textfiles/sf/XFILES/lightnin

From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Date: 7 Sep 1994 18:30:22 GMT

Not for redistribution or publication in any form.
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			LIGHTNING

West Virginia panhandle, 3:32 a.m., May 17, 1993

     The quiet hillside of the West Virginia mountains rolled away
under the dark night sky; the pinpricks of silver moonlight lit the
green hills grey and turned the valley where Matt and Libby Vernon
lived into an old photograph, the edges peeling and crumbling. Matt
Vernon sat alone on his porch, a loaded rifle in his lap, his feet up
on the wooden railing, his meaty head resting against the wall of the
house behind him.
     A flash of light burned one side of his face, darkened that side
of the house with a coat of ash, and killed the young pine he'd
planted last summer to shade that side of the small building. Matt
Vernon didn't wake. There was a loud WHUMP and something rattled in
the trees; then a falling star of a peculiar sort -- rising up
through the air rather than falling down through it -- burned away
from the quiet mountainside, and Matt woke as an afterthought.
     "Libby?" The front two legs of the chair thumped down on the
porch, along with Matt Vernon's heavy feet. He ran down the yard and
towards the trees that lined the hard-fought-for lawn, such as it
was. Then he heard the rustling in the underbrush and stopped.
"Libby?" he called again.
     "Matt...?" A tiny woman, hair straggling across her face,
appeared at the edge of the yard where the stars almost lit enough to
see; she was half-crawling up the hill to where the cabin perched. 
"Matt?"
     She stopped at the edge of the grass, from her knees down still
hidden by the forest's brush, dead leaves and vines, a faint pattern
of calico visible in her dress, her face half-shadowed by the tree
she leaned on, one hand outstretched -- not palm up, but palm out,
facing her husband...
     "Libby," Matt Vernon said, swinging his rifle up and holding it
with one hand, perpendicular to his body, the muzzle pointing at his
wife. "Let's hear where you've been."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An X-Files Story
starring 
David Duchovny as Special Agent Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson as Special Agent Dana Scully
Guest Starring:
as Matt Vernon
as Libby Vernon
as Marshall Tucker
as Mrs. Haynes
as Mr. Haynes
as Sheriff Connelly
Based on the characters and premises of Chris Carter
written by Judith Tabron
Copyright Ten Thirteen Productions
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9 a.m., the FBI Building, Washington, D.C., December 20th, 1993

     "Well, you're here early." Dana Scully, immaculately dressed as
always in a beige suit that coordinated with her briefcase and her
lipstick, tossed a heavy folder onto her desk in the FBI building's
basement. Her partner, Fox Mulder, winced at the thud it made when it
hit the blotter.
     "Judging from your face, I'd take bets that you A.) had a long
hard weekend, and would like to ask me for an Alka-Seltzer, or B.)
have not left this office since I last saw you here Friday evening.
What are my odds?"
     Mulder ran a hand through his hair, standing it more nearly on
end, and smiled a smile that was only at half-mast. "I think you
could get 10 to 1 on A, even odds on B -- but neither one of them is
the right answer, so you might as well save your money. How'd you
like to go to West Virginia?"
     "I would not like it at all. Next question?" Scully plopped down
in her desk chair.
     "OK, would you like it more than, say, gall bladder surgery?"
Lurching out of his chair Mulder snapped off the lights and snapped
on a slide projector, which began whirring in the dark. A
black-and-white photo of a young woman with long brown hair pulled
back in two barrettes flickered across a wall that was only mostly
free of tacked-up sheets of paper.
     "Libby Vernon disappeared from her home on April 15th at 11:55
p.m."
     "Maybe she needed to file her taxes."
     "She was reported missing by her husband, Matthew Vernon," the
picture flipped to a hefty-looking man who appeared to be on the
slope side of 45 and wearing it badly. He wore a hunting cap along
with a shirt from which the pattern had faded on the shoulders. 
     "That's her _husband_?" Scully expression gave away her opinion
of that possibility. "He looks like he could be her grandfather."
     "Yes, well, there's never any accounting for taste. Mr. Vernon
also reported her *re*appearance, on May 17th of this year."
     "So she's home, safe and sound, story ends happily, and we care
because...?" Sculley leaned forward in her chair, waving an
encouraging "cut to the chase" hand towards Mulder.
     "Well, _I_ care because her local paper claims that Ms. Vernon
spent the intervening month on a ship from outer space. " Flick, and
a newspaper story headline was projected against the wall. "But
enough about me. The bureau cares because one of her neighbors, a
Mrs. John Haynes who apparently lives nearby, has reported her
missing again."
     "Runaway?"
     "Maybe runaway, maybe taken away... maybe murdered."
     "Why would anyone think that?"
     "Reports are that Mr. Vernon wasn't too thrilled about his
wife's disappearance but was even less thrilled by her reappearance."
     "I see. Well, Mulder, I'm sure that the local authorities --"
     "Will be thrilled to have our help. Can't find a trace of the
girl but the sherriff says that if there is a body, it's in
Pennsylvania or Ohio and out of his jurisdiction. The paperwork's all
in, I'll meet you at the plane."
     "Mulder, no! I mean -- " Scully turned around at her desk,
flipped a desk calendar. "It's the 20th of December, Mulder.
Christmas is only five days away."
     "I'm sorry, Scully, I didn't think." The lights came back on and
Mulder's long body sloped against the doorframe. "Did you have
plans?"
     Dana considered her nephew and the toys she'd gotten for his
Christmas. "Aside from a large stack of presents, every one of which
is in a box that says, 'Some assembly required', no, not really."
     "Great! See you at the airport. You'll have the case solved in
time to have us back long before Christmas Eve. And I'll get a chance
to catch up on my sleep."

From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Date: 7 Sep 1994 18:31:08 GMT

     The "rental" car was a Land Rover of dubious vintage. One of the
front fenders, poorly disguised with primer, was rusting away.
Apparently it belonged to the brother-in-law of the local sherriff;
there was no such thing as a rental car in this town. Scully steadied
herself against the dash as a particularly virulent pothole
threatened to dislodge her from the seat entirely. "Mulder, at the
rate we're going we'll be lucky to question Matt Vernon before New
Year's."
     "Look at it this way. At least we'll probably find him at home."
     The sun was heading behind the rise of a hill as Mulder stopped
the car, at a neat semi-circular wall of stone, then turned in the
driveway. A two-story frame house sat back from the snow-packed dirt
track that passed for a road, its front serenely lined with
rosebushes bare of leaves for winter, a row of enormous pine trees
along one side sheltering it from wind where it sat on the top of a
slight hill. A dog was chained to one of the trees; it yapped at them
as Mulder cut the engine.
     A white-haired woman answered Scully's knock on the door. "Mrs.
Haynes?" Scully inquired.
     "Yes?"
     "I'm Special Agent Scully, this is Special Agent Fox Mulder,
we're here because of your report of a missing person?"
     "Come on in."
     Mrs. Haynes led them through a long hallway to the back of the
house, which was entirely taken up by a wide kitchen. "Can I offer
you a cup of tea? I'm afraid we're out of coffee; John can't drive
any more, his eyes are so bad, and I haven't made my trip in to town
for Christmas yet -- cuttin' it a bit fine, I'm afraid."
     Scully eyed the darkening landscape outside. "It's only the
20th, Mrs. Haynes."
     The old woman laughed and changed the subject. "So, you've
actually come about the Vernon girl. That's good. He killed her, you
know."
     Mulder leaned his chin on his folded hands, elbows resting
comfortably on the flowered tablecloth. "Who killed whom, Mrs.
Haynes?"
     "Matt. He's a mean man, Matt Vernon is, and I wouldn't put it
past him." She said this as though she were accusing Matt Vernon of
picking her roses; she continued preparing a pot of water for tea.
     "What makes you say that?" Scully inquired, taking out a
hand-sized notebook and slim metal pen.
     "Oh, I'll tell you all about Matt Vernon over supper. You'd
better bring your bags in and I'll show you where you can stay. You
might as well stay here, as long as you _are_ here -- it's not like
there are any real hotels in town."
     Scully turned and looked at Mulder, who looked as confused as
she felt, and said, "Really, Mrs. Haynes, we appreciate the
invitation but we were hoping to speak to Mr. Vernon tonight."
     "What?" The old woman stopped what she was doing, turned on the
agents with her hands on her hips as though they were small children.
"Where do you kids think you are?"
     Mulder grinned outright at being called a "kid" and winked at
Scully. The other agent persisted, "If you'll just give us directions
I'm sure we can --"
     "Come out here." Mrs. Haynes led them back out on the front
porch. The outline of their rental car was indistinguishable from the
rest of the outdoors; under the huge pines, even the stars failed to
indicate where the land stopped and the sky began. Mulder squinted
but he couldn't even see the road. The faint silver of previous
snowfalls melted into the iron-black of the sky without a line to
mark the change. Only the vague ruts of previous tires had marked
road from non-road in the old snow and now they were invisible.
     "I see what you mean, Mrs. Haynes," he said good-naturedly and
stumbled over the front porch steps just as his hostess reached
inside and flipped a switch to illuminate the porch. "I'll get our
bags."
     Dana followed him to the rear of the Land-Rover, swung her own
bag down from the car's tailgate. "Back way before Christmas,
Mulder?"
     "Would I lie to you?"

     After a hearty dinner John Haynes settled himself into a large
overstuffed chair to read the paper and watch a small 13 inch
black-and-white TV, playing Lawrence Welk. He had communicated little
throughout the evening and seemed devoted to maintaining that record.
Mrs. Haynes settled Mulder and Scully together on a sofa with
steaming cups of tea.
     "Well, that Matt Vernon, he's not really from around here," the
old lady began. "His folks built that cabin just about twenty years
ago, and he's lived there ever since. Never had no brothers or
sisters that I knew of, and when his folks died he just stayed on in
that same cabin. No gumption. He plows a few acres of corn up on the
hill every spring and has tomatoes and such out back, same as we all
do; but if there is a minimum of work to be done keeping body and
soul together, Matt Vernon has done found that minimum."
     "What's wrong with doing the minimum, Mrs. Haynes?" Scully
wrapped her hands around her mug; even in the house she could feel
the winter chill coming down off the mountains.
     "There's nothing _wrong_ with it, it's just not likely to help
you win friends and influence people, now is it? Marshall Tucker, he
helps me out by plowing my garden every spring, and I give him canned
vegetables and venison in the fall when I've got 'em. That's
cooperation. That's how we live out here. Matt'll never figure it
out."
     Mulder stretched his long legs out in front of him, sniffed
appreciatively at his cup. "What can you tell us about his wife?
Libby?"
     "She's a real good girl, Libby is -- I know her mother real
well. She's from over on the other side of town. Her mother was the
youngest girl of Sue and Lamont Williams, and Lamont's daddy helped
my daddy fix the windows in this house right here when lightning
struck it and blew every window out of the house. I remember it well,
myself. To this day I'm terrified of lightning storms. You never know
what lightning might do."
     "Well, maybe we don't have to start quite that far back in the
story, Mrs. Haynes," Mulder grinned at his hostess. "Maybe we can
start when Libby and Matt got married?"
     "Oh -- not very long ago. Not more than a year and a half ago,
and we had the wedding right here in this very yard. This is the
oldest frame house in the county, you know. My family's lived here
since before the turn of the century and I can tell you the history
of every house in this county from sitting right here and watching
the world go by. But Libby. Well, Libby helped me with my garden last
fall, and I gave her quite a load of peas and one of my pumpkins, and
when Marshall Tucker killed that deer before Thanksgiving last I gave
her a good bit of venison, too. I could tell she wasn't very happy
out in that ratty li'l cabin with Matt and I wanted to give her a
good excuse to come by and help me again, him too. I mean, I don't
know if he's the kind of man who'd tell his wife not to go visiting
her only near neighbor, at least if he is Libby never mentioned it.
But he sure is the kind of man who'd want to know what was in it for
him."
     Once Mrs. Haynes got started, Scully realized, it would be hard
to stop her. Wearing a crocheted ivory vest over her plain blue
dress, and fuzzy mules of ancient vintage, the older woman seemed
quite comfortable, indeed cozy in her chair across from the sofa on
which Scully and Mulder sat. Her white hair, carefully curled and
arranged to halo her head, looked ivory too in the golden light from
the Christmas tree, three feet tall, sitting on a breakfront, its
base covered by a fluffy white skirt. Scully noticed the crocheting
of her hostess' vest and thought it might be the same as that of the
yarn doilies that adorned the back and arms of the worn brown sofa.
How could any room look so warm yet feel so cold, Scully thought, and
a small shiver set ripples going in her coffee. Mulder glanced at
her, looked back at their hostess. Did he ever miss anything? Scully
thought irritably and stared at her coffee.
     Mrs. Haynes went on, "Poor girl never sees anyone -- maybe I
should say never saw anyone -- but me and Marshall since she got
married. You realize I mean literally no one. We've got the car and
we make pretty regular trips to the grocery store -- milk, dog food,
and John's gotten quite attached to his cola, and I figure, we're old
enough for some luxuries." Mulder smiled encouragingly, figuring the
woman would come to some sort of point soon. "Marshall's got that car
he knocked together when he was thirteen and he drives it too, even
though he shouldn'ta, no license of course --"
     "Excuse me, Mrs. Haynes, who is this Marshall Tucker? Does he
live here with you?" Scully interrupted.
     "I'm not going to get him in trouble, am I? Marshall's a real
good driver. He'll have his license as soon as he gets to be of age,
I'm sure. It's just an old VW bug. He lives down the road -- I'm sure
you passed the Tucker place on your way in. His older brothers are
all gone and his father works in town most of the week; sleeps there
too -- well, that's his business -- and Marshall and I keep each
other good company... when he's not in school." Clearly worried about
getting her friend in trouble over the driving business, Mrs. Haynes
had obviously added the last detail so as not to add another black
mark to Marshall's record. "The poor boy's all by himself since his
mother's gone and does very well, too. Anyway, Matt and Libby don't
have no car and Matt has to bum a ride off one of us when he wants to
go to town for whatever. Even then we wouldn't see Libby if we didn't
ask for her to come along."
     "You paint a persuasive picture of a pretty unappealing life for
a young woman Libby's age, Mrs. Haynes," Scully said, placing her mug
carefully on a coaster. "Doesn't it seem probable that Libby simply
ran away?"
     "First off, Libby wouldn't do that; she owes Matt a lot." Mrs.
Haynes seemed to consider her words carefully before she went on,
"Second, where would she run to? Her folks moved the week after she
got married, of course, and she wouldn't dream of putting me out,
though truth to tell I'd be sort of glad to have her. She'd be a help
and a person to talk to."
     Mulder examined the back of John Haynes' head and nodded.
     "But she's never once suggested it and I don't think she'd do
it."
     "I still don't understand why not, Mrs. Haynes. It seems
reasonable to me that a young woman would --"
     "She owes Matt a lot," Mrs. Haynes repeated. "Would you kids
like to see where you're going to sleep? Not that I'm tired, you
know, but in case I drift off I'd like to get you a bit settled
first."
     As Mulder and Scully hauled their bags up the narrow stairs Mrs.
Haynes rattled on, explaining how the house had been a hotel for a
brief time in the twenties and that there were still numbers on the
door and that Mulder could have room number 3, Scully would be very
comfortable at the end of the hall in 5, and if they needed anything
not to hesitate to ask.
     Scully found herself in the tiny room, looking at a tiny bed,
covered in a huge patchwork quilt that hung down to the floor on both
sides of the narrow mattress. Slipping out of her shoes Scully sat on
the bed and touched the fading calico squares, considering for a
moment what fraction of her life Mrs. John Haynes had spent piecing
together small squares of cloth too small to be used for anything
else, and making out of them not only something useful, but also
beautiful.
     Perhaps time out here, she thought to herself as she slid into
her pajamas, was something bigger and slower than time in the rest of
the world. Like a sleepy bear or cold molasses. Otherwise how could
any human being work so hard and still have so much time?
     Then she shivered, aware of the cold draft sliding under the
door like a snake, and hopped into the bed and pulled the quilt up to
her chin. She was still contemplating the pattern when she heard the
small tap at the door. "Scully? You awake?"
     No point in going to the door to open it. Hell, she could
practically reach it from where she sat. In an equally low voice she
replied, "Of course I'm awake."
     Mulder, head bent and shoulders stooped as though the door were
too low for him, slid around the open door, pushed it to. "Of course
you're awake. Back home people are still waiting to see who's on
David Letterman tonight. Mrs. Haynes, however, is out like a light,
and so is the loquacious Mr. Haynes."
     "I'm sure she's had a long hard day, Mulder," Scully said,
smoothing the quilt. "And so have we, actually." She smothered a
yawn.
     "You realize, though, that the least little sound and either one
of them could come shooting out into the hallway in a second. I'm not
so dumb that I don't know why I got the room next to theirs. I'm on
probation." He waggled his eyebrows at her in such a ridiculous
fashion that she had to laugh, but laughed into the quilt.
     "Don't, Mulder, they'll hear." Then sitting up, "Besides, it's
not really funny when you think of people like poor Libby Vernon,
watched every day of their lives."
     "No, it's not funny. So it's 'poor' Libby now."
     "I'd feel sorry for any woman stuck all the way out here with a
husband like Matt Vernon. But Mulder, it's time to come clean."
     "Huh?" He made a show of examining the backs of his lean brown
hands. "I washed before I came up. Mrs. Haynes made a point of
showing me the sink."
     "Why are we out here, Mulder? You have no evidence that there's
been a murder except for Mrs. Haynes' opinion. I don't think it's
just likely, I think it's probable that Libby Vernon walked to the
main road and hitched a ride right out of Matt Vernon's life. There
is no body because there is no body."
     "Only one thing wrong with that hypothesis, Scully; Libby Vernon
was eight months pregnant."
     Scully closed her mouth with a snap, regarded the shadowed
profile of her partner for a moment. "Well, that puts a limit on your
long hikes."
     "And a deadline on your escapes."
     "And eight months -- she must have conceived during the time she
was away. I doubt that Matt Vernon is the sort of man who'd take
kindly to that."
     "I suspect you're right. And do consider --" Mulder pushed up
off the narrow bed, "-- how interesting that pregnancy would be, if
she _had_ spent a month in a UFO."
     "Oh no, Mulder. I'm not considering that for a second. You
consider it, that's your pet hobby." Scully scooted further under the
covers to hide the shiver that ran across her spine at the thought,
the sort of shiver her mother had always said happens when someone
walks over your grave. "Unless you mean -- Interesting to whom,
Mulder?"
     Half in, half out the door, he shrugged a shoulder under his
wool sweater. "Interesting to a lot of people."
     "That's why you brought me all the way out here at
Christmastime? Because you think the government's kidnapped a girl
pregnant by an alien?"
     "Partly. Aren't you enjoying the trip, Scully? Out here in the
wilderness with a manly man like me? A little adventure, a little
wrestling with the elements of nature. You never know what lightning
might do." The words tripped away from him in his teasing voice
before he realized that she might take them seriously. They regarded
one another for a moment around the half-open door like it was a
battlement wall. 
     Then Mulder leaned forward. His shoulders seemed to triple in
size as they blocked out the light from the small light bulb on the
opposite wall and from the hallway; his head, dark, bent down and
Scully didn't breathe in or out for a moment. Then he straighted,
pulling an afghan up from its folded position at the foot of her bed,
and spread it out over the top of the quilt. 
     "Let me know if you get cold during the night, Scully." At that
her heart seemed to leap into her throat and to dislodge it she
started to speak, but Mulder only said, "Mrs. Haynes showed me where
to find some extra blankets, if you want them."
     "Oh. Thanks."
     "Don't mention it." He disappeared and closed the door.


From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Date: 3 Sep 1994 19:34:07 GMT

     The sun was shining through the frosted glass and Fox Mulder
turned over on his bed, considerably larger than the one Dana had
gotten. Bless Mrs. Haynes for considering him, he thought when he
laid his long frame down to sleep and when he picked it up again
after yet another long night. Someday again he'd get a decent night's
sleep, Mulder thought to himself as he dragged on yesterday's shirt
and jeans. Someday before the end of the millenium.
     He didn't travel with a robe. He bundled up some clean things
and shaving kit in his hand before he padded downstairs in his bare
feet; the only bathroom was in the back of the house, off the
kitchen, obviously added late in the game when running water had been
added to the house's amenities. He expected to be the first one up
but the smell of bacon and eggs assaulted him before he hit the last
stair.
     Mrs. Haynes nodded to him as he appeared in the kitchen door.
"Please don't go to any great trouble, Mrs. Haynes," he warned her,
"neither Agent Scully nor I tend to eat much breakfast."
     "Nonsense," she replied, as if he'd just claimed 2 plus 2 was 7.
"Get yourself a hot shower before the young lady comes down and sees
you like that." Mulder's brow furrowed for a minute before he
realized that by "young lady" she meant Scully. Well, Scully was
pretty young. He rubbed his stubbled cheek thoughtfully. Yeah, shave
and a shower.
     "And then get something on your feet. You'll catch your death of
cold."
     "You sound a lot like my grandmother, ma'am. But then, I bet a
lot of people tell you that." He smiled as he slid past her in the
small kitchen and made his way to the bathroom.
     Two things surprised him when he re-emerged: he was indeed
hungry, and Scully was already dressed and eating, perched in her
chair, wolfing down eggs and toast, but wolfing in a delicate, almost
catlike way. Mulder was about to decide how to greet her this fine
morning but couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound
like he was commenting on her eating or sleeping habits -- and
Scully's sense of humor in the morning, he had learned, was
vanishingly small.
     All in all it was to Mulder's benefit that a Jeep Wrangler
pulled into the front yard about that time and the local sherriff
stuck his head in the front door. "Mrs. Haynes?" the man yelled.
     "Through here, Jeff," Mrs. Haynes called without leaving her
post at the stove.
     The sherriff filled the kitchen doorway. Mrs. Haynes handed him
a loaded plate. "I'm just here to see Agents Mulder and Scully,
ma'am, you don't have to --"
     "Nonsense," Mrs. Haynes said again, and the sherriff gave in
without a struggle. Dipping a piece of toast into the perfect center
of his fried egg, he reported to the FBI agents that there was
nothing to report. No results from the picture of Libby Vernon he'd
faxed all over the county and neighboring counties the week before,
and no results in the body search.
     "Did you search the Vernon's cabin? Knowing Matt he'd just bury
her in the basement," Mrs. Haynes muttered darkly.
     "We'd need a search warrant for that, Mrs. Haynes," Mulder told
her. "And we'd need a reason to search the place to get one."
     "Well, the girl's missing, isn't she? And Matt Vernon's a mean
old pig, isn't he? What more reason do you need than that?"
     "I'll agree with you that he's a mean old pig, Mrs. Haynes, but
that's not quite good enough," the sherriff sympathized.
     "Does Matt Vernon have any friends?" Scully wondered out loud.
     She repeated the question after Mulder had switched to his
official "FBI Guy" suit and she and Mulder were in the Land Rover on
their way to the Vernon's cabin. It wasn't more than five miles away,
Mrs. Haynes had said, and indicated the right path; her house sat on
a sort of crossroads where three of the dirt "roads" came together.
     "It doesn't sound like he's very popular, no," Mulder agreed.
     "Could it be possible that Libby has disappeared without a trace
deliberately, to throw suspicion on Matt?"
     "It could be possible, sure. You heard Mrs. Haynes telling us
about the way no Tucker has spoken to any of the Gombrichs from the
other side of the valley since there was that argument about seed
corn in '38. These people have long memories, and the fact that Matt
Vernon is a relative newcomer seems to put two strikes against him
already. But from what we know do you think that Libby is that sort
of person?" Mulder tossed the ball back in her court.
     Scully refused to volley. "I don't know, you tell me. You seem
to know a lot more than I do about Libby Vernon."
     Mulder glanced away from the pothole-pocked snow-dirt road to
scan Scully's face, which looked perfectly impassive. "OK, the
information on her pregnancy came to me through a channel you
wouldn't consider -- official."
     "Fair enough. However, as long as I am your *official* partner,
I'd prefer to have key information like that _before_ I begin an
investigation, not after."
     "Fair enough." Mulder concentrated on his driving for a while.
Scully could see muscles moving along his jaw as though he were going
to say something; she watched his profile. Finally he said, "I'm
sorry, Scully. I'm not much of a team player."
     "I'll accept the apology without the excuse. I think anyone can
be as much of a team player as they want to be."
     "I'll work on it."
     Anxious to divert the conversation before she began to feel like
a mother hen scolding a chick, Scully said, "For instance, that new
information leads me to think that we should check with hospitals
within the same three-county radius that Sherriff Connelly is
searching. A woman who _did_ walk out of here in December and was
eight months pregnant would certainly end up in a hospital somewhere.
And there's no telling when she might go into labor or need some
other medical care."
     "Good idea." Mulder handed her his cellular phone and Scully
managed to catch the sherriff before he left the Haynes house on his
way back to town. 
     The sherriff was less enthusiastic about the idea but agreed to
make the calls. "Please realize, Agent Scully, that women around here
tend to have their children at home, with no prenatal care at all and
no one attending the birth but the neighbors. There's no guarantee
that the girl will need to or want to go to a hospital."
     "If she has the chance, Sherriff, she very well might, though."
     Hanging up, Scully said to Mulder, "I just get the feeling that,
given the chance, there are a lot of things that Libby Vernon might
do."

     Matt Vernon was painting his house. That was the first thing
about him that surprised the FBI agents, since it didn't fit well
with Mrs. Haynes description of him as a lazy person. They left the
Land Rover on the patch of unbroken snow that seemed to serve him as
a driveway and walked over the grass to him. "Mr. Vernon?" Mulder
greeted him.
     "Yes?" Vernon squinted at the agent, sizing him up. He was a few
inches shorter than Mulder but much heavier. He didn't look at Scully
at all.
     "I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder, this is Special Agent Dr. Dana
Scully, we're here to ask you a few questions about Libby's
disappearance." Scully tried not to look surprised at the addition of
"Dr." to her usual titles and let Mulder talk. He went on, "I'm sure
you're very distressed right now, but I hope you can answer some
questions for us."
     "Distressed?" Vernon let the paintbrush slosh into the can of
paint, folded his arms across his barrel chest. "Oh yeah. Go right
ahead."
     "Can you tell us when you last saw your wife?"
     "Yeah, week ago Monday. I tol' the cops all that."
     "What time?"
     "Had dinner, went to bed, got up, she was gone."
     "Had you both gone to bed at the same time?"
     "No."
     "Do you usually?"
     "Yeah, I guess. It wasn't any big deal; Libby didn't have the
dishes done before I wanted to go to sleep, so I went to sleep."
     "About what time?"
     "I dunno, after dark," Matt was starting to sound irritated.
     Mulder smiled. "Nice place you got here," he remarked.
     "Thanks."
     "Isn't it a little cold for painting?"
     "Well you know." Matt shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the
other, irritation fled. "Gotta keep busy."
     "Mm."
     "Get the place lookin' nice for Christmas, too," Matt offered
unexpectedly.
     "Sure. You got any relatives coming for the holidays?" Mulder
encouraged him to go on.
     But Matt clearly had no more to offer on that topic. "No."
     Scully watched and made mental notes. The exchange reminded her
of one of those Russian slapping contests. The object seemed to be to
get away with saying the fewest possible words.
     Mulder tried again. "Do I smell potatoes?"
     To her amazement, Matt Vernon's face split in an enormous grin.
"Maybe you do." He waved them into the house for the first time.
     The front door opened into a kitchen with a large dining table
in it. There were no rugs on the floors as at Mrs. Haynes'; there was
a large sink and a counter, and an open cupboard with no door
contained a small stack of crockery as well as a large supply of
canned goods. There was no table cloth, but the small windows, one on
each side of the room, had, of all things, salmon pink curtains. The
paint on the walls was peeling. It was almost as cold indoors as out.
     A stack of potato peelings trying hard to be a couple of feet
high peeped out of a plastic garbage sack in one corner of the room.
Clearly a lot of potatoes had recently given their lives for
something.
     Matt Vernon grabbed two small glasses out of the cupboard and
extracted a large Mason jar from under the sink. Pouring several
fingers of clear fluid into each glass, he offered one to Mulder,
took the other one up in his beefy hand. "Cheers," he said awkwardly
and tossed back the glass.
     Amazingly, Mulder imitated him. "Smooth," he remarked when he'd
swallowed, though Scully thought she could detect a slight bug-eyed
look being suppressed. "You make it?"
     "A 'course. This batch, two months back, it was a good one."
Matt eyed the Mason jar and put it back under the sink carefully; it
was only a quarter full.
     "Libby help you with it?"
     This time at the mention of his wife's name Matt's face showed a
distinct flash of disgust. "No, that girl was as useless as they
come. And for what I paid for her, too."
     "Beg pardon?" Mulder's usually smooth questioning face cracked a
little.
     "Anyway, gotta finish paintin'." Matt sort of herded them out
onto the narrow porch again, then passed them when they seemed
disinclined to move, went back to the can with his paintbrush in it.
     "If we get any further information on your wife we'll let you
know," Mulder followed him out onto the dead winter grass.
     "Whatever." Matt Vernon picked up his paintbrush and started
slapping paint on the wall again.
     Before they returned to the car Mulder stuck his head around the
far corner of the house. The charred stump of a very young tree was
the only marker in the strip of yard that extended farther down the
hill towards the ever present woods. "What happened to your tree,
here?" he called to Vernon.
     There was a short pause in the slap, slap of the paintbrush.
"Lightning," Vernon called back.

From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Date: 3 Sep 1994 19:36:22 GMT

     Mulder held the Land Rover door for Scully as she clambered up
into the seat, but said nothing till they were back on the road.
     "Well, that was educational," Scully said first.
     "Wasn't it though."
     "Isn't it a little early in the day to be drinking, even for
you?"
     "You're just mad because he didn't offer you any." Mulder smiled
out the windshield.
     "I can't believe you actually drank that stuff. You have no idea
what was in that. You could have gone blind or been killed for that
matter."
     "I don't think so. I think Matt has himself a healthy helping
every day, and whatever he was, he wasn't blind."
     "You couldn't prove it by me. I don't think he even looked at me
once the whole time we were there."
     "Now that _is_ hard to believe," and Mulder turned his grin on
Scully.
     "Did you notice the week-old dishes piled in the sink?" Scully
grimaced. "I doubt anything in that house has been cleaned since
Libby left."
     "Yeah, I noticed it. I also noticed that Mr. Vernon seems to be
under the impression that he _paid_ for his wife? What the hell does
that mean?"
     "I don't have the least idea. We can ask Mrs. Haynes." Scully
shuddered. "If I had been Libby I'd have clubbed him in his sleep.
Disgusting man."
     "Mr. Vernon certainly isn't very interested in the disappearance
of his wife, except as it personally inconveniences his cleaning and
cooking -- and distilling -- arrangements." Mulder also looked as
though he'd found Matt Vernon a rather revolting specimen of
humanity. "That doesn't interest me half as much, though, as the
question of why he's painting his house in December."
     "Why not?"
     "Gotta keep busy?" Mulder imitated the mountain twang, then
shook his head. "Matt Vernon doesn't care about keeping busy. I'm not
sure what he does care about, but I'd like to find out how it drove
him to actually painting the outside of his house in the winter. The
paint's not going to dry properly in this cold weather. And the
inside looks like it needs the paint worse than the outside does."
     A minute of silence.
     "I'd also like to know what really killed his tree."
     Scully cocked her head at her partner. "Don't you believe in the
destructive power of lightning?"
     "Out here, in these mountains? Sure." He glanced at her. "But
lightning doesn't incinerate a tree to ashes that way. And why would
lightning hit a tree that small, with larger trees just beyond the
clearing to attract it away?"
     After a moment Mulder added, "Do you think he reacted to the
fact that you were a doctor?"
     "I don't think he reacted to my existence at all."
     "Mm. I think you're wrong there, Scully."
     "Mulder, is this the right road?"
     Mulder focused his attention on the drive instead of the
suspect. Was it the right road? All the hills and dales -- he
supposed those things that weren't hills must be dales --, all the
bare trees and snowdrifts looked very similar. At various points
other trails or "roads" parted from the one he was on; he remembered
thinking on the way to Mrs. Haynes' the night before that he'd have
to pay attention to keep from straying on to one of them; there was
nothing to differentiate them from the "main" road.
     "Dammit," said Mulder, and looked back over his shoulder. "I
don't remember making any turns."
     "Maybe it all just looks unfamiliar when you're going the other
way," Scully tried to reassure him.
     "You're the one with the sense of direction, do you think this
is the same road?"
     "Ask me how to get from Dupont Circle to Silver Springs and I'm
fine. I can't honestly say that I know exactly where I am out here,
though."
     Mulder checked the odometer. Well, in a few more miles they
would find out; if they didn't pass the Haynes house, they would know
they were lost.
     They passed it. Both of them breathed a sigh of relief. "OK,
Marshall Tucker's place should be right along this road, then, just
three miles away and up the driveway on our right." Scully folded her
notebook away.
     Again she marveled at the way the mountains could hide things.
The "driveway" was an almost forty-five degree dirt path that led
directly up to the top of the mountain ridge; just over the crest was
a small, one-floor house. No one would ever see it from the road --
though the clearing around it would make it visible from the air,
Scully thought. She was amazed that Mulder managed to coax the car up
the slope. Most of the snow had been scraped away, but still the
heavy tires fought for a purchase on the gravel-studded path.
     A boy answered their knock. They knew from Mrs. Haynes that he
was only fifteen but Scully would have placed him at thirteen at
first glance -- and at twenty on her second glance. He was short,
only a few inches taller than Scully herself, and his face had the
smooth look of a teenager, but his dark eyes were sunken and old, and
his neck and forearms, where they were revealed by the flannel shirt
he wore over a white t-shirt, were corded with the muscle hard work
causes.
     "Marshall Tucker?" Scully inquired, and was relieved when he
looked at her and nodded. After the Vernon interview she had been
beginning to feel invisible. "I'm Special Agent Scully, this is
Special Agent Mulder, I think Mrs. Haynes told you we'd be coming by
to talk to you?"
     "Y-y-yes," he stammered, and stepped outside and closed the door
behind him. His jeans were faded nearly white, and his flannel shirt
was patched, neatly, at the elbows; his hair, black and straight,
needed cut -- it had grown until it didn't look as though it were
intended to be short, but hadn't yet gotten to the point where you
could call it long. His eyes were also black and swallowed up the
questions they tossed at him.
     No, he hadn't seen Libby Vernon for well over a week. In fact,
he hadn't seen her since the last time he gave her and Mrs. Haynes a
lift into town, the first week of December. No, he hadn't talked to
Matt Vernon since then, either. He didn't know anything that might
help them figure out where Libby had gone. He stood outside, in the
below-freezing temperatures, in just his shirt and jeans, and though
he hadn't folded his arms against his chest Scully got the distinct
impression that he would hold off all comers.
     "Did Libby Vernon have any independent income?" Scully
eventually asked him.
     "Whatdya mean, money that Matt didn't give her? Yeah, a little;
she made some money with stuff that she made, like everyone else
around here. Once a lady driving through here gave her a hundred
bucks for a quilt she'd made that was hangin' in the yard. Stuff like
that." With a little spark of a smile he added, "Libby was so good at
quilts. Hardly nobody does 'em anymore."
     "Mrs. Haynes told us you'd lived here all your life," Mulder
finally wound up.
     "Born in this house," and Marshall indicated the door at his
back.
     "Maybe you could explain to us what Matt Vernon meant when he
mentioned today that he'd 'paid enough' for his wife?"
     A spark of red fire blazed up behind the black of the boy's eyes
but he looked down at his toes. "No," he mumbled, "I don't know what
that meant."
     Mulder nodded, ready to give in the towel. He'd half-turned to
Scully when the boy burst out, "I'll tell you one thing I do know;
Matt doesn't deserve a wife like Libby and never did."
     Mulder looked down at Marshall's face, paused a moment before
saying very softly, "Is that all you want to tell us, Mr. Tucker?"
     Blushing, the boy looked down again, then longingly over his
shoulder at the door. "Yep. Uh, I gotta go now. Uh... tell Mrs.
Haynes I'll be over to see her tomorrow."
     "Okay." Scully trailed down off the porch and Mulder followed
her to the Land Rover. Marshall disappeared inside the house.
     "He knows something, Scully, he just doesn't want to tell it to
us."
     "Maybe." Scully climbed into the cab of the car, waited until
Mulder had gotten in on his side and shut the door after him. "Maybe
he just knows he doesn't like Matt Vernon. That would hardly be a
surprise; nobody does."
     Mulder put the car in reverse, Y-turned and headed back down the
lane. "He's almost sixteen, Scully, and he could pass for eighteen in
any bar in the state; Libby Vernon is just past nineteen. What does
that suggest to you, Scully?"
     "That they are contemporaries, or close to it; Marshall Tucker
would probably be Libby Vernon's closest friend, possibly aside from
Mrs. Haynes, possibly not."
     Mulder nodded. "Don't you think if Libby Vernon were planning to
run away from home she'd tell Marshall?"
     "What makes you think she didn't? I think he was keeping a lot
of things from us."
     "I don't like having to guess at those things. Does he know that
she ran away? Or did he even help her? He could have driven her
almost anywhere. He says he was home all day the day Libby
disappeared; what corroborating evidence could he have?"
     "Well, we can try to check on it." Scully sounded dubious.

     Back inside the house Marshall Tucker crossed the front room of
his four-room house, went into the kitchen, pushed aside a braided
rug and pulled up a trap door. "You can come up, now," he called
softly into the dark.
     Up a tiny staircase built into the root cellar his grandfather
had built under the house came a slender young woman with dark
circles under her eyes and dark hair pulled back in two barrettes
from her pale face. He gave her a hand to help her maneuver her
swollen body up the last stair and out of the trapdoor.
     "They're gone," Marshall assured her.
     "Marshall, I can't stay here," she whispered in dry, papery
voice. "They're sure to come back and I'm going to get you in
trouble."
     "You think I care about trouble?" He snorted, moved over the
stove and turned on the heat again beneath the saucepan of hash he'd
been warming up for their dinner when he'd heard the Land Rover
crunch up the driveway. "Hell, my car's illegal, my skippin' school
is illegal, my driving Miz Haynes to get groceries is illegal --
there ain't much I *can* do that doesn't make me illegal. Believe me,
you're just a drop in the bucket."
     "Please don't say that. I'm scared, Marsh, really scared. It's
not just Matt any more. There's these cops looking for me now. And
look --" She unbuttoned the top button of her collar and revealed a
purplish rash, in the shape of an inverted triangle, raising the skin
just below her collarbone.
     "What the hell is that?" Marshall left the stove and came to
gingerly inspect it.
     "I don't know, Marshall," Libby half-sobbed, "It's been coming
and going for months now, and I think it's getting worse."
     "Hey, don't cry," he hesitated only a moment, then put his arms
around her, his black head next to her wood-brown one. "Lemme put
some calamine lotion on that, you have some dinner and you'll feel
better." He patted her back a little awkwardly.
     In her whispery soft voice she cried, "What are we going to do,
Marshall? What are we going to do?"

From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Date: 3 Sep 1994 19:39:41 GMT


     "Well, what are we going to do now, Mulder?" Scully asked him.
     "You tell me. You're the one with an actual theory."
     "You haven't formed a theory about this case?"
     "I try not to form theories."
     She laughed at that one. "Mulder, you're more full of theories
than a cat of canaries."
     "Where on earth did you hear that? That's awful."
     "I heard it from Mrs. Haynes. It may be old-fashioned but it's
accurate in your case."
     "I'm still waiting to hear your theory."
     Scully considered. "I see no reason to deviate from my original
supposition. Libby ran away. She can't have run far. I think a check
of surrounding counties' hospitals will turn her up, and if that
doesn't, of motels. She didn't have any friends in the area she could
stay with. She had some money of her own, enough to get her a bus
ticket and even a motel room or two. Since we have no idea where she
might have been going, it's anyone's guess which direction she took."
     "OK, that's a theory. Let's go to the sherriff's station and
start phoning hospitals and bus stations. We'll see if he's had any
tips on that photo we sent around."
     "You don't sound very enthusiastic."
     The side of his face formed a moving kaleidascope of muscle and
bone under smooth dark skin; she watched him think before he said,
"I have one question for you, Scully. Where was she the _last_ time
she disappeared?"
     Scully brushed a red curl out of her eyes. "You think she's gone
back to wherever she was before?"
     "All I know is that no one could find her that time, and no one
can find her now. I would like a search warrant for Matt Vernon's and
Marshall Tucker's house."
     "On what grounds, Mulder? There is still no evidence that a
crime has been committed. You yourself don't think she's dead."
     "No, I don't. But I don't think she's on a Greyhound bus,
either."

     They put in a frustrating few hours in the dusty Sherriff's
Office in the main part of town. It was hard to get through to many
of the smaller bus stations; they seemed understaffed or closed for
the holidays already. Wary of being caught out after dark, they
headed back to Mrs. Haynes' at a reasonable hour.
     "I'm getting good at this navigation thing," Mulder bragged as
they pulled into the Haynes' driveway. "Moss grows on the north side
of trees. All that stuff. Think I'll finally make Eagle Scout when we
get home?"
     The smells from Mrs. Haynes' kitchen reminded them that lunch
had been sandwiches from the drug store next to the station, faint
echoes of actual food. They sat down to a huge meal with the Haynes.
Afterward Mr. Haynes once again retreated to the front room and
Lawrence Welk; they stayed in the kitchen.
     "Here, gimme that," Mulder lightly snatched a flowered full
apron from Mrs. Haynes' work-weathered hands, and tied it on. "It's
my color, too. Have a seat, Mrs. Haynes."
     "Oh, well, I -- " Flustered, Mrs. Haynes backed into one of her
kitchen chairs. "I don't feel right just sitting here while you do
the work --"
     "Funny, it doesn't bother me any," Scully muttered. Mulder was
rolling up his blue shirt sleeves and sliding his tie out from under
the apron to undo the knot and slip it out from under his collar; he
fixed her with a look. "Of course I'll dry," Scully offered out loud,
a wry answer on her face.
     "I just want to ask you one more question before I plunge into
the dishes, Mrs. Haynes. Matt Vernon today mentioned in the course of
questioning that he'd 'paid enough for his wife.' Can you explain
that remark?"
     Growing still in her chair, Mrs. Haynes paused a minute, then
sighed, and the sigh was old and tired, the first sound Scully had
ever heard from the woman that made her realize how old Mrs. Haynes
must be. "Sit down for a minute, Mr. Mulder. I don't think I can
explain this well but I'll only explain it once. You see, I've seen
real slavery. I worked in the far south in the thirties, organizing
seamstress workers -- I was a seamstress with a shirt factory for
fifty years, you may have seen some of my sewing things upstairs in
room 1. I heard those girls tell me they wouldn't sit next to
so-and-so, 'cause so-and-so's daddy done stole their niggers. These
were all white girls, you understand; God knows what they would have
done if a black girl had wanted to work too. You can't imagine the
elaborate systems of credit those people used to keep their black
neighbors under their thumb -- in their possession, as far as they
were concerned. And they'd sell credit notes to one another so that a
man never knew who would own the rights to his work for the rest of
his life. I've seen that kind of evil, is what I'm telling you; and
what Matt's talking about is different. But maybe -- maybe, not
different enough."
     She paused and took a breath, as though she'd been running. "He
gave Libby's daddy a present when they got married, same as a lot of
folks out here do. It was a good bit of cash, because that's what
Libby's daddy asked for. He wanted to move right away and the cash
would help him do it. Now it's true there's been feuds over presents
like that, what was promised, what wasn't promised, whether it was
given like it was promised or whether it was small or late. There've
been big fights, and it still stops my heart to see Clint Ashburn get
out of his truck if Billy Delby is anywhere around, 'cause they've
been fighting over what Billy said he'd give Clint when he married
Clint's oldest girl for twenty-two years, and they've come to blows
about it. And you have to understand, a wife is a thing you need out
here. It ain't like you're always in love, though of course, everyone
hopes you are. And sometimes, even if you're not in love to start
with, well, you get there along the way." She smiled to herself as
the strains of Lawrence Welk's orchestra drifted down the hall. "But
it does put an awful feeling of indebtedness on your shoulders, I can
tell you that."
     "That's what you meant last night when you said Libby owed Matt
a lot," Scully pressed, though her voice was low.
     "Yes. Well, she was very aware of that." Mrs. Haynes looked off
into a far distance, and watched a world that no one else could see,
for only a minute. Then shaking off her gloom at least a little she
said, "I guess I'll go sit with John for a bit, if you two are going
to take care of the dishes."
     Mulder rose and went to the sink and sloshed a plate into the
hot sudsy water. The slap of the water and the crack of the bubbles
was the only sound in the kitchen for a few moments.
     "You going to help dry, or what?" Mulder rasped, his head bent
over the sink. When there was no answer, he turned. Scully sat at the
table, her hands in her hair, head bent, staring in front of her.
     "Hey, you OK?"
     She didn't answer.
     "Scully, talk to me." He dropped down to look at her, grabbed
one of her hands with his. "Hey."
     She looked at his hand, brown, wet, soapy; a blob of bubbles
slid across the glistening back of it onto the table. She shuddered.
     "It's weird, isn't it? I mean, I've worked ER, trauma units,
shelters, all those places doctors go during residency and agents see
during their work. I've seen a lot of things done to women by people
who claimed to love them. But this --" A shiver ran down her spine
again. "God, will I ever be warm again," she whispered.
     He released her hand, disappeared down the hall; returned with
the heavy wool sweater he'd been wearing on their trip yesterday. She
took it and shrugged into it gratefully.
     Squatting down again, Mulder said, in a voice that was pitched
low and somehow comfortingly, "There seems to be an almost infinite
number of ways that people can hurt one another. It's a drawback of
this job that we get to see more than our share." His smile and the
light in his hazel eyes were more warming even than the sweater and
Scully was grateful for them too. Then he stood again. "Now, are you
gonna dry or what?"

     The Haynes bid them both good night relatively soon after the
agents had emerged from the kitchen. Scully curled up with a book for
a while, but wasn't seeing the words on the page; she was seeing
Libby Vernon's photograph, and a crease formed between her eyebrows
as she sat, thinking. Mulder had a folder of maps with red circles
and green dots on them and he continually shuffled through them.
     "Very Christmassy," Scully finally said, commenting on the
colors when she noticed the maps. "What have you got there?"
     "Latest UFO sightings. I phoned some of the hotlines this
afternoon. It's been a busy few months in this county."
     Letting her head fall back onto the sofa, Scully sighed. "Go
ahead, tell me."
     "Nine sightings in the last week in this county alone; five more
in connecting counties. Those are just the corroborated ones. Very,
very busy. You'll also be fascinated to know that there was a jump in
sightings in this county a little over eight months ago."
     "A jump."
     "Of course, there's a regular level of sightings in this
community. It's not uncommon in rural areas. Not near enough to any
big papers or cities for the news to ever get picked up."
     "That story about Libby got picked up."
     "Yeah, wierd, isn't it? That was printed in the state capital --
sort of the state's version of the National Enquirer. Mrs. Haynes
says she never misses an issue."
     "I'll bet."
     "You're right, it *is* cold in here."
     "It's just that it's fairy tales as usual, isn't it, Mulder? Not
one shred of real evidence linking that girl to any sort of
extraterrestrial activity. It's just one of the possible answers --
it's the _least_ probable answer." Rubbing her forehead with stiff
fingers she added, "And I don't appreciate you taking time from a
reasonable investigation of more probable answers to pursue that kind
of information, Mulder."
     She realized how cross she sounded but couldn't call the words
back. They hung there in the air, frozen like icicles. Suddenly she
tossed down her book. "I'm going to bed."
     Head held high, feeling in the wrong and therefore very much in
need of a strategic retreat, Scully's progress to the door was
stopped as she passed the breakfront bearing the Christmas tree. Her
head bent, her red hair sliding forward and glinting gold from the
tree lights, and one white hand slid over a glossy green-and-red
package. "Did you see this, Mulder?"
     Mulder rose and looked over her shoulder. There were two
packages under the tree, matching in size and wrapping; one bore a
tag that said, "Merry X-Mas to Fox" and the other "From Santa to
Dana".
     Chuckling, Mulder reached out to touch one too. "She's a fast
worker, you have to admit."
     "That's so sweet."
     "Mine should say 'From Santa to Mulder'. She doesn't know that
I'm the one who believes."
     She smiled over her shoulder, looking into his warm laughing
eyes and realizing that he wasn't angry at her. She was glad. He'd
been so reassuring in the kitchen and she preferred that comfortable
feeling to a state of armed truce. One side of her lips curling up
into a charming smile, she said, "Who's to say I don't believe in
Santa Claus?"
     "A fat red elf with unlimited toy delivery but no Federal
Express?" Mulder had caught her infectious smile and his voice had
the usual teasing edge to it; he raised his eyebrows at her.
     "I _want_ to believe."

     Mulder sat on the couch flipping through his maps. He heard the
noises of Dana in the bathroom brushing her teeth, Dana going up the
dim steps, Dana settling down in the tiny bedroom at the end of the
upstairs hall.
     It was another couple of hours before he gave up and started up
to bed himself. There was nothing in the maps that continued
observation would reveal. But he couldn't shake the feeling that they
contained some information that was very important for him to have.
     On the dark stairs, with all the lights out downstairs, he
happened to glance out the window and he saw it.
     A bright white light, barely visible through the evergreen
branches, but, closer than the stars and moving faster than the moon,
enough to catch the eye.
     He raced out the front door and stood in his bare feet on the
frozen ground and tried to catch another glimpse of it, but it was
gone.
     He was right, he knew it. Whatever was going on was still going
on, and it had everything to do with the Vernon woman. He wanted to
be in on the finish when it happened.
     "Scully, dammit, you missed it," he hissed through his teeth,
then realized his feet were numb and went back in the house and up to
his bed.

From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Date: 7 Sep 1994 18:34:17 GMT

     The feeling of edgy expectation didn't leave him all night or
the next morning. Mrs. Haynes attributed his absent look to the
lowering gray clouds that filled the sky and made it leaden and
threatening. "It's going to snow soon, today, most likely, and you
need to be careful. If it starts while you're in town, you'd best
stay at the sherriff's station; you won't believe how much snow a
good blizzard can put down in an hour."
     Mulder was distracted and preoccupied through breakfast, the
ride into town, the phone calls he was making. He couldn't shake the
feeling that somehow he was missing the show. He felt like a guy in a
theater sitting behind someone with a big hat; part of the picture
was obscured, he couldn't quite tell what was going on, but he felt
like he ought to be able to piece it together from what he could see.
     What he mostly wanted was to be back in the woods.
     Around noon he told Scully he was heading out to Matt Vernon's
place again. "Maybe I can't get a search warrant, but I bet I can
find something around that cabin that we didn't see before."
     "Like what?" Scully didn't even look up; she was making
notations on her list of hospitals.
     "I won't know until I see it," he said, more than a little
sarcasm creeping into his tone.
     Then she looked up. 
     "Cheer up, Scully. At least it's a little warmer today."
     Sherriff Connelly put in from his desk, "It's warmer 'cause it's
going to snow. I been listening to the radio all morning, Agent
Mulder; that storm is coming right up the valley and it's going to be
here soon. You don't want to be out in the woods when it hits."
     "I'll keep in touch; I gotta go."
     That was why he was driving in the Land Rover alone on the
trails in the mountains when he almost hit Marshall Tucker.
     All Mulder saw was a flailing arm and a body and the Land Rover
swerved violently, half-heading up the enormous slope on the shoulder
of the road, then falling back down with a thump when the shoulder
snowdrift crumbled and dropped the front wheels back on the road.
     "Mr. Mulder," Marshall panted as he raced up to the side of the
truck, "you gotta come quick. Libby's having her baby."
     "Get in!"
     He shoved the passenger door open and Marshall clambered in and
slammed the door just as Mulder spun the Land Rover's wheels and the
car straighted out and shot down the road. "Tell me when to turn," he
instructed the boy tersely, dialing the phone with his other hand.
     "Sherriff Connelly," a voice said when the line picked up.
     "Put Agent Scully on the line."
     Then a female voice. "Yes?"
     "Scully, Libby's at Marshall's house and she's having her baby."
     "Oh my God. Is Marshall with you? Where are you?"
     "We're in the car headed to his place."
     "Put him on the line."
     Marshall answered Scully's questions about Libby's state when he
left her as best he could, stopping once to yell at Mulder to turn
left. Finally he handed the phone back to Mulder.
     "Mulder, I want you to call me as soon as you reach the house;
I'm going to see what can be done on this end."
     Mulder clicked the phone shut and looked sideways at Marshall
Tucker, who was cringing at the opposite end of the car seat. "I
think it's time you told me a different story, Marshall."
     "What's to tell? She's been stayin' at my house. I got enough
food. She wanted to leave town but couldn't leave without me drivin'
her and she didn't want to get me in trouble and -- I told her to
stay with me till after Christmas and we'd work something out. We
never figured the cops would look much into it."
     "Mrs. Haynes was very worried about Libby. Couldn't you even
tell her?"
     "Libby didn't want me to; she said Mrs. Haynes'd make her go
home."
     "I don't think Libby knows Mrs. Haynes very well."
     Another spinning turn and now they were heading straight up a
hillside. Mulder's brow furrowed as he tried not to wonder if he had
enough traction to make it. "Well, don't lose your head, Marshall. It
isn't everybody who gets to be in on their baby's arrival the way
you're about to."
     "What?" Marshall shook his head like he'd received a blow to the
temple. "It's not _my_ baby."
     "Marshall, don't _lie_ to me again!" Mulder shouted,
simultaneously slamming on the brakes and cuffing the boy by the
collar to shake him like a sack of potatoes.
     "I'm _not lying_!" Marshall half-screamed. Mulder let him go; he
fell back into the corner of the cab but a angry flash had come into
his black, pupilless eyes. The boy looked like he was trying hard not
to take a swing at the agent; Mulder decided he didn't have time to
let it cool down.
     "What do you mean? Where was Libby for four weeks when she
disappeared eight months ago?"
     "I don't know, but it wasn't with me. And Libby wouldn't --
we've never -- Libby would never do something like that."
     "You'll pardon me if I find it very hard to believe that you
don't know where Libby was." Mulder restarted the stalled car, put it
in first and started the car crawling up the hill again. Over the
top, and he could see the Tucker house.
     "Yeah, well, you'd find it harder to believe where _she_ says
she was," the boy muttered.
     At that, Mulder wanted to grab him by the shirt collar again and
make him explain himself, but Marshall jumped out of the car before
it had even stopped moving and run for the house. Mulder, his heavy
black winter coat swinging behind him, followed.
     Inside and through a door off the front room and Mulder could
see a slight form stretched out on the twin bed in the back room.
"Hi, Libby," he said softly and smiled as he came up to the bed. She
was pale almost to the point where her skin looked sickly blue, and
her hair was straggling across her face; she opened her mouth as if
to say something but closed it again immediately.
     "How are you feeling?" Mulder swung out of his coat and dropped
in on the floor, and kneeled next to the bed. Sweeping her hair away
from her eyes, he smiled again and said, "I'm Fox Mulder, I've been
looking for you, Libby. Mrs. Haynes has told me a lot about you.
She's going to be very glad we found you. Can I look at you for a
minute? I've got a friend who's a doctor who's been looking for you
too and she'd like to know how you're doing."
     "Go right -- right ahead," Libby whispered in her paper-dry
voice, and a shockingly bright flush of red dyed her cheeks.
     "Good, good," he mumbled and kept up a reassuring stream of
noises as he took her pulse, felt her forehead -- she seemed a little
cool to the touch -- inverted an eyelid and looked at her pupils. She
seemed fine. "I'll be right back, Libby."
     "Where's your phone?" he demanded of Marshall, who was standing
in the door behind him.
     "D-don't have a phone."
     Swearing under his breath Mulder darted out to the car in his
shirtsleeves. The wind had picked up and seemed to knock the breath
out of him; a few tiny white flakes bespattered the car's windsheild.
Retrieving his cellular phone, he ran back to the house, dialing the
station as he went.
     With Scully on the phone he asked Libby how far apart her
contractions were, found out she had no way of timing them but hadn't
had one for a "good few minutes now".
     "OK, Mulder, here's the bad news. The nearest ambulance is fifty
miles away and won't come anyway -- they say the blizzard is in full
swing there and it's too risky for them to drive over the mountains
in zero visibility. The good news is Mrs. Haynes is only two miles
away, says she can walk there in her sleep, and is already on her
way. Libby's not going to have this baby for a while yet. I think you
should come and get me and I'll stay by the phone where Mrs. Haynes
can reach me if there are any problems. It shouldn't take more than
an hour to two hours for you to get here and get me back there."
     "There's no phone here that Mrs. Haynes could use to call you."
     Scully thought for a minute. "Leave them the cellular."
     "An hour seems like a long time to me right now, Scully," Mulder
said, turning away from the bed so Libby wouldn't hear what he was
saying. "And probably to Libby too."
     "Believe me, it's nothing," his partner replied dryly.
     Clicking the phone shut and leaving it by the bed, Mulder slid
his arms into the coat and prepared to leave. "Mrs. Haynes is coming
over to see you, Libby, and you'll be fine with her until I get back
with the doctor. I'm going to get her now. Do you think you'll be all
right?"
     Libby nodded vigorously, then whispered, "I would like some
water, please, if that's OK." 
     "Of course! Just a little. No problem." Feeling flustered --
Mulder had not attended a delivery before -- he raced out to get a
glass of water, shoving past Marshall Tucker in the hallway, then
back to Libby's side. Putting an arm under her shoulders he helped
her to sit up a little and sip from the glass.
     That's when the shirt she wore, the top two buttons undone, fell
back from her throat and revealed the purplish rash which had not
gone away.
     Libby's hands started to shake when she saw the look in Mulder's
eyes, a look of disbelieving... exultation. He took the glass from
her and set it on the floor. "Libby, how long have you had this?" he
said, a murmur so low Marshall could never hear it, not touching her
skin but gesturing with his hand.
     "A - a while now -- since the baby," Libby whispered, and her
voice drifted away at the end like soft sand in an hourglass, too
quiet even to be heard.
     "You're going to be all right, Libby," Mulder said, a little
louder, then settled her under the covers. Pausing just a moment to
brush her hair back from her face, now a mask of terror, he added, "I
know, Libby. We'll make sure you're all right."
     "But Mr. Mulder I'm -- I'm so scared." Her eyes were huge and
tears, too afraid to fall, were trembling in them.
     "I know, Libby. But it'll be all right."

     "Mulder, we're lost."
     Scully tried to keep her voice even but her patience was close
to the breaking point. After almost an hour of clinging to the door
handle while Mulder coaxed the Land Rover to throw itself through
snow drift after snow drift, feeling as though every turn could be
their last, and holding her breath through every sickening slide of
the tires on loose snow, Scully had had enough.
     "Dammit, we can't be lost!" Pounding his fist on the steering
wheel Mulder brought the car to a halt. He looked wildly all around
him, but Scully was right. Nothing looked familiar; the snow, falling
thickly and blowing viciously, obscured almost all but the trees
right against the road. He couldn't even be sure if he was heading in
the right direction. And the plowed snowbanks that had lined the
roads for the past two days were obliterated by the crossings and
pilings of the new fall. There was no way to tell what crossroads he
was passing.
     "DAMN it! *Why is this happening to me?*" Mulder's shout rang in
the closed confines of the car.
     "Don't lose your head, Mulder," Scully said sharply. "We need to
find shelter."
     "We *need* to get to the Tucker house! I need you to examine
Libby Vernon!"
     "Mulder! *I AM NOT A RESEARCH TOOL!*"
     Mulder blinked and looked at his partner. She was furious, he
realized, and possibly a little frightened. "I'm sorry. You're right.
We need to find shelter."
     "I think I saw a cabin a few miles back, at the end of one of
these trails. Can you turn around?"
     "Sure."
     Mulder was convinced they were heading into open woods, the Land
Rover jouncing over the carcasses of fallen trees and rocks, but at
the end of the trail, sure enough, was a small cabinlike house, its
windows dark and mostly sheltered by trees on all sides. It was down
in a hollow, rather than up at the top of a hill like the Tucker and
Haynes houses, and the snow had collected all around it like sugar in
a cup.
     "Let's see what we've got in the car that we can take in,"
Scully suggested and waded out into the snow.
     "Ever practical." Mulder followed her.
     The back of the Sherriff's brother-in-law's car contained three
folded blankets, an empty metal canteen, a flare gun, two magnesium
flares, a box of shotgun shells, a combination hatchet/shovel, a
wrapped hank of thin rope, and a box of dried rations -- venison
jerky, some packets of freeze-dried stew, and chocolate bars. At the
sight of the chocolate bars Mulder had to grin. "I guess we've died
and gone to heaven, Scully. Let's set up house."
     Just getting to the door was a struggle but opening it was
worse; the door opened out, and the heavy snow was determined to keep
it pressed shut. Finally they forced their way in.
     There was a fireplace at one end and a wood beam over it for a
mantle. The floor was clean-swept wooden planks. The only piece of
furniture in the room was an enormous wooden bedstead. It filled one
whole side of the one room and the headboard loomed over Mulder's
head.
     "Wow. You look out for giants. I'm going to get some firewood."
Swinging up the hatchet Mulder wrestled his way out the door.
     The sky was darkening and the trees largely blocked his view of
it. He was afraid to get too far away from the cabin, afraid he
wouldn't be able to see his way back. First he opened the car again
and turned on the headlights. Even from the opposite side of the
cabin, he figured, he'd be able to see them for at least tens of
feet, even through the falling snow. Then he picked his way back the
way they'd driven, looking for fallen branches. A great many dead
limbs littered the forest floor, some of them old and decayed, some
of them broken off today by the weight of the wet, heavy snow
accumulating on them. Some of the lower branches that looked dead
succumbed to being tugged and whacked with his hatchet. He returned
to the cabin with a heavy armful.
     Tossing it inside the door, Mulder returned to shut the car
lights off and lock it up. Back inside he took some branches and
shook the snow off in a far corner of the house. "Let's hope this
stuff is dry enough to burn, Scully," he said grimly and laid a fire
in the grate.
     Screwing the top back on the canteen, which she'd just filled
with snow, Scully studied the proposed fire critically. "Mulder --
you don't smoke, I don't smoke. Do you have any matches?"
     He looked up at her from where he was kneeling on the floor.
They stared at each other for a tense moment.
     "There's gotta be matches in this rations box," Mulder insisted,
scrabbling through the box frantically. He crowed with delight and
pulled out a metal case with a tight lid; it rattled. Opened, it
proved to be full of wooden matches.
     "Any other suggestions from the floor? How about kindling?"
     Scully bit her lower lip. "Leaves?"
     "Too wet." Regarding the fire grate, Mulder snapped his fingers.
"Give me your notebook."
     Several pages from Scully's notebook were twisted up tight, to
burn more slowly, and placed in strategic locations leading out of
the pile of wood.
     "I hope you know what you're doing, Mulder," Scully murmured at
his shoulder.
     "So do I."
     There was some more frantic paper tearing and stuffing, but
finally the paper dried out a small twig and ignited it, and the dry
heart of the wood burned gladly. The flame leapfrogged quickly up to
igniting a branch as thick as Mulder's arm. Once it had caught, he
relaxed, letting out his breath.
     "You know what, Mulder, I think they _are_ going to make you an
Eagle Scout when we get home." Dana Scully drew a deep breath, slid
down the wall behind her, and rested her head on her knees, shrouding
herself in her heavy navy coat.
     "I'm going to deserve it, too." Mulder hung the canteen from a
hook on the mantel; the heat of the fire would melt the snow into
water.
     He slid down the opposite wall. They faced each other across the
firelight.

From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Date: 7 Sep 1994 18:34:58 GMT

     "Well, here we are," Scully said, to break the silence.
     Mulder was thinking of Libby Vernon's scared face and the mark
on her chest. "Yes, here we are. And outside the cabin, reality
marches on."
     Thinking she knew what was distracting him, Scully said, "You
know, Libby Vernon is going to be fine. Mrs. Haynes told me she's
delivered a dozen babies in this town, and I'm sure she was with
Libby a long time ago now. And they've got the phone to call for help
if there's trouble. I'm sure if they called the sherriff he could get
a helicopter in there from a Columbus hospital, or --"
     "I'm not worried about Libby, Scully," he interrupted her, and
his eyes looked dark in dimming light. "I hate to admit it, but I'm
not. I think she's going to deliver her baby with no problem. I just
want to know what kind of baby she's going to deliver."
     "What are you talking about?"
     "I needed you to see this person, Scully. To photograph her, if
possible. She had a raised purple rash in the shape of an inverted
triangle, right here." He gestured with his hand at the base of his
throat.
     Scully digested this news in silence.
     "You may not be aware that such markings have often been found
on UFO abductees, sometimes years after the encounter. There is no
medical explanation for the skin disorders and standard treatments
seem to have little effect. I've got a pile of X-files a foot thick
documenting such occurences. Abductees who undergo hypnosis report
that their captors told them the marks are for identification or
testing purposes. Some have their marks reappear during second or
even third encounters later in their lives --in one case, sixty-six
years later."
     "You still think Libby Vernon is an abductee."
     "No, Scully. I _now_ think Libby Vernon is an abductee."
     "And the baby?"
     Mulder spread his hands. "Marshall Tucker swore up and down that
it wasn't his baby."
     "And you believed him?"
     "He looked too angry for me not to believe him." Scully cocked
an eyebrow as if to invite him to continue. "He looked like he --
wanted to be able to say it was his baby."
     "He denies that Libby was with him when she disappeared the
first time?"
     "He denies it."
     "And what do you think?"
     "I think," Mulder said slowly, "that if we had a candle I would
put it in the window and see whether or not a couple of wise men
wander by."
     "Mulder, be serious."
     He looked at her. Her eyes looked silver grey in the firelight,
almost the only light left in the room as the snow blocked the
setting sun from them. The fire leapt and crackled and seemed to
exist only as a reflection of her hair. She was pleading with him to
give her an answer she could hear.
     "I think I am almost serious." Mulder let his head fall back
with a thwack on the wooden wall. "But enough about me. Can I offer
you a lovely venison jerky and chocolate dinner? The water here has a
particularly piquant bouquet."

     Dinner tasted surprisingly good, after their long day, and
afterwards Mulder made another trip out for firewood. This time he
went around back of the house, keeping the wall of it almost within
reach so as not to wander out into the dark, and almost stumbled into
a pile of cut wood. He knocked on the window nearest to him, Scully
opened it, and he tossed log after log through it into the house.
     "There," he said when he came in, "no more trips outside for
us."
     "Well, except for the utmost necessity." Scully looked as
dubious as she felt. There was no running water in the cabin.
     "The great outdoors awaits you any time you feel the need." They
stacked the firewood near the hearth after knocking most of the snow
off of it, to help it dry out. 
     "Well, do you want room number 1, 2, 3, or the penthouse suite?"
Scully asked Mulder, who was eyeing the bed frame thoughtfully.
     "If only that thing had a mattress. Even a box spring."
     Scully cocked her head to one side, considered. "Quaker bed
frames like that had ropes woven across them to support a hay
mattress."
     "There's that rope in the car," Mulder suggested.
     "I don't think it would be worth it. There's nothing to put
between us and the rope; it'd make an awfully uncomfortable hammock."
     Mulder went over to the frame, rocked it with his hand. It was
as steady as if it had been poured out of concrete. "Well, I think I
know why it's still here. It's too well joined to come apart without
destroying the rails; it's too heavy to lift in one piece; and it's
too big to go through the door!"
     "What happened to your hands, Mulder?" Scully came up behind
him, removed the outstretched hand from the bedpost. It was scratched
and scraped, dirt and some blood drying under the fingernails. More
disturbingly, it was very warm. Too warm.
     Scully laid her palm against Mulder's forehead. It was hot and
very dry. "I think you've got a fever, Mulder."
     "Really? That would explain why Libby felt so cool to me. She
*looked* like she'd been working up a sweat."
     "Isn't that just like you. I'm the one who's been complaining
about the cold since we got here, and you're the one who comes down
with, as Mrs. Haynes would say, 'your death of cold.'"
     "She'll be so proud. Hey, let's not jump the gun yet. I'm a long
way from dead."
     "And what _did_ you do to your hands?"
     "Tree-wrestling, hog-tying, tobacco-chawing -- the kind of stuff
you do out here. I pulled some of those first branches off some trees
and the trees fought back. That's all, Scully. If I weren't such a
soft city boy I'da come through without a scratch."
     She poured water over the scrapes, pulled out a splinter and
gave him some Tylenol capsules she found in the depths of her coat.
He smiled gratefully. "Thanks, Scully. That's more than a lot of
partners would do for me. I'm going to nominate you when we get back
for the Girl Scout equivalent of an Eagle Scout. They must have one.
I have to find out."
     "Gee. And I thought I'd reached my peak when I got my M.D. I've
got a fee, though."
     "Yes?" Mulder looked intrigued.
     "Do you play chess?"

     They had to give up chess eventually, though; visualizing the
moves was tiring, and after Scully won two games Mulder said he
conceded the day.
     From time to time they added logs to the fire, which burned down
and warmed the whole one-room cabin. Fortunately it was tightly built
and they finally even took off their coats.
     They talked about cases they'd finished, and then they talked
about X-files Mulder wanted to look at, and they talked about people
they knew at the Bureau. Personal talk always seemed off-limits
between them, Mulder thought. It was all the more obvious now, when
there was plenty of time to talk.
     After a lull in the conversation Mulder volunteered, "I'd like
to ask you a question, if you don't mind."
     "Go right ahead."
     "What did you mean in the car when you told me you weren't a
research tool?"
     Scully scratched her nose -- a good way to hide your expression,
Mulder knew -- and said, "Next question?"
     "Come on, Scully, I want to know."
     "I probably shouldn't have said that --"
     "No bullshit, Scully. Just tell me."
     Leaning up against the wall, knees drawn up, Scully rested an
elbow on one knee and put her chin in her hand. She watched Mulder
watch her from where he was stretched out on his side in front of the
fire, his shirttails pulled out of his suit pants, one long leg
hooked over the other, his arm propping up his head as he looked at
her.
     "I didn't really mean it, Mulder. It just felt to me, at that
moment, like I was a... recording object, like a camera or a Geiger
counter, that you needed to register evidence for you. Just a
camera."
     "I'm sorry, Scully." He continued to look straight into her
eyes. She had learned that when his usual heavy-lidded, sleepy
expression disappeared, like now, it meant that he really was sleepy
-- and concentrating hard. "I expect you felt that way because that
was exactly how I was treating you."
     "Ah." She couldn't think of any answer to that.
     "It's not just that I'm not used to working with a partner any
more. It's more that -- well, I'm not used to having someone to share
my work with. You're not inclined to believe, I know -- but you're
inclined to listen. That's so exciting, Scully, it's like... I feel
sometimes like a kid with a new toy on Christmas morning, and I can't
wait to find out what it will do next."
     With a funny warm feeling blooming in the pit of her stomach
Scully said lightly, "And it's not very flattering to me, is it?"
     "Not necessarily _un_flattering." Mulder grinned his
irrepressible grin. "But I get the general idea. And I'll grow out of
it. As of this minute."
     "Don't strain yourself," she warned sharply, avoiding the full
blast of the grin.
     "I said I was sorry, Scully. How about while we're at it you
start giving me a little bit of credit for knowing the difference
between a legitimate X-file and normal crime?"
     "I do."
     "No, you don't. You always think I'm following the least likely
answer. But how many times have the probable answers already been
eliminated by other authorities? It's not that I'm not willing to
duplicate effort, Scully. I tend to assume that cases with no normal
answers need to be investigated with an eye toward the extreme
possibilities."
     "And I tend to assume that if they haven't got what you call a
'normal' answer -- a rational explanation, in other words -- it's
because of shoddy work, not because it's time to start chasing down
the 'extreme possibilities'."
     "How many times have we investigated cases other people have
shelved, and plowed through a ton of shoddy work, only to find out
that the answer was one that the original investigator would never
have considered? How many cases do you think get mothballed every
year rather than solved simply because some local cop or petty
bureaucrat said that they'd exhausted every *reasonable* answer?"
     "A lot," she admitted. "You're right, it's a lot. I just want to
feel like you're not leapfrogging the logical avenue of
investigation, Mulder. And I want to feel like I'm your partner, not
your witness."
     Mulder looked into the fire and there was several minutes when
the crackling of the logs was all there was for sound. Then in a
flatly neutral tone Mulder said, "I'm going to suggest something and
I want you to realize that it comes from under my psychologist hat,
not my personal hat. OK?"
     "OK."
     "Isn't it possible that at least sometimes you feel that way
because your job is to be my witness? Isn't it true that your field
reports are serving the function of evidence for judicial scrutiny
higher up?" Mulder shifted so that he looked directly into her eyes,
straight on.
     Her face was set like stone. She wanted to say no and tell him
that was a stupid accusation, but she couldn't because she knew it
wasn't. "That has not been my intention, Agent Mulder."
     "I didn't think it was, Agent Scully."
     But that wasn't true. He had thought it. She knew he had, when
they'd first met and for months afterward. It had been a while before
he'd stopped offering her evidence from the X-files like it was a
carrot she couldn't appreciate on a stick entirely under his control.
     Mulder's eyes were still boring into hers. They were hazel, she
knew, a shade of moss-green mixed with flecks of golden brown that,
in dim lights, looked dark brown, but in certain types of reflected
light shone like old coins, or gold-backed mirrors. There was a
volume of explanation in those eyes, and they convinced her of his
respect and his honesty and his trust. Even though it hadn't really
been that long ago, timewise, his eyes convinced her that the time of
his mistrust in her had been long, long gone and buried, and that he
knew that she also wanted to know the truth.
     The odd sensation in the pit of her stomach fluttered up and
caught in her chest and made it hard for her to choke out, "Thanks,
Mulder."
     He didn't say anything but a smile crept up into the corners of
his eyes and made them merry. Suddenly he bounced to his feet. "You
sleepy yet? I'm exhausted."

From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Date: 7 Sep 1994 18:35:39 GMT

     Scully put her coat back on then wrapped up in one of the
blankets. She insisted on giving Mulder both the others, and he
insisted on putting her nearer the fire, so both of them got their
way.
     They'd warmed up the cabin quite a bit but Scully awoke sometime
in the middle of the night. The fire had burned down and glowing
coals dripped out of the grate. Her body temperature had dropped in
sleep and the cabin now had a distinct chill that crept right into
her bones, through blanket, coat, shoes, everything.
     Shivering, clamping her jaw to prevent her teeth from audibly
chattering, Scully reached to put another log on the fire. She let
out a gasp when something grabbed her from behind and drew her away
from the fire.
     "Let me get that," Mulder rasped, his voice husky and deep from
sleep, his eyes heavy and bleary. Scully wished in the dim fog of her
sleep-blunted mind that she had a thermometer to check his
temperature with.
     He poked the coals till flames licked up the sides of the log
again, then regarded the blanket-wrapped bundle of Scully below him.
"This isn't working," he mumbled and, picking her up like a piece of
furniture, unwrapped his own blankets and took off his coat. He
folded one of the large blankets in two and laid it down like a mat.
Then he unwrapped her blanket and coat. Her teeth started chattering.
     "What are you doing, Mulder?"
     "Fixing this." He indicated that she should lay down on the
blanket. Then he spread the smaller of the two remaining blankets
over her, then the larger one, folded in half, then his coat
lengthwise across her feet and her coat lengthwise across her hips.
Then he lifted one edge of this edifice and slid under it, onto the
blanket mat, behind her. She was still facing the fire, and closer to
it.
     "Inefficient conservation of heat," he mumbled, and then she
suppressed a start as she felt his body, so much longer than hers,
against her back. He pillowed his head with one arm and with the
other one pulled her closer.
     "Uh, Mulder..."
     "You've been cold for three days, now you're bitching about
being warm?" he muttered, and she could feel his breath stirring her
hair. He felt like a blast furnace against her. Her teeth stopped
chattering immediately. She could even feel warmth trickling down to
her cold toes, in the depths of her ankle-high boots. He was right;
she was _warm_. She worried about his fever, shifted around till she
could lay one of her palms against his forehead.
     And his eyes popped open. She ignored them and felt his forehead
anyway, then took one wrist and checked his pulse. To her hands,
which she'd kept warm, his forehead did not seem unduly hot, was even
slightly cool, and his pulse was normal. She wished she had more
Tylenol for when this dose wore off.
     His face, right next to hers, seemed sculpted out of warm smooth
stone. But she'd never seen a sculpture capture the angle of a jaw
quite like that, or the curve of a pair of lips quite like those. In
the dim firelight he looked... beautiful. She bit her lip nervously,
then wished she hadn't.
     Mulder bore the inspection of his temperature and pulse, in that
waking world between dream and reality in which it seems that
everything is equally real and equally impossible. The glint of the
firelight, dark red on red gold, haloed her hair in brilliant flame,
and made her translucent skin seem like ivory silk. He couldn't see
the expression in her eyes, darkened and shadowed by the firelight
behind her, but her lips, ripe wild strawberries, parted and drew his
attention. She caught the lower lip between two perfect white teeth
and Mulder suddenly felt the desire to stroke his thumb along it, to
free it. Catching himself from falling over the brink into reality,
Mulder let his head fall onto his arm and surrendered back into
dream.
     He mumbled something else but Scully couldn't catch it. She
turned back over, her back against his chest, and surrendered to the
delicious warmth.

     The windows had lightened with dawn when Mulder next woke. His
face felt a little chilly as he lay flat on his back; he assumed the
fire had burned down again. But the rest of him was comfortable.
Well, a little stiff, he realized, stirring. Then he stopped.
     His left arm was under Scully's head and wrapped around her
shoulders, securing her closely to him; one of her legs stretched
full-length against his, the other was thrown across his thighs. At
some point she had kicked off her boots and her sock-clad foot
pressed against his shin. Her head rested on his shoulder and her
hair spread across the front of his shirt and throat. Clearly there
had been some shifting during the night. He was now almost entirely
off the blanket under them; someone had pushed and someone had
pulled, and now here they were.
     He *was* warm.
     Disaster. Horror. Crisis of biblical proportions. Scully was
going to go stark raving out of her very cool and collected head.
     Oh well, he thought. "Morning," he said into her hair.
     Something was rumbling under her ear, like an earthquake. Scully
woke up enough to realize it was Mulder. What the hell, the thought
sleepily muddled through her head, I'm drooling on Mulder's shirt.
     Then she sat bolt upright.
     "Thanks," Mulder said, and sat up rubbing his neck, "I was
getting a little stiff."
     The unfortunate entendres of this remark weren't lost on Scully
but she chose to wince, then smile ruefully at him as though there
weren't a mariachi butterfly band playing Sousa in her stomach.
     She rolled over, pretending that she wasn't rolling away from
Mulder, and tossed another log on the fire. Running her fingers
through her hair and trying not to imagine what it looked like she
said, "Venison and chocolate for breakfast?"
     "Sounds delish."
     Well, she _was_ taking it in stride. He'd underestimated her.
Under that cool, calm exterior there was a woman who really was cool
and calm. An irresistable urge to press his limits rose up in Mulder
from somewhere in the teenage section of his brain -- a section he'd
never managed to lock away completely -- and he said in a husky
voice, "It's been a long time since a woman made breakfast for me."
     Years of dealing with two brothers had given Dana Scully a
preternatural instinct for when she was being teased. Her chin
dropped, her eyes opened wide and she turned a look of disbelieving
-- and amused -- amazement upon him. In tones of utter conviction she
said, "Don't push it, Mulder."
     If the heavy oak rafters over their head had been made of glass
or silver they would indeed have rung, as in the proverbial songs,
Christmas and otherwise, with Mulder's shout of laughter.

     "My watch says noon. Snow seems to be slowing. You've got a
fever of at least a hundred and some. I'd say it's time to get out of
here."
     Mulder couldn't deny that his head didn't feel as steady as it
might. Looking over at Dana and the stack of neatly packed emergency
supplies, he shrugged. "It doesn't matter now. I'm sure it's all
over."
     "What, Libby having her baby? Why that's when it all begins,
Mulder," she enlightened him and, after he'd struggled to his feet,
handed him the pack of food and gathered up the blankets.
     "I don't know, I just feel like it's all over and we missed our
chance. I missed _my_ chance, Scully. It's over."
     She frowned as they struggled out to the car and plopped the
supplies in the back. "Get in and warm it up, Mulder, I'm going to
douse the fire with snow and make sure it's out before we go."
     The Land Rover started right up and Mulder sent a fevered prayer
to the god of old cars. It seemed like just seconds and Scully was
back with him. Had he dozed?
     "Mulder. We've got to get out of these woods and somewhere we
can orient ourselves. We've got plenty of gas; we just need to get
moving. I think you should let me drive."
     "Miz Scully ma'am, you're welcome to try. This thing has no
power steering or brakes. But go right ahead."
     Oh good. Loads of fun. She indicated that Mulder should shove
over in the front seat and got up behind the wheel.
     "If you ever tell anyone this I'll deny it but I once drove a
mowing tractor at my uncle's farm in Maine."
     "Did you mow in the snow?"
     "Now would be a good time for you to shut up, Mulder."
     For a moment after she'd settled herself behind the wheel Scully
felt like a ten-year-old pretending to drive. It was only for a
moment, then it passed. Gingerly she tried backing up the vehicle.
The wheels started to whine; she stopped the gas. Great, they were
stuck. Now were they *really* stuck or just a little stuck?
     The car was too big for Mulder to push alone, even if he weren't
half delerious, which she suspected he was fast approaching. Okay,
she'd *make* it move.
     Businesslike, chanting encouragements to the car under her
breath, Scully left the car in reverse, tried backing a little, then
let the car rock forward. Slowly but surely she rocked the car back
to a point when one of the wheels caught on some traction and the car
started to move. Quickly before the traction ended she backed up a
good twenty feet, then gave it a quick Y turn and headed back out to
the main road.
     Throughout this performance Mulder said nothing, letting his
head fall back and keeping his eyes closed; the sunlight, as it began
to appear more fully through the now only occasional snow, seemed too
bright and cutting for his eyes. Almost like being hung over, he
thought to himself, but even worse.
     He paid no attention to the navigation from then on. It wasn't
as though he could help Scully find her way out of the woods anyway.
Dimly he wondered if there were a Berlitz course on one's sense of
direction. Sort of like learning French in a week, but different.
     When he felt lucid again it was because he noticed that they
were working their way up a hill, and Mrs. Haynes' house sat at the
top of it.
     "Great!" he cried. "Turn left and we'll get to Marshall Tucker's
in fifteen minutes!  No, go right, go right. I'll bet Libby's gone
home. She'll be at Matt's place."
     Ignoring him entirely Scully turned into the Haynes' driveway.
     "What are you doing? Scully! Turn right! Stop! I mean, don't
stop! What the hell?"
     She gave the parking brake a firm yank, then slid out of the
high seat, marched around to his door and opened it up. He almost
fell out of the car on top of her. "Mulder, you are sick. I am
officially diagnosing you as sick. You are going to get pneumonia for
Christmas if you don't get some drugs in you and get in bed."
     His lips disappeared as he clamped his jaw shut and started to
slide backwards into the driver's seat.
     "Mulder." It was soft but it was serious. "If it's over, it's
over."
     He blinked at her. His voice was low and urgent in spite of the
fog in his eyes. "But Scully, *I need to know if it's over.*"
     Impatiently pushing her straggling bangs away from her face,
Scully regarded him with irritation for a moment; then she
disappeared into the house. Mulder's sense of time was completely
disoriented by his fever. He couldn't tell if she'd been gone one
minute or twenty by the time she came back; he might have dozed off.
     "Come on, Mulder." She sounded tired, but offered him a hand out
of the car.  "You're going to bed."
     "What about --?"
     "I talked to Mrs. Haynes. There's nothing for you to see that
won't wait for you to see it."
     Mulder couldn't quite figure out what that meant but didn't feel
like arguing any more. His eyeballs felt scratchy and a burning pain
had started in the back of his throat. He led Dana lead him into the
house and up the stairs into the bed Mrs. Haynes had made for him.

From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Date: 7 Sep 1994 18:36:24 GMT


     Mulder had no memory of a dark time passing but the light was
different when next he woke. It was morning, late morning. He
groaned.
     "Good morning, sleepyhead. You can stay in bed until I examine
you, or I can let loose the hounds."
     Closing his eyes again he felt the slight dip in the edge of the
bed where Scully sat. She took his temperature, his pulse, and then
laid her ear against the wall of his chest and did a lot of ordering
about how he should breathe.
     "Bronchitis," she pronounced cheerfully. "Not too bad once we
can get some antibiotics into you. And of course bed rest, aspirin,
the whole spiel."
     "And call you in the morning?" The rasp in his voice developed
into a full-blown cough.
     "Ve-ry nice. I don't suppose you're going to stay in bed until
Marshall gets back from town with your antibiotics?"
     "No, I don't suppose so."
     Struggling into a sitting position, Mulder dragged a shirt on
over his bare chest before he realized it wasn't his. "Mr. Haynes
lent you some things," Scully noted.
     "Oh."
     Mulder felt totally drained and exhausted, both physically and
mentally. For a minute he just sat there at the edge of the bed, his
dark head hanging, trying to catch a full breath and wondering why he
felt so depressed, until he remembered.
     "Scully," he finally half-whispered, "I can't think of any other
way to say this that would sound less... well, trivial -- ... but I
feel like I've slept through Christmas morning and missed the whole
thing."
     "Well, in one sense, of course, you haven't; in fact it's
Christmas Eve today. Merry Christmas. In the sense that you mean..."
Her light tone faltered. "I'm sorry, Mulder. We did miss it."
     "I want to see."

     The drive to Marshall Tucker's house only seemed long because of
the silence. They'd left Marshall with Mrs. Haynes so they knew that
no one would be there; still the house's emptiness was somehow
disappointing.
     The narrow bed in the back room had been made with Marshall's
few linens. The rest of the house was clean.
     And just above the house, on the crest of the hill, a perfect
circle almost thirty feet wide had been melted through the blizzard
drifts, through the rock-hard packed old snow, down to the bare
grassless ground. Three equidistant dents had been driven into the
ground while it had been somewhat thawed, then frozen in again by the
cold.
     Mulder stood in the center of it, staring around him. He had to
fight the urge to fall on his knees and scream out his frustration.
Too melodramatic for the Mulder facade, he thought to himself,
clenching his fists in his pockets.
     "Well, what happened?" he finally asked her.
     "You're not going to like this, Mulder. Mrs. Haynes told me that
one, the delivery was perfectly normal and Libby came through it
well. Two, Libby and the baby have been removed to a hospital and
that Libby appreciates our efforts on her behalf but that the case
has been settled."
     Mulder rubbed tiredly at his eyes, which still felt like
sand-covered marbles rolling around in his eyesockets. "I see."
     He sighed and let his shoulders droop. "And this?" he had to
ask, gesturing around at the circle.
     "Made by the evacuation helicopter."
     "Of course." Mulder considered this for a few minutes, then had
to smile, then laughed out loud until a fit of coughing stopped him.
"You know what I think of that story."
     Scully sighed and folded her arms. "Yes I do, and actually I'd
like to know what's wrong with it? Do you find it so hard to believe
that a young girl having her first child might need to be evacuated
to a hospital? Isn't that why you left them the phone? What is that
melted patch you're standing in but physical evidence that
intervention was needed and happened, and why shouldn't it have
happened just as Mrs. Haynes said?"
     "Why _should_ it have? How _could_ it have? Dammit, Scully, if
you just had had a chance to see the girl --"
     "I'm sorry, Mulder. I know it won't make you feel any better but
I feel I ought to let you know that many women develop odd skin
markings and conditions, especially in the later stages of pregnancy
--"
     "You show me documented cases of purple rashes in the shape of
triangles being caused by your average pregnancy, Scully, and then
show me the helicopter that lands on three feet, and then we'll
talk."
     "We're going back now." Her tone didn't seem to be offering the
idea for discussion; Mulder followed her back to the car.

     A surreal tissue as of red cellophane lay over their last
evening at the Haynes' house. Marshall Tucker stayed for Christmas
Eve dinner, which featured a turkey bigger than most German Shepards
he'd ever seen in his life. Loaded with drugs and hot food Mulder
felt considerably better; only his black mood weighed him down.
Marshall and the Haynes were still in the kitchen when Scully found
Mulder sitting on the inevitable brown couch in the front room, his
head between his hands, looking as though he half-hoped the earth
might open up and swallow him and he'd be as gone, gone, gone as
Libby Vernon.
     "So go ahead and tell me what _you_ think happened, Agent
Mulder. I'm dying to hear your theory."
     He looked up. Scully curled into the end of the couch opposite
him. Her mouth was half-curved in a smile that might have been
teasing but her eyes indicated that she did want to hear his theory;
they urged him on.
     He leaned back and sighed. "It's a thin case, Scully, you said
so yourself. I have no explanations, only questions. Where was Libby
the first time she disappeared? Where did that baby come from? And
where is she now?"
     Scully studied the patch of air over Mulder's shoulder. "For
what it's worth I called around again to all the nice friends we've
made in three states worth of hospitals. None of them have a patient
called Libby Vernon or matching her description."
     His smile was grim but genuine. "Thanks. I didn't think you'd
bother."
     "I'm as interested in the truth as you are, Mulder. Evidence
supports that she was evacuated by helicopter -- but I don't know
where to, any more than you do. And I don't know the answers to those
other questions either."
     He winced. "And if it was by helicopter -- whose helicopter? The
rest of the world gets the paper too, Scully. Anyone interested in
UFO contact would have noticed the way sightings have gone up in this
area. You know what Mrs. Haynes told me over coffee tonight? She told
me that they pretty much live on their Social Security payments. I
mean she told me like she was making a point. And you know what would
happen to Marshall if anyone wanted to sic the law on him. They're
trapped, Scully, like I'm trapped, but at least they know. I want to
know. Who wanted to find out about Libby's baby just as much as I
did?"
     "Don't get paranoid on me, Mulder," Scully said lightly but
still her eyes carried the weight of the statement.
     He shook his head and said, "Dammit -- *dammit*, Scully, she was
so scared. I wish I knew that I didn't lie to her, that it is going
to be all right." It was the uncertainty that cut too close to the
bone, he knew; he couldn't stop the tears that rushed to fill his
eyes so he hid them behind a tent of fingers, only letting out the
strangled whisper, "Scully, I just wish I *knew*!"
     "I know." The silence stretched between them for a long while.
     Scully bit her lip, then said, "Mulder, you know, just a couple
of days ago you reminded me that we see a lot of things on this job
that most people don't get to see, and we just have to be able to
stand it, right? And sometimes those things include unsolved cases.
You have to think of it that way, Mulder. It's just an unsolved
case."
     "It's not *just* an unsolved case, Scully." He sighed and the
hands dropped from his face. "But you're right, after all." An almost
half-grin fought its way to the surface and combined with his tousled
hair to make him look like a most unlikely little boy. "As always.
I'll try to follow your sage advice."
     "Well, that'll be a first," she mumbled, but relaxed.

     The slender boxes from Mrs. Haynes contained fleece-lined gloves
for each of them. Their hostess allowed them to open them even
though, she explained, it was Christmas Eve and technically early.
Scully and Mulder later consulted and both decided they would have to
give up working for the FBI since neither of them could figure out
when Mrs. Haynes had acquired the gloves or, more importantly, how
she had managed to find some that would fit each of them exactly.
     "Why there's another box up here for you, Dana," Mrs. Haynes
said, surprised, after the gloves had been duly admired and the small
party was getting ready to call it a night.
     "Hmm?" Warm from cider and turkey dinner, Scully didn't realize
what Mrs. Haynes had said until her hostess dropped the flat little
box into her hand.
     "Merry Christmas to Special Agent Scully from Special Agent
Claus" had been written in tiny square print on the gift tag. A
russet leather notebook embossed with her initials fell out when she
pulled off the paper.
     "Why thank you, Mulder," she said, bemused. "Just what I need.
Especially after you used half of my last one for kindling."
     "Lucky guess," he waved deprecatingly. Mrs. Haynes was watching
him, a smile playing around her mouth; Marshall was watching the
Christmas edition of Lawrence Welk with Mr. Haynes.
     "Lucky guess, huh? So you brought this with you?"
     He saw the trap coming but couldn't avoid it.
     "Please reconcile," Dana Scully purred, "with your testimony,
and I quote, 'we'll be back long before Christmas Eve.' "
     "Ah. Well." The bronchitis, the drugs and the lateness of the
hour only slowed him up slightly. "I told you days ago I'm working on
that Eagle Scout badge. That's my new motto. Always be prepared."
     "No jury in the world would buy that, Mulder." Her eyes narrowed
but she was still fighting off a smile; he could tell he was in
danger but not how much. "Fortunately I have some community service
just waiting for you back in D.C. to work off your debt to society.
It involves a large pile of toys and a truly phenomenal number of
batteries."
     Mulder groaned. "Thank you sir, may I have another?"
     Scully smiled.

From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Date: 7 Sep 1994 18:37:12 GMT


9 a.m., the FBI building, Washington, D.C., December 27th, 1993

     When Scully walked into the office Mulder was already on the
phone.
     "Yeah, send me the best Xeroxes you can make, and I'll send you
a sample by FedEx -- yes, you'll have to sign for it. So sue me." He
hung up. "Morning, Scully. Did you have a nice Christmas?"
     "You mean, after we flew back on a plane so empty I could hear
my thoughts echoing, filled that stack of presents with batteries and
rushed them over to my nephew's already bare tree? Sure, I had a
great time. What did you do?"
     "Chinese. Here, have a look at this."
     "What's this?" She opened the manila folder.
     "Lists of helicopters. Yes, I know, it's riveting. But the U.S.
doesn't have a model in service that can melt snow for a radius of 30
feet. In fact, they don't have one that can melt snow at all --
though they seem to have helicopters for every other purpose. I like
this one; it's got a can opener AND a laser cannon."
     "Mulder --"
     "Of course that doesn't mean there aren't models that we don't
know about -- but who do you suppose would be using secret stealth
helicopters? Medivac? 911?"
     "Mulder --"
     "One of the UFO organizations I spoke to over the weekend sent
someone out to where we just were to confirm sixteen sightings on the
night of December 22nd. Just two days later and the center would have
ignored the whole thing -- they ignore the yearly Santa sightings and
'suspicious looking stars' and so on. They took a Geiger counter out
to the Tucker and Vernon places. The results are in there."
     "Mulder." It was the tone of her voice that caught him in
mid-ramble as much as the look in her eyes. "If it's over, it's
over."
     "It's never over, Scully." He pointed at the file in her hands.
"I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look at that information at some
point, Agent Scully, but of course I realize that there are other
cases requiring our attention."
     She dropped the folder on her desk, extracted a matching one
from her briefcase, and handed it to him. "And I'd like you to take a
look at my field report. I'll be filing it later on today."
     He took the file, regarded it for a moment with something close
to surprise, then put it carefully on his desk blotter. "I'll do
that."
     He was still looking down when a small glittery package slid
into his field of vision.
     "And I still hadn't given you a Christmas present. I hadn't done
all my shopping before I left, since you assured me we would be back
'long before Christmas Eve.'"
     His thin smile acknowledged the dig. "You're not going to let me
forget that one, are you?"
     "Not anytime soon, no." She folded her arms against her chest,
sat back on her desk, and watched him open the small box.
     Mulder stared at the small fire-engine-red object with
fascination. "Hey, I've always wanted one of these."
     "Every Eagle Scout needs a Swiss Army knife. With dozens of
gadgets folded into it that only Eagle Scouts would need. And I think
there's a compass in there somewhere. Everything you'd need for a
crisis in the woods. After all..." she considered it, then went ahead
with it anyway, "you never know what lightning might do, do you?"
     They were silent for a moment, then the crinkles in the corners
of his eyes broke the tension.
     "Thanks, Scully." Running his finger along the back of the knife
he nodded up at her, the smile on his face a gauge of the sincerity
of the thanks.
     "You're welcome. Merry Christmas. And do you have the
Bakersfield file?"