PhaHks Series
by GenieVB






st thing Petrillo noticed about his new patient
was not the anger or yelling or biting sarcasm that usually
belied hidden hurt. 

It was the total silence. 

And the slackness of expression. 

This was one of the few patients he'd ever accepted just on 
the word of another. A care giver but also a doctor who had
insisted to him that her tired friend was not crazy. 

Carl Petrillo was a staff psychiatrist but working with
the frankly demented had never been his strong suit. He didn't
like to medicate if it could be helped and he didn't like
word association or hypno-therapy or anything that might
water down the honest sickness or pain the patient was 
feeling. 

Numbing a person with drugs might control some symptoms short-
term, unless they were suffering chemically induced mental illness;
unless their brain chemistry was pumping the wrong stuff, too
much of this and not enough of that, but the problems still
had to be addressed and those he had found were usually rooted in
nothing more mysterious than simple feelings. Emotions in an
upheaval. Overflowing or so stopped up the result was what he
was seeing before him now: a mute human who saw no use in 
acknowledging anything let alone himself. 

He had Doctor Scully's assurance that this was the case with
Fox Mulder. He was not crazy. 

Well, he would find out soon enough. 

Petrillo checked Fox's chart. Valium - Petrillo saw the lethargy
in the rounded shoulders and hunched back - //tell me something I
don't know.// He'd read Fox's recent history including the medical
data, the list of old injuries and new, the general physical state
and the events (some that shook even Petrillo, who'd seen much, to 
the core of his compassion) that had lead this individual with 
the tired eyes to this place and moment in time. 

Petrillo had read this information at an earlier date, but did so 
again while the patient was seated before him so the words on paper 
could be tied to a real, living creature and the "facts" be made 
personal. In the end, diagnoses were only partially accurate he 
had found. 

Petrillo thrust the chart under his wooden seat and looked for a
few minutes at Fox Mulder, the paranoid, delusional, schizophrenic
who had tried to kill an orderly. Who'd burned his arm with fire
until achieving an oozing, black hole. 

Fox had been an F.B.I. agent in another life. A good one or so
he had been told. Doctor Scully had told him a great deal about this
man for whom she cared. He'd listened and nodded, acknowledging
her desire to let Petrillo in on the secret that Mulder had not 
always been this way, that he really was _not_ this way at all. 

But a badge didn't exclude one from the human race. 

Even kings went crazy. 

"Is there nothing you want to tell me?" Petrillo decided to start
simply. 

No answer and he hadn't expected one. Some patients never shut
up at first. Some never spoke. 

"I guess you're pretty pissed off about being in another hospital.
Locks and bars and lousy food and patronizing doctors." Doctors
really could be patronizing ass holes, may as well clear the air 
right off. "Well, I'm here to help you if that's what you want. I tell
you the truth right now, I'm not sure how. But as long as we're 
working together, you'll have your own private room. Only two 
people have keys to it, myself and Eugena." 

Eugena was the petite little ward night Head Nurse whom everyone 
liked. Even the sickest patients trusted her. Petrillo decided to
voice the key business for two reasons. He wanted Fox to feel safe at 
Greenlawn, so he was letting Fox know that no-one had access to his 
room or him except his therapist and the trusted Eugena. But Petrillo
also wanted his patient to understand that the safety continued only 
if they continued working together. Otherwise Fox might end up with
another doctor altogether and who knows which nurse on which shift
would get the spare key to his room. 

It was kind of a dick-headed thing to do but if it worked (and it
had once or twice in the past), he was sure he would be forgiven. 

His patient sighed, a very long, slow breath of stale room air. 
Up to that moment Petrillo had wondered if the guy was breathing at 
all. 

"Well. We'll still meet each day if that's all right with you. I
imagine they've given you no choice and since I work here I have to
fulfill my part and come here every day,.." 

Had his new charge really been through all the stuff he'd read 
on the chart? Wouldn't that be enough to make anyone prefer 
death? Fox had burnt his own flesh. But Petrillo wondered if that 
had been more a call to life than death. Maybe the guy just wanted 
to feel something again, even excruciating pain. 

"...so we'll meet and just be quiet together. There's nothing wrong 
with quiet. But if you do feel like talking, I'm hell at listening." 

*** 



It went that way each day. Petrillo talking and his patient ignoring
the talk. 

It went that way for weeks. 

Until one day Petrillo tried something that had worked before. Once
in a nine year old boy who had suffered the most horrible abuses
by his mother. A highly intelligent boy who had learned to cope
with his pain by reading and learning and shutting down his mind to
all else. 

He'd come to Greenlawn, cooperative and mute. Petrillo had tried
everything that was suppose to work to get the kid talking. Nothing had.
Until one day... 

He may as well try it here. 

Fox entered his therapists office and sat in his usual spot. Immediately
he noticed the thing painted on the wall. It was a two digit number printed
in large, black letters. It had not been there before. It was out of place,
a picture in fact had been moved to accommodate it. 

I meant nothing to him. 

It meant nothing for days and days. 

Petrillo could see the curiosity swelling in his client. Obsessive mind. Fox
had a need to know. Always to know. The reasons, the whys,
the how-comes. Mute's see far more than they want people to think 
they do. Silence isn't so much crazy as stubbornness. It was an unspoken 
"fuck-you" to the world. 

"Why?" Fox asked one day, looking at Petrillo and gesturing to the
mystery number, jabbing a pissed off finger at the wall.


"Your age." Petrillo answered. 

Fox stared. "Which of us here is insane?" 

"Are you?" 

"Insane. Delusional. Paranoid. A great ass-fuck, take your pick." 

Petrillo didn't nod, but he didn't fail to notice the flippant, off-the-cuff
way Fox had related that last bit of information. Lumping the brutal rape in
with things that were said to be wrong with _him_. And he didn't get too
excited over this sudden dialogue with a man who had made a decision never to
speak again. Petrillo kept speaking calmly as if they were buddies who'd been
chatting for weeks. Soon enough, Fox would realize his error for allowing
curiosity get the upper hand and retreat back into his womb. He would try to
reaffirm his visible insanity for Petrillo by becoming a statue. Death by mind. 

"This isn't multiple choice." Petrillo tapped his pad with his pencil, neither
speaking for a moment. "Is there anything you want to tell me?" 

Fox sighed. "Why are trying to dig me up?" 

"Because your feelings have buried you alive." 

Mulder's heart betrayed his belief in being extinct by beating hard
and fast. Petrillo words were dangerous, they had a power. 

"Leave me out of your psycho-babble, Petrillo, you're out of your 
depth." 

"Can't do that, I'm afraid. I'm no genius but I know pain when I
see it, even when it's hidden under insults." 

"What the hell do you want from me?!" Fox stood and paced
but came no closer to the doctor with the lightening tongue. 

"I think you have a sickness, call it insanity if you want or
just plain old feeling "bad" but that's why you're here, Fox. 
I'm here to help you. You have to want that help. If you do, I'll
do my best. Let me start by saying I won't lie to you or betray
the trust we build together. Think about it for a while if you 
want." 

Fox stopped his pacing and crossed his arms. He didn't
look at Petrillo but at the earth at his feet that was in danger
of splitting asunder. 

Petrillo saw the fear settle in his patient's eyes before Fox
re-entered his silence, leaving him behind. 

***

"Anything you want to tell me today?" 

Petrillo and Mulder were in their Umpth session and thus far 
but for very few, Mulder had spent those hours staring at the walls. 

"You're not an idiot, Mulder. Your scores from grade school tell me 
that much. But we can sit and stare at each other and think vile things
or we can start working to get you out of here. I get paid either way,
so, is there anything you want to say?" Petrillo waited. 

Smoldering pupils but no voice. 

"Tell you what, tomorrow, I'll bring in my Super-Play Station and-" 

"FUCKED-UP!!!" 

The walls shook from the sound waves. Petrillo jumped, barely. Waited. 

Mulder had leaped up and was pacing the room and every second or so he'd 
scream another imperfection at the doctor, the dam thus bursting. 

"UNSTABLE! VIOLENT! DESTRUCTIVE! SUICIDAL! And while we're at it:
DEMENTED-CRAZY-INSANE-SPOOKY-FUCKING-MULDER!" 

Angry Mulder. Lots of things untouched down in there. Lots of
hurt that had to be found and looked at so Mulder could see it for
what it really was - the basic feeling of abandonment and 
helplessness. Guilt, too, Petrillo thought. And fear. Human
things that were not so terrifying once they were exposed for 
what they were: emotions. 

Things they would examine together. Only Mulder did not yet
understand that he would no longer be punished for feeling them. 
He would also have to unlearn the punishment of self. 

"That's what _they_ say you are. I want to hear what _you_ think
you are. Do you think you're all these things? Really?" 

Mulder sat back down, slouched like an adolescent, arms
crossed over his chest to erect a barrier between himself
and the doctor who asked scary questions no one else had, 
never looking at the doctors eyes that could still disapprove
at any moment with a "tsk-tsk". 

But he didn't answer. 

"We have some hard work to do, Fox. We've spent most of this
session and others sitting across the room like two strangers in a 
bar. Too bad we didn't have any beer. But, next session, I'm going
to ask you where it is you want to start, okay?" 

That surprised his patient and it showed on his face for a fleeting 
instant. Walburg must have had little success with this one. 

Kurtzman! Petrillo had never been a supporter of the Sweet Talk 
Method. Any "You're a fine fellow" stuff used on Mulder would have 
failed miserably. And so many hospitals replete with so many textbook 
procedures that had the patients doing little each day to help 
themselves other than wiping their own asses. 

How disappointing to find that so many trained professionals
still tiptoed around the sicknesses as if they _knew_ their patients 
were crazy and unable to make a decision on their own when that 
was one of the first things to being human and sane: the freedom 
of choice. 

*** 

When Scully came for her after work visit, Mulder 
screamed obscenities at her through clenched teeth 
and stony eyes. She was not his friend. She was 
his murderer. A betrayer and liar to boot. He screamed 
until she left in shock. 

He'd done it to complete the death. Not only was he dead 
in body and mind, but now in heart as well and it was only 
fitting. The living had no dialogue with him. He'd told 
that doctor off good and proper too. 

Leave me to burn up out of the sight of pitying eyes! he 
screamed at them from his rift and ripped the scab from his 
healing burn. 

Even dying could be a shameful experience and was best 
done alone. 

*** 

Petrillo knew he was being punished for causing Fox to 
speak. But he didn't bring it up when he visited his patient
in the Infirmary. 

He sat beside the bed. Fox was in restraints but wide awake.
He hadn't been violent except to himself. 

"Well. Well I left yesterday, It was with the hope you had 
opened up, I didn't expect it to be the hole." 

Fox kept his head turned away. He felt shame and it angered 
him. For some reason he'd disappointed this doctor, not because
he'd shown by his self-mutilation that the doctor's methods were 
futile, but because for some inexplicable reason, this doctor had
looked into him and not shrunk back in nausea. Petrillo wasn't 
even showing disgust at his newly bandaged hole. He was sad 
instead. 

"I was kind of hoping we could talk a bit right now, if you'd
like. You know you are in some trouble, Fox? It's not impossible
that you'll be able to feel, equally, love for yourself as you do 
hate at this moment. We have our work cut out for us. I'll see
you tomorrow."


*** 

He was next in line for access to Fox Mulder. 

In an emergency. 

Which this wasn't. 

Mulder was kept isolated but he'd still have to 
settle for access under watching eyes, Greenlawn 
believed in closed-circuit television. But he was still
Director of the F.B.I. and if anyone had an argument
to make he would remind them of that. 

Soon he was being escorted to Mulder's "room".
which was "nice-nice" for a cell with rubber walls 
and a lovely sleeping mat. 

Yesterday afternoon, Mulder had tried to take the 
ward apart. Scully had gone to see him that afternoon. 
Afterward, Mulder had had a session with Carl Petrillo. 
He'd screamed a lot at Petrillo. A lot. 

Somehow yesterday's mix of events had then
lead to Mulder's beating on the furniture. 

Today, Skinner had talked to Petrillo after Scully had
come into work that morning looking like she'd had about 
ten minutes sleep. She looked spent. Depressed. 

Skinner managed to corner her later in the stairwell
and had solicited yesterday from her in addition
to some brimming eyes and a voice so sad it made
his heart ill. 

Mulder didn't want to see her anymore. He'd told
her to go away and never come back. He'd yelled at
her and screamed abuse at her and told her she was
a liar and a cheat and not to be trusted. 

Skinner wanted to kill him. 

The door shut behind him and was locked, he stared
at Fox Mulder for the first time in many weeks. 

Fox Mulder stared back. Defiant. Stood in place, 
looking at Skinner, thin and rumpled and arrogantly 
waiting. Not caring either.


"What the fuck is the matter with you?" Skinner
had not come to mince words, play by the rules
in the Book of Loon or rack up good guy points. 

Mulder actually changed position at that. Fidgeted. 
Skinner still had the ability to exert some authority 
over Agent Du' Spooky. Good. 

"I am sorry you're here, Mulder, but you're blaming
the wrong person by attacking Dana..." 

Dana? Visions of a sweating Skinner all over Scully's 
naked body, obtaining orgasm and pumping her secret 
place full of himself, swam before Fox's eyes in red. 

"It's none of your business," He spoke. One of few times
since the false dawn began. She's none of your business!
"so keep your goddamn hands off her!" 

Skinner flew at Mulder as if from a catapult. He grabbed 
shoulders and twisted his fists into the cloth, slamming
Mulder back against the wall. 

"You fuck! What are you going to do? Destroy her
along with yourself you selfish son-of-a-bitch?" 
Slammed him again. "You've been cut and raped and 
beaten so you've been through all there is, huh? You've 
seen it all?" 

"I have." Strangely calm. "I have seen it all." 

"Well, get passed it! Switch it around in your head, Mulder.
Pretend if you have to. Where the fuck this happened, who 
did it, get passed it; it was a bad weekend with a biker gang, 
it was too much booze, indigestion, I don't care. Just 
fucking deal with it and leave this place because I won't have 
you hurting that woman." Skinner ground the threat into 
Mulder's face, one inch away. "Understand? Am I being 
clear? Do you get it, Mulder?" 

Her scent was on him. "Yeah. I get it. But you don't want me
to leave here." 

Skinner let the fabric go. The impressions from his fists stayed.
"What the hell are you talking about?" 

"You fucked her, didn't you?" 

Skinner thought he'd come to set Mulder straight, to spur
him into getting himself better and getting out, if only to bring
some peace to Dana Scully. But at this moment he didn't give 
a squat if Mulder died here. Whether or not he and Scully had 
been intimate was immaterial, but how dare Mulder assume the 
worst of her! 

Skinner punched the wall beside Mulder's ear, hoping it
burst an eardrum. "You arrogant, self-assuming ass hole!
Scully and I are friends - that's because she has none. All
because of you, Mulder, she's fucking alone in the world
all because of you, you stupid dick! And she's been waiting
on your sorry ass for too long in my opinion. Fucking grow up!" 

Skinner stepped back a pace, standing that close was risky
because he wanted to ram a fist into Mulder's face. He kept
the urge at bay but he wanted to. Oh, yes, he wanted to. 

At the door, he turned back. "Pick up your life, Mulder.
Or stay here and weep, slice your wrists," He waved a hand
towards the bandage on Mulder's left forearm and the burn scar, 
"burn yourself up, I don't give a shit. But do something. Just 
get it done."



*** 



"Fox, I want Doctor Scully to attend some of your sessions." 

Petrillo was not surprised to see Mulder shake his head no. 

"You're afraid of her? Is that why? I heard about your little
explosion." 

"It doesn't matter." 

"It does if it means you won't get well. There's a reason why
you're trying to push her away. If you don't want to tell me,
that's fine, but it does mean it will be that much harder for
our work together. It means you'll be here that much longer,
trying to fix all that hurt inside you that you still won't 
share." 

"I told you I don't remember very much!" 

"Then tell me what you do remember. Something. One thing,
even." 

"I don't want.." 

Petrillo waited as Fox's eyes flickered and closed. He was 
remembering something. But his shame was stronger than his want 
to speak and he was motionless as the battle waged, invisible. 

"I won't tell Dana anything you don't want me to, Fox. For now,
we can keep the sessions closed. But I know she wants to share
in your recovery. She needs to understand too. She has some
healing of her own to do." 

Something in what he said made Fox slump over. He breathed
heavily. Trembled as if in fever. "I don't want...I don't want...
to...hurt her anymore..." 

But he was also terrified of being hurt and so he had tried to
destroy her. Name calling to keep her away because Petrillo didn't 
doubt for a second that Mulder would never have, could never 
have, struck Dana Scully. 

Words had been his only weapon to deflect the offer of opening 
up to her. Her and her love for him was a risk he was too 
terrified to take and had used his continental tongue to annihilate 
it. 

It must have hurt her or she never would have cut her visit so 
short. But Dana Scully was no fool and knew what lay behind the 
fury in his words. She'd called Petrillo the next afternoon and 
discussed it with him. He agreed with her. Told her his idea. 
Petrillo wanted her in on the sessions. 

She had agreed but not wholeheartedly. Not because of lack
of interest in Mulder's getting well, but worry that she would make
things worse. Petrillo had assured her she would not. Coddling
Fox would just be playing by his rules and that would accomplish 
nothing except perhaps keeping him an inmate of Greenlawn for
a very long time.



"Do you think she hates you?" 

"No." Liar! Believing she hated him was weak even though it was
true. But he had to at least pretend to have self-worth or the questions
would never stop. 

"Then let her come. One session. I'm not certain why, Fox, but
I think it's important. Unless you want to tell me why she shouldn't?" 

The doctor was showing his own weakness. Sharing a part of himself
that was flawed. He didn't know the reasons for everything. Therefore
he would share one of his own. One of those that counted the most. 

Shaking at the possibility that the doctor might confirm his disgust
for the corpse in his visitors chair, "I can't..c-can't, "get one" ..unless
I h-hu-urt myself." 

Petrillo watched Fox hang his head in shame at his revelation. Shaking like
he would fly apart at the joints, Fox said nothing more and Petrillo knew
he was waiting to see if this confession would damn him in his eyes.
Substantiate the ugliness that was Fox Mulder. 

Petrillo felt his heart go out to this man who looked upon himself
as not a victim of terrible crimes but as the criminal who somehow
had perpetrated his own destruction. Because he hadn't been able to
save himself from the slaughter, he was guilty. 

I _have_ to uproot that! Petrillo declared silently. The confession
of attempts at masturbation came as no surprise, the confession itself
did. It explained the purple bruises on the thighs, the teeny spiders
of broken capillaries on his stomach flesh. 

Pinching. To accomplish pain. To bring forth pleasure of a sort. The
only kind allotted to him during his incarceration in God-knew-what
under the mis-guidance of God-knew-who. Pain and punishment. 

The confession, the first time for both, was also an extraordinary 
sign of the healing light in Fox's mind. And of trust between patient 
and doctor. How often do people even have the courage to reveal such 
things to their priest? 

"Before, after or during?" 

Fox sucked in a huge breath. "It changes. U-usually ah-after." 

Petrillo made a few notes. So, punishment for feeling horny? No.
Because the abuse got to be so intertwined with the sex that, though 
the orgasm came, the high wouldn't until the pain did. 

That's what sex-torture was all about. It brought a high - to both 
parties - an endorphin rush and for a few seconds, Fox would have felt 
better. Felt, even, a sense of power. Felt something. 

Then the self-hatred would come and bring shame and humiliation. Things
are learned through experience, good and bad. 

They can be un-learned. So if by chance the memory is triggered, the 
physical reaction is not. 

Physically, emotionally and mentally abused children learn to believe
they deserve it. Belief is a powerful force. It can sway nations.
Petrillo knew. He was a psychologist. He had traveled. 

Abused children learn to escape into fantasy, learn to comfort
themselves often by performing the same abuses on themselves as the
abusers used on them. Familiarity can be comforting. Getting there first
is power and control. 

Or they learn to hate self and the destruction of their own flesh (the
wounds often do not scab over) is a kind of agreement with the perpetrator
of the mental bashing or emotional terrorizing. Agreement is
peace-bringing. There is relaxation and an end to conflict by conceding
to a defeat. 

Petrillo's mind went back to one girl he'd counseled who had grown up in a
family of six, experiencing tiny separate abuses that together formed a
poisoning whole of conflict and loneliness. One she wallowed in for ten
years before coming to him at the age of seventeen accompanied by the
frightened gaze of her tired looking mother. 

A few months into therapy, he recalled the girl saying: "I wish I had a
robot hand. A six fingered, black robot hand." When he asked why, she'd
answered: "Because then I could see my malformation and even if it was
creepy, some people would envy it." 

That girl's family ran out of money for her treatment. A year later, she
swallowed a whole bottle of her mother's sleeping pills and never woke up
again. 

Failures like that didn't come around often. Thank god because he couldn't
have stayed in the work if they had. Even doctors need a pat on the back
now and then, with a success. 

Fox was not so far gone as she had been, he didn't think. For one thing, the
man had survived abuses before, as a child, and gotten through it to succeed
in life to a certain extent. Good at his job. Had a share of love affairs
and friendships. 

But Fox was deeply ashamed of his own weaknesses during his captivity and
the result was very nearly the same; terrible self-loathing. Hatred of self
was dangerous. It could make a person sad to _death_. 

"I won't mention that, Fox. You know I don't lie to you. But I still want
Dana to join the sessions." It would cause upset, he knew but there was a
time for gentleness and a time for firmness and the time had come for the
latter. 

Mulder was confrontational. So they would be as well. It was honest at least.
Fox had to learn to feel again. Something good with no punishment. 

"I'm scared. I'm afraid of whu-what I might do." 

Petrillo was very grave. Fox had shown he was capable of violence. Yet that
violence had been directed, focused on authority. Never the weak. No patients
had seen the bad side of Fox's fist of fury. 

"Why? Can you give me reasons why you should feel that way? I'm not sure I
understand." 

Fox shuddered like he was in fever. Something in him was crawling out. "I
think I...k-killed someone,...something..." 

Leaving the semantics aside for the moment, "What was the reason? Do you
remember that?" 

Shook his head no. He was trembling like a leaf, spasming in an intermittent
wind, hunched over to protect what was left of himself from his own
terrifying recollections. 

"No. But I remember doing it..." 

Petrillo wondered how "it" was "done". 

"...it was," - something connected - "alien! Not human." He looked at
Petrillo with his, to him, enormous eureka. 

Petrillo did not argue that part of it. Only asked: 

"Nothing else?" This was a biggie. If it was true, if Fox had killed someone,
might there be evidence of it somewhere? A nameless corpse in a grave not so
old? A frozen cadaver in someone's morgue waiting to be identified? Or, if such
luck still existed, a body with a name that could explain a whole lot about
Mulder's past eight years in limbo. Something to bring to bear a light on the
dark matter of Fox's mind. 

Petrillo's patient struggled for many minutes. If he could bring it forth, an
extra fact that they could confront... 

Silence in which was heard Mulder's tired lungs. Then: 

"It felt good."
 
***************

Scully did not want to be there. She did not
want to see this man, her old partner, sitting 
in silence not agknowledging her presence. Rarely 
even looking her way. 

Mulder was quietly furious, that much was 
obvious, and directing that fury inwards. Thus
far he had not again screamed at his doctor, a
state Petrillo had disclosed to her just prior
to the session, that he wanted altered. Mulder 
had yelled at Petrillo on a previous occassion, 
the therapist had said, but had rarely spoken 
since. A few words, here and there. 

Petrillo hoped to change that today. 

//He wants to provoke Mulder using me.//
Scully thought. 

Despite Petrillo's reassurances, she still
felt that it was a mistake, that her being here
would just make things worse. Mulder did not
want to see her. 

Never again, he had said. 

He had not 'said', he had yelled. After weeks of 
punishing silence, Mulder had come at her with
a verbal attack designed to cut her to the quick. 

"Skeptic!" That was the first and mildest of insults
he had used. He'd spat it out as some would spit
out "Moron!", not a hint of tease at all. 

"Liar", "betrayer", "user", "traitor",...the list in
her mind rolled on. 

"First Lady Benedict". That had been creative,
she'd thought. 

"Iscariot whore", though, had topped it. 

A few standard bar-room names questioning
her virtue had arrived next. 

Crying, too. Whether used as a weapon or an
apology she didn't know, but he'd brought out
the heavy artillery there. 

The next day, Walter had solicited the wonderful
story of her meeting with Mulder including a few
tears of her own. 

When had she turned from Icey-Control Queen
to blubbering weakling?


She'd succumbed a great deal, lately, to the whims
of the men surrounding her, in a respectable way. She
was here, as an example, in Petrillo's counseling office,
ready to cooperate upon his request. 

It was to help Mulder come out of his shell, Petrillo had
explained. She had told Petrillo about the outburst and 
Petrillo had nodded, asking for details and then advising 
her not to take it personally. 

Yeah. Right. 

How could this set-up make Mulder trust his doctor? 
It certainly wouldn't improve her chances in 
regaining his trust. The ultimate betrayal, 
that's what she had committed, his face said it
whenever his look brushed passed her. 

Two lies, actually, his eyes said. Broken promises 
and banging the enemy. 

Oh, yes. "Dick Skinner." Mulder'd said that too. In
response to her teary-eyed "Why are you so angry?", 
Mulder had answered: "Go ask Dick Skinner." 

Scully had no idea how Mulder had come to the conclusion
that she and Skinner were sexually involved. They weren't.
Almost but not. 

But perhaps even a sane person would have a hard time 
forgiving that. 

Petrillo led her into the room already occupied
by the patient in question. 

Mulder was leaning against the cross-barred
window, light at his back, arms crossed. He said 
nothing as they entered and took their seats. 

"Are you going to stand there and block my
light, Mulder, or are you going to join us?"
Petrillo queried. Scully thought that he may
as well have been asking the plant-stand,
for all the response he got. 

Mulder remained a mute mannequin. 

Petrillo stared for a few seconds, then opened
his notepad, preparing to write with a click
of his Bic. 

"Well," He said directly to Scully. "let's
start with you." 

//Me?// 

"How would you describe Mulder's behavior?" 

//Is he kidding? I'm suppose to talk about
him while he's standing right in the room??// 

Petrillo had warned her that some of his methods
were unorthodox, but she wasn't prepared for
questions directed at her. Especially questions
about Mulder. 

"Uh,..um, I would say he's...angry." 

"Yes, clearly he is. I mean, with what or who is he
angry?" 

Scully stared at the doctor in shock. How could
he ask her that? How could he expect her to answer?
Is she suppose to lie, pretend she doesn't know?
Play dead? That's what she wanted to do. 

She could hear Mulder's breath catch at the question,
his respirations tight and fast. If she opened her
mouth, would he fly at her and slap her face? 

Never had he hurt her in any way physically. Not even
a real harsh breath in her direction. But she was scared
now. Jesus, this was some unorthodox way to get a patient 
talking! - goad him into a confrontation. 

//Petrillo, you prick.// 

"Um,...I..I guess, he's angry with me." It was hard
to say it because it was true. "I think he thinks
I hurt him. I guess I did,...I just didn't realize
it at the time. I,...I...needed..." 

Scully cautioned a small glance in Mulder's direction,
shocked to see him looking back. 

But there was no anger on his face, just a terrible,
tired sadness. 

"...I needed some,...um...comforting and Walter offered.
But nothing happened. I couldn't,..I couldn't go through.." 
She stared to cry just a little. 

Mulder and she had never, ever "done it" and here she 
was feeling guilty for cheating on him except that she 
hadn't. Not really. A couple of tears brimmed her 
bottom lids but did not fall. 

She was angry too, she realized, with Mulder. 
With his presumptuous moral indignity and putting her 
through this. Her anger was unjustified she knew but, 
for all that, couldn't help but feel it anyway. 

He deserved better than to be in here and she deserved 
better than having been the one forced to sign the papers 
committing him. 

They both should have been spared this. 

Life was unfair. It was aloof and self-serving and 
completely, fucking, totally unfair! 

"Haven't you ever been so lonely, Mulder, that you'd-" 
She gasped as she realized what she was saying and to whom 
she was saying it. 

"Oh I,..I didn't mean that. I'm sorry... sorry." Scully told 
the blanching face. 

Petrillo decided to intercede. "You've done nothing wrong,
Doctor Scully. Mulder knows that too." 

"I thought that I had destroyed him..." She whispered. 

Petrillo, suddenly, was no more a part of the human
circumstances in that room as was the paint on
the wall. Scully was talking to Mulder and, for the first
time in five months, he was listening. 

"...I thought I'd put him in another cage,..and," she
cried openly. No point in trying to keep tears back. They
were coming whether she willed them or not. 

Turned to him without warning, "You have every right 
to hate me, Mulder. But I didn't know what else to do. I
swear it. I just wanted you back, and happy and normal.
And,...and,...no scars." Her voice choked and she
quit, biting down on her tongue to stop the words that 
came out too fast and too truthful. 

"Why don't you go fuck yourself, Petrillo?" 

Mulder words and they came straight from him. 

"Ah, glad you could join us, Fox. It is nice when my
patients see fit to actually _participate_ in their
therapy." Petrillo declared in mock surprise. "Now, how
about joining us for the rest?" 

Mulder uncrossed his arms and circled the room,
suddenly looking as if he needed to leap out of his skin. 

"You bastard." Mulder thrust a finger in Scully's
direction and spit at his therapist, "What the fuck do 
you think you're doing asking her shit like that? You 
have no right to treat her that way!" 

"You're correct, I don't." Petrillo turned to Scully,
"I'm sorry, my question was uncalled for." 

Scully wondered if Petrillo was quite sane. "That's
okay. I'm fine." Made an effort to stop the tears and 
they cooperated. 

"Why are you angry Fox? Or with who? We still need
the question answered. I'm going to ask it until 
the Second Coming so why not get it over with?" 

"You're a real piece of fucked-up work, Petrillo.
Where the hell did you get your degree? Off of a 
cereal box?" 

"Well, it wasn't Oxford. Calcutta, actually, and
your evading." 

"Fuck you." Fox said politely with a tight-lipped 
smile. 

"No, the fuck's on you. You're stuck in this damn 
place until you decide to deal with your rage and to do
that you have to deal with me. So fuck _you_." 

In answer, Mulder kicked the plastic garbage can 
across the room, making Scully jump. It had been empty 
and so caused no mess he could feel better in. 

Petrillo sighed audibly and heavily. "We could play
soccer." He suggested. 

Scully's eyes followed as Mulder began pacing the small 
office. Small circles, just like at the bus depot. 

She sensed this must have been how he had spent hours 
and days of those eight years of incarceration, pacing 
in his cell or his room or the basement or the dungeon 
or where ever in God's name he'd been kept. 

A dusty road, a few last hours of freedom spent on 
a hillside, then - poof - whole life blown away. 

He was still trying to get it back. 

Mulder's arms were folded but not entwined, as if in a 
private hug in order to keep human and feel somewhat alive 
and reasoning. To prevent thinking about anything other 
than that he was no longer free and never would be again. 
Or that he was someone's property to be used, mistreated 
and then discarded into oblivion. 

That, too, was how he must have existed for those years. 

Now here he was in a doctor's office with people who 
cared but there were bars on the windows. 

The door was locked. 

So he paced. 

This is what she had done to him. 

Her stomach rolled and rolled with the thought of it. 
Scully wondered if Mulder's treatment had been as bad as 
Lucy's experience; six years locked away in a damp, 
black basement. A living collector's piece. A nothing. 
Or worse. 

_She_, Scully, would have cut her throat. Absolutely 
with no debate. 

Mulder stared speaking suddenly but quietly, as if to 
himself. 

"You want to know what those morons at Walburg wanted to 
know? You won't believe me just like they didn't." 

"Maybe not," Petrillo answered evenly, "but don't you 
feel like screaming about it? I won't drop my chin in shock, 
I promise you. Besides, maybe Dana will believe and even 
if she doesn't, so what?" 

"So what." Mulder repeated, not as a question. So what? 
he said in his mind. So what about what happened. Abduction, 
starvation, abuse, beatings, rapings, caged, nearly dead. 
Squeezed dry of every shred of human will and desire until 
nothing was left but a dried out skin. So fucking what? 

There were hundreds of abductions every year, thousands of 
people gone missing. How many were never returned? At least 
his captors had done that. 

Right considerate of them. 

"I agree. So what. But you want to know all my dirty 
secrets, so I'll tell you. Bryant and his Group Therapy! And 
Kurtzman asking me how come I didn't try to escape. ""Why 
Didn't you try to leave, Fox?"" Where does he think I was, 
Tahiti?? You PhD's! You keep fucking asking me the same stupid
questions. I don't KNOW where I was! I don't KNOW!" 

Petrillo made quick notes while his patient paced back 
and forth, speaking in a succession of sentences that seemed 
hardly related to one another, muttering to himself. 

"Bet Kurtzman was never nearly been eaten alive by worm-lice. 
Bet he's never stood in front of a window and knew that if he 
stepped outside, he'd be turned inside-out." 

Mulder shot the question at Petrillo. "Doesn't he think 
I would have left if I could have? Cock sucker!" 

Then spoke out the window. "Doesn't he think if I'd known,
I would have run for my life?" 

Petrillo followed Mulder movements as they became more
hurried, as he circled tighter and tighter, and as his 
narrative left the rhetorical for the direct. 

Suddenly he yelled at the doctor. "I HAD to stay with her! 
- that alien bitch! - no matter what she did. Fucking rapist! 
Murdering cunt!-" 

"-Mulder, try to take it easy." Petrillo soothed. 

"Fuck easy! You asked. You've been hacking away at me
for weeks, Petrillo, and now you're gonna hear it all." 

He looked at Scully. "And I know _you're_ curious Scully." 
Dilated pupils accused. ""Why is Mulder so fucked in the 
head?" You've asked yourself. You're _dying_ to know." 

Scully did not look at him. Kept her eyes on the floor
as his venom found its mark. Of course, he was screaming
at her and only her. Not even at his old captors anymore, 
or his new ones. 

Just at her. 

Because she had welcomed him home with love and then
locked him away, forcing him to live it all over again. 

Betrayed him with a kiss. 

"You want to know why I can't stand to be touched anymore?
You want to know why I can't sleep without being drugged 
until I pass out? Why I wake up screaming and blind?" He 
pounded the wall as he confessed each atrocity. "Why the food 
in here makes me puke?! Why getting strapped down terrifies 
me so bad I piss myself?! Why I can't get a hard-on unless I 
twist my skin until it bruises?!" He faced her down. 

"Is that the shit you want to hear about? You want to know 
why? I'll tell you! Because that demon-whore stole eight years 
of my life, that's why! Eight goddamn years, beating me and 
fucking me too! I almost died there, Scully!..." 

Scully nodded her head in acknowledgment of his accusations 
that no one had saved him. No one had come looking. No one 
had sent helicopters and trucks and infiltration teams armed 
with hand-cannons ready to blow them all away - his kidnappers - 
mow them full of holes, break his chains and take him home. 

//But we tried, Mulder. God, how we tried to find you. I 
tried.// 

"..I almost died but I was already dead - inside. I was 
dead _inside_ the whole time, every minute. The _whole FUCKING 
time_." 

He was crying now, face twisted in rage and pain. Tears 
staining his face. Coursing down his neck, falling to the 
floor, raining over all of them. Over all those who hadn't 
saved him from his living hell. And who weren't saving 
him now.


"I fucking hate her for what she did to me. Fuck her, that 
stinking a-alien b-bitch! And fuck you, t-too, Scully, fuck 
you for asking me! FUCK YOU!" 

//Don't forget the rapes at Walburg, Mulder.// 

- Scully was accusing herself. Accepted it because it was 
the truth - 

//I put you there too, don't forget that.// 

"And you don't believe me! Well, who the fuck would!?" 
Mulder stood in the corner by the window and curled his arms 
over his head to block out the burning sun and it's light-truth. 

"Why the fuck didn't I leave? Why did I stop fighting when 
they stuck me full of holes?" His voice was growing smaller 
but still spurt from between clenched teeth and lips pressed 
together to keep the confessions from spilling out for all to scorn. 
Filthy words like dung strained through from the slop bucket of his 
soul. They forced their way from him like a hole in a dam, to 
assault him and the two unblemished onlookers with all manner 
of dirty violations. Of willing and unwilling obscenities that 
would stick to him until he faded from the universe. 

"W-why,...why did I let them hurt me? Why didn't I leave? 
That's what you want to know! Why didn't I just leave or kill 
myself?" 

Scully was crying softly, face bowed so she saw only her 
white, clasping knuckles. 

"Bec-a-a-a-u-u-u-s-e," long drawn out defeat, "Because 
anything - anything - was better. Okay? Anything was better 
than being empty. I fucking let them do it all, take every 
fucking thing I was, cut it all out of me - every last piece. 
There was nothing else...nothing...just empty. I wanted to 
die. I wanted to die so bad but..." 

"But what, Mulder?" Petrillo asked. This was important. 
Mulder's next words, he felt, would tell him Mulder's 
thinking, not only at the time of these terrible thing's 
occurrence, but now. Right now. 

"Because I was afraid to die. I didn't want to,..to..
leave things...I wanted to come home. I hoped for it. 
Jesus, I even prayed for it. I wanted to explain..."
His quiet sobs cut off his voice. 

"Please, Fox, it's okay for you to say it." Petrillo 
encouraged gently. 

"I wanted to explain to Scully, to everyone. I wanted 
to apologize. I needed...I wanted her to understand, 
even if I'm ruined and garbage. But I don't know how, I 
don't know how..." 

Mulder'd ceased shouting. Just cried sick tears, bent 
like a question mark, hugging his sides as if he were about 
to fly apart. His guts twisted with the emptying of truths
here-to-fore unspoken. Let them think what they will. Let 
her do as she pleases now. 

Mulder had given her what she'd earned, taken his due revenge
for her deceit and exercising his right to accuse his newest 
jailer. She had accepted the charges. 

But then he'd said he was sorry for it. All of it. Everything 
that had happened to them both for the last eight years. 

Scully sat in shock from the unexpected forgiveness. She'd
been absolved of her crimes against him. 

Mulder stayed that way, sobbing and trying not to, back 
up against the warm pastel wall, holding his arms over his 
abdomen as if every organ wanted to spill out before them 
in proof of his deadness. 

Scully kept as still as the chair she sat on, breathing 
hard. Crying and accepting all he said for gospel. She 
couldn't even go to him. Could not touch him in a comforting 
embrace because it would be rejected and because he didn't 
want her to see him like this. He must have cried hundreds 
of times in his missing years. Must have yearned for the 
comfort then. 

Mulder had been abducted by aliens, (the physical evidence 
gave some credence to it). He'd been taken by white slavers 
to Asia. He'd been taken to Hell by Satan himself. Whatever. 
Whatever he said was the truth. 

Because it didn't matter. 

Whether it had been Reticulans or Hell's Angels, Mulder'd
been stolen and vandalized, rifled through like a carton of 
hand-me-downs. Taking what they'd wanted, a pile of worn, 
bloody rags is all she'd gotten back. 

Petrillo ended the session.

***********

"He's pissed." 

Scully stared at Petrillo, she couldn't believe the man's 
penchant for stating the obvious. They spoke privately in his 
business office. 

"I'd say." she answered back. 

"But now he's finally admitting it. Today is the first 
time he has ever spoken about those missing eight years, 
even if some aspects of it seem a little fanciful. 

"You don't believe him?" 

"It doesn't matter - whoever or whatever took him - the 
point is he's _feeling_ something. Believe it or not, that 
raging outburst we just witnessed is the healthiest behavior 
I've seen out of him since he arrived here." 

"So what's next?" 

"I need you to participate in as many sessions as you 
can manage and that he will allow. To be honest, I'm not 
really certain why your presence today helped him open up, 
I just thought it might and I'm glad we tried it." 

"What do you think, I mean really think, about Mulder's 
claims of abduction?" Scully wanted to know this. She wanted 
to know a professional man's opinion but she also wanted to 
know how it felt to ask. How did it feel to be the one 
questioning a disbeliever? To be in the spooky shoes as 
it were? 

"I think Fox is mixing his memories of cases he's 
investigated. I think by the physical evidence you've shown 
me, the things he endured for those eight years have 
scarred him so deeply that he'll do anything to avoid
facing them. I am hopeful that your being here will help 
us cut through those defenses." 

"So you think he's lying?" 

Petrillo started slightly at that. A bit puzzled at the 
bluntness of her question, "N-no. No I wouldn't say _lying_. 
He's glossing, painting a mental picture for himself of 
what happened, one that he can handle; "Aliens did this."
Admitting that people did it...well, that's bottom line. 
Bottom line might be unmanageable for him right now. But 
in the end, as long as we get him through and he comes 
out on the other side able to cope in a healthy way with the 
challenges he's going to face when he gets out of here, I 
don't care if he was abducted by aliens or the tooth fairy. 
That he deals with it, and more importantly, that he accepts 
he was not to blame." 

Scully nodded. Mulder and self-blame... 

...Petrillo had his work cut out for him. 

"So you think he'll get better? Get out of here?" 

"Yes. Fox is not crazy, Doctor Scully, he's in pain. He's 
hurting so badly, that he can't function. He is suffering 
from nothing more exotic than a nervous breakdown and 
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Very serious, yes, but not 
impossible." 

Scully swallowed back the lump that had formed in her 
throat. It was as much for the grief of Mulder enduring 
the anguish of his present condition as for that Petrillo 
had just handed her a hope that the anguish might end. 

She debated what she was about to say. Decided that 
Petrillo could think what he liked. There was every 
possibility she was as right as he was. 

"That's the first good news I've heard, Doctor Petrillo, 
thank you. But you're wrong about the reason behind it 
all. Mulder isn't mixing up anything. He isn't glossing 
or even imagining it. He's telling the truth." 

"The truth as far as he sees it you mean?" 

"No. I mean the truth. As it occurred." 

Petrillo reserved opinion but asked - "Why?" 

"I may not be a psychologist but I know my partner. Even 
in these extenuating circumstances, after all he's been 
through, Mulder wouldn't make up things. Even to deceive 
himself." Scully shook her head at the irony in her next 
words. "And as hard as it is to believe, he neither 
subscribes nor is prone to fancies. If he said he was 
abducted by aliens and kept on another world for the 
last eight years....." 

Her words dropped to a whisper yet her profound belief 
in them was shouted across Washington to reach the ears 
of scoffers who for so many years had mocked her partner and,
by association, herself. Scully stared at Petrillo, 
remembering the black oil infestation of newly dead human 

beings, the faceless men, the burnings, the crisped bodies, 
Mulder's insistence on the things he had seen in the Antarctic 
and what they meant. 

And then her words fell back to earth and found her again. 

"...then I believe him." 

** 

"I'd like to see him." 

Scully made it passed all the doors and locks and meaty men
with keys to Mulder's private room. She was glad. There was a
camera but no one listening in and no other patients to curiously
stare. 

Mulder was seated against the wall on his sleeping mat, elbows 
resting on bent knees. 

Scully recognized a patchwork quilt. It was her mothers hand. Mom 
had sent it to him without telling her. Mulder probably didn't know who
it had come from but Scully was glad it was there. It brought color
to the drab pastels. A reminder, too, that he was in the thoughts
of others. People who cared. Scully smiled. For all her protestations of:
"Dear, suppose Fox doesn't get well?" her mom was a sucker for Fox
and always had been. She was also quite an actress. 

"Hi." she greeted him and sat down on the other end of the mattress. 

"Hi." his voice was soft. Hoarse from all the shouting of yesterday. 

"I have to go back to work tomorrow. I'm behind so I won't be
seeing you for a few days." 

He nodded. 

"I wish you were coming with me." 

He sucked breath, quickly. Bit his lip. Nodded. 

Scully reached out her left hand. One finger, she dared touch him 
with one finger lightly on his forearm. 

He didn't flinch. 

But crumpled. Crumpled forward and over to her and she brought his 
head to her lap and held him there. "Me, too." He whispered. 

****






*****



"I want to re-emphasize the reason for the hypnosis.
We're trying to reach information that we know _is_ there,
but things you're blocking out." 

"I thought you disagreed with hypno-regression therapy?" 

Scully asked the question because Doctor Petrillo had
previously indicated that he did not trust hypnosis at
the best of times, any kind of hypnosis. He and Mulder
had argued about it frequently during their sessions 
together. But in this case, things had changed. 

"I don't agree with trying to reached so-called "repressed
memories", the facts of False Memory Syndrome...well, Mulder 
knows what I think about it...but in Mulder's case, we're 
trying to access more details of what he _does_ remember. Things
he has consciously told me of the night he disappeared." 

Scully looked to her left where Mulder sat slouched forward 
on the doctor's worn couch. "You've been remembering things?" 

Mulder nodded once. "Sketchy, though, just images I can't make
much sense of." 

"That's why I wanted you here today, Doctor Scully, I want you, 
if you're willing, to join in on this part your partners therapy as well.
>From here on in, in all his therapy, in fact, as long as Mulder is agreeable
to that. I believe your presence may be a calming influence. You will 
be figuring in his long term recovery at any rate. If that's acceptable to 
you, we can begin." 

Scully had flushed a bit, warming at Doctor Petrillo's misuse
of the word "partner". They weren't, she and Mulder, partners 
anymore. But was that hope inside her? Her heart was beating 
a trifle faster. She had agreed to coming here today and future
sessions because she wanted that hope. Needed it. After so long, 
maybe, just maybe, they could be joined again somehow. 

Scully said: 

"What made you agree to having me here?" To Mulder. 

His face drained of it's color. "I...need to learn to trust..." Looked
at Petrillo who nodded encouragingly. "I have a problem with trust,
a big problem I guess. For lots of reasons. And...someone reminded
me that this isn't only my problem...it's been yours." He whispered so
softly Scully had to strain to hear him. "But I guess mostly trust." 

She nodded. Smiled just enough to show she accepted, understood 
and that she was here as requested willingly. Wanted to wrap her 
arms around him. Stayed where she was. 

Petrillo opened his notepad, reading his scribbles from a few 
sessions back. "To start, Mulder, would you please tell Dana 
what you have remembered so far, I mean about the dark place." 

Scully felt ice form in her stomach. //"That cold, dark place."//. Where 
Mulder would never end up. Another picture of Mulder unconscious on 
an emergency room table, blood pouring from his shattered femur....
Scully forced her attention away from the stark images. They were still 
there in living colour, whenever fear triggered them. 

Mulder was speaking. "...but all I can remember is light and pain. 
Being cold. I start throwing up if I try to go farther than that." 

Mulder was talking to her. She zoned back into present events, 
nodding as if she had heard everything he had just said. 

"That's when you're awake. I'm hoping, through hypnosis, we'll
discover a few more details. Maybe it'll help with the investigation
on your disappearance. In any case, it is the area of your 
subconscious memories that we've been unable to breach, I think it resists
because of the distress it causes. Okay? Everyone ready? Let's see 
what we can find out." Petrillo said. 

Scully, her attention fully focused now, "Excuse me, but you indicated
Mulder's had other sessions. May I ask what happened during those attempts, 
I mean, at digging out these memories?" 

Mulder answered, a little reluctantly at disclosing his continuing
difficulties. "Petrillo put me under once or twice before..." 

Scully glanced at Petrillo, who held up four fingers. 

"...then he'd ask me about the bright light, and, I guess, I,..I always
just start screaming and screaming." 

"And other things." Petrillo added. 

Mulder looked uncomfortable and was sweating a bit. The thought of
going under again making him anxious. "And he said I claw at the air,
and...lash out." 

Scully shuddered, thankful she'd missed that particular sight. Yet 
Petrillo had requested her here to lend Mulder strength. Even Petrillo
didn't know what might occur this time. 

"Well, this time it may be no different but we could get lucky. I
had to bring Fox out of it during the previous attempts because it 
became impossible for him to distance himself from it, even in the 
hypnotic state." 

"Do you remember any more of it now, though?" Scully asked. 

"No, except for bits and pieces, images of monsters, feelings. 
Stuff which no one believes." Mulder looked knowingly at Petrillo, 
"Not sure now if I want to actually." 

"Today we'll record it again. It may stimulate memories later, when 
you're awake." Petrillo said. 

"Bring on the crystal ball, doc." Mulder was getting restless. 

Petrillo scooted his chair closer to Mulder and had his patient 
relax back against the cushions. After a few moments of soothing
words, Mulder appeared to be under. 

"Mulder, can you hear me?" 

"Umm huh." 

"I want you to remember the night you were on your way to your mother's
house. I want you to remain calm but tell me everything that happened,
in as much detail as you can. But I want you to remember that you are 
an observer. An outside observer. You'll be quite safe. All right? Do
you understand me?" 

"Uh huh." Scully watched Mulder's eyebrows scrunch together as memories 
surfaced. "It's late, I'm driving. I feel stiff, I need to stretch." 

The doctor frowned at the first person pronouns in Mulder's narrative. 

"What are you doing, what's happening right now?" Petrillo asked him,
then scribbling a quick note to Scully and handing it to her. 

She took it and read: 

I HAVE NOT YET BEEN ABLE TO KEEP HIM DISTANT FROM THE EVENTS. LIKE
PREVIOUS SESSIONS, HE HAS ALREADY REVERTED TO FIRST PERSON. 

"My back's sore. I'm gonna park off the road for a few minutes,...I'm
really tired..." 

Petrillo and Scully waited but Mulder didn't continue. 

"What are you doing Mulder?" 

"Sitting on the grass." 

"Please keep telling me everything that's happening, it's okay, you're
safe. Nothing is going to harm you." 

"It's nice here," Scully assumed he was talking about the grass and not
Petrillo's office. "I like the breeze. I don't...don't get to do much
relaxing on the job. Always on the go. Really tired,..." Mulder's right 
hand fumbled a bit at his side. "Scully,.." 

Surprised, she stared. An impulse to go and sit beside him and hold his 
hand struck her. But wherever it was he was, his hand relaxed. 

"..Scully put a sandwich in my coat pocket." He sounded surprised. "That
was nice of her...I wonder...she does things sometimes, takes care of 
me. I didn't think to bring anything. She's...she's...I'm such an idiot." 

Scully closed her eyes, remembering a small gesture long forgotten. He'd
been in a hurry to leave work that evening and hadn't thought of eating, as 
usual. It was nearly an six hour drive to Chilmark and he hadn't, she'd 
guessed, planned on stopping on the way either. So she'd ducked out, 
bought something at a nearby Cafeteria and slipped it into his coat pocket 
before he left. A cellophane wrapped roast beef sandwich, heavy on the mayo. 

Such a small thing. But it had surprised and pleased him and had turned his
thoughts to her while he sat at peace on a grassy September slope. Looking
up at the stars maybe. 

In the horror of his disappearance, that small gesture of concern and affection
had been lost. In the hundreds of phone calls, police tape, evidence bags and the 
call to his mother, that small gift had been wiped out of existence. She hadn't 
even been present for the initial discovery of his abandoned car, the door wide 
open, keys still in the ignition. Wallet, phone, gun, I.D. still tucked in the 
glove compartment... 

Mulder. Wiped out of existence. 

She'd been at her godson's, the visit there being more to spend time with her
longtime friend than the kid who, since he'd turned sixteen, decided that visits
from his godmother were seriously uncool. 

She bit back a moan of things lost. Willed her eyes to stay dry because what
was happening in Petrillo's office was in the here and now and important. 

Suddenly Mulder tilted his head back all the way and screamed bloody murder.
Everything alive in the room jumped as his tenor strained to make them understand 
what his shut eyes were seeing. It was a horrible, terrifying sound. What he
knew and saw was funneling through his voice box and pounding their brains 
but giving no understanding. The scream of a angry horse would have offered 
equal insight. 

Oh, Christ. Scully's heart fluttered in her chest. 

Seeing her wide eyed shock and fear for Mulder, Petrillo held up a palm to her. 

"Mulder, can you hear me?" 

Mulder shook his head back and forth. His whole body shook. Strangled
wheezes from trembling lips and a whimper. 

"I want you, to relax, Fox. I want you to relax and remember that what's
happening cannot hurt you. Do you understand?" 

"Y-y-e-e-s...but it can hurt. It _does_." 

Petrillo frowned, shook his head. "Tell me what you see." 

Mulder's eyes flew open. "LIGHT. HURTS! ITHURTS! ITFUCKINGHURTS. STOP IT, 
STOP IT....." He moaned. Weakly, "..fuck...!" Tears soaked his lashes. 

"Where is this light?" 

"Everywhere. Oh fuck - HELP ME!" The chords in his neck looked strained to 
the point of snapping. "...hurts so bad..." He groaned, swallowed, calmed. Yet 
he shook, wide-eyed, not seeing the room or them. Present and not present, 
experiencing things to which they had no access. 

"Where are you now?" Petrillo wanted to take advantage of this unexpected 
turn. He had never gotten this far with his client before. 

"I don't know. God - oh God, I'm blind." 

Petrillo scribbled another note to Scully: 

ANY PHYSICAL EVIDENCE HE WAS IN SOME KIND OF EXPLOSION OR SIMILAR 
TRAUMA? 

She shook her head in the negative. 

Petrillo continued. "Try to stay calm, Fox. You're safe, you're still
with us. Everything's going to be just fine. Nothing's going to hurt
you-" 

"-Like FUCK! Where am I, What the hell is going on?? I can't _SEE_!" 

Petrillo shook his head in awe at Scully. "Do you hear anything?"
he asked Mulder.


"Yeah. Weird...weird noises, I don't know...breathing? Grunts. Like,...
like...I..I don't know." His nose wrinkled up. "Smells bad." His chest 
rose and fell more quickly. "Really bad. Hard to breath..." 

"Take it easy now. You're safe, you can breath just fine. The air
is fresh, you're very safe. What else can you tell me?" 

"Humming." 

"Humming? Is it a voice or something else?" 

"No, no voice...machine, far away." Mulder started moaning. He appeared
to be in pain, jerking his head left to right and back again. His respirations 
deep and fast. Too fast. 

"Get me the fuck out of here! I'm,...I'm..." He started wiping at his shirt
and pants. Jerky clutching movements, groaning and crying, his face twisting 
up with some private disgust. 

"What? Mulder, what is it? Tell me." Petrillo encouraged but kept his voice 
gentle. 

"I'm...c-c-covered in slime. It smells - I'm, I'm drowning. God - I'm going 
to -" Mulder spit up a few tablespoons of Petrillo's decafe', soaking his shirt 
in a mix of coffee, skim milk, sugar and bile. 

"Oh, my god." Scully commented aloud. She scooped up the tissue box and
dabbed at Mulder's shirt and mouth with a handful of Scotties. 

Petrillo quietly went and cranked open his office window a few inches to
dispel the odor. 

Mulder had not awakened. 

"Was it the smell, Mulder? Is that why you had to vomit?" Petrillo gently 
asked. 

"Jesus...I'm covered in it. Things...my own,...my own...we're all covered. I
want out of here...I want out of here....please,...please..." 

Petrillo pushed a little, not wanting to waste this little bit of progress. 
"Covered in what? Do you hear anything else? Can you tell me any more?" 
He also wanted to distract Mulder from the panic he could see building 
in his patients posture and gestures. 

"Shit. Bile, like Tooms. All over...everything...my...piss...puke...I can't 
help it..." A trickle of sour fluid dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Scully 
dabbed and settled back again on the other side of the couch, trying to get away
from the images in her mind formed from his words. Cruel, nightmare pictures
that would not fade as she willed. 

Mulder screamed again, this time a sharp, high yelp. He began clawing the air.
Scully watched, horrified, as his hands raked at nothing. Dug at nothing. 

"Let me OUUUUUUUUUUUT!" He flailed and tried to get up. Unable to balance, 
Mulder fell back. 

Petrillo was there in a half second, ready to hold him down if necessary.
He was speaking calmly but firmly. "Mulder. You're okay. Everything's fine."
Loudly so Mulder would hear it over his own cries. "I want you to calm
down. I want you to relax." 

Some of it must have gotten through. Mulder's motions slowed and then stopped. 

Petrillo puffed out his cheeks in relief, exchanging glances with Scully. 


Scully was braced with elbow on a knee and a hand covering her mouth, eyes
shut to what she'd just witnessed. 

Jesus. 

She felt like heaving. 

Jesus Christ. 

Petrillo was speaking soothing, calming words to Mulder, readying to bring him 
out of it. 

"Okay, Fox. You're perfectly relaxed and calm. You're safe and feel fine.
When I count to three, I want you to wake up. Okay? I want you to open your
eyes on the count of three...One. Two. Three." 

Mulder opened his eyes and squinted. Blinked. Leaned forward and rubbed them. 

"Wow. I'm really beat." He commented. Looked at Scully. She returned it with
a soft smile. Mulder pointedly addressed Petrillo. "So? Did we get anywhere?" 

Petrillo kept his voice level, giving no hint that Mulder had just scared
both of them shit less. "Farther than before. Quite a bit farther, but it's hard 
to know if it'll help us discover what happened." 

"What's that mean?" 

"I have it on tape. We'll all listen to it, including you, at our next session
and see if it'll trigger any waking memories. Maybe we can pick it apart and find 
out what it means." 

Mulder spread his hands and nodded. To Scully, "I'm dying for some food." 

She nodded, thinking more along the lines of a vacation. 

Petrillo walked them the few feet to his office door. "I think you're being here,
Doctor Scully, was a great help." 

"I'm glad." Was all she could think of to say to the fright session she'd just 
been party to. 

********

"Petrillo thinks you'll be ready to come home in a few weeks." 

Mulder gulped his coffee back, forcing it passed the gag. "He
said that?" 

He seemed more shocked by her good news than glad. "Well, weekends 
at first. Didn't he tell you?" Scully sipped her decaffeinated
coffee. After his one sip, Mulder had pushed his aside and opted
for something more stomach-settling second beverage ginger-ale. 

"Must have slipped his mind." Mulder was, in fact, thrilled by
the notion of getting out of Greenlawn and back to some sort of 
actual "life". But the reality also terrified him. At first,
he'd hated the walls and the locks and the doctors with their 
note-pads on clipboards that they carried like badges of sanity
and authority. Then he had grown used to them and soon began 
counting on them for the only stability he could turn to in life
while his mind played footsie with nuts. 

"I don't know how ready I am or _will_ be." He offered her. Shared
the fear like Petrillo counseled. 

Scully made her own offering. "You won't be alone. You'll be with 
me." She sipped her coffee. Made it a joke. "I mean, living with me
might be just as bad as here but - hey - better food, movie disks,..." 

Mulder smiled. It felt good to do it and mean it. "I'm glad to be
coming home, Scully. I'm glad I have one to come to." His plastic
cup was empty. "But there's no way I can ever repay you for what 
you've done..." 

Scully cut it short before the conversation ended up a comparison
of deeds. "Come home and we'll call it even." 

Mulder nodded. But the fear was there at the idea of survival on 
the outside. He'd have to stand up and prove himself to the laughing
world and the thought made him shiver. 

**** 

*****






**** 


Petrillo waited. It was best to let the man cry. Lots
of crying was okay. More than okay, it was overdue. His
patient had a lot to cry about. 

And the doctor had waited, too, for the anger. That had come,
along with the first tears, a few weeks ago. Finally.


Petrillo was certain that neither would have surfaced had
Dana Scully not agreed to participate in those first crucial
sessions of Mulder's therapy. Now she came or stayed away 
whenever Mulder requested, some things he didn't want her 
to see or hear. When Scully made purely social visits, she 
and Mulder would sit in the Atrium or in the Cafeteria and 
talk, about what Petrillo didn't know. The therapy maybe. Her 
work...but he knew for those times, Mulder was together and 
controlled and could even pretend at cheerfulness. He could 
fake her out. 

But in here, in this room, Mulder was vulnerable, naked, 
exposed. Frightened. Out of control. In here, he was a victim
again. 

"Do you still question who or what did these things to you?" 

Mulder was distraught. He was sobbing. Rubbing his eyes and 
temples, trying to figure it all out. He suffered under almost-
memories that refused him rest. Nothing had been concluded, 
exactly, but at least he was trying. 

"I don't know anymore. I just fucking don't know." Tried to 
get full breaths. "I'm so tired of all this goddamn shit. Son 
of a bitch, I hate this." 

"Hate what? The therapy?" 

"Yeah. No. The control crap. Genuflecting bull shit. Analysis
and talking, talking and all the fucking crying. I'm so goddamn
tired I can't think straight anymore. How am I suppose to know
what did it? Or who? I can't even be sure I'm real." 

"It won't be that way for much longer, you know. Mulder? You're
getting very much better even if it seems like the things you've
come to trust...your memories, the truth of what happened as you 
see it... seem to be crumbling around you. You are closer to being
well that you realize, to getting out of here, and I don't want
you to give up yet." 

"Why?" 

Petrillo knew that was coming. Mulder wanted, always he wanted, 
more than just loose assurances based on opinion. "Because I'm
writing a paper on you and I'd like a good closure." 

Mulder laughed, a little. "You're more fucked up than me, Petrillo.
I always knew that." 

"Don't let it get around." 

"I asked you why." 

"Because you're fighting the darkness. You're trying to discover
the truth, you want all the answers. Pretty good, that desire for
light and understanding. All the skills of your profession are
still there. You have a strong survival instinct, Mulder, despite
yourself." 

"That's not very scientific. Don't your colleagues sometimes wonder
at your methods?" 

"They don't wonder when my patients walk out of here as sane as 
they are. My methods work. So? Back to the wheel?" 

Mulder nodded. 

"Quite a while back, you mention someone. You said "Bitch." Do you
want to tell me more about her? I'm assuming a "her" here." 

Petrillo was treading new and very tender ground. Gaping pits
with this. But it was time to move on from the generalities
he'd allowed Mulder to get cosy in and shoot for the specifics now. 

First times. Lots of those these last few weeks and more to come. 
Lots more. 

Mulder looked like he was about to get sick. Petrillo had learned to
keep his wastepaper basket within easy reach. (He'd exchanged his wicker
one for a heavy duty plastic one soon after their first chat together). 

Mulder didn't get sick, but his hands shook in his lap as he linked
fingers together. "U-u-m-m. Yeah. The female. The subject, um, yeah, it
was a...she b-broke my arm once." 

Whew. Petrillo knew how hard just saying that much had been. "She
must have been extremely strong." 

"In-human." Mulder corrected. 

Petrillo let it pass. "Other injuries, other things she did?" 

Mulder nodded, white as a sheet, trembling. 

"Do you want to talk about this more tomorrow? A little at a 
time?" 

Shaking his head 'no', Mulder took a deep breath. "I don't know
why I can't get passed what she did to me. I don't know why it's
taking so long." 

Petrillo poured them both a coffee from his pot. Decaffeinated.
Placed Mulder's on the coffee table and sat back down. "It's only
been eight months, Fox. you know it doesn't happen that fast." 

"But I'm a psychologist. I know the steps, I know the route. It
should be different for me." He was crying again, a little, at his 
failure to excel at getting well. 

Petrillo sighed. He'd encountered this before. Always, those
in the profession believed somehow that they should be exempt
from the processes they themselves knew were necessary. "Even
a dentist, no matter how good he is, can't perform his own root 
canal." Lousy analogy, Petrillo. 

"I'm 46 years old." 

Back to that. "And you'll be forty-seven by next year. Age will not
hinder you from getting well and it plays no part in the healing
process. Only time does. And hard work"


"My life's half over. More than half, I don't know what I'm
going to do with-" He doubled over, holding his breath, trying
not to cry. Needing to so badly as always. 

"Mulder. You're angry that eight years of your life were taken
from you. And make no mistake, they were taken. You can't get
them back. But the rest of your good life does not have to be
spent in here. If we work together, you will leave here and
begin again. Now before you make 'beginning again' into something
hopeless, let me tell you that it's no shame." Sighed again. "Even
though I know you don't believe that." Not yet anyway. "And the only
ones who should be feeling shame are those who did this to you. You
didn't choose this. But you don't have to live with it _like_ this." 

"It seems impossible. Muh-my soul is gone. I don't f-feel..
..hu-u-m-man eh-eh-anymore." 

"But you are. You are. Soon, you'll believe it." 

"She raped me." 

Petrillo went motionless. Careful not to get excited. "Yes." The
medical reports indicated that. Rape and a whole lot more. 

"I let her." 

Oh boy. "We've discussed this, Fox. You could not have prevented
what she did." 

Mulder's face crumpled to a point of pain like Petrillo had hit
the com-fucking-pletely wrong button. "Later..." Mulder could only
get one word out with each lung-full. 

The guy was really trying. He really wanted to get this one out. 

.."later".. *suck* .."I".. *gasp* .."l-let..her-r." ..*inhale*..
"fuck me.." *wheeze*..."I"..*snort*.."asked"..*sob*.."f-f-for..
it." Mulder was squeezing his guts and sucking air like a beached 
tuna. He was punishing himself for not being super-human. 

Whew. 

Rape survivor guilt. Misplaced, cockeyed, fucked-up guilt. 

Let a human get beaten to within an inch of their life and there 
are no guilty feelings. No self-blaming cry of "my fault, my fault!" 

But let that same human get punched and slapped around by a parent
who says "I love you" first or a rapist who makes you get off and 
the shame begins. Sometimes flourishing into self-hatred. Sometimes 
into self-murder. So difficult to convince a survivor that the
bodies natural physical response to manipulation is as out of their
control as their beating heart is. 

Perhaps, later on in his captive years, Mulder had chosen the 
path of least resistance. Maybe to survive the loneliness or the
hopelessness. Maybe because it was the only form of tenderness
open to him. But not in the beginning. He hadn't asked for the 
violent invasions of his body and certainly not the rapes at 
Walburg. 

Mulder blamed himself. But a human being can't control or 
defeat all circumstance, even though most still learn from youth on 
that one "should" be able to resist or conquer almost anything. 
Technology and cell phones and success ruled the world, but people 
were still just simple, breakable creatures. Fallible. There was 
an innocence in that little truth we have forgotten, Petrillo 
thought. 

"I think this is going to kill me. I'm afraid I'm insane. She sees it." 

Double whew. If he was afraid of going insane, it's a good chance
he wasn't or, at worst, not _too_ crazy to get well. 

Mulder thought he should have died. Deserved death. "I wish I 
could say some words to make you believe you were an innocent in 
what happened to you, and that you are merely human with only so 
much power at your disposal, but I don't have those words. It's 
something you'll just have to learn. For now accept it at face 
value: You were not to blame. You will get well. We'll take 
the rest from there." 

"But it's a mistake." 

Petrillo wasn't sure he understood. "What is?" 

"All of this. I shouldn't be here." 

"You deserve to get well. You _are_ worthy. Scully believes
it, why can't you?" It was the wrong time for this conversation, 
nothing Petrillo said could scale those self-incriminating
walls. Mulder didn't believe it. 

"No. It doesn't matter, don't you see. Nothing matters." 

Petrillo watched his patient quietly weep. Something had
changed in the tears. They weren't the 'I'm-so-fucked-up-
and-useless-and-worthless, I-can't-stand-myself-tears'
anymore. Mulder was grieving over something fresh. This was
new, raw sadness. Doctor Scully had been mentioned. That 
might be it. Okay. 

"I think I hear an "I'm not worth it" in there someplace. Is
that what you think?" 

When Mulder didn't answer, he remembered something. Doctor
Scully's, on a recent visit, had been accompanied by a man. A stern,
balding individual. Petrillo had not met him, only seen him, but his 
impression had been that this fellow would feel at home giving 
orders to the president. What was the name he had heard? Skinner. 

Skinner? As in director Skinner of the F.B.I.? If this was a
love triangle, he suddenly understood Mulder's feelings of not
measuring up. 

"Do you think she thinks that?" 

Silence except for sniffles. 

"What do you think of Mister Skinner?" 

Mulder's countenance slumped into resignation, defeat having
occurred without a battle even being waged. 

In a small voice. "He's a good man." Microscopic whisper. "He'll
treat her right, the way she deserves." 

Thus the nerdy genius hath been cast aside. Petrillo knew Mulder
hadn't even spoken to her about his fear that she was lost to him. 

Petrillo was sure Doctor Scully had no idea Mulder still felt this way. 

"And yet, she has done everything in her power to get you the care
you need. She visits almost daily-" 

"She feels sorry for me." 

So do you! It was a good sign. Some self-pity there. Some ego.
Nothing hopeless about Mulder at all. 

"Have you asked her?" Knowing Fox would not have the courage
to take such a step at this stage. Fear of rejection had a strong
hold on him. Rejection meant worthlessness. Still... "You think
she's abandoned you, so what harm is there in asking to see if
that really is the case?" Was he afraid his fears would be confirmed?
Or that they be disproved? Love was a big responsibility. It meant
answering to another. Proving oneself. Being unselfish, forgiving.
It meant laughing and planning for a future. It was a lot of hard
work, sometimes with rewards at first unseen. It could be scary 
as hell. 

Mulder stared at the floor. Petrillo could almost see the 
thoughts in his head battling for position. 

After a moment, Petrillo suggested, "Would you like her to sit
in again next session? Maybe your fear of rejection is something
we need to discuss together? Would that be all right?" 

Mulder actually asking this woman: Do you love me? was, Petrillo
knew, beyond Mulder's strength. He was too vulnerable. He was cracked
in a hundred places, the wrong pressure here, a tap there and pieces 
could begin falling away... 

Frightened beyond speech, Fox nodded..

*********

"I don't...don't know where I am." 

Petrillo had Mulder under his guiding voice once more
and Scully wondered for the second time whether her being
there was of any use. But one thing was certain, she
wanted to be in on Mulder's treatment; as often as possible;
what-ever it was; whoever it was; how ever it went. 

Leaving him under the care of strangers (though she had to
admit, Petrillo was good), without her there to regularly 
observe at least was no longer an option. 

"It's okay, Fox. You're okay, you're all right. You're very
safe and nothing is going to harm you..." Petrillo droned. 

He'd gotten Mulder to remember farther back this time. 
That is, if the hypnosis could be trusted, Scully thought.
Whether or not it could, Mulder was trying to share his 
nightmare. 

"I'm so cold." Mulder shivered. "I can't see anything." 

Petrillo was making quick notes and watching his client
carefully. "What about the noises? Last time, you told us
about noises. Can you describe them?" 

"Uh...yeah...breathing,...I think. Someone's breathing,..
and...and strange grunts. Something's near me...something
big!" He arms twitched. "I can't see it. Some kind of
animal. I can smell it!" Mulder shook his head back and forth
as if to rid his nostrils of something rank. 

Scully sat on the couch next to but not touching Mulder. She
held coffee in her hand. There were daisies in a vase on the
coffee table.


"I want you to relax, Fox. I want you to tell us about the
noises but I want you to remember that you're quite safe and
that nothing can harm you." Petrillo soothed. 

"O-oh-k-kay." His eyes were closed but moved back and forth as
if experiencing REM sleep. "It's moving away." Mulder stiffened, 
alert. "I smell something else. Strange. Sweet. Really strong 
this time but I can't see where it comes from...dark. Oh." 

Petrillo and Scully exchanged looks. This was new. "Describe 
the smell." Petrillo encouraged. 

"Same, sweet,..gross. Can't get away from it. Surrounded by it. 
I hate that smell, hate it...sickening...makes me throw up." 

Before the action suited the words as at the previous 
session, Petrillo fired another question, "Have you smelled 
it before?" 

"Few times. It's happened before. _Phuhg!_.." He snorted out his 
nose as if it were clogging with the dream stink. 

Petrillo frowned, lost. "Where does it happen?" 

"Here. All the time...so tired." 

"Stay with me, Fox. Okay? Does the smell remind you of
anything?" 

"Ummm,.." 

They were losing him. 

"...uh,..yeah, I guess so. Kind of like sugar, um..syrup. 
Sorta like th-th-aaaaa..." Mulder let his head droop to one side and
he didn't respond to Petrillo's attempts to re-awaken him. 

Petrillo raised his eyebrows to Scully and gestured for them 
to move to his tiny adjacent business office. It was safe to 
leave the patient where he was for the time being. 

"Well." Petrillo could think of nothing else to say right 
off. 

Scully sat in the padded chair opposite his desk. "That was
...strange." 

He puzzled a bit. "Hmm. I hope he doesn't go to sleep 
every time we come to that corner or we'll never get anywhere. 
But as for making sense of what we're hearing? - I don't know 
at this point _what_ we're hearing." 

"So you think the hypnosis is going nowhere?" 


"Well, no, I wouldn't say that. I'm just not sure it's going
to the truth. What happened to him is always going to be somewhat
a matter of conjecture because he remembers so little in the
waking state. We're getting information but how accurate is it?,
I guess is my point." 

"I don't know what to suggest, I'm a pathologist. I can offer 
you this: I know Mulder. He doesn't make things up. He has a genius 
mind and the ability to make I suppose you could say incredible 
connections - leaps of logic if you will - but he has no imagination 
what-so-ever." 

Petrillo thought for a moment. "If I had to guess, I'd say he was
kept confined in a very dark, dirty basement somewhere with animals
yet had connections with people." At Scully's amused look, "With some 
very, very disturbed people. But he insists he lived on another world. 
He seems to hold to that from his recollections, while awake anyway."


"Well. We know what he said. And we know he thinks we think he's 
crazy for saying it never mind believing it." 

"Scars." Petrillo recited aloud. "Broken bones. Torture. Rape.
Assorted assaults. Yet given medical aid, food, water. Conversation.
Does any of it make sense?" Petrillo shrugged his shoulders. "Slave
trade? Kept for work, sex, boredom, abuse..?" 

Scully shuddered at the list as it always made her and wondered too. 
Some criteria fit, some didn't. Like, if he'd been anywhere with the 
technology to keep him alive after the damage those wounds must have 
caused...Mulder would have found a way to contact them. If he could 
have, he _would _ have. But had he wanted to? 

Scully sighed. The little circle of questions had been spinning
in her mind for months. And they were no closer to any real answer
than when the ride began. "Have you been playing the sessions back
to him?" 

Petrillo nodded. "But he tends to blank out. He gets...stony. 
Wooden. And he doesn't talk for a whole day. It scares him pretty
badly." 

Scully stood. "Um, will he wake up...?" 

Petrillo nodded and followed her through the door to the
"client" office. Mulder was asleep but woke when Scully touched 
his shoulder. He blinked a few times. "Whoops. Did I go ape-shit
Doc?" 

Petrillo smiled. "No. You just fell asleep." 

Mulder nervously rubbed his palms on his knees. "So, we listen 
back to it?" Obviously not wanting to. 

Petrillo looked at his clients face. Fox's eyes were on Scully
though he was trying to pretend they were on the far wall. "No.
Tomorrow if that's okay. I'm really backed up in paperwork." 

Mulder jumped up, pleased with his reprieve and the bit of freedom
time Petrillo was granting. Scully took Mulder's hand and lead him
down to the cafeteria. They had a precious hour before she had to
go. 

They took their drinks to the small atrium on the top floor and 
sat looking up at the sky. This was a place for patients advanced
in their therapy and teetering on the brink of re-entry into
civilization. Scully held onto that like a life preserver. 

Mulder pointed out star systems to her, his knowledge extensive.
Clearly he'd been reading up. They lay reclined on lawn chairs
that had seen better days. Scully let her head loll a bit to her
right so she could watch him. Availed herself of that joy as often
as possible. 

He had managed to stay gorgeous. Then, men usually got better 
looking as they aged. She used to think Mulder was cute. Now he
made her breathless. But it was a reaction to something deeper 
than what was skin-deep. Crush on the new partner syndrome was a 
decade gone. 

A stronger disease had replaced it. 

***