Chapter One: These Are Days

~~~~~

June 23, 2002
Late afternoon
Rum Point, Grand Cayman Island

A slender leg shifted on the faded blue cotton, sliding back under the edge of the shortening shadow cast by the edge of the trees. The setting sun glinted off the clear waters of the Caribbean, coloring the sand in shades of soft orange.

"Scully!"

Scully sighed and picked up a leaf from next to her towel to mark her place in her book. She knew that tone of voice; she'd heard it enough over the past three weeks. Mulder had another of his continuing stream of little projects finished and was ready to show it off.

She pushed herself to her feet and walked across the warm sand the few feet needed to clear the low wall that separated their rental house from the open beach. "What is it, Mulder?" she said, laying the book on the patio table.

He was standing in front of the chiminea at the edge of the stone patio and grinning at her, a sight she'd seen often enough over the past few weeks that she almost missed deadpan. "I think I figured this thing out."

She arched a brow at him. "Mulder, what's to figure out?" she said. "We've used it several times since we got here."

He winked, another new expression she'd grown overly attached to. "Yeah, but now ..." He gave a flourish of his hand as he stepped to the side, revealing ...

"Mulder, *what* is that contraption?"

"It's a grill, Scully," he said, delighted with himself. "I took some of those old wire coat hangers you hate, did a little twisting and bending, and voila!"

He looked up at her, and in a moment, his smile started to fade. Guilt hit her as she realized she was scowling at him, and really, why? What was he hurting with this?

She forced herself to relax and smile, hoping it looked more genuine than she felt. "Very nice, Mulder," she said. "Maybe we can try it out with those turtle steaks."

Mulder's face screwed up with distaste, and suddenly her smile was genuine. "Ugh, Scully, I don't know how you can even consider eating those things."

She laughed. "Mulder, what do you think was in that stew you had at that place on the beach last weekend?"

He blinked. "Um ... conch?" he asked, his voice uncertain.

"Yes," she answered, stepping closer. "And turtle." She wrapped her arms around his waist, a little thrill running through her as it always did as his arms automatically lifted to encircle her shoulders. "And you loved it. Finished my bowl for me, as I recall."

"Mmmmm." He lowered his face to rest his lips in the center of her forehead. "Okay, point conceded."

She laughed softly. "Mulder, you know you don't have to defer every point to my ... feminine wiles," she said, her words offsett by the slow back-and-forth movement her body was beginning against his.

"Yeah, I know," he replied, his mouth sliding down the bridge of her nose as he spoke. "But I have to say, it's certainly worth the payoff when I do ..."

He kissed her gently this time, a style high up on her admittedly long list of favorite kisses. Not that any of them were very far *down* on the list.

They kept the pressure light, Mulder pulling away first, slowly, extending the contact as long as possible. "Mmmmmm." Scully smiled at the sound he made; it seemed to be his favorite these days. Well, one of them, anyway.

"C'mon," she said, slipping her hands away and reaching for his hand. "Let's leave the turtle steaks for later and see if we can whip up something else for dinner."

~~~~~

She was thirty-eight years old, and the life she had left fit in two easy-to-carry bags and the driver's seat of an SUV.

In less than an hour, she'd packed the handful of files, laptop, and survival kit, along with every pair of comfortable clothes and shoes she owned and the drawerful of Mulder's things she'd kept. The rest of the time until they left to get Mulder was spent on the floor in front of her living room bookshelves, pulling pictures out of photo albums and slipping them into a single padded envelope. She could hear John on the phone and Monica in the kitchen; at some point, someone handed her a sandwich and she ate a few bites, though later she couldn't have told anyone what it was.

New Mexico stood out in stark relief in contrast to the weeks since. She remembered only a blur of back roads and dark alleys and things she knew existed but had never needed before. Selling the SUV paid for fake IDs and plane tickets; the rest, Mulder had said, would be taken care of once they reached George Town.

The irony wasn't lost on either of them.

~~~~~

Night
June 28

In her sleep, Scully felt him leave the bed and drifted toward lucidity. She briefly considered staying where she was, but something told her this was more than one of his occasional bouts of insomnia. Maybe it was the stiffness in his limbs as he pulled himself away from her and out of the bed.

Whatever it was, she couldn't ignore it. "Mulder?" she asked, rolling over in his direction and pushing herself up on one arm. "What's wrong?"

"S'ok, Scully," he said, his voice soft and soothing. "Go back to sleep."

She snorted indelicately. "Mulder," she warned. "That's not going to work with me and you know it."

Silence. She waited. Finally, he said, "Really, it's nothing serious," he said. "I just couldn't sleep so ... I, um ... I thought I'd work for a while."

She felt her eyebrow lifting even though she knew he couldn't see it in the dim moonlight from the window. Mulder hadn't so much as responded when she'd broached the idea on the plane from Mexico City -- to try to build electronic files on as many X-files as possible out of their joint memories. The last contact they'd managed with John and Monica had been a hurried pay phone stop on the way to Roswell, but then, the disappearance of the files hadn't come as a surprise.

The one good thing about the lack of evidence in their cases was that the files mainly consisted of the reports she and Mulder had written. She'd hoped the reconstruction project would give Mulder something to do when he got too restless to, well, rest. As a bonus, it would give them a reference, a place to start, when they decided to delve back into their fight. They hadn't abandoned it, after all, just taken a long-overdue and well-deserved break.

She could see Mulder fiddling with something in the corner and realized that's where she'd left the laptop a few nights before. Sleep forgotten, she pushed back the covers and slipped out of bed.

"Really, Scully," Mulder said. "Go back to sleep. I'll go out to the kitchen so I don't bother you."

She flipped on the bedside lamp. "Sleep can wait, Mulder," she said. "Partners work together, remember?"

His teeth flashed in a quick grin. "I seem to recall something about that," he said, his arm slipping around her. "What say we start at the beginning?"

She rested her temple against his shoulder. "The very plausible state of Oregon, here we come ..."

~~~~~

Three nights later, the nightmares started.

~~~~~