Title: Drawing Lines 2 Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@iname.com< Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully and the myth belongs to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is intended. Keywords: MSR ~~~~ Drawing Lines 2 ~~~~ "There has to be somewhere to draw the line." --dana scully, colony ~~~~ Chapter One ~~~~ "I have often thought about it. But how will he, who is so hard-hearted, go on in this world? Will he not consider himself superior, will he not lose himself in pleasure and power, will he not repeat all his father's mistakes. . .?" --"Siddhartha", Hermann Hesse ~~~~ Dana felt it seep into her again, but she pushed the warnings from her mind. Until the thoughts pushed into her. They not only pushed, they erupted, collided, fused. Oh, God. They were all going to die. And when this thought reached her finally, she trembled, and fell to the floor of her motel room, sure of her own demise. ~~~~ Mulder felt the room shake and he glanced up, saw the light fixture swinging a bit. Then it stopped. Earthquake, he decided and felt amused by his own carelessness towards it. He wondered if Scully had noticed it, or if she was already asleep. He rose and checked the bathroom pipes to be sure that they had not cracked, then went to his suitcase, searching for some pants. He had just pulled on sweats and a T-shirt when thunder reverberated through his room. Mulder glanced up, saw his door quivering, and straightened. Knock. It was a knock, not an aftershock. He shook his head and moved to the door, opening it. No sooner had his hand twisted the knob, than the door swung in and a body was hurtling into him. He stepped back and found himself awkwardly balanced, with Dana Scully in his arms. "Scully?" She was shivering, and even crying, her limbs pulled tightly into her body and her head buried in his shoudler. "We're going to die, Mulder. We're going to die." ~~~~ She was sitting on the edge of the bed, more composed, but still pale. "It just hit me, Mulder. Everything all at once." He was sitting in the floor at her feet, noting her far away eyes, her trembling lip, the incredible depth of emotion she was showing him. Something had to be horribly wrong. Scully never let herself go this much. "What hit you?" "Colonization. The virus. All of it. Mulder, with the Consortium gone, all those men, where do we go now?" "What do you mean? Scully, you have to calm down and talk to me rationally." He moved to sit beside her, taking her hand as a means to ground her mind in reality. She woke then, jerked up from the bed, shaking her head and confused. "Ah. . ." He watched her back away, moving to the door, as if she were confused. "Scully. Wait." She turned to flee, but his hand reached out and caught her; he felt as if he were continually running after he as she ran away. She looked at him, eyes troubled and deep, her face blank. "Scully, tell me what's going on." She sank to the floor, covering her eyes with shaking hands. "Have you thought about any of this, Mulder?" "I abdicated thought for action, Scully. It almost cost us our lives." She shook her head and continued to speak through her fingers. "Think about this. If there are aliens. . .if they're coming for us. . ." Mulder took her wrists, then pulled her hands down from her face. "Scully, tell me what you're thinking." She nodded and pulled from his grip, sitting down carefully on the bed, keeping distance from him. "I'm thinking that maybe I understand what you did. You were told that everything you believed was coming true. But so much worse. He told you that we were all going to die. Taken over by aliens who cared nothing for us. For whatever lives we might be trying to form, for whatever loves we have." Mulder watched her thoughts fly from her lips like shrapnel, like a bomb had gone off inside her and it was ripping everything apart. "I think maybe I understand. Oh God, it's all going to end. Everything was for nothing. . ." "I don't think that-" "You did then. You did, and I understand. It's all bubbling up in me, Mulder. Everything is swirling into focus and I don't like the picture I'm seeing." "You believe in aliens?" he said, frowning. She looked to him. "Who knows? What does it matter anyhow? We're going to die." "Die from what?" "Whatever those bees have in them, that virus, Mulder, is very very real. Very deadly. You gave me the cure once, if you remember." "I could never forget," he whispered. She looked at her hands, feeling her energy slip away into the night. "Whatever cruel plan that was, it's still there. If CancerMan survived, and we're pretty sure he did, then that plan is still operational. There were others who survived, others out there more than willing to go ahead. And this time, there's no one to stop it." "We can stop it, Scully. We can." She looked up at him, and the moment seemed to pause. There was his face, eagerly seeking her approval, her reassurance, with his eyes deep dark and fathomless, his hands heavy on the bed, beseeching her silently. She was still, feeling weightless and heavy at the same time, feeling time like endless moments that would never find a beautiful peace, never achieve a resolution. She saw things in that moment, with the wind from the open door caressing the silence, and the muggy air in the room stirring with a newfound energy. She saw them dying, gloriously mad, in a maniacal attempt to stop a relentless enemy comng for them, an act predestined for all eternity. She saw them bleeding to death, and wondering where all their wonderful, precious time had gone. And where God was. She closed her eyes, but found no comfort in the darkness, merely more visions. "Scully, we will stop this. I'm not going to make the same mistakes my father made-" "He was trying, Mulder. He's not a bad man." "You didn't live with him." "What are we doing differently? I can't. . .I can't even talk to you. . ." His face twisted in confusion, hurt. "You still don't trust me?" "I don't know anymore. This is all too wrong. . .Mulder, it's so wrong." Mulder didn't try to touch her, made no move to quench the ache in him, the ache that compelled him to need her. "World domination never seems right, Scully." "Not even that. It's horrible. It's the end of everything. But nothing seems solid anymore, no fact resembles the truth." "You can trust me, Scully. That will always be solid." She jerked a bit on the bed, her face wincing as if she'd been slapped. "Nothing is solid. This earth will come to hate us, these people will be ravaged, our lives will mean nothing. God. . .God is nowhere to be found." She seemed so far away, too remote to touch or hold. "You expected to find God?" he whispered. "No. I expected God to always be here." She closed her eyes, and he saw her weep. And he felt less of a man for it. ~~~~ ~~~~ Chapter Two ~~~~ "I feel just like I'm sinking and I claw for solid ground. I'm pulled down by the undertow, never thought I could feel so low. In all the darkness, I feel like letting go." --"Full of Grace" Sarah McLachlan ~~~~ He watched her collapse in on herself, the horror of her secret out in the stifling air of his motel room, her eyes shut to it all. He didn't understand. He wanted to, wanted to be able to say that this made sense to him, but her faith never made sense to him. "Do you believe in the aliens?" he asked instead, needing something to build on. "I can't Mulder," she said frantically, shaking her head. "Why not?" He reached for her with a pained expression, wanting to touch her. "I can't believe in this, Mulder. There's no place for God. None at all. He doesn't fit into this picture of eternity." "Why does God have to fit?" She wanted to laugh at his foolishness, but instead, she felt more depressed, more panicked. "You don't understand. You don't get it." He shrugged helplessly and stood up, becoming frustrated. "Mulder, God is everything. My faith, my courage, my hope. . .I know it may seem to you that I'm not too devout, or pious. . .but my faith keeps me from collapsing at the end of days like these." "I know that, Scully. I see that in you all the time." "So, can't you see this? If I allow myself to believe in your theories, in these aliens, in the awful things to happen, then God no longer exists in this reality." "How can you say that? Your God is too small, Scully." She gaped at him, mouth wide in her surprise. "How do you know that God's appocalypse is not the brimstone and fire raining from the spaceships of another race? How can you say that your God didn't create another form of life?" "For this? For us to be wiped from the earth, or to serve as slaves to them?" He shrugged and sat back down, staring to the wall. "We took Africans and made them slaves. You think they didn't question God? And if you're wiped from the earth, what do you care? You've got heaven, Scully. Or do you not believe?" She wiped her eyes and pushed away her rising anger, ignoring his sarcastic tone, his eyebrows raising suggestively. Sculy didn't know what to say. She would not dare to limit God's abilities, or question his ways, but she never had pictured aliens as being God's final judgment. "Scully?" he said softly and took her hand. She turned to him, needing some kind of hope, and not his doom. "Scully, how do you know that God hasn't placed you right here to stop them?" She blinked and took in a deep breath, feeling a bitter laugh rise to her throat. "You should have been a priest," she whispered. He smiled gently. "I should have been a great number of things. Mainly, at peace. But God has never loved me quite the same way he has loved you." She shook her head and pushed away her fears. "God loves you, Mulder." He still couldn't comprehend her faith, but he smiled and agreed and squeezed her hand fondly. They both stood, heading for his door, recognizing the late hour and their weariness. She paused for a moment, looking at him. "Do you see this like I do, Mulder? The enormity of this?" "I don't know. You're a lot more upset over it than me." "It's coming, Mulder. Death and disease and destruction. And it's going to be the most awful time of our life. If we even survive the first wave." He felt a tiny part of the heaviness of her thoughts invade him, and he pushed open his door, pulling his leather jacket from a chair. "Let's walk," he said abruptly, taking her by the elbow. She followed him from the room, past the parking lot, and into the abandoned lot beside their motel, watching him as he cut a path, thinking about this new age upon them. She shivered and hurried to catch up. ~~~~ They were lying on his leather jacket, their pants soaked through with the day's earlier rainfall, smelling the rich mud and thick soot of the lot, the trash cleared to give them a tiny spot. She was warm in the sun, enjoying the warm weather that the city could pull up suddenly from nowhere in the middle of February. His arm was cradling her shoulders, and they were both silent, watching for clouds. "Mmm, a soul," he said softly, pointing out a wispy, weary looking cloud that seemed to stretch tight across the sky. "A soul?" she asked, watching it drift. "Pulled from its body, towards heaven, but it doesn't want to go. It has too much to do." "That's saying a lot for a collection of air molecules saturated with condensation," she murmured, receiving a laugh for her efforts. He turned to her, smelling her hair against the backdrop of the lot and the loam, with the sun shining on them and the touch of wind across their knees and elbows and chins. "I feel like that," she said. "Collection of condensation? Well, you were crying a bit, and you don't usually." She poked him and shook her head. "No. Stretched tight across the sky. Trying to explain everything to myself, trying to rationalize it all, attempting to find balance when I never will." "You don't think you can find balance?" "Not with you." He wasn't sure whether he should be offended or pleased. Pleased because she said she would *never* find it, and therefore, she would be with him forever. "We could find balance. Don't we usually?" "No. We ignore it." "Well, there goes that. We're not ignoring much of anything." She shook her head slightly, very aware of the one thing they were ignoring. "Anything except. . ." he began and trailed away. "Except us," she added, her eyes on the clouds. "Right, us." There was silence and then she laughed, shaking her head. "And we continue to ignore. . ." she murmured. He shrugged, unwilling to talk any more of it if she wouldn't either. The sky was turning darker, the sun low behind them, casting a reddish halo over everything. It was peaceful, balancing. "Should we ignore it?" He glanced down to her, surprised. "Scully. . .I don't want it to interfere with anything." She nodded, as if she understood, but she didn't. "If we reveal things, and we aren't on the same page, then someone's going to get hurt, and it would be hard to work. . .hard to be so close, and yet. . ." She bit her lip. "But if we keep ignoring it, Mulder, this is going to come back and kill us." "Are you willing to take this risk, in hopes of avoiding one later on?" "Yes." He was taken aback by her honesty. The grass was itching his arms, and he was getting tired of lying on his back. "I need to see your face," he said softly. "That's strange. I find courage comes from *not* looking at the other person." He laughed and ran a finger through her hair, spreading it along the sleeve of his leather jacket. "Then you stay there and keep your eyes closed," he whispered. Her eyes shut immediately and he leaned over her, taking his time to memorize her face, to catch every gesture, every nervous twitch. This image would either delight him from forever on, or torment in his nightmares. They were taking a chance. With her eyes closed, he could pretend she was asleep, that her eyelashes resting neatly on her cheeks weren't fluttering with nervous anxiety, and that her hands weren't clutching the grass. "Scully. . . .I. . ." He paused, searching for the right words. "I-" Her hand came up suddenly, her fingers stilling his lips with a strong touch. She still had her eyes closed. "Let's ignore it for awhile longer," she whispered, biting her top lip. He leaned forward, and she could feel his breath along her cheek, darting across her lips. "All right," he said and pushed his nose to nuzzle her cheek. She sighed and touched his forehead with her hand, pushing him from her. The spell broke and he pulled back, letting her sit up under the setting sun, watching her hair catch fire in the fading light. "Ready to head back?" he asked. She nodded and stood, then helped him up. He brushed out his jacket, then shrugged it on to keep his hands free, just in case she changed her mind. They began walking for their motel rooms, and she slipped her hand in his, giving him a smile. He squeezed her hand and held it tightly, not ready to give her up. She didn't seem willing to let go either. ~~~~ ~~~~ Chapter Three ~~~~ "We have forgotten (don't try to make me fly) how it used to be (I'll stay here, I'll be fine) how it used to be (don't go and let me down) How it used to be" --"We Have Forgotten," Sixpence None the Richer ~~~~ "How about some dinner?" he said suddenly. Scully was watching him lead the way, when his head turned and his eyes sparked with hers. "Dinner?" she said, momentarily confused by the heat that was flooding through her. "Yeah, I know it's early-" "Sounds good." she interrupted, desperate for him to turn back around, get his gaze away from her. He nodded and left her beside the car, motioning that it would only take a second. She moved around his blue Ford to the passenger side, looking in at her coffin. They spent so much time travelling, so much time chasing down elusive mysteries in rickety models like this. She still didn't understand what it had all been for. Aliens, colonists, government tests and government given cancers, sisters dead or abducted, fathers shifting shadows of men who never should have known. All these things, burned to ash and grease on a hangar floor, bodies crisp and brittle, just as lives always were. What could two people do against such an enemy? Expecially two people who did not trust each other, who kept record of petty mistakes, who never divulged any secrets. These two people were not fit to save the world. God works in mysterious ways. Scully whispered it to herself, just as Mulder walked out the door. "Got the keys and some money too." he said. She nodded, then looked down at the pavement, noticing the cracks with their hardy weeds growing flat and trampled. "Scully?" "Yeah?" she said, looking up for a moment. He was smiling. "Get in the car, Scully." She snapped from her reverie to glare at him, but opened the door and slid into the coffin, quietly awaiting her death, still unsure of the time or place, but knowing that it would always be here, in this car. ~~~~ "You really meant dinner," she said. He smiled as he turned the car into the restaurant parking lot, noting the low set sign announcing a salad bar. "I really meant dinner," he repeated and killed the engine. She was smiling again, and he liked to see that, even though it wasn't the kind of smiling that most people did, even though it was the inside kind, where her lips parted just a bit and her eyes came alive. "Are you paying too?" He grinned shook his head. "Taxpayers are paying for this one." Her inside grin dimmed a bit and his walk hitched as he noticed. "Oh. So this is a work dinner." Mulder grabbed her arm, somewhat forcefully, catching the attention of some patrons on their way out. "No, Scully, this is not a work dinner. Most definitely not. I just couldn't find *my* credit card in all the mess." She turned to see his earnest face and gave him an appeasing look. "It's all right, Mulder. I just don't want to discuss mutilated corpses at dinner tonight." He nodded. "I understand. No work. No death. We'll just talk and eat." She let him see her smile, a full thing of lips and joy and childlike enthusiasm. He felt honored. Offering an elbow, he escorted inside, feeling their souls reconnect after a miserable day, and understanding that they both needed companionship after such a harrowing few months. ~~~~ She was finishing off her salad, the plate of mashed potatoes already gone and the chicken picked over, while he was just starting an ice cream sundae, licking the cherry clean of hot fudge. She watched him set it carefully aside, then delve into the ice cream, dribbling chocolate down his chin and wiping it free with an easy swipe. She pointed to the lone cherry. "Are you going to eat that?" His eyes lit and he nodded. "I save it." She smiled, eyes crinkling with pleasure at this information, and the urge to treat him like a child for his innocent pleasures. "Oh. I see." His face got this dejected look and he glanced to the cherry. "Do you want it?" he asked, almost hesitantly. She shook her head. "Oh no, Mulder. It's yours." He grinned again and resumed eating his dessert, licking his lips free of sticky chocolate. "Thanks Scully. I would've given it to you, but. . .it would've been tough." She rolled her eyes and fingered her fork. "Ah, the sacrifices you make for your partner...." He nodded gravely. "I would give you *all* my cherries," he said. She looked into his eyes, that same grin inside that threatened to come out, her mouth parted and waiting for the next bite. "Scully," he said, lifting his hand to cover hers. She frowned. "I would give you anything. . ." Scully closed her eyes, ignoring his words, this conversation, this attitude of martyrdom he perpetuated like a cloud. "Mulder. . .Mulder I don't want it." He closed his mouth, looked back to the ice cream dish that sat unappealingly before him. "No cherries, Mulder. Do you understand that? I just want your trust." He glanced back up, eyes flashing. "You've always had my trust, Scully." She shook her head. "No, you've given me cherries. And expected me to understand how lucky and honored I was for these small little presents." He opened his mouth to speak, but found nothing in him to counter her words, in fact, he wasn't quite sure what she was talking about. "Do you get it?" she said, looking back down to her plate. "Ah, no." "You give me a little bit, Mulder, a tiny portion of what I deserve, and then you hold everything back. I ask you trust me completely." "I do. Can't you understand that?" He felt frustrated, blocked by her refusal to believe. It always came down to that, didn't it? "I know that you think you do. You obviously don't, Mulder. I told you that Agent Fowley wasn't on our side, and I even had the Lone Gunmen back me up on it, but still. . .you believed her." "So that's what this is. . ." "What?" "Jealousy. You're making this way too personal." Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him, her emotions boiling over and freezing as they hit her face. "How dare you." He cocked his head, unable to hear her whisper. "How dare you say that *I'm* making this personal. You're in this for personal reasons only, Mulder. And that's the only way in hell I'm staying." "My personal reasons keep you here?" "No. Mine." "Those reasons of yours are all my fault. They told you that already, Scully. Remember? They gave you this cancer to make me believe." She closed her mouth, fuming at that one moment of candidness that had tainted their relationship from then on. "I was telling you what I had found out, Mulder. I heard the answers, and I felt that I should tell them to you. . .isn't that what you always ask of me?" "I never asked you to kill my belief." "I never said your belief was right." They were staring at each other now, magma anger roiling over their dinner, affecting the people nearby, a strange silence cast about the room. Mulder glanced up, saw they were making a scene, and pulled the credit card from his pocket. "I'm going to the car," she said softly. He nodded, not looking at her. She rose and dropped her napkin to the table, moving swiftly out of sight. ~~~~ ~~~~ Chapter Four ~~~~ "Nothing can make you understand. Why the one thing that you held so dear is slipping from your hands." --"Somewhere Down the Road," Amy Grant ~~~~ In the car, she realized that her death had come. In the coffin again, sliding down the streets, feeling trapped and panicked, she understood. Her death would be spiritual, not physical. A death of the soul. They were going to say things that they would regret for the rest of their lives. And if they never said anything now, they'd never be able to work together again. Too much was festering between them, too much distrust and uncertainty. "I went to the ends of the earth for you Scully. I would again." She was surprised he had started the conversation. "Even now?" "Even now," he replied and kept his eyes on the road and the way it slid along underneath them. It was her turn, and she knew it, but she could find nothing to say to him to make it any better. "It feels like this is over," she murmured. He nodded. "It does." "I wish it didn't." He looked over to her, his turn for surprise. "Maybe this just means we have to go somewhere now. Not necessarily over, over." She bit her lip. "You mean, like we have to move on, move up?" "Yes. Move up. Find a new level for us. I do trust you, Scully. Oh God, I trust you. I wish you knew that." "I wish I did too." She noticed it was raining a bit, sprinkling their car with a kind of acidic pollution leftover, smelling like sulfur and smoke. Mulder rolled up his window and flipped on his headlights, starting up the windshield wipers and shaking his head. "How can I show it to you?" he said softly. "I don't know, Mulder. This wasn't an overnight thing. It was a slow procession of events. . ." "All of it my fault. . ." "And mine." She watched his jaw tense and flex beneath the skin, his fingers clench around the steering wheel. The rain turned to hail and began to pound furiously down on their car, like fists beating to get inside. She shivered, watching the large chunks blast into sidewalk and pavement, tarmac and road. Mulder squinted through the windshield and pulled off the side of the road, flashing his emergency lights for whatever traffic that was behind him. "The weather's pretty strange," he muttered. "I think a tornado's coming." He nodded. There was an awkward silence as she thought about what he had been saying, as she tried to find the reasons for her distrust. "What do you mean by this being over?" he said suddenly. "I feel like there's no way to reclaim what we had. . .no way to stay the same." He picked at the seat, watching in supposed fascination as it unravelled beneath his fingers. "What if we didn't reclaim what we had before, but claimed something entirely new?" She frowned, her mind trying to sort out exactly what he was saying. "What?" "Something new. If we moved up. . ." "Up. To where?" She really didn't understand what he meant anymore; she had been pretty lost with her own attempts to parallel cherries and Mulder's sudden boughts of caring. "Scully. . .?" She turned from the frightening sight of hail demolishing the landscape to see his eyes, just as eery, just as destruction, focussed on hers. "I'm going to kiss you," he whispered. She blinked, then felt his lips, so rough and raw, scraping hers with blind need, nothing in it chaste, nothing in it demure. He paused, breathing along her neck, eyes closed, waiting for her hands to push him away, waiting for something in him to die as she rejected him. Scully felt his body close to hers, his breath skirting her skin like fingers, and his hands on her thighs. She buried her head in shoulder, more to quiet her rushing blood and thuddding heart than to seek comfort. He wrapped one arm around her, pressing his lips to her hairline with reverence. She never expected this kind of death. She never expected it. ~~~~ Pulling back onto the road, Mulder was concentrating intently on staying safe, the hail slackening somewhat, but still dangerous. She peered out the window, watching it crash down, watching her own life crash down. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to stay the same, wanted her and Mulder as partners on the X-Files for forever, wanted them side by side, fighting injustice. Etc, etc, etc. She sighed and propped her chin with a hand, licking her lips to catch the taste of him again. But he was right, there partnership, in the form it had been in, was over. It was most definitely over. Now, they had nothing to lose. Not even the X-Files. She glanced to him, biting her lip, watching him drive hunched over as if it would help him see better, his hands tight on the wheel, his lips pinched together. She couldn't imagine not having him. She *could* imagine not having the X-Files, not having the Bureau, not having her old partnership. As she thought about it, this new partnership sounded better and better. And more like what she needed from him anyway. Here she was complaining that he didn't trust her, asking that he did, and what she really meant. . . she really meant that she wanted him to love her. Scully closed her eyes and shook her head, frowning at her own selfishness, at her immaturity. She wanted this. . .she really did. She wanted something bigger and better and firmer and more appealing and more alive than what they had. She wanted it. ~~~~ Mulder led her back to the room, feeling the hail slap into the protective tarp he had made of his jacket, ushering her quickly beneath the storm. She shook the rain from her hair and took his leather jacket from him, wiping it down with a towel to keep it from ruining. He watched her move, felt his heart triple timing in his chest, his hands sweating as he thought about what he'd done in the car. Best explain now, try to save something. But what exactly, did he have to lose in the first place? "Scully. . .I'm sorry. . ." She looked at him, face frozen, her entire being poised to listen, as if his next words could kill her. He paused, noticed her quick breath and shaking hands. "No. No, I'm not sorry. Are you sorry?" She eased; her shoulders slumped with relief and her hands came to her elbows, as if she were hugging herself. "No. . .no, I'm not sorry either." He grinned and stepped forward, hands outstretched to capture her. She let him hold her for a moment, then she stepped back. "I know. . .know you trust me. . .I was just afraid you didn't. . .didn't. . .ah. . ." "Love you?" She looked away, avoiding his eyes, hearing the laughter in his voice and mistaking it for mirth. "I'd give you all my cherries, Scully. I thought I told you that already." She laughed and glanced up at him. "And I'd give you mine." ~~~~ ~~~~ Chapter Five ~~~~ "I never thought that I could be this close to you, I never thought it could be this way, but now I know, it's all I know." --"I Can't Believe" Kim Hill ~~~~ "We're almost there," he said, shaking her gently with one hand while he steered with the other. She pushed up in the seat, looking out the windows at utter black, seeing stars. "How long have I been sleeping?" she murmured. "Three hours." "We're nearly home. . ." she answered. He nodded and turned on his blinker, alarming her as he pulled off at a random exit. "Where are we going?" He looked to her and grinned. "Ice cream," he said and shrugged. She rolled her eyes and tugged on her seatbelt, smoothing her skin where it had rubbed her neck raw in her sleep. "It's hot in here," she said and reached for the vents. He stilled her hand and shook his head. "I know. It only blows hot air." She sighed and leaned back. "Ah. . .that's why we're stopping for ice cream." "That's why I woke you." She grinned and began deciding what kind to order, and what toppings to pile on top. "Good idea, G-man." He smiled and eased from the road into a dim parking lot, then found a place and squeezed in their government issue Ford. Stepping from the car, Scully glanced up at the former McDonalds, noting the blackened area where the sign had been, and the boarded over drive-thru windows. "What is this place called?" she said, looking for a sign. "Fat Eddie's," he said hesitantly. She looked at him, eyebrow raised. "Fat who?" "Eddie. Come on, Scully. It's hot," he whined. She sighed and followed him inside. ~~~~ It was cool inside, and running ceiling fans kept the air circulating. She ordered a sundae with hot chocolate and nuts, finding that Fat Eddie's was actually a clean looking establishment. She went to grab a booth while Mulder ordered, snaring napkins from a canister and two straws for water. Within a few minutes, Mulder appeared under the flourescent lights with an orange tray bearing ice cream. She simply stared at the concoction he grinned at. "What is that?" He looked up, and she found a little boy grinning at her, his face bashful but proud, his eyes clear. "A. . .a Fat Eddie." She raised both eyebrows, quelling the urge to laugh. "So that's how Eddie got fat. What is it - chocolate ice cream and bananas?" "And strawberries, Scully. Don't forget. And vanilla ice cream and peach too, I think, with pink bubblegum mixed in with Cookies and Cream." She gaped at him, then shook her head as he dug in, eating with relish. She removed her cherry, setting it on a napkin, feeling an odd sense of deja vu overcome her. Scully looked up and saw Mulder watching her cherry, eyes mournful almost. She sighed and glanced to her ice cream, then ignored his look and began eating. After a few minutes of enduring painful silence, she took the cherry by its stem and dropped it in his bowl. He looked up at her in surprise, the cherry balanced precariously on his spoon. "What's this for?" She shrugged. "All my cherries, Mulder." His face seemed to fall and she mentally berated herself for being so stupid, for bringing it up. He probably didn't want to remember- She stopped thinking when his hand closed on hers tightly, making her look up. Tiny tears were trickling down his cheeks, and he wiped them off only after she'd seen them. He moved around to her side of the booth, sliding in next to her, then pulled her into his arms with ferocity. "Thank you, Scully." She felt shocked by his display, but she snaked her arms around his waist and pressed her nose into his jacket. "All for a cherry?" she whispered, trying to make him laugh. He did, and pulled back to see her. His mouth moved in close and danced over her lips for a moment. "Eat your cherry," she said softly. He grinned. "Yes, ma'am." ~~~~ end all adios RM