"Hour Follows Hour"
A short XF fanfiction piece by
K. Judson (Katiefrog@aol.com)

Insight into the author's warped psyche: We all know Scully 
as a balanced, bright, stable person. She doesn't often fly 
off the handle, and she isn't often affected by her work. But 
what would she do the moment she realized that "they" 
would never leave her alone? What then?

Disclaimer: The X-Files and the characters and situations 
contained therein are the property of Chris Carter, 
Ten-Thirteen, and Fox. They do not belong to Katherine 
Judson at all. She is a bad, bad person for using them, and 
even worse for feeling no remorse. (Is anyone really 
reading this?) "Hour Follows Hour" is the property of 
Righteous Babe Records and Ani DiFranco. Ani DiFranco 
is the property of herself. (Don't worry, don't worry, I didn't 
actually put the song in the story.) If you want to send the 
story to someone (an extreme possiblity, but just in case), 
keep my name attached.

Unauthorized duplication, while sometimes necessary, is 
never as good as the real thing. You wouldn't want the 
now-infamous Agt. Sibrava to come get you.

I, the eternal cynic, don't really believe anyone ever reads 
authors' notes. Be that as it may, I would like to thank Paul 
for helping me through a recent rough spot. This one's for 
you. Oh, yeah, and you know how all of my recent 
submissions have been nice, feel-good, 
As-Long-As-Mulder-and-Scully-Are-Friends-All's-Right-
With-the-World stories? Ha ha. Well, after this one, that's 
gotta stop. Look for Gore By Kate coming soon. <g>

Pre-Leonard Betts

***********************
"Hour follows hour like water in a river. From one to the 
next, we don't know what each hour will deliver. We just 
call it like we see it; call it out as loud as we can. 
Afterwards, we just call it all water over the dam." 
        -Ani DiFranco
***********************

The ugliest, greyest, slushiest sleet I had ever seen was 
hurling itself at my window. It wasn't a dark and stormy 
night of the curl-up-in-front-of-the-fire-with-a-blanket 
variety. It was a truly disgusting, depressing afternoon. It 
made my mild head cold seem a lot worse than it was. It 
made my apartment seem darker and messier and lonlier. It 
was, for all intents and purposes, a bad day.

I stared at some leftover work sitting on the floor. I thought 
about getting it done. I didn't move from the couch. This 
was my leave time, and I should have been enjoying myself 
or something. Instead, I was moping. 

Since Chinese food cartons contain metal, and metal can't 
be microwaved, and my plates and forks were sitting in the 
sink, and I didn't feel like doing dishes, I was eating cold 
Chinese food out of the carton with a spoon. The food was 
rather old, and Scully, had she been around, probably 
would have told some appalling story about when she was a 
resident. She would explain, in great detail, all about a man 
whose stomach exploded after eating old Chinese food, or 
something to that effect. Usually by the time she gets to the 
part where entrails ooze out of the guy's gaping wound, I 
am no longer eating. I am fairly certain she makes these 
stories up. "You wouldn't like this," I informed the 
emptiness, "But this food is a week old and I'm going to 
finish it because you're not here to stop me."

The more I thought about her, the more I wondered what 
she had been doing with her time off. I hadn't heard from 
her in a few days, which was unusual, but not really a cause 
for alarm. I'd see her on Monday, if not sooner. 

It was early evening when she called.

"It's me," came her voice over the line, quieter than usual. I 
thought about saying "Bambi?" just to be annoying, but 
something warned me not to tease.

"Scully, is everything all right?" I expected a "fine", and 
was ready to move on to the next topic when she hesitated. 
"I'm not sure. I..." On my TV, a woman was talking. I was 
having trouble hearing my partner on the phone. "Hang on, 
Scully."

"Oh," her voice was uncharacteristically hesitant. Is 
someone there? Is this a bad time?" 

"I'm just switching off the TV," I replied gently. The noise 
ceased. 

She took a deep breath, and her voice was suddenly 
shakier. "I'll be fine." 

Alarm bells sounded in my head, triggered by the desperate 
note in her voice. I was suddenly very, very worried. The 
anxiousness prompted me to act. "I'll be right there, Scully. 
Stay there. I'll be right over."

Halfway to her apartment, I hoped that was indeed where 
she had been calling from.

I knocked on the door while trying to calm myself. She'll be 
fine, I repeated under my breath, over and over. "It's open," 
I heard her call. See? asked an inner voice. See? She's fine. 
I wanted it to be true. I let myself in, locking the door 
behind me. 

"Scully?"

"In here."

I followed her voice into the bathroom, feeling almost a 
degree of relief when I saw her leaning over the toilet. Her 
elbows rested on the seat and her head fell forward. Her 
hair hid her face and arms. She was very still. She's sick, I 
thought to myself, She has the flu. Or a hangover. Or food 
poisoning. "I hope your stomach doesn't explode," I told 
her. She didn't answer me. "Sorry, I couldn't help it." No 
response. I was beginning to not like this again. "Scully?" 

"Mmm-hmmm?" 

She was trying not to cry. She hid it very well, but I could 
tell from experience that something was very wrong. "Are 
you going to throw up?" I moved closer to her and pulled 
her hair back from her face. I held the sloppy ponytail in 
one hand and groped for a rubber band with the other. And 
then I looked at her hands.

"Scully!"

"What?" 

"Your hands! You slit your wrists!" 

"I know."

"Scully!" I grabbed a towel off of the shower curtain rod 
and wrapped up her hands, holding hard. She squirmed. 
"Stop it," I ordered.

"You stop it," she snapped back. I held her as hard as I 
could against me, steadying myself against the bathroom 
wall. Neither of us spoke for a long time. Red spots marred 
the white towel. The bleeding stopped. 

I found the first aid kit in her medical bag. I did a pretty 
shoddy job with the gauze and adhesive tape. I flushed the 
toilet.

"You didn't cut very deep," I told her when I realized how 
shallow her slashes had been. 

"I didn't think so."

"You should see a doctor." She raised her eyebrows at me. 
"One that didn't just try to empty her blood supply into the 
sewer system," I amended.

"Are you going to make me?"

"If it means your life, yes. Yes I am. Scully, I know what 
you're thinking. I know how worried you are that the 
Bureau might find out, that this might affect your career, 
but you can't have a career if you're dead."

"I think I'll be okay."

It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. "You *always* say 
that."

"I'm not dead yet, am I?" 

"Oh, now there's a good attitude to have."

"I sound like you, don't I?"

More than you could ever know, I thought, but didn't 
answer. Instead, I took her scalpel from the floor and held 
it in my hand.  "Why did you do it?" She sat down on the 
side of the bathtub and held her head in her hands. Her 
shoulders shuddered, slowly, once, and then she turned to 
stone. Still and icy, she sat just a few feet away but made it 
seem like miles. I felt helpless to do anything. Thousands 
of possibilities ran through my head. I wildly wondered 
what had happened that had unbalanced her so. 

"I couldn't bring myself to cut much, but I really did want 
to kill myself," she told me, finally. "I really did."

"Why?"

"I can't remember yesterday. I can't remember Thursday 
either. There are messages on my answering machine, there 
was mail in my mailbox, and I don't remember leaving the 
house."  She looked up at me with her piercing gaze, daring 
me to oppose her. As if I would.

My mind raced. "What are you saying? That you were 
taken again?" Maybe she'd say I was jumping to 
conclusions, that it couldn't possibly be. I hoped so. I sat 
down next to her on the rim of the tub. 

"Mulder, I just don't know." 

"They can't hurt you, Scully. They can't. We have their 
secrets. We can expose them."

Scully turned her eyes heavenward, trying to compose 
herself. "What if we can't, Mulder? What if they found a 
way around it? What if nothing we do will ever benefit 
anyone?"

"You can't think like that. We just take one day at a time, 
believing we'll get through it." Funny, I was starting to 
sound just like her. But maybe that was the point. Maybe 
we are so close because we balance each other out, see 
each other through. "Hurting yourself, Scully, is not the 
way to get through this. Maybe if you die, you'll be free, but 
maybe you won't. And what will I do once you're gone?" I 
really hadn't intended for that to sound as pathetic as it did. 
Being pathetic, however, didn't make it any less true. "No 
matter how bad things get, there's always a way out. you 
have to believe that if you're going to survive." 

She looked down at her hands. "They don't do the same 
things to you that they do to me. I feel so helpless. They 
can take me at any time. I don't know who they are. There's 
no one to chase and arrest. If I dissappear, I might never be 
found. Do you have any idea how frightening this is?"

"Yes," I told her. And it wasn't just because of my sister. 
Somewhere between the abduction of an eight-year-old girl 
and a thirty-year-old woman, I knew I could never give up. 
For I had loved both of them in different ways. I felt tied to 
both of them. And it is human nature to fight for what we 
love and what we are tied to. I can never let them go.

But it was with Scully that they had hurt me, because she 
was the key that could help me unlock so many secrets. As 
long as we worked together, I truly believed that we could 
uncover anything. It was when she looked at me with 
distrust or when she lay in a hospital bed that they hurt me 
the most. I didn't know if she knew that. It occured to me 
that she might never know. It was suddenly very important 
to me that she understand.

"Yes," I told her, "I know how frightening it is that you 
might be taken away. It scares me every day. They want to 
separate us, and I live in fear that they will be successful." I 
think she knew that before, and I did not have to say the 
words, but I had to be sure. She nodded sadly, with the look 
that she acquires when she knows that any explanation is 
hopeless, that I will never understand. But I did. 

I rolled up my sleeve. There is a scar on my lower arm, just 
a little nick. It can be interpreted as so many things, an 
accident in the kitchen, a childhood scar. It is none of those 
things. Scully's eyes caught and held. A few seconds later, I 
knew she knew what she was looking at. For if a trained 
eye looks long enough, it can see the mistakes, the places 
where the scar had been reopened. I had been careful, but 
not perfect.

"It was when they took you away. I didn't know if I'd ever 
see you again. I thought they had won, that they'd finally 
separated us forever, and I got desperate. For what, I don't 
know. There was just this feeling of aloneness. I couldn't 
make it go away. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't 
make it go away." 

"I wasn't trying to kill myself," I explained. "I just wanted 
to see it, see the blood flow, reassure myself that I still had 
some measure of control over what happened to me." I 
waited for her to coldly acknowledge the scars, to file them 
neatly away in her organized psyche. She never did. She 
looked away from the scar, up into my eyes. She nodded. 
She understood.

She smiled, took my hand. "I would not leave you if I could 
help it, Mulder. Our work means too much to me. You 
mean too much to me." She squeezed my hand. "Okay?"

I squeezed back. "Okay."

"And if we ever have a problem, we'll talk. We won't let 
this," she motioned to her wrists, "happen again. They'd 
love to shut down our division because we're 'unstable'."

"Agreed." 

"So now what?"

"Now," I told her, "You need to eat, before you pass out."

"Before that."

"We tell Skinner to call the Navajo, because we're going to 
kick some cancerous ass?"

"Excellent idea, esteemed colleague." 

I headed for the living room and the telephone. Scully 
stood up and followed me. In the hallway, she stopped. 
"Mulder, wait." 

I stopped and turned to face her. "What is it?" 

She smiled a sad little smile that quivered at the corners. 
She stood on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around my neck. 
I could feel her tears on my cheek, her breath in my ear. I 
hugged her back. We were silent for a long time, and there 
was more feeling in that silence than we could ever hope to 
put in words. She finally let go. She stepped back and 
smiled, more happily this time. "I needed that. I've needed 
that for a long time." I knew she wasn't just referring to the 
embrace. She needed everything that had passed between 
us. I felt a surge of pride that she had trusted me this much. 
I felt the warm glow of friendship. 

I returned her smile. "I know. Me too." I rested my hand on 
her shoulder. "I think it's all going to turn out just fine."

She covered my hand with her own. "I know it will." 

****************************
"First you decide what you've got to do and then you go out 
and do it. And maybe the most that we can do is just to see 
each other through."
        -Ani DiFranco
**************************** 

"And if I stand, let me stand on the promise 
That you will see me through
And if I can't, let me fall
On the grace that first brought me to you."
        -Rich Mullins