully," as her finally word.
	She sat up, and focused on her suit jacket hanging over the doorknob, the 
source of the ring. Scully lurched out of bed and stumbled for it. "Scully."
	"Took you long enough."
	"This is a record for you, Mulder. Waking me up twice in one day."
	"What are you doing sleeping on the job, anyway?"
	In shock, Scully realized that she didn't exactly know. *Fuck.* Her prisoner-- 
But even as Scully wondered what her options would be if Miss Parker had 
escaped while she slept, other than ritual suicide, she saw the prisoner in 
question. She was sitting on the top step of Skinner's stairway, smoking. 
	Scully leaned against the doorframe, marveling at her good fortune. On top of 
everything else, Miss Parker had changed from her leather to the only article 
of clothing Scully could think of that she would find equally appealing -- a 
man's white dress shirt, hanging unbuttoned off her shoulders, the hem 
skimming her thighs and the cuffs dragging low on her hand. "I'm -- I'm not 
really working. Just watching this woman until we can locate her lawyer. Where 
are you?" It was hard to tell from the curtained window in Skinner's room, but 
the light seemed uncomfortably heavy, as though many hours had passed while 
Scully slept. She could only trust that Miss Parker would have woken her up if 
it were nearing time for Skinner to return.
	"I have a layover in Atlanta. I should land up there at 8:15. I'm sorry, 
Scully, but it was the best I could do on short notice."
	"It's fine. Come to Crystal City -- we're at Skinner's."
	"You're where?"
	"I'll explain later." The clock read ten after four; how could she have slept 
so long? Scully crossed the hall into the bathroom and ran some water into the 
cup by Skinner's sink. "I've been thinking about what you said this morning."
	"Hey, forget it. I'm paranoid schitzophrenic and you were half-asleep. Hell, I 
don't even remember what we talked about. Aztecs or something."
	Scully smiled slightly into the mirror. So like Mulder, to take the lion's 
share of the blame and shunt it off to his much-maligned sanity, then go on 
undisturbed. "More Krycek than Aztecs."
	There was a long silence. "Senator, I have no memory of that," he joked 
feebly.
	"Mulder. You were right."
	"About what I said?" Mulder said dubiously. "I actually don't remember saying 
anything noticeably right."
	"About what you did."
	She could almost hear his silent, poleaxed shock against the ambient noise of 
the Atlanta airport. Scully emerged from the bathroom; as her eyes settled in 
pleasure on Miss Parker, she felt what had been jealousy of Mulder -- of his 
charisma, of his divided affections, of the fact that he had found an 
emotional height in the midst of their chaos, insane though it was to find it 
in Alex Krycek, that Scully feared she might never find for herself -- 
transform into sympathy for him. Her temporary, necessary, perfect affair with 
a darkly ambiguous beauty had brought her this sleepy peace, the simple 
satisfaction of looking at her lover and being softly recalled to past 
pleasures. His affair had carried so much past, and from the very beginning it 
had been gored on the blade of its own future. "I just wish you'd found 
something that would...make things easier on you, not harder."
	"Scully. Thanks." He sounded dazzled, almost drunk on the unexpectedness of 
this. "What -- what can I say? You're the queen of all things. I'll be there 
before nine."
	"Okay. Skinner's."
	"I'm on it."
	Though she had meant to walk casually across the hall and back into the 
bedroom, Scully found herself ridiculously unable to do so. She stopped 
halfway and stared at Miss Parker, routine and businesslike white cotton 
draped against her rare, marble beauty. She wore it with the such aggressive 
confidence, her cool eyes daring Scully to treat her any differently than she 
would if Miss Parker were still wearing a catsuit and heels. "Nice of you to 
stay."
	Miss Parker looked for a moment as though she'd been caught doing something 
she was somewhat ashamed of, but then she gave a defiant shrug with one 
shoulder. "This puts a few more pieces on the board, this FBI business. Should 
make things interesting."
	"You're beautiful," Scully said, the words lurching out of her with awkward 
straightforwardness.
	After a moment's thought about that, Miss Parker shook ashes onto Skinner's 
carpet and took another drag off her cigarette. "I want Chinese for dinner."
	"You're also very demanding."
	"It's because I'm worth it. Anyway, it's on the taxpayer, right? Just take it 
out of my taxes."
	"Why am I suspicious that you don't pay taxes?"
	"Of course I do. I think. You'd have to ask my accountant. I like Kung-Pao 
chicken."
	"Let's start with the ice cream and work forward from there," Scully suggested 
from just inside the bedroom doorway. She picked up the copy of *Carrie* she 
had left on the nightstand, and as she returned it to its shelf, she noticed a 
Polaroid camera. The idea was too tempting.
	Miss Parker was lighting a new cigarette just as Scully came out of the room. 
"Hey."
	She looked up at Scully, and even after the flash went off, it was a moment 
before Miss Parker realized what had happened. "What the fuck is this?"
	"Everyone needs one," Scully said cryptically as she descended the stairs.
In the kitchen, beside the refrigerator with the empty handcuffs hanging from 
its handle, Scully stopped and watched as the picture sharpened into focus. 
Dark and white, disheveled and sleek, vulnerable and unreachable, risky and 
necessary. Scully smiled. One picture of one dream, something to lie in bed 
and watch in the dark, thinking *this has always been no one's business but 
mine, whatever the rules may say.* Miss Parker was always meant to be 
temporary, but in some small way, this evidence of her made everything that 
had happened between them take on the sharp, sweet taste of permanence. It 
made Miss Parker's strange, wicked charm tangible, and though it was no 
substitute for Miss Parker herself, it wasn't really meant to be. It was what 
it was, and what Scully wanted: a piece of deviance that she would keep, that 
was real and not to be pared down or stripped away in the quest to become 
herself...only less so.
	Scully heard Miss Parker's footsteps on the stairs. "So where's my ice cream?" 
she said from the doorway.
	She laid the photograph down on the counter and opened the freezer. Neapolitan 
wasn't Scully's favorite, but at the moment she was too ravenously hungry to 
care. She could start with Neapolitan. And work forward from there.

Hth
hth29@hotmail.com





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