From: Windsinger@aol.com

Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996

Re: Revelations 7: Just the Two of Us I

Dear Friends, I can't believe this is finally done. Just after I
finished the story MEMORIES in March 1995 I started this story -
JUST THE TWO OF US (JTTOU). That's a year so we are talking long in
the writing.

Sometime in April or May, however, I quite work on it and began
writing THE ABDUCTEE. It was not until a third of the way through
THE ABDUCTEE that I decided I wanted to tie all these stories
together. Thus my series REVELATIONS was born. (CC, I had this name
WAY before the episode 'Revelations' and, I hope you don't mind,
but I'd really rather not change it.)

JTTOU is the finale to the series and refers back to all the other
parts of the series, even those parts not finished yet though it is
most closely tied to MILE HIGH and MEMORIES; therefore, I cannot
urge you strongly enough to read or reread these two before reading
JTTOU. They are not that long; not that long for my stuff, anyway.

For those of you who have been waiting for this I apologize for
taking so long. It was done to the end in December but when
revisions missed the Christmas deadline I lost the momentum and let
it sit while I wrote three more stories during review and edit
time. I feel the extra time was worth it, though its basic
structure did not change.

As with all X-File fanfic writers, I have seen ideas, scenes,
snippets of dialogue I had already written into the draft, show up
in other author's stories, even on some of the episodes. I'm
thinking here specifically of the use of 'lots and lots' as in
'Paperclip' and '.... whatever' as in 'Synezy' and more general
Mulder character traits as from Oklahoma, Therapy series, and the
episode 'Grotesque'. There also scenes that remind me of ones in
the fan fiction story Too Close by Jennifer Lyon. Excellent story,
however) and MacSpooky's In-Laws even though the JTTOU parts were
written before either came out. What I've found is that usually I'm
the only one who sees any similarity. I assure you the similarity
is coincidental, just like my series title REVELATIONS, which all
writers will agree happens all the time. In addition to the CANON
as laid out by CC, the greatest influences, at least for Book I
were the early works of Amperage and in particular Machine of
Intention by Patti MacKinnon, a very early fanfic.

Book I? Did I say? JUST THE TWO OF US runs somewhere around 350
printed pages and is organized into three books all about
relationships at their core but all are entirely different. The
first two are not the kind of relationships dealt with much in
fanfic although I am YEARS behind in my reading (you are all so
very prolific) so I may be wrong on that.

Book I - relationship/Mulder angst and answers the question
'What really happened on the plane in Colorado?'
Book II - relationship/action adventure and a little X-file

Book III - relationship/a little X-file and a lot of romance.
Yep, finally got to the real romance part but, hey, this
is Windsinger story so nothing is ever easy.

The book and the whole series is rated PG-13 for adult themes and
some violence and a few bad words. The very last chapter pushes the
edges of PG13 all the way to 'R' but is suggested rather than
graphic. (At least at it stands now. I keep rewriting the last six
pages.)

The following synopsis of the series is to help people to
understand how all these parts fit together. Those who have read
the other parts will have no problems so the following is for those
who would like a synopsis of the parts released so far and to give
everyone a little preview of the parts not yet complete. (The not
completed parts are all started and WILL be finished. In fact I
hope to finish SKUNKED AGAIN before all of JTTOU is posted. They
are also all planned to be MUCH shorter than either THE ABDUCTEE or
JUST THE TWO OF US, but then JTTOU was never 'planned' to be as
long as it turned out.)

Revelations 1: Revelations of the Dawn (title approximate)

Half done as of 4/1/96. The morning after the last scene in
The Jersey Devil (yes, we are talking EARLY first season), Dana
Scully's new partner Fox Mulder demands that she be reassigned
while he works on a serial killer case for the VCS. References to
Amos and Amos's farm in JTTOU I and the walk in the rain mentioned
in JTTOU II are from this story.

Revelations 2: The Box (released in March or April 1995)

Many months later towards the end of the first season a grumpy
pair of agents are forced to endure each other's company under VERY
confined conditions. This one's a classic. The references to the
case in the Everglades and to Skunks in JTTOU 2 and the epilogue
SKUNKED AGAIN are from this one.

Revelations 3: The Vacation (title approximate)

After the incidents in The Box and the case in the Everglades,
agents Mulder and Scully seriously need a vacation. What they get
is an X-file (yes, an honest to goodness, straight out X-file)
while sailing in Key West. That they went sailing is mentioned in
JTTOU as well as references to a moonlit lagoon. (Has to be one of
those.)

Revelations 4: The Abductee

Returning from their vacation, slightly sunburned, Scully has
high hopes for a little more from their relationship, but, instead,
Mulder accepts a special assignment out of guilt over what he sees
as his mishandling of a case from a very early point in his career.
A mystery/thriller/medical drama this one with a little X-file
thrown in.

Revelations 5: Mile High

Recovering from his near death during The ABDUCTEE, Mulder
rankles over his recuperation with the Scully women and accepts
'light' duty in Colorado. Mulder discovers something about himself.
The story culminates with a telephone conversation where Mulder and
Scully anticipate his homecoming. Like, MEMORIES, this story is
critical to appreciating JTTOU.

Revelations 6: Memories

This one overlaps with Mile High, in that it really begins
with that telephone conversation, but from Dana's point of view.
While waiting with a romantic dinner for Mulder to come home, Dana
has a visitor and learns that their homecoming has gone horribly
wrong. Memories was written in April 95 but revised in July for the
series. Read the revised revision.

Revelations 7: Just the Two of Us

Begins a week after the finding of Mulder at the end of
Memories. Book I describes Mulder and Scully's estrangement and
Mulder's struggles to put his demons to rest. He gets much needed
help, but not from anyone you might expect. Book II is an
investigation, the search for someone who is lost and Mulder learns
a little more about friendship. Book III... you'll see.

Revelations 8: Skunked Again

This short epilogue occurs 4 months after JTTOU in the spring
of 1995 just before Erlenmeyer Flask in episode time. (My time line
for this series gives new meaning to the phrase 'lost time'.)
Mulder settles a debt to the past and Fox and Dana contemplate
their future.

That's it. Or at least I thought so. The good townspeople of
Deacon's Chapel need a story of their own which, who knows, may
even be my first screenplay. We'll see. Have to finish all of the
above first. I hope you like reading these as much as I've enjoyed
writing them. (Well, mostly enjoyed. Editing is a pain.)

=====================================================================
======

From: Windsinger@aol.com
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 00:15:16 -0400
Subject: Jttou book I chap 1-6

JUST THE TWO OF US: Book I Richard and Sheila (and Fox) 1/12
by S. Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

Snyopsis: With some help from an unexpected source Mulder recovers
from the trauma described in MEMORIES only to find that the Fate
has dealt he and Scully a rotten hand once again.

Rated: PG13 for language, a bit of violence, and a little sex
(suggestive, not explicit)

Disclaimer: Thanks to CC, DD and GA whose characters these are. I
borrow them with respect and love. And thanks for fueling my
fantasties and making life a real joy.

Copywrite 1996 by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger). May be freely
distributed as long as no money is made (unless I can have some),
no changes are made and my name stays on this.

This is part 7 and the finale to my series Revelations. (CC, I had
the name first!) It takes place two weeks after the events in
MEMORIES. If you don't remember MEMORIES and MILE HIGH well I
STRONGLY encourge you to read them again. They are on the gossamer
site and are short while JTTOU is not. JTTOU consists of 3 books.
Book I has 12 chapters, Book II has 14 and Book III has 10. I
started this almost a year ago right after MEMORIES but stopped
after the first draft of Book I to write THE ABDUCTEE. Thanks to
all my editors: Rodent (the perfect), Goo (my attack lawyer),
supermom Vickie, Mary Jo, Connie (the head of my Hoover Industries
and technical college fanclub), Steph (the long sufferer waiting
for Season 3), and Ann. There is a SHORT epilogue coming, then I
will finish Revelations parts 1 and 3.

Chapter 1

Outside Tuccon, Colorado
Monday 9am
December 10, 1993

Richard Charles finished the quick trim on his gnarled beard
and stared at the results in his bathroom mirror. Maybe it wouldn't
pass at the FBI office in Washington where Walt worked but in
Denver it would do. Dampening a piece of tissue, he wiped the stray
cut hairs from the sink. It may have taken ten years of marriage
but he finally remembered to clean up after he trimmed. Well, most
of the time anyway. Rather depressing, though, to see how much grey
there was. Mentally, he went down the list of everything he would
need for the class he would be teaching at the FBI's Denver office,
at one point absently patting the inner pocket of his tweed jacket
to make sure the airline ticket was there. The paper crinkled.
Good. Now what was the time? The strong, slightly stocky man
squinted at his watch.

"Didn't get your bifocal prescription filled, did you?" a
female voice said from the hall but by the time Richard looked up
the doorway was empty. There was only the sound of his wife's
retreating footsteps on the bare wooden boards. Richard followed
the sound, first tripping over the pile of shoes lying at the foot
of the bed that never seemed to get put away. He checked both his
daughter's rooms. Nothing except for the typical mess little girls
make, Barbie dolls and clothes and crayons, horses and half
finished art projects.

In the last bedroom on the floor, the small guest room with
the low ceiling under the eaves, Richard found his wife. As always
he marveled about how time changes a person and yet does not change
them. The years had robbed her of her youthful freshness but
replaced it with something more rare. She was standing looking at
the single bed she had stripped, toying with the end of her long,
blond hair. Aging hippie, New-Ager some would called her from her
look and her peasant dress, but Richard just called her unique.
Seeing him, she shook out a clean sheet and tossed him one end.
Something was on her mind. She would get around to telling him
eventually.

"The optometrist said I didn't need to fill the prescription
until it became too irritating to live with. It's not that bad yet.
Besides, I haven't had the time." Without thinking he grabbed the
corner of the fitted bottom sheet and hooked it over the end of the
mattress. "There was a time, you know," he said sarcastically,
"when a husband could expect his wife to take care of those little
chores for him."

She straightened up, one hand on her hip, a twist of a smile
on her lips. "No, there wasn't. That's just a dream you men try to
tell each other. Never happened. After all, four jobs are enough,
don't you think?"

"Which four this week?" he asked.

"Same four since we had the kids." Sheila flipped her long,
grey-blond hair over her shoulder before she bent down to handle
another corner. "Which for you? You all packed?"

He checked his pocket for the ticket again. "I think so."

"And what hat are you wearing this weekend? FBI Denver area
senior agent or Inspector for the State for Colorado, Department of
Law Enforcement?"

Richard flipped up the end of his tie and peered at it. "Red.
Guess it's FBI. Sometimes it does take a while to remember if I'm
working as a state or federal representative."

"You're just so talented," she winked, throwing him one side
of the top sheet. "Does it really matter?"

"In the end...no, except to the accounting staff. Heaven help
me if I charge my travel vouchers to the wrong account code." He
helped her with the sheet. "You really think I should get those
bifocals, don't you?"

"Looks pretty bad to me, especially when you're tired. You are
on the down side of middle age, you know."

"Down side!" he exclaimed in exaggerated offense. "I'm only
seven years older than you and you say you're just approaching
middle age."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Women still live longer."
Slipping the pillow in the pillowcase, she paused with it against
her stomach gazing at him with warm, worried, grey eyes. "Just as
long as it doesn't interfere with your ability to see when you
drive. The weather's been exceptionally mild so far but that won't
last. After all, it is December."

"You worrying about me again?"

"Maybe," she responded. Coming around the bed and pressing her
soft, rounded body into his, she gave him a friendly kiss. "There
have been enough accidents lately."

That broke the mood, rather like a chill wind. A chill wind on
a sore wound. Sheila Charles broke away and picked up the used
sheets, pressed them to her face. It had been too long. More than
two weeks. Just the smell of soap and fabric and the slightly musty
smell of a bed not used much. No unusual man scent.

To break the uncomfortable silence, Richard asked. "Why are
you changing the sheets now? Misty coming back? Can't resist your
messages?"

Sheila threw back her head almost laughing, remembering the
excitable little woman who nearly drove her husband crazy, so much
so that he had opted out of coming home more nights than one.
Richard did always know how to catch her off guard. "No, she's not.
I told her this is not a place to hide. Well, sometimes, but not
permanently. Last time I saw her though she told me to tell you how
much she enjoyed your sessions."

"What can I say... We're a team. So are we getting a new
guest?"

"Not till after New Year's. Battered woman with a two year
old. They're staying with relatives for the holidays."

Richard frowned. He hated battered spouse cases. "You want me
in on this one?"

"No, I think I can handle it. She escaped the situation on her
own. She just needs some reinforcement, a safe place and someone to
talk to, but if she feels like she needs to talk to a REAL
psychologist, would you mind?"

"Do I ever? You always manage to find the most interesting
people."

Sheila sat down on the bed, arms still clasped tightly around
the used sheets. Now she would talk. After all the years he could
usually tell. The rest had been preamble. "I came in here and
started thinking about him." Richard just leaned against the door
frame. He knew who 'he' was. "Fox was the last one to sleep here.
I just started thinking and decided since I wasn't being very
useful I'd change the bed while I was at it."

"Thinking can be a dangerous thing."

"Life is dangerous, as we both know." Sheila bit down lightly
on her lower lip. "Hon, I have a bad feeling."

"Oh, no, not one of your feelings." He spoke in jest, but both
knew he took her intuition seriously.

"Very funny. Fox still hasn't returned your phone calls, has
he?"

Richard felt his stomach begin to twist. His old partner,
Walter Skinner, was not being much more communicative than his
silent field agent. "Walt says Mulder's been through a very
traumatic time. I don't know the details but recovering from
amnesia usually doesn't happen overnight the way they show it on
TV."

"Which is why he might need a little help from his friends. I
thought you and Fox got pretty close?"

Richard pulled at his beard, pensive. "I thought so, but when
he was here those two weeks he was alone and didn't have anyone
else to talk to all day except me. That was bound to happen. Once
back in D.C. I suppose he fell back in with his old crowd."

Sheila shook her head slowly. "Fox looked like the loner type
to me, not the 'crowd' type. You said the only person who ever
called was his partner."

"Okay, I stand corrected." A pause with only the sound of the
winter wind in the pines outside. "Darling, if he needs us he'll
call."

"If he needs us, will he be able to call?"

Richard knew where this topic was leading and for once he was
a few steps ahead of his empathic wife. After all, he had been the
one who talked to Skinner. He had heard the hesitation in that
voice. There were things Walt was not telling them. Richard came
over to stand in front of Sheila, his exploring hands picking up
from the dresser a clay bowl one of his daughters had made at camp.
He had been saving this conversation for a better time, but - oh,
well. "How's the manual for Peter coming? Are you under a
deadline?"

Sheila's eyes narrowed. "Now that's off the subject. If you
must know I need a few more days but the customer sent the software
back for some new requirements so I can't finish my end until I
know what the programmer is going to do. Why do you ask?"

"Just that it means you can get away if you're not under a
deadline. In that case I do have some news. The Denver office is
sending me to Quantico Friday morning to teach this course, the
same one I'm giving today. I can take a couple of extra days. Want
to come? Think of it like a little vacation." His eyes gleamed a
little at her look of surprise and pleasure. "I've talked to your
Mom, she'll keep the kids and I - SUPPOSE - we could stop in at old
J. Edgar's house for a visit."

Sheila grinned, jumped up and threw her arms around her tall
husband's neck, leaning into him, forcing him to step back until
she had him pinned against the wall.

"I guess you're interested," he managed to say before she
kissed him, only the kiss was not the friendly kind she had given
him before. This was a deeper one, more insistent. "I hope all this
is not because you're so happy to be seeing Walt," he finally
managed to say.

"Why should I be?"

"Oh, I happen to know you threw yourself at him before you saw
the advantages to hooking up with me."

On tip toe, the woman played with the longish hair curled at
the back of his head. "That's a lie. Well, actually, yes, we did go
out on a couple of dates but I hadn't met you yet. You were in the
hospital and he felt at lose ends."

"Ah, the tortured soul syndrome." Richard traced the soft
curve of her lip with his forefinger, deciding there was time for
a little relaxation before he had to leave for the airport.

"Walt was a HARD case," Sheila whispered, her voice becoming
slow and low and throaty as his touch aroused her and she could
tell hers was having a similar affect. "He was worried about you
and needed someone to talk to, but was too gun shy from his divorce
to want to allow himself to get involved."

"So that's why you appeared at my elbow the morning I got
back."

"Jealous?" She looked into his deep set eyes. "You shouldn't
be. Once I saw you it was no contest."

*********
Washington DC
Friday 10am
December 14, 1993

At the Bureau's front desk Richard and Sheila picked up
visitor passes. A glance at the huge, tastefully sterile and
non-denominational holiday wreath reminded them both that it was
just ten days before Christmas. Still recovering from the stress
surrounding the crash, Richard's responsibilities in the
investigation and Mulder's death, they would gladly have foregone
the holidays entirely this time but for the giggling anticipation
of their two little girls.

The receptionist was cool, efficient, and generally polite as
she handed them their temporary passes. "I have a note here...
Assistant Director Skinner sent down instructions for you to
proceed directly to his office on the fourth floor."

Richard felt an uneasy shifting in the atmosphere. 'Bad vibes'
some people still called it. Bad Karma. The 'instructions' sounded

distinctly like an order, which reminded Richard that Walt had been
less than enthusiastic when Richard had called saying they were
coming. Most definitely, Skinner was playing it very close to the
chest with this one. As he clipped his pass on his coat lapel,
Richard heard Sheila ask, "Agent Mulder's office, where is that?"

The receptionist's pleasant smile faded. She looked at them
oddly. "Basement," she muttered. "Room 13, though I don't believe
there are any room numbers posted down there. And I'd go up to see
Assistant Director Skinner first if I were you."

That was a warning, Richard thought, but Sheila simply smiled
and took her pass. At the elevator she pressed the 'Down' arrow.
Richard could feel her excitement mounting. "Sheila..." Richard
said warningly. "Walt also told us to see him first. I think I'm
detecting a pattern here."

The elevator door parted and she pressed 'B'. "I've been
waiting all week to see Fox and I'm not going to wait another
minute. Walt can shuffle his papers a few more minutes."

Richard shook his head as he followed her into the elevator.
When Sheila was like this he might as well save his breath.

The basement was a rabbit warren of hallways and tiny offices
which seemed to be used now mainly as storage rooms. The hallways
themselves were stacked and sometimes blocked with file cabinets
and shelving. They wandered for a while not seeing any room which
seemed to have been recently inhabited. "I see now why the
receptionist said 'basement' the way she did," Sheila said, noting
the dust on the piled boxes.

Richard disagreed with Sheila's interpretation but kept his
peace. The woman's grimace was in response to Mulder's name, not
the location of his office. Richard was becoming very worried about
this.

Sheila released her coat from a jagged piece of shelving. "Fox
has got to ask Walter for a better location for his office."

"Sheila, I told you," Richard reminded her, glancing in a
storage room where someone had left the light on, "Mulder, not
Fox."

"Okay, Okay.... I'll try. He told the girls they could call
him Fox and they keep talking about him. It's kind of become a
habit around the house. I'm glad six and eight is too early for
real boy craziness or we'd have a problem on our hands."

"Girls that age," Richard explained patiently as if he had
done so before, "are looking for any adult role models other than
their parents. Fox - No, now you've got me doing it - MULDER played
with them, indulged them -"

"Enchanted them," Sheila added, "like some tragic prince out
of a fairy tale, though I admit he looked like a man with not much
experience with children. I think he played with them because he
was scared to death of them. Probably thought they would put a
snake in his bed or something if he didn't."

"No," Richard offered, musing as they arrived at a 'T'
intersection, "not scared of them, just scared and there was
something very sad about how he looked at them sometimes."

"Here," Sheila suggested, exasperated, "you go right and I'll
go left and we'll sing out if we find anything."

Unhappily, Richard complied, not being able to think of any
way of dissuading her. Besides, he also had questions that needed
answers.

Sheila found a hallway lined with xerox boxes. At the end of
the hallway stairs led off to her right towards the main floor and
to the left was a door with etched glass and no room number, but it
did have a name plate. 'Special Agent Fox Mulder'. "Richard, I
found it," she called over her shoulder as she opened the door.

She was smiling as she entered, her smile broadening as she
was overwhelmed by the contents of the long narrow room. Every foot
of perimeter space was occupied by file cabinets, bookcases and
tables covered with files and reports. The walls were papered with
diagrams and posters, maps, both aerial and topographical,
photographs of crime scenes and what looked like UFOs, of all
things. It was not tidy but somehow it had structure. Sheila had
expected such a room from someone with the kind of nimble and
restless mind Richard had described and which she had glimsed so
briefly. Besides, she had seen similar haunts in the bowels of the
FBI's New York office. Nothing with the variety as Mulder's, but
certainly with this maleness about it.

In the midst of the snow storm of paper was one small desk,
situated near the door, which was cleared and neat. Further down
the room was a truly cluttered desk, a dark figure slouched over
it, who was just turning to the sound of the opening door.

"Hello, I was looking for Fox Mulder," Sheila asked brightly.

The figure flinched, scowled, began to unwind himself until he
was standing. Sort of standing. He was more propped up against the
side of the desk, face dark, shadowed, thin. No, Sheila thought
automatically, more than thin. Gaunt. Angry. Exhausted. Even now
dark, hooded eyes which she did not recognize were glaring at her,
cold and suspicious. Those eyes held her, were all she could
clearly see.

"I d-didn't mean to intrude," she stammered, her concentration
abandoning her completely. "I was looking for Fox."

Sheila was about to say that she must have the wrong office
when she realized the man had straightened at the name, defensive.
"I don't appreciate strangers calling me by my first name."

<God in heaven...> The voice brought her out of the cold
bleakness of those dark eyes, but still she was caught, unable to
do more could only stand and stare, and try to find in his
graceless, sullen figure some resemblance to the handsome, gentle
man she had known so briefly.

The figure turned away and dropped back down into his chair,
picking up a set of gruesome photographs he had been studying when
she came in. "I have work to do," he said with his back to her. "If
you want to stare, go visit the National Zoo. And close the door on
your way out."

She bit her lip searching frantically for something to say,
began backing up and was never so happy to find Richard standing in
the doorway even though he was blocking her retreat. "Agent
Mulder," Richard said in his gravelly, low voice.

The man at the desk spun his chair around to glare at Richard.
"I don't remember this room being on the tour."

"You don't need to be rude," Richard snapped, which got the
man's immediate attention. Sheila suddenly got the impression that
no one had talked to Mulder this way for a long time, too afraid of
this cold anger. "You don't remember us do you?" Richard asked
levelly.

The older man came fully into the room, side stepping Sheila,
and headed towards Mulder's desk. Sheila stepped back towards the
door, recognizing when the mein of the uncompromising, non-nonsense
federal law enforcement officer settled over her generally easy-
going husband. Gone was the man on vacation.

"No," Mulder said with a feral growl. "Should I?" At that
Sheila turned and stalked out.

Richard's brow clouded. He raised his hand at the dark figure
before him, a request for patience. "That's too bad. I remember
YOU, but we'll talk about that in a minute. Thanks to your warm
greeting I have to deal with another matter before we can talk."

Closing the door behind him, Richard caught up with this wife
in the hall.

"What the hell!" she hissed. Richard could feel her body
trembling both from anger and fear.

"Honey, he's obviously ill -"

"Ill? He doesn't remember us! Well, not remembering me I can
understand, I only saw him that one night and morning, but YOU!"

Straight armed, she supported herself against her husband's
broad shoulders for a few pounding heartbeats, gathering herself.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I usually don't lose it like this, I
expected a lot of things but not what's in there." Recovering
quickly from the shock her eyes narrowed. She had detected the
guilty way he was not meeting her eyes. "You KNEW about this!"

"- I suspected," he corrected. "From what Walt was not
saying."

"You lied to me again! First you tell me that you found Fox's
things in the wreckage of that plane crash -"

"- Which was hard enough -"

"- then you don't tell me his partner is in town and that
there is a possibility he may be alive."

"It was a long shot and I was out of town on that kidnapping
case in Oregon."

"'I' could have helped her -

"You had Jason staying at the house. You know, JASON - the
fifteen year old delinquent who wouldn't take his Ritalin."

"You could have TOLD me."

"And raised your hopes, probably just to leave you to have to
go through all that hell again later."

Angrily, Sheila stepped back, hands at her sides in fists,
head down almost like a angry steer. "I will NOT be coddled."

Richard moved forward, wary of her knees. Sheila had too much
self-defense training and when she got angry sometimes she forgot
what, in her own self interest, she might do better NOT to forget.
He took her in his arms, felt the tenseness, the fury, also felt it
relax a little in his embrace. "I'm not coddling. Well, maybe I am.
I see how torn up you get each time one of your people goes back to
their real lives and gets hurt again, or goes out and gets into
trouble again. You feel so deeply, it tears you up inside. I don't
like to see that. I don't know how you do it."

"Because it's what I DO," she pronounced through clenched
teeth, her voice shaking.

"Shhh, we shouldn't argue here."

"We're NOT arguing," she began, then after a pause continued
more calmly, as if she had said this before. "we're discussing
loudly."

"Uh, huh." He stroked her cheek and she let him, the tenseness
ever so slowly relaxing.

"Just remember," she admonished, a softness coming back into
her voice though not all the anger had left her, "you were once one
of my 'people'."

"And you were the best little kick in the pants I ever got,"
he admitted. "You told me to get off my ass and if I didn't like my
life to change it."

"Is that why you married me?"

"Part of it."

"Hmmm."

"Well, maybe more than part."

With a slight toss of her head, the small woman broke off from
her husband to smooth down her dress and her hair. "You're not
forgiven, but I'm going upstairs to give Skin a talking to."

"That's good, you're always better at calming him down than I
am."

Sheila had not missed the half-playful sarcasm in his voice.
She looked towards the closed office door. Her voice lowered. There
was a little fear for him in her voice now. "You going to go in?"

Richard squared his shoulders. "Into the trenches? I guess I
am. I can't leave him in there in the mud alone. Besides, I'm
afraid that if he heard us DISCUSSING him out here and I go up with
you, he'll escape and we'll never catch him again. I just hope that
by our blundering in like that we haven't blown our chances of
reaching him all to hell."

Just before turning to look for the elevator the woman asked,
"Do you really have a class to present at Quantico today or was
that bogus, too?"

He looked hurt. "I swear to God I did."

"Did?" she asked suspiciously.

"It was cancelled two days ago and our reservations were non-
refundable." He winked at her. "I saw no point in letting two
perfectly good tickets go to waste."

Reentering the basement office, Richard noticed how the
occupant's dark, wary eyes tracked to the door and not to him.
Almost as if he were entering the den of some wild thing, Richard
prudently left the door open. He had no intention of being caught
with an animal that was feeling cornered. He also remembered that
wild animals could smell fear.

"Anything come to mind while I was gone?" Richard asked.

Mulder did not seem to have heard, did not move. In fact,
physically at least, it seemed that the younger man had not moved
at all since the last time Richard had been there. Seemingly, his
large, pale hands were gripped around the same autopsy photographs
as before.

Depending on his decades of experience, dealing with tense
situations, the senior agent took four steps to where Mulder still
sat like darkness itself and with smooth authority opened his ID
before the damning eyes. "Is the case file on White Industries
which you mailed to Agent Scully available?"

Mulder flinched, the rigid tension in him exaggerating the
movement and stared suspiciously at the older man, obviously
considering whether to yield. Bleak curiosity overcame even his
current dark mood and slowly, he slid back his chair, opened the
top drawer of his desk and reluctantly pulled out a file. It was
stained and rumpled by this time from days of painstaking perusal,
both by Dana during the days of her frantic searching, and later by
Mulder in Washington as he sought... answers, answers to questions
he had not even words for. With forced casualness he tossed it down
on top of the mound of similar files stacked haphazardly in the
middle of his disordered desk.

Richard ignored the younger man's impudence. He placed his ID
down near the second set of signatures on the title page. "Compare
those," he said in a tone that was nearly an order. "Maybe it will
jog your memory."

In the end Mulder only complied because he could still
recognize an experienced law enforcement officer when he saw one,
could practically smell FBI on this man. That and something else,
something more personal, as if the older man was really two people.

With dragging obedience, Mulder examined the signatures. Below
his own photocopied signature was a name he had stared at seemingly
for hours, desperate for some hint of recognition. Richard stabbed
at the second signature with his finger and then his ID. "That's
mine. That's me. Inspector Richard Charles, Department of Justice
for the state of Colorado, at times on loan to the FBI, Denver
office."

At the mention of 'Colorado' Mulder had gone pale, as pale as
he could go under what looked like a two day growth of dark beard.
The signature on the file that had been plaguing him for two weeks
and that on this officer's ID were, to his eyes, identical. He
glanced rapidly at Richard and back at the file. He wanted to know,
wanted to know so badly that he could taste the bitterness in his
mouth. But, no, he had been tricked before, not again.

"Get out."

Richard dropped his tone. "We worked on this case together,
Agent Mulder. Because of what happened to you afterward, you don't
remember me. Maybe it's just because I'm not very memorable, but
there are people in my office who remember YOU." Richard looked
down at the closed folder. "Need me to prove it to you? I know
that's a copy, not an original. I know because I was there when my
secretary, who still has a crush on you by the way, made the copy.
The original's in the Denver office. All these details you can
verify by a phone call. But there's probably a lot of things you'd
like to know which you can't check out." Richard had let his voice
become less demanding, more sympathetic. "I want to help."

Carefully, Mulder's long hands touched the file as though it
held secrets he could not read.

"You mailed that to your partner. Did she give it to you? Did
she hope it would help? Scully's her name, as I remember."

Something crossed Mulder's face. If Richard was not very good
at what he did he would have missed it. "Certainly she must know
there's a problem, but maybe not the extent?"

Mulder ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit which from
the look of his hair he had been doing a lot lately and something
considerably stronger than sadness flickered over the too lean
face.

Richard gritted his teeth. Suddenly he had an image of this
young man dead. Early on, when he still woke up nights seeing that
wreckage, the devastation on that hillside, he had seen this face.
Even now, each time he walked by a house and smelled smoke from the
owner's wood stove, he smelled as well that too-familiar sweet
stench of burning human flesh.

Mentally, Richard put a lid on HIS empathic side. This was not
good. Perhaps this was not the right case for him. Perhaps he
should step away as he so often told Sheila she should. What a
surprise to find that cool, logical Richard Charles might be too
close to a case to be objective. But he had offered help and it
would be worse for Mulder if it were withdrawn at this point. The
senior agent crouched down beside the chair. "Don't go into the
dark alone, Fox. You're a trained psychologist. You know that's not
the answer. What's wrong? Are you just missing time or it something
else?"

Mulder jerked, the movement almost imperceivable but Richard
noticed. Something about the words 'missing time' had struck a
cord. "Funny you should put it that way," came the words, but
nothing more followed that enigmatic statement in that low, hoarse
voice.

Richard stayed in his crouch beside the desk, as still as deep
water. He could wait. He was near enough he could see how the
muscles worked under that taut skin, could see clearly the exact
moment when Mulder made the decision to keep his own pain. This
stranger had gotten too close, far too quickly. Inside, Richard was
frantically searching for a way out of this stalemate. Failure to
get through now would only give Mulder time to throw up more walls
and only make it harder to make contact later.

Perhaps it was need, perhaps exhaustion, but Mulder broke
first. Under normal circumstances Richard did not think this would
ever happen but the circumstances were not normal.

Bloodshot eyes looked towards the door. "That woman..."

"My wife. Sheila," Richard explained letting Mulder pick the
starting point. At least the man was talking.

"Assuming I believe you, did we know each other... then?"

"You stayed at my house the night before - the night before
the crash."

Mulder seemed to visibly wilt, like a plant suddenly bereft of
moisture. He ran two quivering hands over his face. It was all
Richard could do to stay coolly in control. Someone here had to be.
Mulder certainly wasn't.

"You have seniority, she's your wife," came the muffled,
strained voice. "If for no other reason, I apologize."

"That's a lousy apology but maybe you'll think of a better one
before she comes back. She went to see Walt. Not that she was hurt
all that much. She's handled far worse than you, but that's still
no excuse for bad manners."

Mulder stared at the older man, a spark of curiosity in that
darkness. "Say that again?"

"What?"

"Calling Skinner 'Walt'. No one here does."

"We do. Sheila and Walter Skinner and I, we're old friends,
that's why he sent you to work with me in the first place. He'll
vouch for us. I don't expect you to believe me on my say so. You
wouldn't be working here if you did. Call Walt. Sheila probably has
him cornered and he'd appreciate the rescue."

<Walt> That name challenged Mulder's besieged brain. <Someone
had used that name recently. Who?> When Richard didn't offer more
Mulder stood suddenly, gripping the older man by the arms and
dragging him to his feet also. "Tell me," the tired voice demanded.

"Tell you what?" Richard asked evenly, keeping his eyes fixed,
open. Far from backing down, he straightened his academic posture
so he could look the taller man in the eyes.

"Everything. Tell me what I did there."

"Why?"

"It's gone, it's a mess! Hell, why do you care? I just need to
know!"

The raised voice was not pleading, but there were elements
almost of hysteria and certainly exhaustion. The eyes that stared
into Richard's were wild, like those of that hunted, trapped animal
Richard had seen the second time he had entered this office, an
animal whose back was against the wall, who had no resort but
finally to turn and fight. Even through the thick wool of his coat
Richard could feel each individual iron finger closed over his
arms. The older man fought down the tightness in his chest. <Damn
you, Walt, why didn't you tell me? Whatever hell Sheila is giving
you, you certainly deserve it.>

"A mess? Disorganized?" Richard kept his voice low and steady.
"And parts missing? Which or all, Mulder?"

Taking his hands from Richard's shoulders, mortified to find
them there, Mulder broke away. With a shudder he walked towards the
back of the room, following a cleared path that looked well paced.
Even the floor tiles were faded and scuffed. His head felt foggy,
it was hard to hear, harder to think, felt stuffed like it did when
he flew....

********

Fox burst out of the nightmare, a terrible, soul-gnawing
maelstrom, completely disoriented. And there she was, holding his
sweating hand, handing him a cool, wet towel as the stewardess
passed it over. As he wiped his face, trying to cage the shudders
that were visibly attacking him like some unseen animal, she was
there, touching his hair, his cheek.

"It's all right, Mulder. It's all right. We're on a plane,
heading back to D.C. You were exhausted. You fell asleep and you
must have had a nightmare." She looked so depressed and her voice
was not steady. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have rushed you. I just
wanted to get you home." Fox could barely see her, his eyes were
full of images of such horror, but she saw it all in his face.
There were tears on her face which matched his own but she had not
even noticed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said over and over,
wanting to hold him, but he was too tense and held himself still,
frightened of what letting down what barriers he had left would do.
He could not even trust himself to speak. When she gave him some
pills there was fear and hurt in her eyes for the distance he had
put between them. "I thought I had lost you, Mulder," she breathed.
The words were too impossible to make sense. And he did not respond
at all.

End of Book I, Chapter 1

=====================================================================
======

JUST THE TWO OF US: Book I Richard and Sheila (and Fox) (2/12)
By Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

Disclaimer: Thanks to CC, DD and GA whose characters these are. I
borrow them with respect and love. And thanks for fueling my
fantasties and making life a real joy.

Copywrite 1996 by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger). May be freely
distributed as long as no money is made (unless I can have some),
no changes are made and my name stays on this.

Chapter 2

Washington DC
Friday, 11:30am
December 11, 1993

Richard felt his gut twisting. Mulder had paced to the back of
the room, turned, shaking his head slightly as if trying to clear
it. Then his face had gone blank. Just blank. Not like in Colorado.
Not spacey, fazing out into a pleasant daydream when Mulder had
gone inward thinking about his partner and their being together
again. This was a horrible deadness. Richard felt sweat breaking
out on his forehead from a sudden real fear that at any moment
Mulder would stiffen, convulse and fall. After a concussion like
his, trauma-induced epilepsy was not that uncommon and the CAT Scan
or MRI that the hospital had certainly ordered would never have
detected it, only an EEG could do that. Richard knew he was holding
his breath, waiting. He let it out only when Mudler blinked, moved
his head, and completed the turn, totally unaware of the
disassociation which had lasted, measured in real time, less than
fifteen seconds.

"Talk to me." Richard's request in that calming voice came
from, what seemed to Mulder, a great distance.

From the end of the room where his frantic pacing had taken
him, Mulder whirled, still moving slower than normal at the
beginning of the turn, and not reaching full speed until the end.
"I don't know you. Just leave me alone." One shaking hand ran
through the stiff dark hair again.

"So you can sit in the dark all alone and lick your wounds?
Has that done you any good?" Richard demanded to know. Then his
voice dropped, remembering the dead expression on that thin face,
"Mulder, you're ill."

"Why would that matter to anyone but me?" The voice softened.
"Just go." There was more left unspoken. Frightening depths where
there were monsters.

"If I have to fight an attitude like that, you're right, I
can't... but at least I'm willing to try. Are you?" Richard asked
in that low non-threatening voice again. "Have you given up or do
you think it's stronger to bear all this alone?"

Anger flickered in Mulder's eyes. "I asked nicely. I won't
again. Just get the hell out."

Richard stood his ground. "There's more than one kind of
strength. It takes guts to admit the truth, too. From what I know
you did nothing to deserve this. There is no guilt and nothing to
hide. Get some help - from me, from your friends, from some fancy
Georgetown doctor, from a bottle of pills, from some faith healer
in the South - I don't care, as long as it works."

Mulder was unmoved, his expression of anger and desolation
unchanged.

This reaction was most probably the way Fox dealt with the
world, Richard thought as he stared the younger man down, sensing
Mulder's wanting to keep it all inside, to struggle with his
problems alone. All the older man's instincts, however, told him
this time it was the wrong approach. Richard wiped a sheen of sweat
from his forehead. "It's getting hot in here. I either take off my
coat and stay or I go. You choose. I only know whatever you've been
doing so far hasn't worked."

The body at the end of the room tensed again. Richard waited
and wondered what he would do if the younger man refused to talk
now. Richard stood very quietly in back of Mulder's desk,
fingertips on top of the disorderly pile of files.

"Paperwork. Don't you hate it." Richard turned the autopsy
photos around so he could see them. "Nice pictures. I wish the ones
from my last fatality case looked so nice. They were from a plane
crash. Yours. Supposedly yours. At least that's what I thought at
the time." Richard looked up to meet Mulder's eyes which were, at
least for that moment, less hard.

"The reports of my demise were premature."

"Weren't they though." A pause. Richard looked down at the
autopsy photos again and then back to the younger agent. "Do you
remember anything about the plane, about the men who took you? I'd
really like to catch those bastards."

Richard could almost hear Mulder's heart beating, feel the
tide of his blood turning. Now they were on common ground. This was
what they did. Suddenly the conversation had become impersonal.
Safe.

"I heard the FAA ruled that the crash was caused by human
error." Mulder's voice came out harsh as if he had not spoken this
many words in a long time.

"But Agent Scully found a witness who saw you taken off that
plane while it was in mid-taxi. What if what happened on that plane
during your abduction made the pilot lose his concentration? It
only takes a moment in those mountains. So I hope you don't mind if
I ask again, but do you remember anything, no matter how slight?"

A direct question. Richard noticed Mulder did not like to
answer direct questions. The side comments were just defense. The
voice answered, very quietly, but answered. Certainly a question
about a case was less personal. If the animal within realized that
it had been trapped into answering, then Mulder allowed it. Perhaps
it had let itself be trapped, perhaps it had found that it had
nowhere else to go. "I remember saying goodby to Scully at the
airport. Dulles. After that -" Mulder closed his tired eyes.
"Images, but not coherent. A small town. Walking down sidewalks.
Sun, blue sky, mountains." He started, as if surprised to find
himself speaking. His posture flipped to take the offense again,
its natural element. Eyes fixed accusingly on Richard's face. "Do
you know that place?"

Richard felt as if a stone had been lifted from the area of
his chest and he could breathe again. His recklessness may pay off
yet. Unfortunately, the answer to the first question Mulder had
asked was not going to be something he wanted to hear.

"Do I know the place? Yes, but I won't tell you." Richard sat
on the corner of the cleared desk. "You've been in the field for
years. You've seen probably hundreds of small towns and lots of
mountains. If I did tell you, you'd always wonder if you were
really remembering or just remembering what you were told."

"You said you could help."

"I can. Only I get the impression that you are not very
trustful."

"You might say that."

"So would you believe me if I did tell you? I can see the
answer in your eyes. No, you wouldn't. So I'm willing to help you
remember it for yourself. It must be hard living with holes in your
life."

"Better than holes in your head," Fox murmured, suddenly
unbearably weary, his old sense of humor making a vain attempt to
reassert itself.

"But not much, eh?" Richard responded.

Mulder took a deep, slow breath. Much as he fought it,
something about this self-assured man was getting to him, getting
through the storms that raged inside, that had battered and
confused him for so many days. The sight of this senior agent,
looking like some small college dean, sitting so calmly, waiting
for him, triggered something in Fox's brain which was not quite a
memory but more than a feeling. A feeling that said that this man
was something rare, a friend, had been a friend. No one image stood
out, just a solidness and there was so little in Fox's life that
felt that solid. Even Scully, his rock, was gone.

Besides, Fox Mulder was not a stupid man, just a very stubborn
and private one. Reluctantly, he admitted, he had had no luck
dealing with this alone, though heaven knew he had tried through
almost ten nearly sleepless nights. This was the first person
besides Scully who had held out a hand offering help in the
darkness, and that help was not being offered in the guise of an
official in a white coat who would want nothing better than to pull
him behind white walls. Nor was this one too close, not someone he
needed to work with on a regular basis, not someone who would
constantly be there to remind him of his weakness.

Richard detected the subtle change in posture, a dimming of
the frantic light in the eyes. "Looks like we work then." The words
were simple, the effort that they implied was not. "But first,"
Richard told him, "before Sheila comes back, certainly before
Scully does, we do some damage control. We go find a barber shop.
You need a haircut and a shave. I assume you know where there is
someplace close. Half the politicians look like they spend every
Monday morning at a 'salon'." At Fox's stunned response to his
suggestion, Richard continued matter-of-factly. "The way you look,
your own mother wouldn't know you."

"My own mother wouldn't notice the difference," Fox found
himself saying in an almost normal voice. Almost. The reply,
seasoned with some bitterness, was both a statement and an attitude
which Richard found very telling. The older agent stored the
exchange away for future reference.

"Sheila noticed, though, and you've scared her enough. She
doesn't deserve that." Richard rose and stood by the door staring
patiently at Fox when the younger man did not move. "Well, come on
already. Where's your coat?"

The abrupt change of topic made Fox feel like he had entered
the eye of the storm that raged within him. Something normal,
something thoughtless to do, a respite. With dragging steps,
Mulder headed for the door, his sulking posture more for effect
than anything, reluctant to appear to be giving in too readily. "I
don't know why I should be doing this."

Richard let Mulder hold the door for him and breezed through.
"Because you know I'm right and because maybe you need, and
probably would appreciate it, if someone would tell you what to do
for a few hours." Richard smiled kindly. "It's tough being grown up
sometimes."

"Go to hell," Mulder murmured, closing the door to his office.

As it turned out, Mulder had left his apartment without his
coat that morning. Richard took that as further proof of Mulder's
general disregard for his own health and well-being. As they exited
the Hoover building both noted that the wind, full of damp chill,
had picked up. Richard wrapped his own coat more tightly around his
fifty year old body. "If it's going to be this cold, at least there
could be snow," he complained.

The stooped, lean man standing beside him on the sidewalk with
his hands in the pockets of his suit pants did not seem to mind the
biting wind, however, as though he had managed to close himself
off, even physically, from a world that no longer made any sense to
him. "There wasn't any snow in Colorado, either," Mulder mentioned
without thinking.

Richard scrutinized the sallow face critically. "That's
right," he verified. "There was snow only on the mountains when you
were there." He nodded approvingly at Fox's flicker of interest.
"See, we're making progress already. Now where's this barber? I
could use a trim myself."

***********

"None!" Sheila cried.

"Damn it, Sheila," Skinner told her, "keep it down. You're the
only one who I'd ever let come in here and talk to me like this but
my patience only extends so far."

Sheila lowered the pitch of her voice but not the volume.
"Thanks, Walt. That mark of distinction means a lot to me too, but
I don't find your problems so all important right now. Mulder looks
like that and you haven't made him go see someone? What I saw
downstairs just now was NOT Fox Mulder. Not the nice, young agent
you sent to us who I let play with my kids and sleep in my house.
That man down there scares me. I wouldn't let him within two blocks
of my kids!"

"Do you think I'm blind?" Skinner was pacing back and forth in
front of his desk while Sheila was sitting AT his desk as she used
to do in New York, eyes blazing, watching every stride her old
friend made up and down the room. "Do you think I don't know? Do
you think I didn't try? He refused to stay in the hospital or go
back to a doctor later and I didn't want to force him. I depended
on Agent Scully's support to make him agree, at least, to see one
of the psychologists on the staff but she was against it also."

Sheila leaned forward. "Why? She's a medical doctor, right?
Certainly she's enlightened about the advantages of therapy after
trauma like this."

"I think she was afraid any formal psychological evaluation
would recommend some house care."

"With the work you do, you all have those little bombs in your
files, Walt."

"Well, Mulder has a mine field of them, but I believe it's
more than that. Agent Scully was certain that he wouldn't be
cooperative with anyone but her. That kind of report in his file
would look worse than not seeing anyone at all and not do him any
good. Going the official route certainly never worked with Mulder
before."

"All pretty shortsighted," Sheila stated, disapprovingly. "You
say the head trauma was extensive?"

"Yes, but Scully had him checked out physically. Evidence of
a severe concussion, but that is healing without complication
according to the neurologist on his case. However, there was the
amnesia."

Sheila's eyes narrowed. "You reported to Richard that he
recovered from that."

"Mostly," Skinner sighed thrusting his hands deep into his
pockets. "But the recovery was violent, emotionally and
physically. If I read Agent Scully correctly, he frightened her a
great deal. There was another observer, a Dr. Byers, who saw the
'recovery' also. He corroborates my suspicions that the experience
was not a pleasant one for anyone involved. And Agent Mulder
remembers only bits and pieces of the month or so before the
trauma. I'm not surprised he doesn't remember you. That's a real
loss. Richard's reports indicated he was so 'at peace' when he was
with you. I hoped..."

Sheila drummed a pencil eraser on Skinner's desk top. "You
hoped Richard and I might be able to jar something loose? You
certainly have a funny way of asking. So why didn't you call?"

Skinner glared. "I would have in time, but you two couldn't
wait, could you? You just had to come now. I didn't think he's
ready for more... revelations. Not right now. Agent Scully had to
sedate him on the plane just to get him back here. Believe it or
not he's better than he was - or so we thought. We tried to ease
him into field operation a few days ago and he 'weirded' out.
That's how it was described to me. Agent Scully reports he has
terrible, terrible nightmares. Worse than he's ever had, which I
suspect were pretty bad before. Until this recent development, we
all hoped he was snapping out of the worst of it. If everything had
gone well, I planned to ask you to come to help with those missing
weeks."

"So you think we came too soon?"

"Too soon and without time to prepare him. That's my gut
feeling, but I'm an amateur. Hell, everyone is an amateur when it
comes to dealing with Agent Mulder."

Sheila let a little smile emerge. "As I remember, your gut
feelings were always pretty good."

"Then you'll understand why I was reluctant for you to come
and why I left instructions for you to see me first. I'm sorry you
got such a shock."

"That was my fault, don't blame Richard. The way Mulder
looked, the way he acted, was just so unexpected... But that's no
excuse. I handled the situation in absolutely the worst way I could
have and then left Richard to pick up the pieces. So don't feel
sorry for me. You have no idea the kind of people I've been dealing
with these last five years. I'm more afraid for Agent Mulder.
Richard is persistent. He wears a velvet glove but he's
persistent."

Skinner frowned. "As well I remember, but he only knows Mulder
from one case and that one was pretty innocuous. I was worried
about preparing Mulder... maybe I should be more worried that no
one prepared Richard."

Sheila did not like the way Skinner's eyes went from the phone
to the door. "Why are you so uneasy about Richard being alone with
him down there. Richard said Mulder used to do a lot of profile
work for VCS. There's nothing worse than that for screwing up a
person's psyche but Richard has been there, done that. He knows
what to look for."

Skinner's shoulders, stance, screamed his uneasiness. "If that
was all I wouldn't worry. But Mulder's been dealt a pretty rotten
hand in this life and he's unpredictable."

"In what way?"

"Let's leave it at that for the moment."

Sheila's eyes were wary. She was not going to let that drop.
"But you can't deny that he did well with Richard. Why didn't you
send him back to us?"

He whirled at her. "Think... How could I do that to him? To
her? Scully thought he was dead. Sheila, we held his memorial
service! Two of them. They'd already been separated for three weeks
and went through four weeks of hell before that. Being together was
what I thought they needed. They're adults, professionals. He's got
a Ph.D. in psychology. She's an M.D."

Sheila sighed. "All good intentions, Walt, but smart people,
especially psychologists, can screw themselves up just as
thoroughly as the intellectually challenged."

"No," Skinner corrected, "you don't understand. They have
pulled themselves out of some of the worst stuff you can imagine.
I was certain that together, if left alone, they could solve this
thing."

"But something's gone wrong, Walt. Where is this Scully? If
she cares for him she should be with him. He shouldn't be sitting
down in that hole all by himself."

"Give her a break, Sheila. Agent Scully went through hell
herself and now for the past two weeks she has been watching her
friend falling apart before her eyes."

"All the more reason that she shouldn't be trying to treat
him. And Mulder's not stupid. He probably knows he is falling apart
and what is killing him is knowing she is watching. Doesn't make
for smooth communication. Leaving the two of them alone to deal
with this is not the brightest thing you have ever done, Walt."

Skinner rubbed the back of his neck. "God, what a mess! "

"What is going on Walt? Why exactly does he look like that? A
couple of missing weeks won't do that to a person. That's not the
Fox Mulder I knew in Colorado. Richard found him reserved but
brilliant. They worked very well together. I found him a delightful
guest. That guy down there now is practically psychotic! He looks
like he's dropped about 20 pounds and hasn't slept in a week. If
he's not clinically depressed he's close to it."

Walt Skinner smiled grimly. "'Delightful'? Mulder? I've used
a lot of words to describe Mulder but 'delightful' was never one of
them."

"You're his superior, of course you haven't seen that side of
him. I found him a perfectly charming example of his sex. A sex I
happen to take a special interest in. If I were twenty years
younger and unmarried I might not have let him go." Sheila had
started to say 'Scully might not have gotten him back', but not
knowing how much Skinner knew about the partners' relationship
revised her thought at the last moment. She did not want to break
the confidence Mulder had shared with Richard so many weeks ago.

"Charming is not an aspect of Mulder's character I spend much
time thinking about, either, but, since you always did have a
special way of relating to the males in the office, I'll take your
word for it." Looking at her sitting there with that long hair
resting against the back of his chair reminded him so much of those
days that a small twinge of regret twisted somewhere inside.
Lightly he continued, "I really blew it. I should have asked you to
marry me when I had the chance."

"Then you would have lost two friends."

"I was self-absorbed. I handed you off and by the time I
realized I may have made a mistake you had your sights set on
Richard."

She winked at him. "And my aim was pretty good. Besides, you
really were such an officious son-of-a-bitch."

As the Assistant Director studied her, his ex-military
demeanor slipped a little more. "You were a good friend to Richard
when he needed it and both of you have been good friends to me. Be
a friend to Mulder. The man has enough enemies, he can use all the
help he can get."

"You're firing my curiosity, Walt. I need more information."

He waved her request off. "Later. I think we should get
downstairs now."

Sheila got up from behind the desk, and pulled a chair over
close. "Not with your being as tense as you are." She beckoned him
towards the chair. "Come here, Walt, unless you're afraid of being
caught acting 'unprofessionally'."

The big man hesitated a very long moment. "We should check on
them."

"I have more confidence in Richard than you seem to. Richard
can hold off the wild man for a few more minutes." Skinner gave a
her rare tolerant smile and let out a long breath as he settled
back into the chair in front of her. She began to knead his
shoulders. His eyes closed and his head dropped back as he groaned.
"Oh, Sheila, you haven't lost your touch."

"Sometimes I think Richard only loves me for my hands." She
worked a little more and the face he could not see was worried.
"Maybe what we saw in Colorado was not the real Fox Mulder. From
what I understand, he almost died six weeks ago. He may very well
have had a near death experience. That leaves a euphoric residue -"

"Sheila, I think you've been living too close to the San
Andreas for too long." She could almost hear the sarcasm in his
voice.

"Of all people, Walt, you should know better. Hell, we all
feel like we can take a tiger by the tail right after we recover
from an illness. From Richard I gather Fox felt he was finally
getting his strength back. He was excited about that." Sheila fell
silent again. How much DID Walt know about the depth of the bond
between Mulder and Scully and the direction it was leading.
Certainly he must suspect something.

Her fingers bit into a sensitive spot which made Skinner wince
as she replayed what she had just thought. 'The direction their
relationship was leading?' How about 'Had been leading.' If he
didn't remember Colorado he didn't remember how he was feeling
about this Scully, emotions which Richard reported were very
recent. Did not remember that phone call which he had made up in
Richard and Sheila's bedroom and how he had come down distracted
and, Sheila could have sworn, floating, afterwards.

Frustrated, she attacked Skinner's firm triceps with a
ferocity that made the big man gasp.

"Hold on," he croaked. "I'm not a mound of bread dough."

In response she dug deeper into a tight mass of muscle in
Skinner's back and he groaned. Sheila smiled wickedly. She hoped
his secretary was listening at the door. That could initiate a few
new stories for the office rumor mill. But then her face grew
troubled again. That dark man in the basement, such a beautiful
mind, in such a terrible place.

"Why so tense, 'Skin'? We only have few minutes so do try to
relax."

Skinner did try, he certainly needed it. He felt safe with
Sheila as with so few people. She was a lot like Agent Scully in so
many ways. Where Scully was outwardly cool, Sheila was warm but
there was a strong inner core to both of them. And she said Richard
was tenacious? They were a pair.

Skinner and Sheila checked out the basement office. Not a
soul. Skinner walked in, hands in his pockets scanning the floor.
"No blood," he noted. Sheila looked at him with annoyance. "Bad
joke," he apologized.

"I would not have picked Fox to be the violent type."

Skinner thought. "Actually he isn't. If he is, I haven't seen
it yet, though I've heard stories of when he was in VCS. But he is
passionate about his beliefs and with the right trigger any of us
is capable."

"'Beliefs'? that doesn't sound very FBI."

"Mulder is NOT very FBI. He never would have gotten in if it
weren't for his phenomenal talent as a profiler."

"Some people are not psychologically cut out to do that kind
of work, even though they may be good at it. Richard was good and
you remember how he was when you gave him to me."

Skinner noticed the autopsy photos on Mulder's desk, put his
hand down near them but did not touch them. "I remember. How can I
forget. I know I couldn't help him any more. One of the best days
of my life was the day you agreed to set up your computer in the
middle of the bull pen next to Richard's desk and started quizzing
him relentlessly about our data management requirements. Drove him
nuts. Saved his sanity."

A gentle smile on her face, Sheila made a cursory study of the
office, but there was no indication that anything significant had
changed since her last visit. Most notably, she didn't see her
husband's coat. "If Richard's got Mulder out somewhere, that's a
good sign."

Skinner also studied the room, noting the clutter which was
far worse than normal and could guess why. "Unless, Agent Mulder
ran out on him."

Sheila stared at her old friend hard. "No one runs out on
Richard."

A corner of Skinner's mouth twitched. "That's right. I
remember." He took a deep breath as if that settled a problem for
the moment. "Come on. Since Dick's got Mulder in hand, I'll take
you to lunch."

But Sheila did not move, she was looking at her old friend's
face and then her eyes widened. "You care about Mulder, more than
the others. You see a little of Richard in him, don't you?"

Skinner felt like laughing for the first times in weeks.
"Hell, no. Richard always played by the book, Mulder flaunts it at
every opportunity. As far as my spending a lot of time dealing with
Mulder, let's just say the rusty hinge gets the oil. Where they are
similar, I guess, is that while Richard is dedicated to the
extreme, Mulder is driven, obsessed."

"Driven towards these beliefs you haven't specified?" Sheila

concluded more than curious.

Skinner nodded. "If I could only channel that drive back into
areas which were more productive, his relationship with the bureau
would be smoother."

"Better for the Bureau maybe, but better for him?" Sheila took
Skinner by the arm. "A rule breaker with a dark past. Just gets
better and better. And where's his partner? You've never answered
that. Come on you promised lunch and as long as you're not
betraying a confidence, I think it's time you let us in on just
what we're dealing with here. In our line of work Richard and I
don't like surprises - not if we can avoid them."

Skinner looked over at the 'I want to believe' poster.
"Surprises? With Mulder be prepared for anything." He put on his
hat to cover his impressive bald pate and they started for the
door. "What do you think of UFO's, Sheila?"

End of Book I, Chapter 2

=====================================================================
======

JUST THE TWO OF US: Book I Richard and Sheila (and Fox)
by Windsinger

Chapter 3

George Washington University Hospital
Sunday, 9am

December 2, 1993

Dana watched her partner as he sat in his hospital bed
massaging his temples. He was a dark slender silhouette against the
grey light of the window on this dreary winter morning.

"Everything okay?"

"Headache. I just want to go home."

Dana turned tired eyes on him, but he would not look in her
direction. Mulder was not himself, quiet, withdrawn. Almost four
weeks had passed since he had left for Colorado. He had been
terribly thin then but from his phone conversations during the
second week he had reported that he was doing better and had
actually gained some weight. Was exercising, too. In truth, even
his voice had sounded stronger and he had seemed to be in a good
mood, proud of his improvement, even though the case was boring.
Dana only wished that the case had remained that way, boring, and
that he had come home to her. That he had flown in, taken a cab
from National Airport, walked through his own front door and
dropped his luggage on the floor. That he had flopped his lanky
body down onto the couch and smiled at her with weary but welcoming
eyes.

Instead, she had this. Someone who was not even close to the
friend she had seen off at that airport too many weeks ago.
Taciturn, melancholy, morose - those were traits she had seen in
Mulder before, but only on the worst cases or when he was weak with
illness and struggling with some guilt the way he was in the
hospital after Angela. This was something else.

After the nightmares on the plane the day before Dana thought

that he had passed through the worse. That did not keep her from
following her instincts, however, and going to check on him when
she had awakened from an uncomfortable sleep on the couch in the
hospital waiting room.

Admit it, Dana. To assure yourself that he was there, that he
had really come home, a little damaged, but home.

And so a few hours before in the dead of night she had walked
the hospital's hallways. Under the dimmed lights, she had walked on
tip toe, not allowing her low heels to make a sound because the
atmosphere seemed to call for silence. Because she had moved so
quietly, he had not heard her coming, had not seen her standing in
the doorway of his room.

He was not sleeping. Dana could hear sounds. Muffled sounds.
He lay face down, his face buried in his pillow, his shoulders were
visibly convulsing and he was crying. Only he did not want anyone
to know.

He was dealing with it, Dana had thought. Whatever lingering
fears and sorrows the remembering had called up, he was working
through them. In the morning he would be spent, contrite, ashamed
of himself, even though he thought no one had seen and her own
Mulder would be looking at her with those sleepy eyes she had come
to know so well.

Dana had been wrong though. Now it was morning and she had
found this stranger sitting in his hospital bed. Red, hard eyes,
unbending back and rigid jaw, body and brain walled off against the
world. What was so terrible that he had chosen to bury himself this
way?

Within an hour after his memory returned, Mulder had been
examined by Ravensworth's in-house psychologist so the missing time
had been known almost from the beginning. That time had not come
back yet, and because of the physical trauma everyone knew there
was a possibility that it might never come back. Unfortunately, he
had had concussions before with similar effects, more than she
wanted to count, so nothing new here, though none before had been
as bad as this. Something else must be bothering him then, but Dana
did not understand what.

Maybe the lost time was trying to come back but was just too
painful to face right now. When she had first seen him in the
gardens of the convalescent center at Ravensworth she had thought
he looked marvelous. But what she had seen was largely the affect
of attitude. He was feeling better, he had had good news, he was
beginning to remember little things, and the nurses were
shamelessly stroking his ego. He was happy.

He had come too close to never feeling happy again, or any
other emotion for that matter. The initial examination notes from
the county's free clinic on the condition of a John Doe found in a
ditch in sub-freezing temperatures still made Dana's palms sweat.
The man the county had eventually sent to Ravensworth had been
critical when he was brought in - comatose, dehydrated and
suffering from exposure, mild hypothermia and early stages of
pneumonia. From the lack of anything in his stomach or intestines,
it was obvious that he had not eaten recently. In addition to the
concussion, there had been a recent injury to the area around his
right kidney, new bruises on his face and chest though they were
not severe, and a rash-like skin irritation and abrasions on his
wrists and ankles, that the doctors in the suburban backwater had
not even attempted to explain. But Dana recognized the signs of
hard restraint when she saw them. Someone had used prodigious
quantities of duct tape and Mulder had not submitted quietly. In
other words, her partner had had a very bad four or five days. No
wonder he did not want to remember.

She told herself that time and familiar surroundings were what
he needed, and then all would work itself out.

Dana stood by his bed side, watching as he sat with his arms
wrapped about his knees, his head turned away from her.

"Are you sure you don't remember anything more about what
happened?"

He stared bleakly at the wall. "I don't remember." She waited
but he offered nothing more. Only there was more, she was sure of
it. His answers, his whole posture, were too guarded.

A few hours later, there being no medical reason for keeping
him, Fox Mulder was released.

Washington DC
Friday, 1pm
December 14, 1993

Richard returned to the Hoover building with a trimmed, clean
shaven, though still rumpled, FBI Special Agent in tow. The bemused
glance the receptionist sent the two of them, when Richard flashed
his visitor's pass, was not lost on Mulder who merely frowned.
Feeling more presentable and having his empty stomach filled with
two all-beef chili dogs had improved his mood. Before he would have
scowled at the woman.

Once inside Mulder excused himself motioning for Richard
downstairs. In the basement office, Richard took off his coat,
checked his watched and estimated how long a background check would
take. Knowing Sheila had gone up to see Skinner, it was a bet that
Mulder would not try to contact him but would seek out some other
means of independent verification. Sensing such paranoia in one so
young was uncomfortably familiar, Richard had had his own bouts at
about that age, but the older man had no doubt that Mulder would be
back. Richard had seen a hunger in Mulder, a hunger to know, to
work out what was wrong. A hunger that was stronger even than his
fear.

Within five minutes of Richard's estimate Mulder was back,
closing the door to the office, Richard noted with satisfaction, as
he came in.

"Have they updated my bio lately in that database of yours?"

Mulder showed no surprise at the question. "1991."

"You're more up to date than the state of Colorado. I'm
impressed."

Actually Mulder was. The man was who he said he was and more
besides.

There followed a silence more unsettling to Mulder than even
Scully's probing questions because he did not know what to expect.
Richard was again reading the article from the issue of 'Science'
he had picked out of the office's bookshelf. Mulder sat down at his
desk, ran that hand nervously through his hair but aborted the
movement as he felt, almost with surprise, how clean and soft it
was except for the relatively sharp cut ends.

"I forgot how much barbers - excuse me - 'stylists' cost in
the big cities," Richard commented, not looking up. "For a fifth
of the price my barber at home does as well."

"This is longer than I usually leave it," Mulder murmured.

Richard tugged at the ends of his own which curled a little
over his collar. "It's my experience that women like it long." He
returned to his article.

Mulder watched Richard reading then looked down at the files
and photographs and notes he had been working on, but the work no
longer had any significance. The analysis, the writing of reports,
had served because it was, if not safe, at least familiar and made
the awful time pass. The mundane actions of walking down the
street, eating, being able to look at himself in the mirror almost
without flinching, and having to interact with this man who was not
just a man but a senior agent with a distinguished record, had
pulled Mulder out of that narrow band at the topmost levels of his
depression where he had been existing.

So the work was not what Mulder wanted now. He was
experiencing the odd sensation of feeling curious, expectant,
almost normal. Emotions he had not felt in, it seemed, weeks, and
he did not want that to end.

"Interesting?" Mulder asked referring to the article.

The older man looked over the top of his half height reading
glasses. "Actually, it's deadly dull. I was waiting for you."

"To do what?"

"What you want. What you're comfortable with." His eyes fell
upon the desk. "If you need to work, work. If you want to work
together to solve this thing, then to lay down ground rules. If you
want to talk, we'll talk. If you want me to go to hell, that's your
choice." Richard remembered Colorado and the young agent Skinner
had sent him. Even during the first few days when Mulder was still
physically weak and obviously depressed he had always dressed
impeccably. The wrinkled, stained suit looked wrong, must feel
wrong as well. "If you want to complete the transformation and
change into your spare suit, that's fine with me. That one looks
like it's been slept in more than once."

A bemused expression in his eyes if not on his lips, Mulder
slowly rose from his chair. "You really were a field agent."

"Still am. I allow them to keep me behind a desk as little as
possible, though I usually give the younger men and women the real
down and dirty stuff. Age has its privileges, after all. But I
still keep a change at the office." A dark image intruded on
Richard's mind of picking through that crash site with it oily
smoke and strewn death. He had not left that horror to the younger
ones. That duty, that obligation both to the present and to the
past, Richard had taken personally. Within thirty seconds of
returning from that mountain and its silent horror, however, he had
stood in the middle of his office and frantically stripped the
stinking clothes from his body, bit straight through his lip to
keep from screaming.

Mulder saw the shadow on the older man's face, felt a tug of
awkward camaraderie. Affected more than he wanted to admit, Mulder
opted for this man's last suggestion. It had its point if for no
other reason than delaying making any other decision.

As Richard had assumed, Mulder did keep a change of clothes.
Needed to. From the way Accounting looked at him when he turned in
his cleaning bills, he suspected that he was harder on his clothes
than most, but considering the situations the X-Files led him into,
that was not very surprising. Swamps and quarries with their dirt,
slime and dust; cobwebs and oil from deserted buildings; sweat and
water and mud from running down witnesses and serial killers
sometimes in the pouring rain; grease and sugar from stake outs
made bearable with burgers and powdered donuts - all these played
havoc with his suits. There was also the need to be able to fly
out on a moment's notice as well as the frequent all-nighters.
Being called unexpectedly before Skinner more times than he wanted
to count also warranted an emergency back up system.

The door to the small utility closet, which was located in the
most poorly lit corner of the office, was nearly hidden under a set
of time exposure photos of classified military aircraft. A grey
suit, still in its dry cleaner bag and a shirt hung on a hook
behind the door. A Washington Redskins day pack buried in a corner
was packed with soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, an electric razor,
a tie, a change of underwear, T-shirt and socks.

Fox paused at the door, not at ease with the situation.
Finished with the article, Richard had begun examining odd items he
found on the office shelves.

Richard turned, a preserved leaf from a plant heretofore
thought extinct in his hand, at the sound of Mulder's grumpy tenor.
"I don't know why I'm doing this," Mulder said from the doorway of
the closet.

"Doing what?"

"Talking to you."

"Don't think. I know you've been trying this on your own. I'm
only here to help. Try to relax."

"I don't know you." But even as he said it, Fox knew that that
was not entirely true. There was no memory of this man or of the
time they had known each other, only shadows, but there WERE those
shadows. Richard was not remembered, but not a stranger, either.

Mulder knew that if he could just find it within himself to trust,
it would be a relief to turn off and not to have to think anymore,
to feel safe, if only for a few hours, a few days. From what he
could remember and from what he had been told, the last two months
had been long and exhausting. Exhausting he could believe, he could
feel the ache in every movement and breath, but sleep was not a
pleasant alternative.

Richard's voice reached him. "I gather you don't open up to a
lot of people."

"Comes with the territory." Mulder's voice was muffled now. He
had moved inside the small closet but left the door partially open.

"You mean being suspicious?" Richard called.

"Scully tells me it borders on paranoia." Richard carefully
set the waxed leaf down. He heard the sound of dressing, of shoes
being dropped, a zipper, cloth against cloth and skin.

Fox felt odd, tight, unnatural. He had taken care of himself
since he was - well, certainly since Samantha's disappearance. Even
for years before that, when he realized his home life did not
reflect what he saw on the sitcoms, he had managed. The job he had
been doing lately, however, had not been so great. He fumbled with
the last of the buttons on his odiferous shirt and held it away
from his body with a grimace. How long had it been since he had
changed it? To realize that he was unable to deal with even the
simple things was frightening.

Reaching up to take down his suit and the clean shirt,
Mulder's hand brushed a suit of Scully's he had forgotten was
behind his, a maroon one with a cream blouse, which hung there for
the same reason as his own. Fox stood for a moment touching the
soft, clean fabric. He had been trying to tell himself that being
out from under her watchful eyes was a relief, but he felt,
instead, only emptiness.

A few moments later Mulder appeared before his uninvited
guest, gym bag in hand, dressed in his old suit pants, the
offensive shirt hanging out and closed by only two buttons, and gym
shoes without socks. Richard raised his head questioningly from
where he sat on the corner of the cleared desk, a copy of The Lone
Gunman open in his hands.

"I'm going to take a shower," Mulder announced. "I think I'm
capable of doing that by myself."

"I'm sure you are," Richard responded matter-of-factly. "I
just hope it doesn't mess up that expensive styling job." In fact,
the walk down the block in the wind and Fox's nervous hands had
done their work on the style already. As Mulder stalked out,
Richard turned back with a slight smile to an article proposing
that the collapse of the 'Cold War' was a Soviet fabrication.

Fox stood under the shower, water set as hot as he could stand
it in an attempt to ease his tension-tight muscles. He was thinking
seriously about telling that man in his office to move along and
take his do-gooding somewhere else, somewhere where it would be
appreciated. He thought about it, but that was all, for Mulder was
getting so tired of the visions before his eyes. If there was one
chance, even if it was a snowball's chance of maintaining its form
and substance in Hell, Mulder was determined to try it.

The water was warm, lulling, its sound and feel replacing all
the pain. Fox slide down the wall to huddle on the floor of the
cheap shower stall, not minding the rust. He let the gentle water
beat down, wrapping him in mind-numbing comfort. If only he dared
to sleep.

*******************

Fox Mulder's apartment
Wednesday 3am
December 5, 1993

The nightmares clung like the gaping, sucking mouth of a leech
affixed to his mind. The dreams were like a second skin and though
he swore and shrieked and sobbed for release they refused to be
dislodged. The victims' eyes stared at him. The expression of the
woman with red hair was full of pity. Why didn't she at least fear
him when she should have? She had had time to be afraid before he
wrapped his long hands around that slender neck and squeezed and
squeezed. The dark-haired girl, with a face like a pixie, was no
longer laughing. She was a spitfire, though. That one spat venom at
him, her eyes blazing accusingly before the huge, razor sharp knife
plunged itself into her gut and ripped her chest and throat open to
the chin.

Why were the women always Scully, the young girls always Sam?
Because they were those few whom he loved. What better way for the
demons from the dark swamp of his soul to get their revenge for
having been so rudely disturbed. When the victims in his nightmares
were older women, they were always his mother, pitifully weak and
frail. The young boys were always freckled Tom Reese, his lone
childhood friend, or sometimes the young boy who had seen his
sister abducted but whom no one would believe.

The adult male victims? Funny, there was no single male
influence in his life. The one who should have been there, his
father, was nowhere to be seen among the tortured loved ones.
Surprisingly, there was Skinner with his brains blown out, Reggi
Pardue, his old partner, with his throat slit, and Robert Adler.
Adler had been a professor of Mulder's at Quantico who taught the
introductory course in profiling. He was the one who had encouraged
that hellish talent in the young recruit. Adler had taken Mulder
under his wing, mentored him, made the brilliant introvert feel
special and had frowned when others used the hated nickname. His
sentence in the nightmares was the poison that made men's skin turn
red then grey then black as they choked out their lives writhing on
the floor while the eyes of the killer watched. Last among the men,
who had in some way cared and, thus, came into the dream for
punishment, was one other man - tall, iron-haired, slightly stooped
like a scholar - but not anyone Mulder remembered. The dreamer
paused, puzzling.

There was no time to solve that mystery. The killer was busy,
the killer must kill and kill and kill again with knife and wire,
cord and gun, palm-sized stones and electricity, open elevator
shafts and lofty cliffs, tall buildings, ropes suspended from
beams, rattlesnakes and poison, acid and fire. All manner of ways
in which one no-longer-human-being can kill another. And the hands
of the killer were always his, though the murderers themselves were
always from within, leering out of his eyes, gleefully reliving
their greatest triumphs again and again against Fox's few beloved
ones.

Finally, when there seemed no more ways in which to kill, the
veil of sleep mercifully began to thin. Clawing and screaming, Fox
fought, exhausted, out of its clinging grip, coming finally to grim
reality lying on the floor beside his couch where he had fallen.
His throat burned from his screams, his body drenched with sweat
and convulsed from the adrenaline tremors which ran up and down it.
Shivering, he pulled the afghan from the back of the couch. The
radiators were turned down at night and with the ancient, drafty
windows it was cold. He curled, huddled on the floor, grateful for
the cool air which helped keep sleep at bay.

Mulder clasped his arms around his chest to kill the sobs,
refusing to cry even in his frustration. He had taken one pill.
Just one! He had promised Scully he would try and he had been so
tired. So tired. Never, never, never would he take another if it
kept him imprisoned in such a dream, unable to wake. The palms on
his hands hurt where the unkept nails had dug into the soft flesh,
his arms ached where he had raked those nails across his forearms,
desperate for the pain that would drive away the dream. They would
have to drag him kicking and screaming, tie him down and fill his
veins with drugs him before he would take another pill.

The tremors gradually subsided. He sat in the dark, his arms
wrapped about his knees, the blanket over all. How could his rooms
be so quiet? How could they not still be echoing with the force and
terror of his screams? In his head he could still feel them. And
worst of all he was alone.

Fox rested his head on one arm, the other was wrapped about
the sweat damp hair. He did not want to be alone. He was tired of
being alone, of forcing her away. Perhaps he had been wrong to try
to protect her from the monster that lived within himself. He
needed her hand in the darkness that kept getting darker and darker
and he was so afraid of becoming lost. He longed to hear a human
voice that was not the one in his dreams. Any voice, but hers
especially. The phone was dragged down on the floor and he called
her number... then sat as still as a stone when a man's sleepy
voice answered.

"Hello?... Hello?.... Who is this...?" So shocked was he that
at first Fox failed to recognize the voice but then swiftly the
name came.

"Evan..." A woman's voice, also groggy with sleep, could be
heard in the background. And not just any woman - Scully - and
Fox's sharp ears would hear her plainly. "Evan, that's probably for
me. I had my calls forwarded."

As the man on the other end of the line must have been handing
over the receiver, Fox's burning eyes hunted for the glowing
display on the VCR, the only light in the room except for the pale
grey of the street lights from his window and green glow from his
fish tank. It was three a.m. THREE A.M.! What the FUCK! was Evan
doing at Scully's - no, she at his place, even worse - AT EVAN'S! -
at three in the morning.

With tearing misery, Fox slammed down the phone. He sat alone
for the rest of the night shivering and warily watching the dark
and the silence. Sleep did not come again.

Dana stood in Evan's bedroom, the damningly silent phone in
hand. "Who was that?" Evan asked, looking up from the computer
screen.

"Mulder."

"Did he say anything?" the researcher asked.

"No, but it was Mulder," Dana told him with certainty. "Evan,
I don't feel right about this."

"Do you want me to take you home?"

"If you would." Slowly, she put on her coat. "If you don't
mind, I think we should meet at my place from now on."

Evan frowned. "Do you also want me to park a block away and
sneak in the back way? Dana, you are treating him like a child. He
won't like it when he finds out. I know I wouldn't."

"He doesn't need to know what I'm thinking. It would hurt him.
He'll find out soon enough, then he can hate me."

"He's hurting now." He got up and retrieved his coat. This was
ground they had covered already. "Waiting won't help."

"It will help me. I can't do this to him."

"You ARE doing it to him."

She wearily waved her hand. "I know your arguments. Please, no
more. Just take me home."

End of Book I, Chapter 3

====================================================

JUST THE TWO OF US: Book I Richard and Sheila (and Fox)
by Windsinger

Chapter 4

Fox Mulder's Office
Friday, 2pm
December 14, 1993

Richard looked up when Fox reappeared with damp hair, dressed
only in the gym shoes and sweat pants, with a towel and the strap
of gym bag containing the dirty clothes over his shoulder. "That
was quick," Richard commented. He had visited the Washington office
often enough to know that the Bureau's exercise rooms and shower
facilities were far on the other side of the huge building.
Questions of how Mulder had gotten from his basement office, there
and back dressed as he was, were forgotten as Richard tried not to
stare or reveal his dismay. Out of his suit, the younger man's pale
thinness was shockingly apparent. Even his sweat pants hung below
his hip bones. Worse, his face, which should have taken on at least
a little color from the heat of the shower, looked if anything more
pale and his eyes were as red as they had been when Sheila had seen
him that morning.

"There's a janitor's room three doors down that's not used
much. It has a shower." And it was private, Fox thought to himself
as he headed back to the closet to get his clean clothes. Unlike
the locker room attached to the FBI's exercise area there were no
prying eyes, no insulting taunts intentionally pitched to be
overheard. On the other hand, if he had gone there, he would have
been in such a hurry to leave that he would not have allowed
himself to become lulled by the relentless beat of the water and
fallen asleep, would not have had a replay of that new nightmare.

But had he been asleep - or awake? If awake, what had thrown
him gasping to his senses and then to his feet, the water in his
mouth and in his eyes? A waking dream? A hallucination? A bead of
cool wetness ran down the skin over his spine but that was not what
made Mulder shiver.

Richard stared after the retreating figure, frowning. For a
shower just down the hall, Mulder had been gone too long.

As Fox kicked off the untied shoes and let the sweats slip too
easily down to the floor, he remembered that when he had passed
Richard had been closely studying the photographs pinned to the
office's over-crowded bulletin board, pictures Richard would find
bizarre, the subject matter not quite - human. An icy weight
shifted in his stomach. There was a good chance that Richard did
not know about the X-Files until today. Even within the Bureau they
were a well kept - embarrassment, a far cry from the convoluted,
though 'normal', white collar crime Mulder had been sent to
Colorado to work on - the case for which he had only the file, the
report in his style, and the copies of notes made in his own
handwriting to prove that he had worked on it at all.

Just like the others, the older agemt would turn away from the
crazy man and his insane obsessions when he knew. Why, Fox
wondered, did he find that so disturbing. He had not let himself be
bothered before with what other people thought.

In boxers and t-shirt Fox peered around the partially open
door. Richard had kept up his careful scrutiny, moving from picture
to picture. The older man called out, "I know you checked me out.
I know you'll talk to Walt, but, just to let you know, I'm not
surprised if you are still suspicious of Sheila and me and our
motives. All I can do is promise you that we're not here to mess
with your head. Unmess it, describes it better. I liked you a lot
when we worked together in Colorado. I think we got along well."

Mulder walked out from the closet to see Richard straightening
his 'I want to believe' poster. "As I said, you came to my house
for dinner and to spent the night. Sheila approved of you
immediately, and she has good taste."

Raising his head from buttoning his clean shirt, Mulder stared
at Richard, level and hard, unbelieving. The rare individual liked
Fox Mulder. A few tolerated him. A small percentage were in awe
over the tricks he could do.

A cast of a foot, a foot with three toes, attracted Richard's
attention. "Your work was good, very clever, organized and
insightful. You were very - happy - at the end. Wish I could say we
had something to do with that but mostly you were happy about going
home to see your partner."

Mulder turned from the performance, slipped on the suit pants
and pulled up the zipper with a finality which was ironic. Happy to
be coming home to Scully? Had she been looking forward to seeing
him again? No longer. Considering the black mood he had been in
during the past two weeks, considering all that had happened the
day she left, it was a wonder she had been willing to be in the
same room with him as long as she had.

Fox wondered morosely if she had already effectively left him.
He had thought she would have called. It had only been two days,
still... And he had been 'happy' in Colorado? 'Happy' was an
emotion Fox Mulder had very little acquaintance with in his life.

"'Happy?' Was I drunk the whole time?" he asked sardonically.

"Not a drop," Richard answered, ignoring the tone as he
flipped through a particularly thick case file he had found sitting
on the top of Mulder's 'In' box. "Do you get drunk often?"

Richard waited. There was a long silence. A decision was being
made whether to answer. A drinking problem somewhere, then, but not
Mulder's, Richard was willing to bet. Fox did not have the look,
and clearly was not a man who made a habit of running away from his
problems, but someone close to him most definitely misused alcohol
in a big way.

"A glass of wine, a couple of beers," Fox admitted from across
the room, "but when I worked for Violent Crimes I used to - too
often. Not on a case but afterwards, to try to forget. Never worked
though, so I don't do that any more. I'm told I am not a happy
drunk."

"So why did you ask if you were drunk when I said that you had
been happy if Colorado?"

"Something to say," came the voice from inside the closet this
time. "A witticism seemed in order. You have a problem with that?"

Richard chuckled. "Humor as a defense mechanism, eh?"

Suspiciously, Fox came forward into the room. A feeling he had
had ever since Richard offered to help, was trying to crystallize
in his exhausted, besieged brain. A certain number of probing
questions he had expected from an investigator of this man's
experience, but the way the questions were delivered, the way they
were phrased, hinted at other training, another discipline than
police work. Fox vaguely remembered the morning in this office when
Skinner had offered him the assignment with his old friend.
Ironically, the Assistant Director had offered it as a chance to
get away and rest and recover. But Skinner must have many old
friends. Why this one?

"You answer a lot of questions with a question," Mulder
remarked, suspiciously.

"Noticed that, did you?" Richard replied with a casual,
knowing smile. Now he was examining a skull he found on a shelf. It
had a rather large depression on one side.

Standing in the middle of his office, dressed now in clean
clothes but still lacking a tie and his shoes, Fox gaped as the
revelation hit him. "You're a -"

"Psychologist?" Richard completed raising one eyebrow. "Takes
one to know one."

"Shit!"

"Is it a crime?" Richard asked replacing the skull, and facing
the irate younger man.

"No one digs around in my head but me!"

"Haven't you heard the axiom: The doctor who has himself as a
patient is a fool. You're obviously surprised by my background.
Surely Walt told you."

"If he did, I would hardly remember."

"Didn't my bio mention it?" Richard asked, surprised.

"Guess I was just so overwhelmed by all the commendations,"
Mulder snarled, "I missed it."

The fact that he had missed it, was like a sharp, wicked thorn
in Mulder's side. Normally that sort of thing would not happen,
because he had learned to use his eidetic memory to capture such
information conveniently for later retrieval. But desperate to
control the storms Fox had closed that function down, for waking or
sleeping, along that unique super highway from the unconscious to
the conscious the nightmares traveled. There had even been times
during the past week when, if it could be cut out, he would have
done so and gladly. And so, like an amputee, he was trying to live
with access to only half of himself. Unlike the amputee, however,
the function he would lose was still within him, the tools to
access his gift, his curse, within his grasp. All that was needed
was for him to let his guard down, to allow fear or exhaustion or
just inattention to distract him, and then he would reach for it as
a man will use his hand to scratch an itch even if he had made a
bet not to use that hand. Like a man dying of thirst given a barrel
of water and a long handled ladle he would not be satisfied with
the few drops on the surface of the barrel but would dip down, down
into those forbidden depths, where deep within his mind demons
prowled.

Richard was sitting on the edge of the uncluttered desk,
watching. Mulder had gone grey, his hands twitched, the eyes were
black pools. Fear, the older man could sense it, like sweat
leaching through the pores in the young man's pale skin.

Time for a different topic, probably not safer but at least
different.

"Where's Scully?" Richard asked.

The black staring eyes turned to green, glowing fire. "Damn
you."

Richard swept his hand over the desk top. "This is hers, isn't
it? You don't let a cleaning woman in here or she'd disrupt your
decor." He rubbed his fingers together. "This desk is dusty. Your
partner hasn't been working here regularly for a week at least. So
do you want to tell me now?"

Fox reached angrily for his suit coat, his expressive face not
only showing anger but also something like despair and loss.
Richard waited patiently. After a few moments, he called over to
where Fox was bent down tying his shoes with furious movements,
"Oh, I might as well tell you... Sheila's one, too."

More swearing from the other side of the room, but the phrases
were so purple Richard chuckled, recognizing they were largely for
effect. Surrender, at least for this battle, though Richard did not
fool himself into thinking he had won the war. Mulder just hadn't
been pushed enough so that he was ready to walk away, not yet.

Time to pull back again, to give a little breathing room.
"Actually, I lied before," Richard admitted. "Sheila's not a
psychologist, though she's had a lot of courses. She is, however,
in addition to being a wife, mother, and computer analyst, a damn
fine therapist. She uses a lot of massage in her sessions. You're
not skittish about that sort of thing, I hope."

The older man did not need to see the flinch, the unconscious
convulsive grip Mulder took on the laces he was tying, to identify
the shield Mulder had erected around himself like a force field.
Richard had actually tensed waiting for the lace to break.

With deliberate slowness, Mulder straightened up. "I don't
think that's necessary." The voice was as cold as the December wind
outside.

"I've found her talent very helpful, even with people who
don't go in for that sort of thing. Oddly enough, I've found her
presence especially helpful when I use hypnosis, and it may come to
that in your case. I know that use of massage under such
circumstances is not conventional methodology but that's what we
do. Tension in the body is a distraction to the flow of thoughts
from the mind or some sort of psychobabble. I just know it works."
Richard waited, but Mulder maintained his cold facade and did not
speak.

"Mulder, Sheila considers herself only an amateur, but I've
learned to depend on her a lot. Her experience, by the way, is
primarily with battered spouses and juveniles. That spare room you
stayed in when you were at our house has been used by so many
troubled people it should be haunted. Then, of course, she also has
first hand experience, living for ten years with a victim of PTSD."

Mulder's attention sharpened as he turned to study the older
man's face, remembering the twist of pain he had seen more than
once. Richard had worked with Skinner in Violent Crimes for years
back in New York. That much at least Mulder remembered from the
man's biography stats. There was no doubt in Mulder's mind who the
victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was.

Richard acknowledged Mulder's examination with an unwavering
gaze that allowed the younger man in, hiding nothing.

"About the massage and the hypnosis," Mulder began cautiously,
"we'll see."

Richard nodded almost imperceptibly. "That's all I ask."

Five minutes later, each armed with a cup of Mulder's
horrible, strong coffee, they sat across from each other. Mulder
dressed, shaved, considerably improved from the morning, physically
and mentally, but still a little feverish, still wary, his handsome
face shadowed as no young man's should be.

"So," Richard began. "No one messes in your head but you? So
how many sessions have you had with yourself?"

*******

Walter Skinner's Office
Friday, 10am
December 7, 1993

Dana pushed back the hair that kept falling over her right
eye. She knew she looked a mess. Red-eyed, a run in her stocking,
hair in need of more time than she had given it. Had it been a week
since she had brought Mulder back? Felt like a month.

No, felt like hell.

Skinner started speaking. "Agent Scully, I've heard -"

"Sir, why have I been called? And why is Dr. Byers here?"

"Because I've heard some unsettling reports and because I have
some concerns of my own. I need to know what Agent Mulder's status
is." The Assistant Director had come out from behind his desk and
he had called her 'Scully', not 'Agent Scully'. Not an official
meeting then.

Dana let the bite creep into her voice which Mulder in his
right mind had certainly heard often enough. "You know what Agent
Mulder's 'official' status is. He's still on medical leave."

"But he's still working."

"Not in the field."

When she did not offer more Skinner pressed. "The status of
his health then. People who have been down there -"

"YOUR people," she said coldly, more than a hint of accusation
in her voice.

"My people, then," he admitted. "They say he doesn't look
well. That even for Agent Mulder he doesn't look well. That he
looks, excuse the expression, 'spooky'. Agent Scully, I have Agent
Mulder's best interests at heart - "

"It's not his fault," she retorted hastily, not liking the
defensive tone in her voice.

"Is anyone saying it is? No one blames him for what happened.
If he needs -"

"He just needs a little more time."

"We've given him a little more time. Can you honestly say that
you've seen any improvement?"

No, she thought fiercely. If anything, he's worse.

Skinner was pacing, faster than usual. There was no rule book
for what he was trying to do here. He wished he even knew WHAT he
was trying to do here. "I let you take him out of the hospital
against doctors' recommendations because you assured me he would
snap out of it. Now you don't even seem to be spending as much time
down there with him as before. Has the situation gotten that bad?"

She suddenly found a reason to look at her hands in her lap.
"Having me around doesn't seem to be helping. It makes him very
agitated."

"Why?" Skinner demanded.

Evan Byers was leaning against the wall, his arms folded
across his chest, his broad, strong face nearly as lined and tired
as hers. "She thinks he blames her for what happened. For the way
everything came back."

Dana shot him a bitter glance. "You know Evan you're not
helping. That was private."

"I was there, I saw."

Dana slowly closed her eyes, remembering all the times over
the past week when she had looked up from her work to see her
partner - the friend she thought she knew so well, the friend she
thought she was able to read, if not like a book at least like a
book written in a related language - just sitting at his desk,
staring with the most painfully concentrated expression in those
haunted, hazel eyes. At first she had tried asking him about what
was on his mind, but her asking just increased his anxiety, so she
quit, hoping he would come around in time. Other times he would
shuffle files around on his desk, pick up this one, then that,
resort them, to finally slam them down and jump up to frantically
pace the room. Only after a little while would he even seem to
remember that Dana was in the room. They had had cases before which
made him retreat, silent or irritable or both, but he had always
come to her eventually. This was different, much worse, and it
frightened her. She had been frightened before for his health, for
his life, but never frightened for his sanity as much as this.

Mulder's behavior was no more comprehensible after work. He
seemed to be forcing himself to tolerate her presence. He accepted
food, but from the look of his kitchen, he did not seem to eat much
of it. Dana was frustrated as well as scared for him. Something was
going on within that mind but she did not know what it was.

Skinner sat on the edge of his desk. "Would it do any good if
we got some professional help? Some one not at the Bureau. They
know him at Georgetown."

"As a psychologist, as an interesting research subject because
of his memory, NOT as a patient," Dana retorted. "He has to work
with those people professionally."

"Then what about the place in Pittsburgh I sent you the
brochure on?" Evan asked. "They don't know him there. I interviewed
the head psychiatrist. He has experience with special cases, with
some very intelligent people who sound a lot like Fox. He's very
interested in Mulder's case -"

"He's not a case," she snapped. "He's a very unique person and
I will not have him hurt or humiliated. And what good would that
do, anyway, if he won't talk. It would only antagonize him. He will
sit in the corner and sulk. And what has he really done to deserve
that? Is he dangerous to himself or anyone else? Does he talk to
himself? Is he unable to take care of himself?" Dana paused. It was
getting close. Food did not seem to be high on his list of
priorities. Normally, he was impeccably dressed. Now his clothes
were rumpled and she didn't know what he would do when he ran out
of clean ones. "He won't go willingly and I will not and cannot in
good conscience recommend that he be sent anywhere against his
will."

"Then we are at a stalemate," Skinner was forced to conclude.

Her eyes were a hard brittle blue. "Yes, we are."

"How long are we going to let this continue?" the Assistant
Director asked.

Dana looked at him with a lost expression on her face. Who
could say? Certainly not she, but Skinner had to have something.
Reluctantly, she offered, "I'm thinking about going away." That got
Skinner's attention. Dana looked in Evan's direction. "Dr. Byers
and I have been talking about it."

Evan took it up. "Just a suggestion," he confirmed,
uncomfortably. "It's just that she's always there for him, picking
up the pieces. Maybe if she wasn't, maybe it would help him
recognize how much she is doing for him and how much he is not
doing for himself. It might help him accept the fact that he needs
help."

Skinner nodded grimly. "I raised a teenager once. In those
days they called it Tough Love."

Evan nodded. "They sometimes try the technique with alcoholics
and, occasionally, drug addicts. For - mental illness -" Evan used
the word very carefully "- it's useful only if the patient is aware
that his or her behavior is abnormal. From what Agent Scully says,
Agent Mulder knows there is some problem, otherwise he would not be
trying to hide it from her. Maybe Mulder needs to try to deal with
life without Agent Scully for a few days. Maybe it will make him
realize he needs help. And I think Dana needs the rest."

Dana knew there was more. Evan thought she needed to get away
from the constant reminder of what she perceived as a situation she
had caused. That she needed a clearer view, maybe as much as Mulder
did.

Looking at Scully's face Skinner could see that this was not
a plan that pleased her overmuch. "You wouldn't have to leave
town," he assured her. "You could just stay away."

"It would be too easy for him to find me," she said.

"I could send you away. Give you an out-of-town assignment."

She shook her head, emphatically. "No, I don't want him
blaming the work. I don't want him blaming you. If he is going to
blame anyone, I want him to blame me. He blames me anyway."

"You don't know that," Evan countered, striding towards her
from his place by the wall.

"If I don't know it's because he hasn't spoken more than a
dozen words at a time to me since he 'woke' up in Colorado."

"That's irrational. There's no way that you can be held
responsible for how he would react upon seeing you."

Her gaze was level as she stared bleakly back at him. Her eyes
said what they were all thinking. "That is rather the point, isn't
it?"

Skinner ran a hand over his bald pate. "I know he has no
family in the area. If you decide to do this, let me know and I'll
see that someone keeps an eye on him. Surreptitiously, of course."

"Of course," she replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Before Skinner could react to her tone, his staff assistant
tapped on the door. "Director Gaines has asked to see you if you
have a moment."

Unenthusiastically, Skinner acknowledged the summons. When
Dana and Byers moved to leave he waved them back. "Take your time,"
he told them. "We can continue this when I get back if you need
to."

Dana watched Skinner's back as he departed. She hated the
stealth, the informers. Against your own, it was an insult, but she
did not tell Skinner 'no'. She knew she really would feel better if
someone kept an eye on Mulder if she did indeed go away.

Away?

Dana turned in her chair to face Evan. "What am I thinking? I
can't leave him alone! It would be better if I took him away. Just
the two of us. Somewhere quiet." Her eyes traveled over the office
where they, especially Mulder, had been dressed down for
investigation irregularities more often then Dana could count.
"Away from here, that's for sure."

"Just the two of you? alone?" Evan asked his voice showing
real concern. "Dana I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Why not? He's not dangerous. Mulder would never hurt me. He's
just running. He's scared. I need to take him away from work
because all he wants to do is work, but he's not really working.
It's just an escape from the real problem." She stared into her
lap. Evan came and sat on the chair across from her and took her
hands in his.

"You know him better than anyone. Which way do you feel is
best?"

"I don't know. I only know that I look up from my work or I
walk into the room and I find him staring and there is no one home.
No one. Maybe back there in his brain, but nothing is reaching his
eyes or his face. And I want to take him in my arms and tell him
everything is going to be all right, but I don't know that, do I?"

Dana stood up and walked over to the window of Skinner's
office to look out at the grey, low-hanging winter sky. She could
almost see George Washington University Hospital from this vantage
point even in this weather. She remembered the night and the
morning after she had returned with Mulder to Washington.

Now more than ever, Dana wished she had done it different, had
gone to her friend that night when she had found him crying his
into his pillow. Maybe she could have gotten something out of him
before he had had time to put up his defenses. Now was it too late?
At the very least they had a long, hard road ahead of them.

Evan came over, put an arm around her shoulder, and spoke
softly. "Unless you want to talk with Skinner again I suggest we
get out of here. I pulled out some new case studies you might want
to take a look at."

Dana turned from the grey sky. "Why not."

"And will you come with me to check out that facility in
Pennsylvania?"

After rubbing tired eyes Dana reached for her coat. "All
right, all right, you make the arrangements, I'll take leave."

Mind and body numb, Dana let Evan lead her from the room.

End of Book 1, Chapter 4

=====================================================================
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