JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over 6a/9 by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com) NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but there are some very nice parts in here, too. For Disclaimer see chapter 1 Chapter 6a Lucidity can be fleeting Jake discovered. After the equivalent of only two blocks he could feel the fever back behind his eyes. Closing them felt better, cooler. Besides, he didn't need to see to navigate the freeway's straight and level ground. Clinging to Old Bessie for balance as she rattled among the ruts, the cold breeze battling with the sweat on his body, reminded him of the fever dreams of his childhood which were always filled with other worldly places and discordant sounds. Suddenly the cart stopped and Jake found himself reaching for empty air. Forcing open his hot, tired eyes he saw only darkness until he looked up and up and realized that they had literally come to the end of the road - or just as likely - the beginning. Years before the project had either started or ended here. A vertical wall of dirt and rock rose four stories before him to meet the street level above. Dazed, Jake turned at the sound of soft chiding on Rosa's part. She had already maneuvered Bessie part way up a step track which had been made by many before her in order to allow those on the freeway to reach the 'real' world above. Jake started. "You must be mad!" he croaked. "You can't get that cart up there." "Done it before," the old woman wheezed, "I'll do it again. Now don't go givin' me those patented, sad eyes, child. I'm a tough old bird and I've been rattlin' around these streets before you were born. Take care of yourself first. You're not well. If you make it up before me, then you can turn around and give old Rosa a hand. Now on with you and mind the prickle bushes." Having discarded his dignity days before, Jake crawled up the slope on his hands and knees. His hands reached out for whatever he could find to pull himself along - a buried stone, a hand hold of hard, packed dirt, the rough stem of one of the few thorny bushes. Despite the cold, the fever sweat poured into his eyes. By the time he forced his upper body over the top, his legs quivering too violently to hold him, he had lost his coat. But he had reached the street level, that was the important thing. All his hopes of a quick rescue, however, rapidly crumbled away. The street was totally deserted! Barely on his feet, clinging forlornly to a handy light post, Jake squinted down the empty pavement. To his right he saw chain link fencing from a construction site. On his left a great, silent, grey limestone Federal building gleamed ghostly in the halogen glare. Eagerly he looked from floor to floor but all the offices were dark at this hour. Staring down the silent street again he saw only the alternately red and gold and green glow from the traffic lights that had no traffic at this hour to direct. It wasn't until he concentrated past the construction site that he was able to make out the dark, blocky bulk of a massive building, a building with a wide strip of much lighter stone around it. In that instant he knew where he was. That was the Building Museum with its Civil War frieze. Rosa had been right. He could scarcely believe that it could be so incredibly close. In this town where so much was strange to him the sight of it was almost like seeing the lights of home. Jake found his breath catching in his throat. Damnit he was not going to cry! Instead he remembered Rosa, his strange guide and benefactress. "Rosa, here, let me help you." He reached his hand down the steep path to aid the old woman, thinking to grab hold of Bessie and help drag the cart like a stubborn old mule up the last few feet. Only Rosa's trusty shopping cart wasn't at the top of the path where Jake had expected to find it. Taking a long study of what he could see of the path leading crookedly down into the dark, it appeared to Jake that Bessie wasn't anywhere on the path and neither was Rosa. Perhaps she had never intended to take that path, but had let him think so, so that he would not feel awkward about leaving her. That was her realm below where she had presence and a kind of grace and where she was clearly awarded a kind of respect she would never be granted along the Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues of his country. After standing for a moment on the edge of the eroded path, one hand raised briefly in farewell, Jake turned without further hesitation to face the empty street. From somewhere he found the strength to run though it was not a graceful gait. By the time he stood on the side walk leading to the dark, double front doors of the museum his breath was the loudest sound which could be heard in this silent city. It didn't help that the pain under his ribs had blossomed to include most of his left side which made movement of any kind difficult and yet both were miseries he found he could almost ignore so great was the pure relief he felt to be standing here. Yes, the building was dark, unoccupied, locked for the night, but it was also familiar and had been as much of a home to him as any other in this city for the scant days he had lived here. Lifting his eyes to the band of carved limestone he saw the lines of ragged soldiers. On his first day he had walked around the entire building which was more than a football field in length on each side and he had never found a repeated soldier. Feverish eyes eagerly scanned the contents of the display case beside the door. Though slightly out of date now, the notice he had hoped to find had not yet been removed. "Special Exhibit: The National Building Museum welcomes America's Young Urban Architects." Quivering fingers reached out to touch the glass case. Running along the bottom of the poster were the names of the juried exhibitors. And there was his own name. His name. His world, not the dark and violent place where Fox Mulder lived. The good memories were coming back as if he were emerging from a dark and horrible dream, the second such horror of his life. At least he was finding this time, more quickly than he had after the first, that nightmares do have a way of ending. Two steps and his hands came up to touch the door. He laid his hot cheek against the cold bronze. How he wanted just to rest here beside these walls which was the one tiny island in this huge and powerful city where he felt safe. To lie on this doorstep and sleep was all he desired at that moment. Let them find him in the morning, pick him up and send him home. In the hours between he would just sleep in the cool darkness... Jake's body suddenly jerked, swayed, but stayed upright. To sleep in the dark... Dark... Mulder, was still in the dark and waiting for him! How could he have forgotten... Jake whirled and calling though his voice came out barely above a whisper, "Mama Rosa, help me. Where...?" But, of course, she wasn't there. He was alone. He had forgotten. The old woman had gone her own way as the old tend to do. It didn't matter, though he would have liked to have thanked her and maybe she even knew the way to the FBI as she knew the way to this place. In the end it didn't matter, most likely she would have refused to take him anyway. She probably liked the idea of the Feds even less than police and the voices that spoke to you over telephones. Jake's fevered brain turned over slowly. FBI... where was it? What had Mulder said? Pennsylvania Avenue and ... and what? Some round number. Tenth? Tenth. And this was... Fifth? His tired green eyes, only one of which worked reliably, raised to the street sign on the corner as if to reassure his flagging memory. Yes, this was Fifth. Not so far... Wavering slightly, one arm hugging as always his stomach and lower ribs, Jake forced his legs to carry him down the deserted street. For just a second as he turned towards the east he thought he heard behind him the distant rattle of an ancient shopping cart rolling along the sidewalks. End of Chapter 6a From trevizo@utep.edu Wed Oct 30 02:57:20 1996 I did not write this. Please send all comments to the author at (Windsinger@aol.com). __________ / __ __ \ ( (__) (__) ) --------[[[---------]]]----------------------------------------- -------- JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over 6b/9 by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com) NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but there are some very nice parts in here, too. For Disclaimer see chapter 1 Chapter 6b ******** Mulder shivered more from what the gel foretold than from it's chill. Behind him, still humming, maintaining enough weight on Mulder' calves so that Mulder had no use of his legs for defense, Lawrence zipped down his own pants and then in one practiced motion was up on his victim's back like a stallion on his mare, or a ram on his ewe. For the moment he was just rubbing skin on skin, generating a little excitement for himself. He smiled in evil delight as he entwined one huge hand in Mulder's hair while the other reached around to caress the firm and lightly haired chest. He liked the feel of this one. The huge body began to move faster, then faster still, harder, his breath coming deeper, but not hurried. Oh, no, not yet. Mulder's thoughts were barely coherent through the panic, the hatred. His world had narrowed down to two options. Fight or surrender. Lawrence had said that he liked a good fight. Perhaps it would be better to do so then and let the devil get hot and pumped up all the faster. Then it would be over. Over and done with. Part of his past like so many other horrible things. On the other hand if he went passive and submissive perhaps his tormentor would be turned off and settle for a simple beating. Then Mulder felt Lawrence poised behind him, teasingly close and easily as hard as the man had boasted, and suddenly his options narrowed in crystalline clarity down to one. Mulder bucked with every fiber of his being like a horse determined to rid itself of an unwanted rider. Without effort Lawrence only settled his considerable weight down with greater force crooning softly, "Now there's my little Fed." It was clear Lawrence was more than ready now. He had only to reposition himself after that last series of exhilarating struggles and then he would begin his final assault. So intent in fact was he upon the anticipation of the next few minutes that Lawrence failed to notice that the air in the small, enclosed space which had become close and warm since the con's arrival had in the last few moments begun to chill, and more notably to thicken, as if it were filling with a dense but unseen fog. Alerted by a prickling between his shoulder blades, Mulder was acutely aware of the arrival of the chilling draft and immediately after detected again the unmistakable scent of musk and flowers. What could she want here? Did her appetite run to finding pleasure in observing this kind of torture? At the mere thought Mulder sent a blast of purest rage in her direction. As if in reproof for his faithlessness, an icy pain shot through the length of his body. There was no mistaking her touch though it was not her gentle loving hands he felt this time, nor the fire of her passion, but the merest backlash from her jealous fury. No, she was not here as a voyeur to enjoy the sport. Far from that. Lightening crackled, softly, unseen, thunder rumbled as if from a rapidly approaching summer storm but oddly the sound was low, felt more than heard and almost beyond the ability of a man to hear. But Mulder heard and hearing wished fervently to be just about anywhere at that moment than handcuffed to a pipe in the shell of an old furnace with a sadist on his back and a sensual, avenging spirit hovering far too closely nearby. That was the end of logical thought. Logic had no place here. The heaviness and tension in the air had begun growing at an incredible rate and had become a pounding, pounding in his head. Quickly there followed a return of her chilling touch but this time it stayed becoming a bitter cold which turned his hands and feet to ice. And the cold spread like a creeping glacier numbing his limbs as it crept along its icy path up his legs, into his thighs, down his arms. It flowed on death's cold fingers across his shoulders and down his back, as if purifying all of the places that Lawrence had touched. But there was one hint of grace to this. Just as a man who is freezing to death no longer feels the cold, pain had became a sensation which was far, far away and even farther away was any sense of Lawrence's rough clothes and rougher skin. Amazingly, Lawrence was still oblivious to all of this. So intent was he on his own pleasures that he completely failed to notice the breath of December in the room, the electricity building and growing dangerous in the thick, cloying air about him. Nor was he aware that the skin of his victim had come to more closely approximate that of a corpse than a man over the last minutes. When a convulsive tremor ran through Mulder's body as her cold touch crept near his heart, Lawrence only laughed lightly assuming that his prisoner was simply experiencing arousal from Lawrence's attentions. What further proof did he need of his virility. But SHE was not entertained by Lawrence's immersion in his own lust, and certainly not by his attentions to this one which at least for the moment she considered hers. The temperature in the room plunged another ten degrees in response to her wrath. SHE would be loved or SHE would be feared but SHE would not be ignored nor would she tolerate a transgressor. The thunder which had begun like the slow heavy strokes of huge beating heart now merged to become a steady roaring like the rushing of a mighty river just out of sight, like the ocean plunging in waves against the rocks of home. Sensing something ominous in the change Mulder forced open his eyes. The iron wall of his prison which was within inches of his eyes had begun to move. Feeling what parts of his body he could still feel go rigid, Mulder blinked and stammered with numb lips whatever he could remember in Latin at that moment from his humanities classes and hoped it was a prayer. Couldn't hurt. A black film was emerging from the soot of the walls, the ceiling, the floor. It was the color of ink and the consistency of honey. Mulder cringed as it emerged within inches of his eyes but then, mercifully, flowed off to either side absorbing into other streams like mercury. As Mulder watched fascinated and yet horrified, they twisted themselves within seconds into strands and then into coils of sooty smoke as thick as a man's arm or a woman's all of which slithered out of sight to gather in the shadows. If it were possible, the air in the room became suddenly even heavier, in its way, alive and nearly too heavy too breathe. Scarcely able to feel anything and barely able to hear with the roaring in his head, Mulder was still aware of Lawrence. The man was now swearing and getting rougher. Even he was not totally unaware to what was going on any longer, though all that the icy chill in the room and his victim's sudden detachment meant to him was that it affected his performance. He would have his prize and if he had to let his anger fuel his desire then so be it. To atone for the disappointment he was causing this one would just have to be introduced to some of Lawrence's more creative games in the future. Over the years Lawrence found he had a knack for administering that sort of punishment. But that for later. For now Lawrence was tired of waiting. Another power also sensed his sudden determination to finish this and would have her own say. From the shadows one of the coils of inky smoke struck out as quick and fluid as a snake and closed in - hard - upon that bar of living iron of which Lawrence took so much pride. The man's roar was like the bellow of a enraged bull cut across the belly by the warrior's sharp, bright sword. "What the hell...! Damn you mother-fucker!" Murder flared in Lawrence's eyes brighter even than his agony certainly more than reason which would have told him that his victim was in no position to initiate that sort of an attack. Before the man's monstrous hands could close in to crush and snap his victim's neck, the host of the black coils materialized from all corners of the room and converging with the cold charged air created a storm of which hell would have been proud. Only at the last moment did Mulder see shadowed on the wall above his head two forms, one was Lawrence screaming, the other was an outline of a rearing column of darkness which moved far too quickly for Lawrence or anyone to avoid. A thunder clap exploded like a bomb in the small room and Lawrence was suddenly - gone - the sound of his huge body hitting the farther wall of the furnace shell like a thousand Chinese gongs. Mulder found himself thrown through the air in the opposite direction, not far, for there was nowhere to go, but far enough to end in a burst of shattering pain from a face thrown into the wall and the near dislocation of shoulders and wrists. For long, long seconds the only sound Mulder heard was a deafening silence such as that which follows the crack of the lightening bolt, the only sensation that of freezing in the cutting, brittle snow, the only sight of lights bursting behind his eyes. Boneless, like a discarded toy, Mulder slid back along the crate, falling back in roughly the same position where Lawrence had held him. Though barely conscious, one tiny flame still burned in his brain with questions for which he had no answers. Wearily he turned to see as far over his left shoulder as he was able. Lawrence's flash had shattered at some point during the conflagration but there was still light. A thousands points of phosphorescence glistened like a thousand fire flies over every surface inside the iron cell. By their glow Mulder was easily able to pick out Lawrence's body, now a crumpled and twisted mound, his neck and limbs lying at angles never found in nature except on the dead. There were no shapes at all now to throw shadows upon the wall. Scully was going to love this, Mulder thought shivering violently. More impossibilities for her to try to rationalize. The glittering lights began to dim. As the horrible frozen numbness flowed from Mulder's limbs like water, feeling returned which was not altogether welcome. Mulder blinked trying to shake off a small flow of something slightly warm and sticky that dripped down from where his forehead REALLY hurt. He tried to raise his head, tried to move from this ridiculous position with his hands cuffed above his head and his naked ass still sticking out into the chill of the room, but he had no strength. It seemed that the lights were beginning to fade faster and faster but were those the lights in the room which were fading or the lights inside his head. Both he decided though it scarcely mattered. He was going to lose consciousness. At this point that was inevitable. "You have got to work on your timing," Mulder whispered into the darkness. Gently, a little apologetically, warmth settled over and around him like loving arms. Rest... nothing will harm you. Tired beyond imagining, Mulder gave himself up to the comfort of that warm, healing touch and when it came he embraced the dark. ****** Time moves as it will and not as men would have it. Best then that the lean man forcing his way painfully empty block after empty block did not notice that the sparkle of the stars in the east was gradually fading. He was angry enough but that kept him moving. A cold breeze blew against his aching face, the rough wire of the chain link fence that walled off yet another huge, deserted construction site burned his fingers as he pulled himself, swearing, along another block. Didn't anyone work at night in this city? he wanted to scream into the black sky and he would have if he had had the breath and the strength to spare and if he'd thought that there was anyone out there to hear. Perhaps they all stayed up late celebrating spring like the crowd on the street the evening before. On his five block journey Jake had met with only infuriating disappointment. Within a hundred yards of the Building Museum he found a fire department but a notice displayed on its door announced it would be closed on Tuesdays as a budget move and the public was advised to seek assistance at another location the nearest of which was blocks away. The purely utilitarian structure was totally dark. Must be Tuesday. The window glass covered in places with plywood, the cracked concrete walls and dismal landscaping all pointed to a building, and a city, in a sad state of disrepair. In front of the National Portrait Gallery he found a water fountain in the middle of a small park. His captivity, his fever, the walk had left him parched, but the spigot only gave up the tiniest trickle of its precious fluid. Enough to allow him to wet his grimy fingertip and lick off the few clinging drops but little more. Ironically, Jake had found three public phones - one was out of order, one had its receiver cord cut and the other only took credit cards. Braced against a utility pole to keep himself upright, Jake blinked impatiently waiting for his good eye to focus on yet another street sign. This anger was doing him no good, he told himself. It drained him and he hadn't the strength to spare. It scarcely mattered any more anyway. He was close. Had to be. This was Ninth. He had traveled east far enough. South now. From here he could not help but run into Pennsylvania Avenue. At least there if he fell on his face in the middle of an intersection someone was bound to notice. A stray thought tickled his brain as he forced his leaden legs past another boarded up building, more broken street lights. Maybe he should just walk up to the White House and knock on the front door? He was close enough. Now that might be get someone's attention. Probably the wrong kind, but something. The first block south felt a mile long. There were limitations to his strength and his will and he had exceeded both blocks before. How much father could he go? How much farther would he have to? E street, another street sign said. But how far was Pennsylvania Avenue? Like the other state named streets in D.C., it radiated out at angles from the Capitol like spokes on a wheel, but where any could be expected to cross the square grid of lettered and numbered streets was a riddle that had baffled more than a century of tourists. Across the street a huge building, squatting on what seemed to be an entire city block, caught Jake's weary eye. Sixties modern it was, in an unusually creamy color for poured concrete. Automatically his eyes made sense of its form and design. Not a bad example of its style. The large block-like windows were deeply recessed giving it a dash his professional mind found satisfying. Jake wiped his perspiring forehead on the back of his shirt sleeve. He must really be close to losing it if he was analyzing buildings at a time like this. But the building claimed his attention again or something about the windows did. It came to his mind only slowly what that was. Some were lit. Wonder upon wonders, office lights were burning. Not many but a few. His heart picked up its faltering beat and he scanned up and down the structure for an entrance. The damn place was built like a fortress! One set of stairs was even blocked by a steel barrier, a unoccupied security station and gates guarded the access tunnel to an underground parking garage. Jake took this all in as he hurried awkwardly across the street, in his haste stumbling on the curb. Almost as an after thought he saw posted a small plaque posted at knee level with an arrow pointing up the block to his right. "Hoover Building, E Street Tour Entrance." Hoover! Jake's fingers threatened to crack the concrete barrier he was currently holding onto to keep on his feet. Then he ran, reeling like a drunken man but he ran. Somehow he managed the half block. The concrete steps he took crawling. He threw his body against the double doors and pounded on the dense glass with his fists over and over and over again. The lights were dimmed in the tall lobby, there were signs everywhere listing tour hours and stating 'No Food or Beverages Past this Point', but not a living soul came. Nearly in tears, Jake slipped onto the ground, furious that he hadn't even had the strength to trigger the building's alarm system. Crawling to his feet he kicked at the useless door one final time and turned to find his fury transformed to dismay as for the first time he discerned the faintest greyness of approaching dawn in the east. Damn! Flinging himself recklessly back the way he had come, Jake staggered down the sidewalk following the curve of the building. There had to be a night entrance, a staff entrance someplace! In his frantic haste he took a corner too quickly and a sharp edge of concrete which jutted out from the wall caught him directly on the swollen, aching space under his ribs. In agony he fell writhing to the ground, the lights flickering on and off in his head. As the worst of the pain passed, however, the light in his face steadied and Jake heard a young and slightly unsteady voice. Squinting, he looked up into the face of a young man wearing a uniform. "You hurt?" the security officer asked. Jake found no breath for the moment to speak and could only stare in stunned amazement. Perhaps Washington wasn't a city of phantoms after all. "Are you hurt?" the man repeated. "Do you need an ambulance?" "I need..." Jake began in an entirely unsatisfactory voice, as he searched his feebled brains. The name of the man Mulder told him to ask for, what was it? An odd name. "Sk-Skin...Skinner." "What?" "Call Skinner." The young man shook his head more than a little uneasy in this situation. "Sorry, I just got transferred from Treasury yesterday. I don't know the staff. What I think you need is an ambulance." "No, I need to talk with someone at the FBI." Jake let his head loll back against the sidewalk. He was too tired to try to talk any more, too exhausted to move another step. He hurt, but at least he was no longer alone. That stood for something. The young officer drifted from his sight. In the quiet of the city night even from a distance, Jake could hear the young man make a phone call. Only it wasn't to the FBI! He was calling the police, reporting that they might have need of a team from St. Elizabeth's, the District's psychiatric hospital. Raw panic broke through all. No! He would not let the police have him and send him away to a place where no one would believe his story, where everyone would assume he was crazy. At the minimum there would be delay and the dawn was coming and the dawn could very well bring Mulder a visit from Pete and his sharp little friend Jim. For what he hoped was the last time Jake forced himself to his knees and immediately into a staggering run. As he stumbled away he heard an alarmed shout from the guard. It was a long block. Jake passed another set of stairs with an iron barricade. Frantic despair was settling in as the guard drew closer shouting his urgent demands for the running man in the filthy army fatigues to stop. Jake reached the corner, a broad avenue, and there was even an occasional headlight moving here. Coming up through breaks in the sidewalk in front of the Hoover Building, were three straight rows of young trees. The street lights and the palest silver of dawn tossed their shadows in a distractingly regular pattern onto the ground like the bars of a cell. It was in stumbling away from those confining shadows that Jake found himself at the right angle to see into the corner of a shadowed alcove. There he saw a door whose purpose was identified with the simple words: "Personnel Entrance" in simple white letters outlined in black. Relief providing energy which little else could, Jake sprang for the handle of the door - only to find the entrance locked, accessible only by a passcard at night. Throwing himself and his fists against the glass, Jake roared in frustration just as the young guard came running around the side of the building. The young man was so intent on searching the shadows under the trees that he almost missed Jake who had sidestepped into a shadow of his own. Eyes fevered, face white and glistening with sweat, he stood defiantly with his back against the locked door. The young guard dropped to a crouch, gun carefully raised. "Quiet now," the guard said gently, seeing wild fear more than anything in the glazed eyes. "No one is going to hurt you..." Like an animal Jake drew deeper into the shadowed corner mere steps from the door and there his finger tips clutched helplessly at the brick of the wall behind his back. Within him, strength and will were shattering into a thousand pieces. "Mulder, I'm sorry," he said his lips barely moving. "I'm sorry ... I tried...." Out of nowhere a voice spoke beside him, not the young guard's voice but a different voice, an older voice. Jake spun staring. A guard from inside the building had come to the door in response to the pounding and now opened it, drawing his own gun as he saw that the young security guard facing the entrance had his weapon drawn. "What's going on here?" At the sight of a second gun, Jake had instinctively drawn even further back into his shadow, but then he realized as he stood here hesitating that his last chance was slipping, slipping further away. Half-leaping, half-falling Jake lunged for the partially open door. The security guard outside shouted - something. A command. Already in mid air Jake never heard. The weapon in the young guard's hand fired. End of Chapter 6 From trevizo@utep.edu Wed Oct 30 02:58:58 1996 I did not write this. Please send all comments to the author at (Windsinger@aol.com). __________ / __ __ \ ( (__) (__) ) --------[[[---------]]]----------------------------------------- -------- JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over 7a/9 by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com) NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but there are some very nice parts in here, too. For Disclaimer see chapter 1 Chapter 7a It was a night for bad dreams, Mulder decided, and he was going to wake up from this one. He was. He would wake up and open his eyes to total blackness and the all the aches and pains in his body were going to scream at him for having been cuffed in a cold, clammy iron crematorium in this ridiculous position for who knew how long. It would not be pleasant but at least it would be real. But Mulder had been telling himself this for an eternity, which in real time was probably about ten minutes, and none of this had happened. He had opened his eyes to utter blackness or he thought he had. It was black, that part at least was true, like velvet, but the opening of the eyes part was what he could not be certain of for he could feel... nothing. And the sensation, or lack thereof, was beginning to really turn an understandable fear into total panic. Perhaps he was dead. Relax, he told himself. Take ten deep breaths. Bad idea, don't try that because there was no way of knowing if he had taken even one. He could take a hundred by mistake and hyperventilate and then perhaps he'd die. That was a cheerful thought. Think of something else, Mulder. How about this? Just before Lawrence died a pressure had built up in his ears, in his head, that had been like dropping fifty floors in an elevator only a hundred times worse. THAT he remembered. When that kind of pressure is suddenly released you can get nitrogen narcosis - in layman's terms 'the bends'. Now that you could definitely die of. Back to that subject again, eh, Spook? You have a one-track mind. Concentrate. The only dead person around here will, hopefully, be Breaker Lawrence. Oh, yes, and the black-haired ghost. She was dead and she was certainly around here. Ghost then, not dream? Mulder considered. The explosion had to have been real because Lawrence had been suddenly gone, no longer clinging to Mulder's back like a really bad triple-X rated S&M video. But the explosion had also driven Mulder's own frail bones into the wall of the fire box as if he had missed a turn in a subway station and run at full speed into a train. He should be waking up to a cracked head at least. Until he had passed out after the explosion, there had been some intense and nasty stuff. But that was the problem, wasn't it. There was no pain now. He felt as if he were floating in a black pool, cuddled within a womb, safe and warm - and he found the entire experience intolerable. Being safe and warm and without pain wasn't so bad until he had decided to wake up and found he couldn't. Mulder didn't like cages even if the cage was a pleasant one. "Listen" Mulder called in his mind instantly feeling uneasily like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol addressing the Ghost of Christmas Present. "Don't do this. Don't protect me, not like this. If Pete comes, don't you dare leave me like this!" The image of Pete with his experience of eradicating the lusting impulses of a few hundred male sheep was not one Mulder cared to dwell upon. His next plea was stronger, tinged with panic that was in full surge now. "I need you to listen to me! I have to be able to fight!" The womb contracted a little, like a mother's arms reassuring a frightened child bringing disturbingly physical memories of the exquisite pleasure earlier that night. Mulder's temper erupted, he would not be coddled! "DAMN YOU, LET ME GO!!!" He screamed in his mind appending a few dozen expletives he thought a spirit would care a wit about. There was suddenly a vision in his mind of a peevish expression on the face of a black-haired sprite. She didn't like her will being thwarted, even by him. Very well, the black eyes seemed to say, you may have what you want. Exactly what you want. And she did. In the space of one heart beat she ripped away the velvet cocoon. Mulder could only compare it to the times when, lying lazily warm on a cold winter morning under a huge pile of quilts, Sam used to come and jerk off every one. After she'd let the window stand open for five minutes, of course. Only this time instead of sudden, heart-stopping cold there was sudden heart-stopping pain. Pain. Pain that almost sent Mulder spiraling down into his own private dark from the shock, pain such that for a second he thought that Pete must certainly have already come, that the deed the little man had threatened was done. No little Mulders in his future, not even the sad solace of lonely Friday nights with just himself and his video collection and his good right hand. Only after time and with concentration did the pain begin to sort itself out. The suddenness of it after the lack of all sensation had just been more than his stressed nerves were willing to bear. He was, he had to sadly admit, in exactly the same position he had been in when Lawrence had suddenly left him -- kneeling with his upper body stretched out over the wooden crate, his arms shackled to the wall above his head. From having had half of his weight dragging on his shoulders for hours, the cramps in those muscles were the worst. His head throbbed from its impact with the wall. Added to that, somehow the skin of his wrists had become raw from the cuffs. Lawrence and Pete may even have sharpened the edges of the metal. Sadistic bastards! Mulder felt cut in half where the box edge was biting across his stomach and his lower back was screaming in protest for having been arched in the completely wrong direction for far too long. From having knelt on the rough, cold, metal floor, his knees ached like no ache Mulder had ever felt before all the way up into his thighs. How did the old Catholics manage it? Finally, there was the cold on the flesh of his buttocks sticking out unprotected and still gelled to Lawrence's taste. Mulder was not likely to forget either that the front side was as equally exposed. Having taken stock, and a pretty poor inventory it was, Mulder began to unwind his cramped and blood-starved muscles and joints. One muscle group at a time was stretched and straightened. Somehow by grasping the chains of the cuffs in his hands, he was able to pull himself to a sitting position on the box. His back against the wall, his arms now cuffed at a height even with his head, naked ass on the rickety pine -- oh, joy, splinters -- Mulder drew up his legs so that his feet were on the seat of the box. It was awkward especially with his long legs, but all in all his exposed flesh felt considerably less vulnerable than before. Besides, from this angle, even with his pants pulled down around his knees, he was in a better position to lash out at knee or groin, chest or throat. More blackness, more dripping water, a considerable amount of dripping now, and shivering all the way to the bone. That was all that was left now - that and the waiting. Mulder hated waiting but as he resigned himself to it he did have one grim consolation - that when Pete did come he would be hard pressed to find anything to cut. Mulder had no doubt that his family jewels had, in self preservation, taken a dive for his abdominal cavity if only for the warmth. Mulder did not have to wait long. Not this time. As if on cue, the familiar rusty creaking of the furnace door announced Pete's arrival. A pale, thin greyness came in through the open door that could only be natural light. The interminable night had passed and dawn had come. Mulder grasped the chains of the cuffs in his fists and tensed. "Larry, you in there?" Pete's cheery, rested voice rang out. "Come on, we got us an operation to perform." From the twisted heap of arms and legs out of the way to the left of the open door, Lawrence didn't answer. This Mulder hadn't thought about. What would Pete do when he found his partner dead? To augment the feeble light the harsh beam of a yellow flash shot across the dark space from the open door and struck the prisoner. Blinking, Mulder managed to make out Pete's form silhouetted behind the flash. The small man hadn't tried to crawl in but huddled in the low doorway and clearly his eyes were only for his prisoner huddled on the box in the corner, white knees showing above the dark line of his pulled down slacks. "Thought he'd be here, guess he's been and gone," Pete dryly chuckled. "What did he do, teach you a few things about your new 'position' in life and then take off to find himself a bottle to celebrate? Damn it, I need him because I don't suppose you'd be willing to lie still for this." Mulder responded by staring directly back with an expression of venomous hatred. Not for a second did he let his eyes flicker towards the crumbled body in the corner. Until Pete actually put his head inside the furnace he couldn't see Lawrence's body and Mulder didn't want to give him any reason to be suspicious. "Hmmm, I can see you're not too thrilled about our plans. Truth is, you couldn't stay still even if you were willing to. I ain't gonna use any of that an-es-the-tic. That would take the fun out of it. Well, I don't have to wait for him. He'd probably be useless anyway after his celebratory bottle. I'll just call on a couple of guys I know upstairs who've got more bulk than brains. They'd probably enjoy the experience." The dark form in the doorway began to pull away. "Now don't you go away. Ya hear?" Pete joked. "I'll be right back. Jim and me, we're just itchin' to begin." The flash switched off and, as Pete swung the stiff door nearly shut, the inky dark returned. Mulder jerked savagely in response on the handcuff chains. He wanted to fight. Instead he felt so damn helpless! But there was help. The scent was suddenly there all around him, thick and sickly sweet with the flowers, heavy with the undertone of musk and over all of her. Mulder greeted with a mixture of both relief and dread.He had thought the pressure of the air, of her gathering terrible anger was bad before, it appeared far faster this time and was a thousand times worse. The rapidly expanding pressure in his ears forced a sharp gasp of pain from Mulder's gaping mouth. He had the impression of her flinging wide her arms in her wrath as if she were furious that she had lost her prey when Pete had not actually entered the tomb. She had known! Mulder realized struggling to breathe, to think through the growing agony in his head and in his chest. She had known that Pete was coming and that was why he had awakened enclosed in that dark cocoon. She had meant to protect him from what he experienced when Lawrence died. Clever man, came her thoughts approvingly. You could have bloody told me! The biting lash of the storm was like a bludgeon pounding his body. It was clear that she had expanded her vengeance beyond his cell. He could sense it by the heavy metallic booming and groaning of tortured metal, like horrible thunder, which not only came from Mulder's prison but from the other furnaces in the low outer, every one stressed almost to breaking by the tense pressure of the storm. Will you let me protect you now? she admonished him over the thunder. Mulder merely clamped his jaw down hard and huddled into a tighter ball. Men! And he felt her cloak of numbing warmth begin to wrap snugly about his limbs. Beyond where he huddled on Lawrence's very insubstantial crate of splintery boards, her anger raged, but he sat in the eye, sheltered, shielded from all that fury. The last sound he heard before the womb closed shut around him was a thin, horrified wail from Pete that sounded far, far away. End of Chapter 7a From trevizo@utep.edu Wed Oct 30 03:00:07 1996 I did not write this. Please send all comments to the author at (Windsinger@aol.com). __________ / __ __ \ ( (__) (__) ) --------[[[---------]]]----------------------------------------- -------- JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over 7b/9 by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com) NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but there are some very nice parts in here, too. For Disclaimer see chapter 1 Chapter 7b ******** Raising her head for the second time that night from the pillow of her arms on her desk, Dana took longer than she should have to wake from a groggy sleep. Fumbling with the receiver, pushing back tangled hair, she eagerly answered the call, but the voice that spoke to her was not Mulder's or even Skinner's. It was an older voice, slow, unhurried, almost apologetic. It was the night guard at the Ninth Street Employee's Entrance. "Agent Scully, I'm sorry to disturb you, but one of the District's finer citizens just caused a commotion outside and then stumbled in here and passed out on our floor. Nine-one-one said they'll have a long delay before they can get any ambulance here and asked if we had anyone who could hold the fort until their arrival. I thought of you when I saw from the screen that you were still in the building. Sorry, this one really is a mess. From the way he was acting, he's probably on PCP or something." Dana ran a hand over her face trying to wake up. "What have you done for him?" she asked her thoughts still a little muddled. "Well, at the moment, we're standing with our weapons pointed at his back just in case, though he's out cold. Breathing though." Well, that was a relief, Dana thought. She didn't want a corpse on her doorstep tonight of all nights. She pushed back her chair and by feel hunted in the knee space down by her feet for the tackle box of medical supplies she brought on cases for Mulder, the size of the normal Doctor's bag not proving to be adequate. "All right, give me a couple of minutes and I'll be there. Assistant Director Skinner is also in the building. You'd better inform him too if you think there's a possibility that our visitor may become violent and if he's going to be staying with us for a while." The guard rang off. Without enthusiasm Dana took the tackle box in hand and headed for the door. Only at the top of the stairs did her head begin to clear. This was all she needed tonight, a druggie to have to deal with. The stairwell door closed behind her and Dana walked slowly for a moment across the echoing deserted lobby as her thoughts came together. It was an odd coincidence to have a strange man wander into the FBI just now when they had the police alerted and dozens of agents out combing the city for a man who was likely lost and a stranger in their city. Mulder didn't believe in coincidences and in most situations Dana had to agree with him. Dana began to run. Her low pumps sliding a little on the polished floor Dana came to a halt inside the employees' entrance foyer. More than a dozen people had gathered, probably staff just arriving for early morning shifts who had lingered to see if they could help and just because human nature was human nature even in the FBI headquarters. So many of the curious were there that, initially, Dana couldn't see their visitor, though she could smell him. He smelled like a sewer. That better not be Mulder in disguise, she thought, or she wouldn't let him near her for a week. That actually wasn't true but she'd never let him know that. Murmurs increased in volume around her, there was a shifting of bodies, and finally a pathway opened. A man was lying face down at her feet. The man was tall and lean and dressed in filthy army camouflage fatigues. His face was turned from her but the body size and hair color were right and the top of the long, slender hand spread out limply on the floor looked so familiar that Dana's heart began to pound wildly. Dana dropped down on her knees and began checking for a pulse at wrist and jaw. It was weak and a bit unsteady but without a doubt he lived. The hand was ice cold and the skin on his throat too warm. "Gently," Dana ordered, "help me turn him over." The entrance guard who had phoned her leaped to assist after putting his gun safely on. Another employee also bent to the task. "If there had been an ambulance available, would you have sent this man away without calling me?" she snapped to the guard as he stooped beside her. Confused, the man's mouth opened slightly but he said nothing, not able to comprehend her sudden anger. As they waited for the second man to get into position, Dana noticed Skinner's gleaming pate just entering through the crowd. He must have had the same suspicion as she because he had come just as he had crawled off his office couch - no tie, white, wrinkled dress shirt barely tucked in. Taking in the figure on the floor the lines on his face deepened with worry. Dana found herself glaring up at him in a way she had never allowed herself to do in public before. "We informed all of the hospitals, all of the fire departments and all of the law enforcement agencies in the District to look out for this man and we don't inform our own people?" she accused. Jaw tightening, Skinner moved to the side of the young security guard who stood just inside the doorway, his gun still out and ready in case the unconscious man should suddenly awaken and start causing trouble. "I hope you didn't fire that thing at anyone, mister," Skinner inquired, a slight growl of displeasure in the back of his voice Quailing more than a little before this older man of obvious position and training, the young guard slowly put his weapon away. "Only in warning, sir." "Only in warning," Dana repeated in ire as she and her two volunteers prepared to turn the unconscious man. The young guard swallowed. "Sir," he began to the clearly furious former military officer beside him, "this man was acting very oddly when I encountered him outside. I thought he might be psychotic - " "Psychotic? Really? What made you think so? Did he say anything which would lead you to that diagnosis?" "Say anything? Not much. He might have been looking for someone. Is there someone here called 'Skin' or 'Skinner'?" The Assistant Director made a gesture of irritation. "I'm A.D. Skinner," Skinner said voice dripping with irony, "and thank you for your very prompt attention in this matter. We'll have words later after I've read your very thorough report on this incident." Turning swiftly, Skinner found himself startled in a way few events in his life had ever been able to do. With help Dana had gotten the man on the floor turned over onto his back. The face was chillingly familiar though the combination of days of beard, dirt, dried blood, bruises and the swollen eye would have made the figure unrecognizable to anyone who did not know him well. Dana had opened the shirt. Underneath were the remnants of another shirt, even dirtier, whose color and striped pattern seemed to be the same as that she had seen in the kidnapper's photographs. She was rapidly checking for injuries. "Who is it?" Skinner asked gently. Dana knew. She had sensed it from the first second but, needing confirmation, her hands quickly pushed away the ruined clothing and moved to the left shoulder. Smooth, unbroken skin, no neat round scar from the bullet from her gun. Her expression was a mixture of relief, concern and grief as she gave her report. "This is Jake Simmons." Skinner's jaw tightened at the news. With no word from Mulder all day and night, he was as aware as Dana of what this meant. He stared down at the man on the floor. "Can he be moved?" "I'd say, yes," Dana said after taking a moment to consider. "If what the guards say is accurate, he did walk in here, generally speaking." Skinner glared around at the crowd now. "Well don't just stand there. Let's see six of you put those first aid courses you're required to take to some use and get this man to the infirmary." With only a moment's hesitation, six of the arriving morning staff hastily handed coats and brief cases to companions and linking hands under the downed man's body smoothly lifted him. As Dana followed the group, her mind was spinning furiously so that even before the six had carefully laid their burden on the examining table in the Bureau's well stocked infirmary she was on the phone. "Lina?" Dana asked. Lina Anu was the night supervisor in the evidence lab. "Dr. Scully, you're either working very early or very late." "A bit of both. Lina, I need a Class one trace evidence team in the infirmary -" Dana looked over her shoulder where Skinner was standing protectively by the unconscious man. "- and I need it STAT." "The infirmary?" the woman's voice with the soft Indian accent asked incredulously. "That is what I said. Can I have it?" "For you Agent Scully, always and with bells on. We're just beginning to overlap shifts here anyway." Within five minutes six agents and two evidence clerks were at the infirmary door. Dana had already covered Jake's eyes with a light wrapping of two inch gauze. Better he should open his eyes to a white fog than to wake up seeing six intense faces hovering over him all holding plastic evidence bags or bottles and going at his body with tongs, finger print tape, cotton swabs and eye brow tweezers. The fact that the gauze wrapping went a long way towards hiding his resemblance to a certain, still missing special agent didn't hurt either. A graceful Indian woman entered first, her face serenely professional showing no aversion to the intensely disgusting scent rising from the form on the examining table. She went first to the left hand lying alongside the lanky male body and began inspecting the nails. Dana knew Lina Anu had a thing about nails. Almost as soon as she had lifted the hand, the slender, young woman dropped it with a tiny shriek of surprise. "It moved!" Dana looked up from her own examination of the bumps, bruises and caked blood on the skull under the hair, hair distractingly like Mulder's except for it being finer and a little longer. "Good," Dana said simply. "I mean he's alive!" Scully allowed herself a tiny smile. "This is an infirmary after all, Agent Anu, and not an autopsy bay in case you haven't noticed. Now could you all get on with it. This is Mr. Jake Simmons of Portland, Oregon and if in the next hour he's unable to tell us where he's been, another man's life may depend on our being able to figure that out without his help." After that the atmosphere in the room changed dramatically.. It was always a relief for the lab team to have a chance to work on a 'live' one for a change. Lina raised a sharp pair of clean shears. "I need to take some clothing samples. Any instructions? Restrictions?" Dana hesitated only a moment before pulling out two clean trash bags from the infirmary's storage cabinet along with a blanket. "Take everything," Dana decided quickly as she finish the unbuttoning of the two shirts which she had started earlier. She didn't dare look in Skinner's direction who was leaning against the wall in the far corner of the little room trying to keep out of the way and let his specialists work. "Take everything?" Lina asked in astonishment. "Well, I don't want them here. Take the lot." Within thirty seconds the lean male figure was stripped, each section of his body discretely covered as it was revealed. The sight of the draped and solitary figure was so disturbing that Dana felt a sudden overwhelming need to provide him with some privacy. Mulder would have been embarrassed to his bones by the probing, poking crowd. As if sensing Agent Scully's silent wish, the team began to vanish one by one as efficiently as they had entered until only Dana and the Assistant Director were left. "I've seen some movement," Skinner observed. "Do you think it's safe to rouse him?" Dana frowned at the reading on the temperature probe. "He has a fever, low blood pressure and from the feel of his skin I'd say he's dehydrated. I'll hazard some smelling salts but that's all for the moment." But neither Skinner's commanding voice asking questions nor the sharp, pungent smell from the broken ampule brought any response from Jake other than a slight fluttering from his good eye, an uneasy shifting under the blanket, and a soft incoherent moan. Dana had pulled out a bag of Ringer's Lactate, a safe volume expander of sterile saline and other electrolytes, and thoroughly scrubbed the side of one lean hand. The dirt and soot came off in rivulets. As she swabbed the large surface vein on the side of his hand with alcohol, she was struck with a sudden deep sadness. Poor Mulder had been hospitalized so many times that the sight of his knobby, much-probed veins sent phlebotomists into a sweat. Jake's veins were smooth and unbroken. "Agent Scully?" came Skinner's concerned voice. Realizing she had been staring at that hand which was so like Mulder's and that vein which was so unlike for too long, Dana shook herself, smoothly slid the needle into the skin and thumbed the gauge on the bag of saline for a fast flow. All the while she kept staring at that hand, not daring to look at her supervisor. "He'll feel a lot better once we get his blood pressure up." "What can we do now?" Skinner asked, his voice several tones softer than usual. "I just called the police. An ambulance is still at least half an hour away." Dana stood back and studied the silent form all except for the face. She wondered if she dare look at that face which, without the gauze wrappings over his eyes, would be too much like Mulder's. That would hurt her heart in ways she refused to think about. "I've got the saline coming pretty quickly. Someone should be gently manipulating his legs and arms to help his circulation and we need to get rid of some of this dirt so I can finish assessing his injuries." Skinner began rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. "Sounds like a bath to me." "Sir?" Dana's shocked turn of the head lit her supervisor's face with an expression of the mildest expectation which was the closest he ever allowed himself to a smile. "What's wrong? Do you think I never bathed any of my men in the field hospital? More often than you can possibly imagine and most far worse than this. Believe me, he'll thank us for not having to wake up little better than one of the untouchables." Dana swallowed. For Mulder she'd done this cleaning ritual several times but the thought of Skinner helping boggled the mind. Worse still was the fact that in a way she was doing this for Mulder, and yet was not doing it for him. To know he was still out there somewhere was hard. Knowing Mulder he'd be in danger, that went without saying. With sun up fast approaching and the words of the kidnapper's note screaming in her mind, Dana wasn't sure she could do this. "If you're worried about propriety, either yours or mine, you can be my chaperon and I can be yours," Skinner reassured her. That comment and the twinkle in her boss's eye got Dana moving towards the sink as Skinner threw open cabinets looking for what they might need. Skinner's professional yet matter-of- fact attitude was like a balm over Dana's initial hesitation and soon she was deep in sponges and water, soap and towels. They didn't speak except that her lips moved automatically as she enumerated Jake's injuries. As the soot and dirt and worse rolled off, leaving patches of black and green and yellow and red skin among the white, Dana felt her eyes burning. Skinner's expression was also becoming gloomier and gloomier. An elbow he was cleaning refused to come clean. Another bruise. Dana was shaking her head as she bent over the damaged left eye. It was blood shot still, but with care and time it should heal cleanly. An x-ray wouldn't hurt when they could get one, but at least the bones in that area of the skull were thick. "It never ceases to amaze me how inhuman human beings can be," Skinner mused sadly. "How many times and for how long did they beat this poor man?" He didn't expect an answer and Dana couldn't trust herself to give one. She had finished washing the architect's face and had decided to give him a much needed shave, more than anything so she could get a better look at some of the deeper cuts and abrasions on his face Rinsing off the lather she saw for the first time ... Mulder. The resemblance had always been there but she had told herself that once cleaned up and shaved the differences would become more apparent, but this was her friend's likeness in almost every detail. Despite the cuts and bruises and the swollen eye, the perfect duplication was almost spooky. Skinner's eyebrows raised as she stepped back, startled. He, too, had noticed. They continued to work, cleaning down the long legs. There was, of course, no scar on the upper thigh where the gunshot under the white cross had almost cost Mulder his life. There was a long scar on one knee Mulder didn't have. Most likely from orthoscopic surgery following a sports injury, Dana suspected. The Assistant Director held the man on his side, supporting the head, while Dana cleaned the architect's back, down below his waist and then some. When she was finished she generously spread a soothing, bactericidal ointment over the inflamed buttocks. Skinner shrugged as he let the figure back down. "He has nothing to be ashamed of. I did it myself in Nam more than once - we all did - and we volunteered for that little carnival. He didn't." Dana took her patient's temperature again. She thought she had noticed a change. The liter of below body temperature saline inside and the cooling effect of the sponge bath outside had practically dissipated Jake's fever. There was moisture on his lip and in fact, there was the slightest bit of gooseflesh on his arms and legs. Quickly Dana got another blanket. "When he wakes up he's going to be cold. I can finish here, can you find clothes somewhere for him?" Skinner dried his hands and pulled down the cuffs on his wrinkled shirt as he headed for the door. "I dare say I can find something that will fit. I'll also get a map of the city. If he walked here, he can't have come far." He paused in the doorway to tuck in his shirt and roll down his shirt sleeves. It didn't help much, but he did have an image to protect. Dana nearly smiled. She knew where Skinner would head first, to the clothes Mulder had left in the little storage room less than twenty-four hours before. "I've got to hand it to you, Mulder," Dana murmured as she finished washing the area just under the rib cage, "no one else could have brought back their man in so short a time. Now just bring yourself back." Frowning, she bent to examine the swollen upper abdomen which she had almost missed under all the dirt. There was bruising here as well as swelling. Although she pressed it gently, the man on the bed writhed. Dana liked this not at all. Only now at the end did Dana attempt to wash the genitals. Somehow she just had not wanted to do this in front of Skinner. Her discomfort vanished to professional interest as she studied the condition of the blackened wound on the section of the foreskin where the kidnappers had cut and obviously cauterized their handiwork. "Will I live?" came a familiar, soft voice from above her. End of Chapter 7 From trevizo@utep.edu Wed Oct 30 03:02:13 1996 I did not write this. Please send all comments to the author at (Windsinger@aol.com). __________ / __ __ \ ( (__) (__) ) --------[[[---------]]]----------------------------------------- -------- JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over 8/9 by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com) NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but there are some very nice parts in here, too. For Disclaimer see chapter 1 Chapter 8 A wide smile on her face as she straightened up from her examination, Dana took a step towards the head of the table where one large green eye was opened drowsily in her direction. "It's not pretty, so you might want to see a very discrete plastic surgeon when you get back home, but from what I can see ninety percent of what you had is still where it should be, Mr. Simmons." The eye closed and Jake's breath came out in a sigh of blissful relief. Someone knew his name. He was not nameless, abandoned, any longer. "Please," came the voice so tired it was barely audible, "call me 'Jake'. Mr. Simmons was my father." Suddenly, the uninjured eye opened again but so wide that even the swollen one showed a glimmer of light. "Where am I?" There was such a dire need in his expressive face, both hope and dismay at once, that Dana found herself gently stroking the broad forehead, touching it with more gentleness than she would ever have dared to do to Mulder unless he was unconscious. "The FBI. You made quite an entrance. You nearly got yourself killed." Jake barely heard the woman's words. At her gesture his eyes had closed automatically like a contented pet. This was a woman, a beautiful and obviously caring and intelligent woman and her touch was like that of an angel. How blissful this felt after Lawrence's hands and Pete's and the months and months of his solitary existence before that. For a man who loved women, who adored the touch and smell and feel of them, this touch on his skin was like sheer magic. A wave of physical pleasure washed through him that was shockingly arousing considering his condition otherwise. Dana had misread his reaction. To her the injured man seemed to be fading out again and that was the last thing she wanted. "Jake, please, I need you to stay with me here. I said you're at the FBI, in our infirmary. The guards nearly shot you." He heard her this time, her words and the urgency in her voice that went beyond words. His brow clouded with that worry and pain that the photograph taken at his fiance's funeral had captured, the photograph that reminded her so of Mulder. "We have to go," he told her. "We have to help Agent Mulder." Even though Jake could not say that any muscle actually moved, the face of the woman standing over him lit up at his words with an almost spiritual glow. He had clearly said something right. "Relax, we will. Agent Mulder did take your place, then?" The eyes were darkly apologetic. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to, but he was insistent." "He wouldn't have had it any other way. Can you just tell us where he is?" she asked earnestly. Jake reached out for the bit of information, for the address Mulder had drilled him on, the connecting streets, but he had been so intent on just getting here... A spasm of alarm struck the familiar face. Dana was startled. It was a kind of panic she never saw from Mulder who would have kept it all inside. "What is it?" she asked. "I-I forget... No, no, it's there, I know it is I'm just a little groggy - I walked so far." Disappointment can be like a sword sometimes, but Dana seized on what she could. "You walked the whole way here from where you were held in your condition? Then it can't be that far. Can you remember landmarks?" The brow creased, but after several second he shook his head. "I'm sorry. It's like a dream." Be calm, warned Dana's rational side. He's understandably disoriented. But Mulder doesn't have time! She didn't need a window in this room to know that the edge of the sun must be nearing the horizon by now if not already over it. "Give yourself a few minutes," she forced herself to say with patience she did not feel. "Assistant Director Skinner has gone to get a map and some clothes for you." Jake made a feeble attempt to rise. His body hurt everywhere but especially that spot above his stomach under his lower ribs. Dana reached for those broad shoulders, assisting his struggle to sit up which he could not have managed on his own. "You shouldn't try to get up. You have bleeding there, a little at least. An ambulance is on the way." A thin smile came to the lips she knew, a smile that couldn't hide what it was costing him to try to move. "I need to wake up so I can think, besides - and I know they never show this in the movies - but I honestly believe I could think better if I could use your facilities. I feel like I've been holding it for days." Despite everything, that made Dana smile. "Creature comforts. Believe me, I've been in some bad situations and I understand completely. The restrooms are just around the corner in the hall. But first sit on the side of the table while I take out this IV." The bag of saline was about empty anyway and his movements were too awkward for him to be allowed to move around with a needle in his hand. Besides, this would give her a chance to see if he could sit without falling over before she let him try to stand. As she worked, Dana was all too aware of his eyes on her, one wide, the other slitted open, but both penetrating, evaluating, the way a man looks at a woman he finds attractive. It was all Dana could do to keep her hands and her voice in control. "When you feel steady I'll help you. I don't want you fainting on me and suing the pants off the FBI." That statement made them both distinctly aware that Jake was wearing only a blanket and that item had slipped badly until it was barely covering his hips. Casually, he picked up the end of the cloth and tucked it in loosely low around his waist. No boyish embarrassment here as Mulder would have shown, even if most of Mulder's reaction, Dana had always suspected, was for her benefit. "Thank you for getting rid of those clothes and cleaning me up." Before she was ready he was reaching out an arm for her shoulders and she realized that he had no qualms whatsoever about using her to help himself off the table. In a second his feet were on the floor and his entire naked chest pressed up against hers. Dana found she couldn't move. Mulder never allowed himself to enjoy physical contact, not like this. It was as if their relationship was built on spirit and air, but this Jake had almost wiggled into her arms, seeming to crave the body to body contact as much as he needed her strength. He was relaxed and comfortable in her arms, not tense the way Mulder always seemed to be. She found herself staring into his eyes only inches away from her own. Somehow, her shock must have conveyed itself to him. "I-I'm sorry," he said but made no move to remove himself. "Am I embarrassing you?" "Ah, well, no, not exactly." "I thought nurses were used to this sort of thing, after all you cleaned me up." He inclined his head towards his lower extremities. "All of me." "I'm not the nurse," Dana corrected him, without the least rancor. "Oh." Something about the way she had been trying not to look at him transmitted itself across their skin. For the first time he stiffened in her arms though not much. "Oh, my gosh, you're the girlfriend." Dana stared. "Excuse me?" "You're Mulder's girlfriend?" Warm already from his closeness, Dana felt a pleasant burning spreading all the way through her body that was so poignant it was painful. "To my knowledge Mulder doesn't have a girlfriend." Almost against her will she asked, "Did he tell you he did?" This petite and lovely woman's obvious confusion made Jake slightly uneasy but he liked the feel of her arm around him, of her strong, small body, the smell of her hair. It had been SO long. I am out of it right now, he thought. Way too vulnerable. Still this was too nice and he didn't want to give up this feel of her until he had to. "He said he had 'sort of a girlfriend'." Dana felt herself blush, her heart had picked up its tempo until it beat with a warm, unnatural rhythm. "He said 'Sort of a girlfriend?'" Dana realized how stupid she was sounding repeating everything he said. Perhaps she had better start by clearing up some misunderstanding here. "I'm Special Agent Dana Scully, pathologist. Though my patients are on the whole farther gone than you, they called me when you 'dropped in'. I'm also Agent Mulder's partner." A twinkle came into the eyes so close to hers that he looked for a moment almost exactly like Mulder on a roll. "Partner, almost girlfriend, same thing right?" Dana swallowed, wanting to pull away and yet not wanting to. He was physically weak, she told himself. He needed her there to prop him up and keep him from falling. But it was more than that, he definitely did not want to be separated from her and even leaned into her more comfortably. Like Mulder he wanted her there, but unlike Mulder he could enjoy this physical sharing which she and Mulder had denied themselves. Surprised at herself, Dana realized that she didn't want to lose this either. This is the way Mulder would feel, she told herself if they touched this way. This is the way he would be if the tragedy of Samantha and his family and the grief and the guilt and the coldness had not stripped away from him most normal human reaction. It was with painful longing that Dana enjoyed the relaxed male-hard leanness of Jake. She could easily imagine him in bed with his lovers, entwined for hours even when both slept. This was a snuggler - most definitely. And the greatest sadness of all was the thought that Mulder may never know that sweet physical abandon with her or anyone. Dana became aware that Jake was staring at her as if he could read everything going through her mind. "I'm sorry, did I let the cat out of the bag?" "No, I mean yes, I mean, we don't have that kind of a relationship. We don't touch like this." He was bent down so she could take part of his weight which brought his face very close to hers, his lips gently parted as if he was within a breath of kissing her. "You should. He's a good man. I didn't want him to take my place. I told him to go and come back for me and not the other way around. I have no one now. I told him he wasn't making a very good trade." "Mulder wouldn't have had it any other way." Not moving away, those familiar lips smiled all so gently and it was a easy smile, unconscious and without Mulder's sarcasm behind it. "A man of honor, eh?" "In his way, always." Jake looked into the lovely face before him, strong and intelligent, beautiful and loyal. This one knew her place in the world, was planted solidly in the earth. She would not go running after - after whatever Alex had been looking for. Whatever that was. What Jake was still trying to figure out. If they were too late, this one would be left alone, but she would go on, wounded and alone for a little while, but she would go on. And he would have taken him from her. That was when he kissed her, soft and deep and loving, the way Dana had always wished to be kissed, lasting just long enough - not too short, not ridiculously long. A perfect kiss. It left her literally breathless in a way Dana thought only heroines in Romance novels ever experienced. "That's for Mulder," Jake whispered. "Just think of me as a sort of a stand in." Then he briskly kissed the tip of her nose. "And that's for me. You looked like you needed to be kissed. I know I needed it." That broke the mood, sending an uncomfortable blush rising up Dana's throat and onto her face. Hastily, she cleared her throat. As she did so, she felt them mutually separating, not enough that anyone watching could tell, but it was clear that a moment had come and gone. "Look, Mister, do you need to see to your bodily functions or not? Assistant Director Skinner will be back any moment with your clothes." "An Assistant Director? I'm impressed. And it's Mulder's clothes he'll be bringing I take it?" Jake asked lightly. "Right, Mulder's." "Help me stagger to the bathroom then. That kiss went a long way towards waking me up. I have a map to read." Skinner arrived less than two minutes later with a District map and some of Mulder's sweats. "I hope that's a clean set," Dana teased. Her comment and finding her standing guard outside the men's washroom brightened even Skinner's face who vanished inside with the clothes to reappear less than three minutes later supporting Jake. Wearing those familiar clothes and with hair and face slightly dripping as if he's tried to put his head under the faucet, Jake looked so much like Mulder after one of his morning runs that Dana felt the ground sway under her feet. Luckily, however, all he had on his mind at that moment was business. A thirty second examination of the map was all it took for the three to pinpoint the area where he had been held even though Jake could still not remember all of the address. Fourth Street and - something - but more importantly he brightened to see the dashed lines marking the uncompleted 'freeway' on the map along with the tracks from Union Station. Jake remembered hearing and sometimes even feeling the vibration of the trains. That and the description of the two block square area of concrete that was cleared of buildings across the street from an old yellow apartment house and the directions were clear enough for Skinner. As the Assistant Director was rounding up forces, neither he nor Dana would dare risk an assault in that area of the city without extensive backup, Dana sat with a pale, bruised, and quickly tiring Jake near the guard's door he had come in through. There was no mistaking the resemblance to 'Spooky' Mulder now even though Skinner had found him a baseball cap from somewhere which Jake had pulled down over his eyes. They sat waiting for the ambulance, Jake wrapped in the blanket over Mulder's clothes against the draft. He leaned back in his seat allowing his head to rest against the wall, eyes closed. The fact that he was also partially leaning against her had not escaped either of them. "I want you to go straight to the hospital," Dana whispered to him, ignoring the startled looks from the other agents as they entered to start their shifts. "Not till you find Agent Mulder," he responded firmly. "I can't be sure of my directions until I actually see the building." "Jake, I think you have some internal bleeding. Something's bruised at the very least. Probably your spleen. If it ruptures completely you could go into shock." Gently she touched the spot as if to bring her point across. A sharp hiss escaped his dry lips. "It's held together for the past few days, it can hold for another hour." His gaze fixed on her. "I won't go until you have him back." Dana smiled wryly and patted his knee. "That stubborn streak reminds me of someone. Okay, but you stay in the ambulance which I see pulling up front even now. You can at least help us to positively identify the building, that will save us time. Does that make you happy?" "I stay until you find out how he is." Dana's expression shadowed. She wanted to say 'no'. Jake was a civilian. If Mulder was not found in good condition... But Dana had taken the man's measure. He would find out eventually. If he had been unable to reach the FBI fast enough with his information and Mulder was badly hurt, he would blame himself sooner or later. The two men were alike in more ways than looks. "I shouldn't do this..." she began. "But you will." ******** Only when the paramedics brought in the gurney did Dana grasp the full extent of Jake's injuries. He reached for her in true need this time requiring her strong body to help him rise from the soft chair. What strength he had left after his long walk he had totally exhausted in his discussions with Dana and Skinner. He moved as if his body was well aware that it had only to hang on for a few minutes more. Dana rearranged the blanket over him herself and rode with him slowly and silently through the Washington streets, her hand wrapped inside his limp, sweaty palm. "Let me give you something for the pain." "No," came the curt response. "I need to be able to think." That certainly had a familiar ring. Skinner rode with them, the map spread out on Jake's bed, consulting him on the directions the architect had been able to give them at the Bureau. It was a good thing he was with them. In his dazed state with his fever returning Jake's memory for his route was not good but from his raised bed in the ambulance he was at least able to pick out some landmarks. Not surprisingly most of these were buildings. When the sky opened up and the stripped blocks covered with broken concrete appeared he relaxed back into the thin mattress. "The yellow-brick Federal style," he whispered one hand raised gesturing weakly. There was no doubt in his mind. Dana saw it and not giving a damn what Skinner thought pressed a soft kiss on the familiar brow while the assistant director gave instructions via his cellular to the four cars of FBI agents traveling behind. Pulling out her weapon her face expressionless except for its determination, Dana rose. "Remember your promise," came the soft voice behind her. Dana turned to gesture to the driver to go on to the hospital before following Skinner out the wide back doors. She had thought that after the positive identification of the building Jake had faded into unconsciousness. "We had a deal," he said without opening his eyes. "I stay here till you come back. Besides, Mulder may need the ride more than I do." Reluctantly, Dana nodded in agreement then fixed her stare on the senior paramedic though she included Jake in her instructions. "I want constant blood pressures taken until I get back. Agreed? And if it starts to drop, I don't care what he says, just go." With those instructions she turned and headed out. Only at the last moment did she think she heard him say something to the attendant in that familiar voice. The essence of his comment was that he had never considered before that a woman with a gun could be sexy. Dana was not the first agent in the building, though she was only the second one down the stairs which from Jake's report was where Mulder would most likely to be found. "We're looking for a Furnace Room!" she shouted to her team as they spread out. "Here," called Edwards' voice a few seconds later from the other end of a narrow, dank corridor. Then, "Oh, my god!" she heard him gasp in horror. Dana's heart nearly lodged in her throat so that when she finally burst into the huge, low-ceilinged room she couldn't speak. In a spot of faint light from a tiny, incredibly grimy window, a slight man with stringy hair was propped up against one wall. This could only be Pete from Jake's description. The man was stripped nearly naked. His clothes were in tatters. Between his hands was the handle of a long, very sharp, very bloody knife and which was sunk almost up to the handle in the man's own stomach. Edwards' hand was over his mouth as if he were going to be sick. "Before he did that, he cut off his own..." "Well we can't do anything about it now, so I could care less. Find Agent Mulder," Dana snapped. Her head swung from the dead man to search the rest of the room which sported half a dozen monstrous iron forms - some old boilers, others coal or perhaps even wood burning furnaces from long ago. "Furnace, furnace..." she muttered to herself. "Jake said he'd been held prisoner inside the firebox of an antique furnace. He also said that there were two men to worry about - a large one and a small. Seems we've found the little one." Dana's eyes quickly noted that the low door to the largest of the furnaces was slightly ajar and that there were numerous footprints on the dirty floor in front. Gun raised she advanced, her blood pounding in her stomach and head and chest so that she had to force each breath or stop breathing entirely. She stood to the side, gun raised, nodding to Edwards who had pulled himself together and brought over one of the big lights. As she flipped the heavy door farther open with the toe of her shoe, she shouted, "FBI! Come out! Hands in the air!" and Edwards directed the flood into the doorway. All agents dread these situations. You try to anticipate all the possibilities but there is never a time to be prepared for everything. If the other kidnapper was inside, she could expect one of three things: Gunfire? Always. Capitulation? If you were very lucky. A hostage situation, if Mulder was also inside? She hoped the hell not. If the kidnapper was not inside, Dana prayed for a tired but welcoming, "I'm okay, Scully." If he were hurt badly, a groan, some noise. If he were hurt very badly even - yes, even as far as the silence that is eternal - then so be it. One less star in the heavens, the second sun of her life gone cold. Dana lived day to day with that possibility just as he did. The kidnappers had only to take one look at his male organ stripped down as most men's were from infancy and the switch would have become obvious. Heart beating wildly, Dana waited and listened. What she heard was: "Turn that damn light off!" in Mulder's echoing voice, a strained voice bristling with anger and with an undercurrent of -- something else. Awestruck, her eyebrows raised almost to her scalp line Dana let her gun dip slightly though she hadn't released the safety yet. "Excuse me?" "I said, turn off the fucking light!" Mulder barked from inside. "And someone please get in here and bring a damn hand cuff key." The gun dropped this time, safety on. Dana exchanged shrugs with Edwards, glad that Skinner hadn't arrived in the basement yet and pulled out her own key ring. Getting down on her hands and knees she put her head into the black hole. "Mulder, it's pitch black in here." "Don't you think I don't know that!" During the interminable minutes - maybe even hours - since he had awakened free of his she-demon's 'protection', Mulder had had nothing to do but sit on splinters, helpless and wait for Scully. With Pete no longer a threat, that had given Mulder far too much time to dwell upon how easily Lawrence and the spirit both had manipulated him. The brooding had not sat well with Mulder's temper. "Do you have the fu-... Do you have the key or don't you?" "Just wait a moment okay? I'm bringing it in now." There came a strangled sort of sound from within then the sound of a restless shifting. "Isn't there anyone else out there who can bring it in?" Dana hesitated. Really confused. "You want someone else to bring it in to you?" she realized only after she spoke how very hurt her voice must have sounded. "Oh, all right, come on in, but... please, no lights?" The last was tinged with a bit of apology and more of that other emotion she had not been able to place before. Embarrassment? Once inside, his voice directed her to his hands both of which were cuffed uncomfortably high up on the wall of the furnace but he wouldn't let her stay long enough to do more that put the key in his cold fingers. The cool, hard object in his hand seemed to relieve him considerably. "Ah, Scully," he said now most contritely, "would you mind leaving for a moment?" Dana couldn't help smiling into the dark. He was fine but it was clear to her that he had gotten himself into some embarrassing predicament or other. "You want me to leave and after I just got here?" but Dana knew that voice and crawled back out of the furnace where she stood with sooty arms crossed over her ruined suit tapping her foot and listening to the sounds within. The sounds of handcuff locks opening that was unmistakable. The sharp moan as the arms came down and the blood rushed painfully in, she could relate to that. But after a few moments she heard the sound of cloth on skin and -- a zipper being pulled up? A tiny, tiny smile crept over Dana's lips. Clearly, Mulder had been a busy boy but it must not have been too bad or he would have been other than angry and slightly embarrassed. "May I come in and rescue you now?" she asked finally when there came only silence from within. "And may I bring some light?" "Come on in," came the sulky reply, "but be careful and don't trip over the body." Body? Oh-kay..... What Dana saw this time besides the body was an incredibly dirty Mulder sitting on a box in the far corner one hand partially covering his light sensitive eyes from the beam of the flash light. The crumpled form of a large man lay in the opposite corner of the fire box, his neck broken. His eyes were no longer sensitive to the light, not now, nor would they ever be again. Ignoring the dead man, Dana went to Mulder's side. He looked perfectly awful. "You're hurt!" she said. He looked as bad as Jake and Jake was in a bad way. "It's going to look worse than it is." Her fingers examined the swollen eye but the texture didn't feel right and with prodding the whole mess came away in a lump of theatrical putty, spirit gum and make up. "Are any of these 'injuries' yours?" He read her concern. Angry as he was he didn't really want to her worry. On the other hand, she loved to doctor and it was SO good to see her. Lower lip pouting, he touched the spot on his forehead where the equal but opposite reaction from the ectoplasmic explosion which had killed Lawrence had ground his face into the wall. "Here," he said softly like a child, holding up his fingers sticky with blood, "That's mine." Her hands deftly examined the injury. Her touch was soft, cool and, more than anything, real. And it had been a horrible few days. As she worked, Mulder let the realization sink in that it was over. He let that thought, like the comfort of her touch, warm him. She was here and so Jake must have made it through. As the agony in his arms subsided, he became aware that his lip throbbed. Lawrence had smacked him pretty good. "And here," Mulder said, touching his lip. He almost thought he saw her smile. Almost. Dana rose from her crouch barely needing to stoop under the low roof. "In your dreams, Mulder. I've got a really good looking man with a potentially ruptured spleen to get to the hospital. Now do you want to come with me so that you can have that itty-bitty cut on your lip stitched up or do you want to find your own way there?" Jake found himself awakened from his doze by the metallic, grating sound of the ambulance door. For a moment the fear reached out for him that he was still - there - and he was hearing the opening of the door to his prison. Instead he was surrounded by light and brightest of all was the smiling face of his own red-headed angel. A tall, lean, quite dirty and disgustingly smelly figure bowed his dark head under the ambulance's low doorway as he followed her inside. Jake didn't care about the pull on the bruised parts of his face. He smiled. It was good to see this Fox Mulder in the day light. So everyone said he could be Mulder's twin. Given a bath, not bad. Most importantly, the agent moved a bit stiffly but otherwise seemed whole. Gingerly, Mulder sat his splintered bottom down on the seat across from the gurney where his double laid. He sat close to Dana but, in deference to the present state of his hygiene, not too close. Mulder's hazel eyes glittered in Jake's direction as the ambulance pulled away. "Thanks, you did well. And don't think I'm not grateful but you really should have warned me about the rats." End of Chapter 8 From trevizo@utep.edu Wed Oct 30 03:03:40 1996 i did not write this. Please send all comments to the author at (Windsinger@aol.com). __________ / __ __ \ ( (__) (__) ) --------[[[---------]]]----------------------------------------- -------- JAKE'S LUCK: An X-Files/Red Shoes Diaries X-over 9/9 by Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com) NC-17 warning for violence, good and bad sex and nasty stuff but there are some very nice parts in here, too. For Disclaimer see chapter 1 Chapter 9 Three days later Mulder quietly pushed open the door to the X-Files office and looked in with caution. Dana was leaning over her desk her back to the door. Without turning she asked, "Are you going to stand there all morning or are you going to come in?" "Do I pass inspection?" "So far, but you're still ten feet away. The deal is no sharing of transportation or office space until you pass the two foot test." Mulder closed the distance by half. "How's that?" Still not turning around Dana raised her head and sniffed. "Closer." He came within touching distance. This time Dana granted him her attention. He looked nice in his grey suit this morning and his hair actually seemed to have been recently cut. The twinkle was back in his eye. It was good to have her old Mulder back again. Jake was cute but he lacked Mulder's rough edges that made him so -- The first word that came to Dana's mind had been 'endearing' but she hastily corrected that to 'challenging'. Today he sported dark red scabs and a green and purple patch of discolored skin on the left side of his forehead which was all that was left of the head wound. This was in addition to the four small black threads where the ER staff at GW Hospital had sutured his lip. "Swellings gone down I see." At least he didn't look like he was perpetually pouting any more though on Mulder that didn't even look all that bad. "Finally. So do I pass Agent Scully's I-guess-I-can-bear- to-be-in-the-same-room-with-you test?" Dana came around the desk and on tip toe sniffed near his jaw her eyes half closed in a way that made him go oh-so- slightly weak at the knees. "You tried the lemon concentrate wash I see." "Works for skunks, I hear." He bent down and let her get a whiff of his hair aware that the situation was beginning to get pretty kinky. "And peach scented shampoo?" she asked. "Isn't that going a little far?" "For you, Scully, anything." Dana stood back fists on hips. "Okay, but just for my own curiosity, tell me what else I sense here. Something that doesn't mix with lemon and peach, that's for sure." Hands went into the pockets. The adolescent pity-me ploy. "It's the Brut your mother gave me for Christmas. I put on too much. I tried to wash it off," he insisted. Dana made a brave attempt not to smile. "It's really not that bad, it was the mixture that threw me. And now that that's all cleared up you promised to shed some more light on this case for me." Spread out on Dana's desk was a set of unpleasant photos of Pete and Lawrence's autopsies. "You've been awfully quiet on this, Mulder. I really need to close this out and your saying 'I really wasn't in any condition to notice' doesn't buy it. Remember who you're talking to here." "I doubt you would believe me if I told you." The thought that passed through his mind was that he wasn't certain that he believed it himself. Dana delivered the patented Scully-is-not-amused look without raising her head from where she had been scrutinizing the photos. "Mulder, this case is about as far from an X-File as you can get." Want to bet? came to mind, but he replied mildly with, "Believe what you will. If you want to report that Lawrence was trying to be less than neighborly and that during our scuffle he lost his balance, fell, and broke his neck I won't contradict you. If you want to write that Pete came out of Marion Correctional a little crazy and just went a little extra crazy over the death of his friend I don't think there would be anyone to contest that either." "So that big hunk Lawrence was being 'less than neighborly', Mulder? I don't suppose you'd like to be more specific." "No, I don't think I would." In answer, Scully's eyes, usually skeptical of Mulder stories, warmed him with her concern. "Nothing happened," Mulder assured her his voice softer. "Could have." "Didn't. Can you just drop it?" Dana shrugged and started putting the sections of the case report back into their proper order. As she worked, a set of smaller photos Mulder hadn't seen before slipped out of an envelope. One caught his eye. His fingers trembled ever so slightly as he held it. It was a woman's picture. A exquisitely beautiful woman with a feline grace, lots and lots of thick, curling, dark hair, and troubled, enigmatic black eyes. "Scully?" Mulder asked, his voice oddly constricted, "who's this?" "That's Alex Koritsky. Jake's fiancee." Dana finished storing the other photos and reached for the one Mulder still held. "The one who committed suicide." As she drew the photo from his hand, Dana detected that a shadow had settled over her partner's bright spirits. Something was here which he was not sharing. Not yet, at least, but Dana trusted him that he would tell her when he was ready. "Isn't it about time to go see Jake off at the airport?" Mulder asked, suddenly gathering his coat before Dana even had a chance to answer. "I need to talk with him again." ****** They were waiting outside the private commuter terminal at National Airport when a private ambulance pulled up. As the attendant and driver carefully pulled the gurney out, Jake's face, pale against the white pillows, brightened. Mulder nodded towards the vivid yellow, green and purple of the healing bruises on the new arrival. "I'm jealous. Your colors are better than mine." "And I'm touched," Jake returned. "I hadn't expected to have anyone here to see me off." At Dana's nod to the attendant she and Mulder took over control of the gurney and wheeled their charge into a small lounge to wait until the private plane, which Jake's partner had hired to fly the architect back to Portland, was ready to receive its only passenger. As they entered, a sleek white jet taxied up to the exclusive terminal. "Healing alright?" Dana asked. "So I'm told. They say I can live without a spleen." "It was in pretty bad shape. You're better off without it. Your doctors in Portland can give you some symptoms to look out for but there shouldn't be any problems." Out of the corner of her eye Dana watched Mulder, troubled. He was the one who wanted to come but since his first comment he had been quiet. At the hospital, after they had examined their family histories and proven that as far as they knew they had no common ancestors anytime this side of the Mayflower, they had stayed a little aloof from each other. That was probably to be expected. Mulder had lingering suspicions about his 'clone'. Mulder's profession and his collection of 'enemies' naturally scared Jake to death. "Thank Assistant Director Skinner for me for assuming the medical expenses," Jake offered into the awkward silence. "The least we could do," Dana replied. "I suspect that they'll just put them down on Mulder's side of the balance sheet. No one will notice the extra." Mulder's raised eye brows showed that despite his obvious distraction he was still with them. She also got the gentle hint from a flicker of an eyebrow that her presence wasn't wanted for a few minutes. "Excuse me. I'll go check with the on-flight nurse to see if he's all ready for you." As she stood in the doorway, neither noticed Dana indulge in one final look at the two of them before she left. If they could only see themselves, she thought. The two men wore identical worried expressions. The attendant called to her. Sighing, Dana headed for the plane. She'd get the gist of their conversation out of Mulder later. Mulder had begun to wander, looking about the lounge. Real leather. Certainly a couch he would die for. Polished wood and chrome, no plastic, and thick quiet carpets. "Fancy place. Private jet. It must be nice to know people with that kind of money." Jake returned a firm, unapologetic gaze. "I'd rather have peace of mind." Now that he was here Mulder had begun to reconsider not bringing up what he had come to say and after this comment he was even more undecided. Would knowing or not knowing bring this man more of the peace of mind he sought? Uncomfortable watching the signs of tension in Mulder's athletic grace as he prowled the room, Jake asked, "Agent Mulder, I just don't see --" "Mulder, please. What don't you see?" "How DID Lawrence and Pete die? Under the circumstances I don't see - " Mulder leaned against a wall, crossed his arms and stretched out his legs. "I didn't kill them." "Then who --" "I had a little help from a friend. Though not a friend of mine, a friend of yours." Confused, Jake waited. He had no friends in this area of the country. Mulder debated with himself but finally took the leap. "Jake, do you believe in ghosts?" Eyebrows rose even over the eye that was still swollen and mostly purple. "I'm going to assume I heard you right. Do I? Maybe..." Jake let that trail off. "Why? Are you trying to tell me that a ghost killed those men? A ghost who's a friend of mine?" Hesitation, then a terse nod from Mulder. Surprisingly, Jake did not laugh. "Do you know whose?" he asked almost fearfully. "Do I get a free question first? Would you say your fiancee was a woman of singular passions?" Jake rose part way off the bed. Only a sharp, stretching pain from the incision through which they'd removed his mangled spleen held him down. "Alex? What could make you possibly think that?" "I saw her ghost. Only once but clearly illuminated by - Let's just say that the light didn't come from what you would call a natural source. I remember the face, but I didn't have a name. I saw my first picture of Alex just an hour ago. I assure you, it was Alex I saw." Jake's eyes had turned inward and Mulder read not gladness or sadness for her loss but a far deeper pain of abandonment and betrayal. "I don't believe you. How could she be here? And why? And why you?" He rose again, slowly this time almost to a sitting position, aware of every throbbing muscle where hard fists and kicks and bludgeons had connected and no one had come. "Are you trying to tell me that she killed those men to protect you? My God, why not me?" Mulder crossed the room and pulled a chair up close to the gurney. "I've read most of what's out there on the subject of the supernatural, hauntings and the like. Most of it is drivel but some... Do you really want my theory?" "Would Dr. Scully buy into this theory?" Jake asked clearly baiting. Mulder didn't flinch. "I haven't told her about this yet and, no, she wouldn't agree, not without serious reservations, but she's seen stranger things than ghosts." "Ghosts haunt buildings, cemeteries," Jake protested. "Reliving events or looking for objects, longing to finish tasks that were left undone, that's true. My theory is that Alex haunts not a place but haunts you. How else can you explain how she could be here in Washington at all." "If she haunts me then why haven't I seen her? And again, if she haunts me, why help you?" Mulder wasn't looking forward to this. "There's a lot in your history the FBI collected about her suicide. You took it hard but I think, if her actions are any indication, that she took it worse. Her overwhelming guilt for what she did to you, both while she lived and by the manner of her death, binds her to you but also prevents her from making contact. With me, however ---" A light came on in Jake's face. "You think she feels some sort of remorse around me but feels 'safe' with you. You're me and yet - not." The architect looked suddenly tired and, head turned away from a face too like his own, sank back onto the pillows. "What can I say? If she killed two men then I don't know her any more. If what you say is true, she not only protected you over me but she left me, once again, in order to do it." "Jake, listen to me. Some parapsychologists feel that ghosts are insane. In that case you're right, she's not the Alex you knew, not entirely. But she's the real thing, an entity, a conscious presence, not just a memory acting out some obsession like a loop on a video tape. She's sentient, she can learn. She can get into your thoughts. The time she killed Lawrence, I don't think she was actually trying to kill Lawrence, just hell bent on keeping him from hurting me." Mulder touched the purple spot on this forehead. "That time I got a back lash. Later there was a time when I felt nothing, as if she had completely isolated me from my body. I was furious. I though she was protecting me from the discomfort of my surroundings, but I'm certain now that she knew Pete was on his way and that she was trying to protect me from what would happen when she confronted him. She didn't want to hurt me again. More importantly, when I got angry at her and told to 'bug off' she was furious but she did leave. Jake, I'm trying to tell you, this can be serious. You're being haunted by something that is unpredictable, that can be an angel or a devil, and only marginally controlled. It's also smart and dwelling upon your betrayal only feeds its attention." Throughout everything he had said Jake had kept his head turned away, not moving. Mulder had begun to worry that the architect had not heard a word, but without warning he spoke. "Forget about what happened? How am I supposed to do that?" "You probably can't forget but you need to keep it from consuming you." Listen to me..., Mulder thought chiding himself. Me with my obsessions. Mulder continued in a softened voice, a voice Scully had heard more than once. It sprang from what she called, with approval, his nurturing side. "Jake, whatever you're doing which keeps this memory fresh in your mind, whatever that is, you need to stop it." "Is this your psychologist degree talking?" "Ah, Scully told you about that. Indulge me." Jake turned suddenly, sitting again, one arm protectively around his stomach, green eyes flashing. "I didn't sign up for this. It hurts. I read the diaries because to know that there are others like me gives me something to look forward to every day, because it helps me forget about the pain for a while, because it hurts, like it happened yesterday. Every day it's as if I just held her dripping, dead body in my arms, that I just read that horrible book for the first time. It's a stab, and a stab and a stab in the gut every day!" He looked down towards his incision one corner of his mouth curving ironically upward. "Everyone is being so solicitous because of my injuries. This surgery? This is nothing." Mulder knew what he meant. Sam's loss was like that. Maybe that was why he was so sure that she wasn't dead, because she was so much still a part of him. "Perhaps the wounds are so fresh because she never really left you." Weaker than he wanted to admit, Jake lowered himself back down onto the thin mattress, grimacing at the pull from his stomach muscles. He looked up surprised to find Mulder at his side, those strong familiar arms around his shoulders, supporting him. "What I don't understand," came the barely audible whisper, "is why she stays. She never loved me." "Never doubt that she loved you. That she still does." Mulder's voice wavered just a little. This was the tricky part. "And I assure you, she's still very much a sexual being." Jake's frown deepened. "Now THAT I don't believe." "No?" Mulder pursed his lips taking two steps from the bed before turning. This was not something Mulder felt right talking about even one man to another, especially to a man about what his deceased fiancee was capable of, but Jake had to be warned. A man could die of a heart attack from a haunting like this. "Did she, or you, or the both of you ever indulge in a little control fantasy involving -- uh, mastery of large winged serpents?" Jake's green eyes opened as wide as eyes possibly could, even the swollen one, as he watched the tips of Mulder's ears turn red. "She didn't" "I swear on my lustful little heart, she did. And you, sir, have my utmost respect. Clearly your control is better than mine. I also see that I need to get a look at your library." Jack was seeing no humor in the revelation. His expression had become sullen. Mulder sat down again beside the bed. "Jake, remember I was just a surrogate. As you said, safe... and in no position to resist her." Mulder let a roguish smile touch his lips. "Handcuff yourself to a bed post one night. You might be surprised." Despite the tears that had appeared from somewhere, Jake almost laughed. "I might just do that." At that moment Dana returned, getting the cold shivers just seeing the two of them. They looked like a guilty pair of twins caught looking through a hole into the girl's locker room. Now why was she so sure that they had been talking about women? More specifically, sex. Because, Dana told herself, Mulder never achieved that particular shade of red unless he was embarrassed down to his toes. "They're ready, when you are," she told Jake a little coolly. "Good, home sounds right, besides Agent Mulder has give me a lot to think about and all the excitement around here makes that hard." Jake paused looking carefully from one to the other of the partners. "By any chance do you two get out to the West Coast often?" With the memory of countless airline seats stamped into her backside Dana answered with a smile, "Now and again." Jake focused on Mulder. "I'd like to talk about this again. When you're out next will you come and visit?" Mulder's glance towards Scully was warm and relaxed. The tension he had carried to the airport had somehow miraculously vanished. "I think a little detour could be arranged." "Yes, that'll be easy," Dana offered. "I'll just let Mulder navigate." Mulder wrinkled his nose at her as he stood stretching his long arms. He'd been bent over Jake's gurney too long. Jake's gaze traveled up the height, the germ of a pleasant idea smoothing the lines of his face. "Agent Mulder, by any chance would you be interested in a little roundball? One-on-one?" Hazel eyes lit up. "Any time, any place." "Time is when you make it out West. Place... well, I've got a one-on-one court you won't believe. I have some rather bad memories associated with it. I'd be interested in making some better ones." "What do we play for?" Mulder asked, avariciously. "How about my ghost?" Mulder cast a look in Scully's direction whose jaw was quite literally hanging open though in a nice way. The look quite clearly shouted incredulously, "Mulder, I was only gone five minutes!" Leave it to Mulder to leap frog to THIS sort of topic in such a short time. Though he spoke next to Jake, answering the architect's previous question, the wink was for Scully who did the slow burn so well. "Does the winner get her or get rid of her? The ghost I mean." "That all depends," Jake teased getting into the swing. "On?" "How good she is." Mulder threw back his head in a silent laugh and Jake grinned. "Don't answer that," the architect advised gesturing to Scully who was bestowing the evil eye on both of them. "I already know how good she is." Dana glowered certain that there were two meanings to this conversation and just as certain that she would regret understanding either one. "When you two 'boys' are finished, I'll be waiting outside," she told them, then turned on her heel and did just that. "Is she angry?" Jake deliberately asked while she could still hear them. "Not really - " Mulder begun until Dana spun back momentarily towards them. "Oh, by the way, Mulder. Just a little reminder. By the time we get back to the office it will be time for your next anti-rabies injection." Mulder grimaced as the door slammed behind her. "Well, maybe she is just a little piqued. Let's return for a moment to the terms of the game. I really don't need your ghost. I've got enough of my own." "We could trade." "Believe me you wouldn't want mine." Scully tapped on the window and gestured towards the plane. Clearly, the crew was eager to be off. Mulder began pushing Jake's gurney towards the door. "Fox, can we be serious for a minute?" Jake began with a solemn face, his eyes fixed on Dana's trim figure which could be seen through the lounge windows. "Not if you use my first name." "'Mulder', then. May I offer you some advice?" Mulder had a feeling he knew what was coming, at least the topic, and it made his mouth dry and his palms sweat. "Considering what you went through for me, I guess I owe you that much." "If you find a woman to love and who loves you, don't let your relationship become stale, or too predictable. Keep some of your mystery and let her keep some of hers." "I don't think predictability and lack of mystery on my part is anything Scully needs to worry about." Mulder's head jerked slightly making him miss Jake's knowing smile. Now where had the use of Scully's name come from? Not knowing exactly how to continue on from there, Mulder resumed maneuvering the gurney towards the door. Dana was hovering just outside and came to help move Jake towards the wheel chair lift, which was positioned like a small cherry picker near the door of the plane. At their leave-taking Dana bent and planted a sisterly kiss on Jake's cheek. If she lingered a little longer than a sister would have, Jake knew it was not a result of his charms. This brave, beautiful, intelligent, but certainly frustrated woman had just been trying out some possibilities, just to set in her mind how everything fit. For one of the first times in almost two years Jake felt a glow of interest. Oh, he would like to try out some possibilities with this one... but, no, she was clearly taken. Jake watched the two of them from the window of the plane as it taxied from the terminal. They were standing beside the departure gate, one tall, one not tall at all. Red hair and brown whipped in that gusty air that is omnipresent at busy airports. They were standing close, too close for just friends. They would find each other in time, of that Jake had no doubt and maybe by taking the longer route it would make the finding all the more precious. Wearily, Jake closed his eyes. His in-flight nurse had given him something to make him relax during the flight. That numb glow and the rhythmic vibrations from the jet's engines were soothing. As he faded out he started to dream of a soft, warm hand, lighter than air, touching his bruises, taking the pain away. The End