Classification: TRHA

Rating: NC-17, for just a LITTLE explicit sex.

Summary: A visit from the Mulders.

Spoilers: None.

Disclaimer: We're waiting! Property of 1013 Productions and Fox Television.
 

"We've always felt it was the decent thing
To succor men who couldn't help themselves.
We've fought for others many times before,
And now we see a new war coming up."

Euripides, "The Heracleidae," Lines 329-332. Translation by Ralph Gladstone. Copyright 1955 and used without permission.
 

Merimna
 

January 1, 2000

"I don't think they were too upset that we broke up the celebration," I said to Langly as we lay down on the bed.

"You kidding? I think Byers has been waiting to jump Juliet all evening."

"Well, they did manage to work something in this afternoon, I'll bet."

"Yeah. We never did walk in on 'em, did we? Damn!" Langly grinned. "'Course, I'm gonna be real disappointed if I find out that Byers was showing her something on the computer."

"That would have spoiled all our fun," I agreed.

"Ever been caught in flagrante delicto?" He inquired.

"Nope."

"'Randa never walked in on you?"

"That's what locks are for, babe." I rolled myself on top of him. "You?"

"Not really. There hasn't been that much in flagrante delicto in my life, at least not till you came along."

"Well, I wasn't the first."

"Yeah, but you will be the last. C'mere." He pulled me down on him. "God, I am so horny."

"I sort of noticed," I whispered. "I figured if I let you stay in the living room much longer, you'd be arrested for indecent exposure."

"Mmm." We kissed, another long, breath-stealing one. I could feel everything heat up and move faster in me. "Maybe we should get more indecently exposed." He moved me up and began to open my shirt buttons. "Are you going back to bras when you're outta your cast, Ally?"

"Yes, dear. I do have a public contact job," I reminded him, but I was losing my breath as he moved his hands over me.

"Too bad." His mouth captured one breast and the sensation was overwhelming. I started moaning. More clothes were shed, more kisses shared, more parts explored. We were a mass of limbs and hands and mouths, just taking everything about each other in. The man is a banquet for the senses, I decided. And I can be hungry anytime.

I'd touch him certain ways, in certain areas, and I'd be rewarded with soft cries of ecstasy. Finally, I sank down on top of him, and had the exquisite pleasure of watching his face at the moment he climaxed. He was radiant, beautiful. He made sweet, primal, almost childlike noises when he came, and it drove me insane, and the way he'd call my name-he'd say it softly, but urgently, like a mantra, and that would inevitably drive me to my own orgasmic frenzy. Every sense satisfied.

"Langly?" I whispered to him when we were in our post-coital cuddle.

"Mmm?"

"I'm glad you asked me."

"Me, too." He pulled me in tighter. "Sorry. Don't wanna hurt your arm."

"Arm's fine," I assured him. "Wow. 2000. New year. New millenium."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." he began sleepily.

"Charles Dickens, 'A Tale of Two Cities.'"

"Yep. Only line I remember. I hated that book."

"Me, too," I giggled.

"We both hate Dickens. Cool. It's a great basis for any relationship," he said as he chuckled very softly.

"That, and really fantastic sex."

"Yeah, that too."
 

I awakened several hours later to find something large and immovable near my feet. At first I thought it was Tiny, but Tiny generally slept with Michael. My next thought was of Miranda, but I discovered upon cracking the door slightly that it was Shelby. She had come upstairs and was sound asleep at the end of our bed, the spare blanket pulled up around her.

My first inclination was to wake her and send her back to her room, but I recalled how for nearly three months after Eric died, Miranda had insisted on sleeping in my bed with me. And this was in a situation where the trauma of the death was the only issue. Shelby's problems were a lot more complicated. I decided to let it ride. Langly's and my main difficulty would be in getting comfortable; for Shelby, it wasn't going to be so easy. I figured I could talk to her in the morning. Besides, I had a wicked headache from the quantity of tequila I'd had the previous day, and all I wanted to do was go back to sleep.

Langly's only comment was, "Ally, put the fucking dog out. I can't move my feet."
 

January 4, 2000

Dana, Mulder, and Rebecca were seated in our living room with us. We hadn't seen them since before Christmas, so ordinarily, it would have been quite a treat. This, however, was a business call. They'd just spent a week in Northern California, assessing Lydia's situation and attempting to make sense out of it. The frustration in their faces was disturbing.

Mulder had attempted, with the help of a psychiatrist friend from Stanford, to use sodium amytal in order to help Lydia retrieve her memories of the four and a half months she had been gone from us, but had not been successful. He wasn't certain whether it was due to drugs she had been given, certain treatments that may have worked over her memories, or simple resistance on her part. His clinical evaluation of her was not terribly uplifting at this point, either. Lydia knew she had missing pieces; her last cogent memory was of going out to Blockbuster to get videos. She appeared to remember her scientific data from her work; that seemed not to be lost on her. She knew her family members; she'd remembered when her
parents passed on and when. She remembered Seth; he'd flown out and they'd talked to him, but the information he possessed regarding their place of employment was of limited value. Lydia had apparently not confided in him regarding some of her discoveries. I wasn't sure of her reasoning; I suspected that she did not want to jeopardize him. Dana and Mulder both
indicated, however, that in spite of her expression of desire to see him, she was strangely cool to him. She had little affect, and Dana felt her weight loss had been critical; Lydia was always thin, but apparently Emma had not exaggerated when she stated that her sister resembled a corpse, both in emotion and activity.

Dana also indicated that the baby seemed to upset Lydia strangely. She and Mulder basically had traded off caring for Rebecca while the other one conversed with Lydia. Dana had corroborated the findings of Emma's internist, who had examined Lydia.

"One thing we were looking for was an implant," Dana indicated. "And we found none."

"What kind of implant?" I asked.

"Computer chip, planted at the base of the spine," Langly explained.

"This." Dana lifted up her coppery curls-her hair had grown out and looked gorgeous-and showed me a tiny scar on the back of her neck. It looked like the faint remainder of a scratch from a cat.

"Maybe they improved the technology," Langly suggested. "Used materials that you couldn't easily detect."

"Two MRIs revealed nothing," Dana indicated.

"You look for any biocompatible materials?" Langly asked her, while I signed his words. As a signer, he could only carry on basic conversation; anything beyond that and my expertise came into play.

"We looked for anything conceivable and inconceivable," Mulder shrugged.

"What about evidence of drugs?" I asked.

"Nothing that could be detected-no opiates, no barbiturates, not even some of the more arcane compounds that can be found," Dana went through her clinical evaluation. "And I attempted to check the FDA databases for experimental compounds, and Langly, nothing you fed us turned up anything, either." Langly had done a hack into the military medical experimentation
records, and had passed them along to Dana and Mulder, at least what he was able to get to.

"Gotta be something they put in her," Langly held stubbornly.

"I'm not inclined to disagree, but I have no evidence," Dana told him simply. "And I'm not about to make an unsubstantiated claim. I also am trying not to let my own...experiences color my judgment here, and this I admit I found difficult to do."

"So what? Does she go back to New Jersey now? What about her employer? What do they have to say about all this?"

"We've contacted the employer. They apparently placed her on...indefinite administrative leave, so if she wants, she's welcome to go back whenever she's ready," Mulder explained. "Which is very odd. Woman doesn't show up for work, can't be located, no indication of her whereabouts...and her employer's ready to welcome her back with open arms." He shook his head and cradled his daughter close to him.

"Mulder, it's happened to us," Dana reminded him.

"Yeah, but Lydia Gerstein doesn't work for Walter Skinner. She has a normal-more or less-professional job, which she's apparently very good at, and she works for a company that demands a lot from its employees, including attendance." He snuggled the baby girl in his arms against his shoulder when she began to fuss. "She's indicated a desire to return to work,  which I find strange, in view of the changes that have taken place in the company she works for. Meerschaum-Beckerling's not what it used to be."

"Stock price took a pretty hefty nosedive," Langly commented.

"I think she ought to stay out of northern New Jersey for a while, that would be my recommendation," Mulder indicated.

"But she was abducted here," I pointed out.

"I think whatever happened to her, North Jersey has a role in it. I indicated she ought to stay with Emma for a while, and Emma agreed, although it looks like they may be back on this side of the map soon enough. Apparently Emma is trying to obtain a position in educational lobbying here in Washington," Mulder stated.

"She said something about that when she was here," I told them.

Rebecca continued to complain, and Dana took her from him and began to feed her.

"Second time she's eaten since you guys got here," Langly commented. They'd only been there an hour and a half.

Dana gave Mulder a Look. "Takes after her father." This got a good laugh out of everyone in the room. She was her father's daughter, no question about it. She had his dark hair, same shape of face, and it appeared that her eyes would darken to his stormy green color. Fortunately, she did still have Dana's nose. Kid was going to be a looker.

"Kid's getting huge," Langly commented.

"She eats enough," Dana assured us. "Once she got the hang of it, she decided this was a Good Thing."

"A girl with an eye for quality. I can appreciate that," Mulder winked at Dana, and she passed him another Look.

"So you ready for another one?" Langly teasingly asked Mulder.

"Sure, why not?" Mulder grinned. Dana looked horrified when Mulder signed his comment to her. "What about you guys? Think there'll be any for you?"

"Not real likely," Langly said, a bit wistfully, I thought. "Ally here's an old woman." I swatted him with my cast.

"Well, you've got Miranda, and she is a wonderful child," Dana told us. As if we didn't know.

"Miranda, yeah, she's cool." Langly grinned.

"And it looks like you got another one by default. How's she doing?" Mulder inquired, indicating Shelby.

"Wellll..." I shook my head.

"She's been coming in our room at night. I mean, I don't care, 'cept there's no room for my feet," Langly mentioned.

"Miranda did the same thing after Eric died," I volunteered. "Eventually she just moved back into her own room. Neither of us ever really said anything about it."

"Well, she's what? 14?" Mulder assessed.

"Going on 15," I informed him.

"Hmm." He blinked, contemplating. "I certainly wouldn't encourage that sort of thing, but it probably will be temporary...get her a sleeping bag and leave it on the floor, that's my suggestion." He shrugged.

"Guess we could do that," Langly mused.

"And she should be seen by a therapist," Mulder informed us.

"Yeah, I know...it's just...my family background is one...we're sort of skeptical of psychotherapy in general...I wouldn't even know how to go about looking for a good one," I told him.

"Well, I do have professional contacts, and some of them are very good...I can give you some references," Mulder offered. "I'd treat her myself, but I know her, albeit peripherally, and I'm not comfortable with that situation."

 "Don't worry, Mulder. We want Shelby to be okay, not like you," Langly jibed him. I was mildly aghast, but this was Mulder, and he just burst out laughing.

"Some references would really be helpful. Thank you," I nodded to him.

"I'll e-mail you."

"How are you doing, Langly?" Dana directed her question at him.

"I'm fine," he said.

"And it was never figured out what was wrong," Dana frowned.

"Nope," he said, not sounding terribly concerned.

"Are the follow-up visits indicating anything?" she asked him.

"What follow up?" I laughed. "He hasn't had any!"

"Sorry, they didn't leave me with much blood. I'd like to keep what little I have left," he told Dana. This inspired her to glare harshly at him. I decided in that moment that she would have made an excellent schoolteacher or bouncer.

"Langly, you've got to follow through on this," she warned him severely. "The follow ups could reveal some of what caused the illness in the first place, and in the event that you became ill again, there'd be a better grasp of how to treat it. Or how to treat someone else if they became similarly affected."

"I'm not planning on getting sick again," he said stubbornly.

"And you didn't plan on getting sick the last time," she shot back. "Plus you were ill with from what Allison described to me as bronchitis or pneumonia before that. You've probably suppressed your immune system more than you think. I hope you're not driving yourself into the ground, although I'm quite honestly not hopeful in that regard."

"Just standard issue alcohol poisoning," he told her.

"We imbibed pretty heavily over the holidays," I told her unnecessarily. "And enjoyed it."

"Yeah, the tequila gods got their revenge on you New Year's Day," Langly commented, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Anybody who gets hangovers like you do, you'd think they'd figure out they shouldn't drink so much."

"Well, babe, I'm a slow learner," I laughed. "And New Year's Day sucked anyway." I turned to Mulder and Dana. "We had to bury Mu. She was our oldest cat."

"The tortoiseshell? I'm sorry," Mulder said gently.

"Yeah, but we had a great dinner afterwards. Nothing like a funeral to inspire a great meal," Langly said, rubbing my back.

"We went to Bustamante's, and the way we behaved, well, they might not let us back in," I elucidated.

"Hey, we didn't do that much damage," Langly squawked. "It was only a little food fight!"

"Little food fight, my ass. I'm still getting cheese out of my hair," I told him tartly.

"And who started this junior-high activity?" Dana asked.

"Well, Miranda started by tossing garlic bread at Michael. Langly tells her to stop. She doesn't. Michael starts throwing grated cheese at her. Then he starts on Langly for chiding Miranda. Then he gets into it..." I shook my head. "Good thing John and Julie weren't with us. I think they'd have died. However, my brother and his fiancee were there, and they're unrepentant food fighters. Things got messy."

"When did they leave?" Dana asked.

"Day before yesterday. It was a blast having them here, though."

"Yeah, Jason's gonna be in the wedding party. How about you, Mulder?" Langly asked him.

"Sure. Do I have to get dressed up?" Dana punched him lightly.

"Ask Frohike and 'Randa. They're in charge. We just have to show up." He grinned at Mulder.

"You're letting Frohike plan your wedding." Dana looked intensely skeptical. "You're far more trusting than I'd ever be."

"I did my first wedding. I'm more than happy to let somebody else deal with it," I told her. "And Miranda'll do a good job."

"Your mother offered to help her, which was very kind, thank you."

"Mom? She loves those kinds of things." Dana waved her hand. "And she loves Miranda. She'd like to take the girls for a weekend. Call her."

"Hmm." I smiled wickedly at Langly. "This could mean..."

"An entire weekend with no extra people? What a concept," he smiled.

"When was the last time you two were alone? And I mean really alone?" Mulder asked.

"You mean like, nobody was here but us?" Langly looked baffled.

"Yeah, that kind of alone."

I looked at him. He looked at me. We shrugged.

"Chesapeake Bay," I concluded.

"And that was..."

"Oh, about six months ago," I figured.

"You need a weekend," Dana decided firmly. "Actually, when we were on the West Coast, we took a couple of days to go to San Francisco, and it was wonderful."

"Well, with Becca, you're not exactly alone now," I laughed.

"Yes, but my mother insists we go out by ourselves every week just to have some time together, and she gets her grandma time in with Becca. And I'll tell you, it saves my sanity sometimes," Dana told us. "Besides, Mulder and I have had the chance to spend a lot of time alone together in our work, which is something you two don't get."

"Gets a little nuts around here sometimes," Langly concurred.

"Hey, we had our own room at Black Hat," I reminded the crowd in front of me.

"Yeah, and thousands of your most intimate friends all around you," Mulder shot at us. "And if I recall, your little vacation was cut short."

"We're just saying, you two look like you could use a break. Call my mother. Get out of town for a couple of days. Just be with each other," Dana advised. "And you." She pointed at Langly. "Who's your physician?"

"Lu Ying, I think her name is," I told her. I trusted Langly in this case to pass her disinformation.

"You will either go and see her and follow up, or I'll draw your blood myself," she threatened Langly. "And I guarantee her bedside manner is better than mine."

"Scully's profs in med school recommended pathology based on her bedside manner," Mulder laughed. "Although I can't say I have any complaints."

"I mean it, Langly," Dana said sharply. "Either agree right now you'll be seen next week, or I'll roll up your sleeve myself."

Langly considered this. "How's she at drawing blood, Mulder?"

"She's a brute," Mulder stated bluntly. "I'd go with her first recommendation."

"Okay, okay," Langly grudgingly gave in.

"And if you're agreeable, I'd like her to draw a sample for me to look at. I'm curious," Dana said to him.

"Sure, why not? Get everybody in on the act." Langly groaned.

"You're lucky she didn't come equipped for the job. She'd probably be sticking you now," Mulder laughed at him. Langly was not amused, and screwed up his face to indicate his displeasure.

"How's the arm?" Dana asked me as Rebecca finished dining. Mulder took his daughter from her mother's lap and began patting her on the back as Dana refastened her shirt.

"It's okay. It'll be x-rayed again later this week. Some of us keep our appointments," I reminded Langly pointedly. "I'll be happy to have two working hands again-as you can see, I'm a bit deficit in signing right now."

"I didn't have a problem with any of your signs. You seem to have good mobility in your fingers," Dana observed. "Let me take a look." I held my left arm out to her. She examined the digits sticking out the bottom of the cast, manipulating each one. "Swelling seems to be minimal, flexibility-at least from what I can tell-isn't too bad. I think you could probably sign a
little each day, like you're doing now with me. I don't think you can return to six or eight hours a day, like you normally do, but I think maybe a couple hours a day, you could do and be comfortable. I don't see any reason for you to be totally on disability."

"Thank you!" I cheered. "The only thing that's really a problem is getting it wet. I have to still have it wrapped up to do anything with water."

"Well, you can't do anything about that, but I think going back and doing a little signing each day would be good for your hands, and for your head." She looked at me pointedly, but then she smiled.

"Of course, if I'm going to get back to work," I narrowed my eyes at Langly, "someone needs to give me my car keys. Can you believe I haven't driven since my Sentra bit the dust?"

"How were you gonna drive with your arm like that?" Langly gestured at my cast.

"The car's an automatic. Shouldn't be a problem," I told him. "I'm not sure why you're so scared about me getting out on the road, babe. I'm sure I won't be any more of a road menace than I usually am."

"Now I'm feeling very reassured. Ally, and let me run this by you guys, too, you got hit by what looks like a Hummer. Now, he was on the straightaway, and you were turning left. He's got the right of way. Now, he plows into you, and okay, he probably came out ahead of you, but he's still got damage. Now why the fuck have we not heard a word about this from the driver? Why hasn't he hired one of the miserable fucks on daytime TV to clean us out of our net worth? I mean, technically, Ally, you were the motorist at fault."

"Langly, I'm telling you, I didn't see shit!"

"I didn't say you were actually at fault. I just said, according to the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, you were legally at fault. So where's our mystery man? I mean, I'm not complaining-I have no desire to deal with a screaming dickhead, and it's nice that the phone's quiet. It's just weird, that's all. I don't like it."

"Langly, I've sworn to you before, the guy did not have any lights!"

"Ally." He held up his hand in a truce gesture. "I'm not doubting you. I believe you. I'm just saying, don't you think it's a bit strange?"

"Maybe the other driver was intoxicated and didn't want to deal with the problems connected with that," Dana offered.

"Well, that'd make sense to me," I said.

"Well, maybe that's what we'll end up telling the insurance company if we wanna collect on the collision," Langly shrugged. "I'm just worried, that's all. I wanna make sure that someone's not after you."

"Well...I'm reluctant to say, particularly in view of what we witnessed in Sacramento," Mulder allowed. Then he directed his attention to Langly as he rocked his little girl. "On the other hand, keeping her in the house...she's a redhead, Langly. I don't think it's safe." He grinned, and he got another Look from Dana. He and Mulder, I swore, did things just to get a rise out of the women they loved.

Dana stood up and signed, "Let's go outside," to me.

"We're leaving," I announced, grabbing Langly's jacket. I walked over to him. "Zip me up?"

"Hey, that's my jacket!"

"And it's more comfortable than mine." He zipped it up, and I felt about four again, which I think was the age I was when I learned to fasten a zipper.
 

"I hope you don't mind," I signed to Dana, "but I've been jonesing for a cigarette for about three hours now."

"Only if you give me one," she signed back. I was surprised, but she explained that she'd smoked in high school and college, and she could really use one right now.

We walked up the street. The temperature was in the teens, and the sky looked like snow. We carried on our conversation strictly manually, no verbalizing, which we didn't do often, but she had indicated she didn't want to speak.

"Allison," she signed my name, using the sign name she'd given me, an "A" hand with the sign for door, "I'm not going back."

"To the Bureau, you mean."

"Yes. I've decided to accept a teaching position at Georgetown that I've been offered. I'll be starting in summer semester, which begins in May. I'd like you to work with me again."

"I'd like to. You told Mulder yet?"

She shook her head. "I have to. I'm going to do it after we leave today."

"Well, I mean, you discussed your leaving quite a lot in recent history."

"We did. And...Allison, I did this because I wanted to. Because you're my friend, and because I thought I could help."

"You mean Lydia, don't you?"

"Yes. I had to go. I had to do it. And now I know. I don't want to go back. My priorities have changed. My main concern is protecting our daughter, and I refuse to do anything that jeopardizes her safety." She looked at the cigarette burning in her hand. "Except this, of course." We laughed.

"It's only one, Dana. Relax."

"That's why I asked you for it."

"How do you think he's going to take it?"

"I don't know. He agrees with my doing this, at least in principle. But the idea that we wouldn't be working together on the X-files...I'm not sure he'll stay with it, Allison. And I think that it would be a mistake for him not to." Watching her, dressed in jeans and a parka, hair in a butterfly clip, and only lip gloss for makeup, she looked about twenty. And strangely at peace, in spite of her consternation regarding her decision.

"What would he do?" Mulder certainly had career options; whether or not he chose to exercise them was quite another matter.

"He's begun talking about starting a forensic psychology consulting practice."

"He's got contacts. He'd do well."

"Yes, he would. I just...The X-files were so bound up in our existence for so long. They were our existence. Now I've moved beyond that."

"Maybe Mulder has, too."

"I'm not sure. Mulder...is Mulder. How do I explain it?" She smiled affectionately.

"And he's a guy, which automatically qualifies him as an alien species." This she found hilarious, and I got a real laugh out of her, which is pretty rare from Dana Scully-Mulder.

"You said it," she agreed. "I mean it about your alien, Allison. I don't have a good feeling about this. He really needs to receive some follow up care. And I'm really curious as to what happened to him. That's why I asked for the blood sample."

"Where're you going to do your testing, if you don't have the Bureau's labs?"

"I'm not going to be teaching until summer, but I will have lab access beginning with winter semester, which at Georgetown is in two weeks. I still need to work, Allison. As much as I love being a mother-and believe me, it's a privilege I thought I would never have-I still need to be working."

"The money doesn't hurt, either," I commented.

"Actually...that's another thing. Mulder was left some money from his father's estate, which, up until now, he's refused."

"Uh-huh. It's his choice."

"After Rebecca was born...he began to lean differently. He wants to buy a house, for one thing."

"You looking for one?"

"Not yet. But we want to get out of Annapolis. I love being there, and my mom is so close, but it's too far to commute into DC. We're thinking about looking in Silver Springs."

"Pretty nice real estate, except for Crazy Jaleel," I nodded.

"Ah, you've met the infamous Jaleel," she smiled. "That man is the most irritating chauvinist pig I've ever met."

"Jaleel? Yeah, but he's moderately entertaining."

"And he can be very...helpful. However, I don't trust him a bit."

"I don't think we're supposed to. He did sell me the Neon that I haven't driven yet."

Dana shook her coppery head. "Mulder swears by him. Me, I stick with my Toyota dealer."

We walked on down the hill to the adjoining street.

"This is nice," Dana observed. "Rustic. And very private."

"You wouldn't expect the Gunmen to advertise now, would you?"

"No, I can't say that I would."

"Langly fell in love with this house. I'm not sure why. I mean, I love it, too, it's a great house, but for some reason, when we saw this place, this was HIS house. He was going to have this house come hell or high water. Of course, if the bank of Eleanor hadn't volunteered to put a big chunk of change down, we'd never have gotten it."

"How is your mother?"

"Well, she's paying for the wedding."

Dana looked somewhat surprised. "How'd you manage that?"

"Miranda asked. Piece of cake." I turned to her. "Dana, would you be in the party? I've got Shelby and Miranda so far, but in view of the number of guests, we need a lot more ushers, and I've got to-"

"I'd be honored," she said simply. "On one condition."

"That being?"

"No ugly bridesmaid dresses."

I laughed loudly. "Miranda wouldn't permit such a fashion faux pas."

"No, she wouldn't," Dana agreed. "I'd love to. How many people have you invited so far, by the way?"

"Langly and I haven't invited anybody. Miranda and Frohike, on the other hand, are up to nearly 500 people."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not."

"Where are you having it with that many people?"

"That's a question for our highly trained and capable staff of consultants."

"Well, if nothing else, it's going to be a hell of a party," she decided.

"Yeah, sometimes I think we should have gone with the Elvis option," I giggled.

"You did go to Vegas. See? You could've had it done and over with, no muss, no fuss."

"Yeah, but my daughter would never forgive me."

"Is she making you go for the dress and flowers and all the trimmings?"

"No doubt. I do have veto power on the dress, though." We had gotten to the bottom of the hill and turned out on to the main street nearby. "What's Ellen up to? I'd hoped to see her New Years' Eve, but I guess she didn't make it back."

"Ellen's out in the Rockies right now. She's checking out some leads related to Lydia's case. She's hit Montana, Wyoming and Utah so far."

"She hates Utah."

"Yes, she does. She complains about going anywhere that's dry. Actually, Ellen doesn't complain about much, and she's the hardest worker I've seen since Mulder. Before she came on, there was no one I'd even consider handing the X-files over to. Now...Ellen approaches her work with the same passion and professionalism I've come to expect from Mulder. And she's a
better administrator, to tell the truth. Of course, it d be hard to be a worse one than Mulder," she grinned slyly. "And if there was anyone qualified to head that division, it'd be Ellen. All the times in the past, the X-files were taken from us, and I felt robbed when they did. But now, the choice is mine. And I think I have the power to let it go."

"I think you've already let go."

"Not totally. Part of me doesn't want to give it up, believe it or not. But watching Ellen work it, I feel more reassured that the work would go on...and what is truly miraculous is that she can work with Jeffrey Spender, whom I find to be very difficult, and who irritates Mulder unceasingly. But she seems to bring out the best in him, and the more I see him work, the more I'm convinced that he, too, will make certain the work continues."

"How about Smullen and Fowley?"

"Smullen...he's a good agent. Not very colorful, but in a nonauthority position, he could be very useful to them. He is very thorough. And Fowley..." she threw back her head and laughed. "She's a bright woman, but not a good agent. Ellen regrets asking for extra help from Skinner. Ellen actually believes Skinner sent her just so that Ellen wouldn't ask for any more bodies."

"What do you think?"

"I don't think Skinner sent her."

"Hmm. Who do you think did?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. And I don't care. But I think Ellen could get her out of there."

After a few moments of companionable silence, her hands moved again. "Allison, do you know what I regret most?"

"No, I don't." I wasn't going to guess. This was a woman with plenty to regret.

"I regret that I won't be able to hear my daughter laugh. I can still hear people laugh in my head. I think mostly in sign now, and sometimes I forget what words sound like, what noises certain items make, and it doesn't bother me. But not being able to hear my daughter laugh is something that will always make me a little sad. I still have a clear memory of Mulder's laugh,
and I swear I can hear him every time he does laugh, even though I know that's impossible." She looked wistful now. "Everyone I meet now, I don't know what their laughter sounds like."

"But you do remember it. Memory can be a powerful thing."

"Yes. It can. And lack of it can be devastating. I'm very concerned for your former sister-in-law. I hope she can piece this together. Mulder has her working with two friends from Berkeley and Stanford to help her. They're experts in memory and cognition. And regardless of whatever path we choose, we'll be following her."

"I appreciate that, Dana. More than you know."

"I'll be curious to see what Ellen turns up. If anything."

"I'll be happy just to see Ellen. Best drinking buddy I have."

Dana smiled. "I'm afraid I'm not much of a drinking buddy. I'm kind of a lightweight."

"You're a good friend. I have plenty of drinking buddies. Probably too many. It's enough that you're here and you're a good friend. It'll be fun to work together again." I blinked; the wind was kicking up and irritating my eyes. "Think we should go back? Or should we hit Incognito?" I pointed to the bar on the corner. I didn't tell her it was a gay men's bar, though."

"I think we'd better get back. The chowhound will be screaming for food. And right now, I'm the only snack bar in town for her."

END OF PART 50