Nightmare Killer 
by 19 
E-MAIL: xff19@yahoo.com 
DISTRIBUTION: Archive freely, just let me know where please and 
thank you.

RATING: PG-13 for language 
CATEGORIES: XA 
KEYWORDS: M/S something or another 
SPOILERS: first season, minor others

SUMMARY: The trials and tribulations of a new partnership.

Disclaimer: X-Files characters belong to FOX Corporation and 1013.
I suspect I will never make any money doing such ridiculous things
as writing stories about old tv shows.

Author's Notes: Recently re-watched the first season and was
inspired to delve into the dynamic duo's early thoughts.

The actual case is just to push the plot along and is rather
improbable so I'm pulling out my Artistic License to account for
any implausibilities.

Timeline: Present Day set right after Jersey Devil I took the dates
from http://timelineuniverse.net/X-Files/XFilesSeasonOne.htm cause
it makes more sense to me that the pilot happened in 1993, not
1992.

BE WARNED THAT THERE IS A LOT OF TENSE-JUMPING. The present is
written in present tense, the past in regular past tense, and M/S
thinking about things that happened in episodes are in past perfect
tense.

**** 
PART 1a 
September 1993

<She is screaming his name in a manner that is unbecoming of a
lady. Neither is it the type of 'his name screaming' he generally
hopes for. Shrieking and writhing in her wrist and ankle restraints
she struggles to achieve wakefulness even as the life is being
sucked out of her corporeal body. Thick red droplets ooze down all
of her extremities in slow zigzagging patterns as she almost throws
herself off the cold metal table she is lying on.

Then all of a sudden she calms down. The screeching stops and all
too familiar pangs of panic threw their icy hands deep into him,
gripping his spleen, his lungs, his heart. He is losing her...
losing her... losing her...>

----

Mulder wakes up screaming, which he realizes is both ridiculously
cliche and rather unattractive in a grown man. However, as he
slowly regains a semblance of mind/body coherence he realizes that
he is hardly in a position to be concerned about appearances.

Is having a nightmare about someone else having a nightmare merely
ironic or a case of never-ending homunculuses - homunculi? Is he
the small man in her head watching her have a nightmare? Who then
is the small man in his head watching him watching her nightmare?
An interesting philosophical thought for a man whose head is
pulsating with the subtlety of a supernova. Spontaneous cranial
combustion seems like a definite possibility and, at this point,
would most likely be a blessing. More aliveness meant more
nightmares and more inside-the-head solar explosions.

He looks around as best he can - trying to not aggravate his head -
and ascertains the basics. He is lying on the metal table from his
dream and, true to form, his ankles and wrists are cuffed so that
he is spread-eagled in a rather undignified fashion. He can barely
move his upper body enough to examine his restraints but, in
between painful intercranial bursts, can feel blood seeping from
both swollen wrists and ankles. He thinks maybe he is cold as his
body seems to be shaking with more vigour than a semi-clothed guy
in Antarctica. It probably doesn't help that he is sporting only
translucent boxers and a sweat-drenched t-shirt.

The worst part is that it is entirely his own fault. Basically he
is fucked. No one knows he's here.

And it had all started out so well...

**** 
PART 1b 
March 1993

Fox Mulder was plotting - scheming if you will - in a manner that
brought a wry half-smile to his normally blank expression. They had
assigned him a new 'partner', a serious little science-nerd spy. He
was gonna try to set a record with this one - one case and out.
Maybe even just half a case. He could do it - with his inner
asshole firmly in place it was 'plausible' that she would be flying
home from Oregon in two days, tops. Little red spy-y mcspy spy
wouldn't last long enough to make more than one field report on
him.

----

Well, she was stubborn, he had to give her that. Maybe he hadn't
done his absolute best but antagonizing the locals, digging up
graves, going through cemeteries in pouring rain, spouting off
about aliens, and dragging her off into the woods to get a bop in
the head was still enough to drive most people to the 'where do I
get a transfer application' mental state.

And she was so horribly green but quick to learn. So naively
trusting that he wanted to slap some sense into her. Running to his
room half-naked in a blackout? If it had been any other male agent
she would have been done. A dead duck. Skewered and roasted by the
rumour mill. He had to admit the temptation was snipping at his
synapses - a timely legume-spilling around the proverbial water
cooler and she'd forever be skanky spooky's wanna-be seductress.
That would learn her to be so damn guileless. How dare she trust
him? Seem interested in his theories? Smile coyly at his jokes when
she thought he wasn't looking? One well-placed verbal bullet and it
would be over.

He could picture her storming into his office, irish temper
a-flaring, spouting Etna-worthy hot geysers of accusation. He would
stare at her in what he knew to be an infuriatingly blank manner
and throw in a non-sequiter or two, most likely involving banshees
or mermen. She would be on the direct
transfer-request-to-Blevins-office flight and he would be, once
again, gloriously alone.

With no incredulous, one-eyebrow-raised looks. With no scientific
this and proof that. With no by-the-book squad of one stomping on
his natural investigative flair.

She would likely never speak to him again. He could deal with that
- couldn't he? It wasn't like he trusted her - hell he didn't even
like her. Or did he? As straight-edge as a razor with the intellect
to match. If he didn't like her then why was he even debating it?
And why did a gastrointestinal rogue wave hit whenever he imagined
her being hurt by his scheme?

His reverie was broken with a well-aimed newspaper to the chest. He
looked up to see his object of contemplation eying his suspiciously
and his brain autonomically set his face to grin. Mulder inwardly
cursed his limbic system as he was blanketed by that elusive
emotion he had heard described as happiness.

Apparently he did like her.

Damn.

That had never been part of the plan.

**** 
PART 2a 
September 1993

Her return to consciousness is imbued with a general aura of
fuzziness - in her mouth, limbs, pancreas, but mostly in her head.
She tries to open her eyes but the fuzziness runs rampant and
impedes her every thought and action.

Slowly, both an insistent and familiar beeping and a particularly
unpleasant smell drill their way into her senses so when she
finally pries her eyes open she is not surprised to find herself
surrounded by the irritatingly pastel hues of a hospital room. Nor
is she surprised to find her mother sitting beside her bed, a look
of concern on her face.

"Dana, honey, you're awake!" Margaret Scully says softly, reaching
over to grip her daughter's hand. "How are you feeling?"

Scully tries to respond but the fuzziness has other ideas - as in
her mouth is making the right movements but only a horrible
scratchy sound is being emitted.

Finally, after a few croaks her mom figures out the problem and
gets her a cup of water.

"Thanks mom, " she says, still a bit hoarse but at least emitting
decipherable noises. "Where am I? What happened?"

"You're at Georgetown. You were admitted with a fractured skull and
a broken arm after being found by the side of Route 270 by the
highway patrol," her mom answers in an annoying hospital voice.

Well, that explains the fuzzy factor and the plaster encasement
around her right arm, she thinks dully.

"How long have I been out for?"

"Just under 24 hours since you were admitted. What happened honey?"

That certainly is a stumper - what had happened?

Scully grimaces as she tries to think of the last thing she
remembers but this time her new pal, the fuzziness, is relentless.
Concussion-inspired amnesia, she supposes. Oh well... Mr.
Photographic Memory will be able to help her fill in the blanks...

Frowning, Scully looks around as best she can.

"Mom, where's Mulder?" she croaks.

"I don't know honey. I've yet to meet him." Maggie Scully replies
with a shrug. She had hoped to meet her daughter's oft-discussed
partner and evaluate his fitness to be trusted with Dana's safety
but he hadn't shown up yet. He is, therefore, already plunging
steadily towards 'unfit to even associate with Dana, much less
protect her' status.

Scully's frown evolves into an expression Maggie Scully has rarely,
if ever, witnessed on her daughter's face in all the 29 years of
her existence. It is so rare as to possibly be misconstrued, even
by her mother. But there is no mistaking it this time - Dana
Scully, Scully the stoic, is quietly panicking.

"You mean he hasn't been here yet?" she wheezes, trying to at least
keep some semblance of calm.

"No, honey. But you haven't been here long - maybe he just hasn't
gotten around to visiting yet," Maggie says soothingly, all the
time inwardly cursing this so-called partner that hadn't yet
managed to visit her daughter.

"No mom. Something's wrong. Mulder should be here," Scully insists.
The fuzz is almost vanquished and she knows, without a doubt, that
her hyperemotional partner should have been there with the
glazed-over eyes, overnight stubble, and cramped body of a man who
had paced himself to sleep in an uncomfortable hospital chair. No,
she had never had the occasion to be visited by him in the hospital
before but her Mulder-sense is rarely that far off. If he wasn't
there apologizing profusely for some sort of flagrant foul then he
is likely in trouble.

Most likely in serious trouble.

"Mom, I have to go."

She starts to get up and finds herself reliving childhood carnival
sensations of excess spinny rides, replete with dizziness and
nauseousness.

"Slow down honey. I'll get a nurse to come help you get to the
restroom."

Scully shakes her head - which didn't do much to alleviate the
dizziness. "No mom - I mean I have to go. Mulder's in trouble."

"Dana, don't be silly. You're in no shape to be going anywhere -
you can't even stand up on your own! I'm sure Mulder is fine or you
can get someone else to help him if he really is in trouble. But I
think you're overreacting - I'm sure there's a perfectly good
explanation for him not being here." Maggie says, attempting to
gently push her daughter back into a prone position.

It is clearly not working.

Scully had recovered enough to be performing a passable impression
of a three-year-old trying to get undressed. Complete with look of
utter confusion at the lack of clothes to change into.

"Mom - I need some clothes," she finally says after looking around
stupidly for much longer than necessary.

Maggie sighs and went in for one last try. "Dana, the doctor's not
going to release you. You have a fractured skull! They didn't even
think you were going to wake up for days. You are being ridiculous.
I won't allow it."

The look Maggie gets from her daughter is not unknown to her but
still sends a shiver down her spine. It is cold as liquid nitrogen.

"Mom, I'm signing myself out AMA if need be and I need clothes. If
I have to I'll go get a set of scrubs but I am going now."

Scully hopes she sounds more confident than she feels. Her legs
seemed to have exchanged muscle and tendons for jelly and more
jelly and her broken arm is making its displeasure known in a
fairly painful way. More problematically, there was clearly a small
man standing inside her head, incessantly whacking her brain with a
sledgehammer of sorts. She can't think more than two coherent
thoughts in a row so she sticks with repeating "Gotta find Mulder"
and "Staying upright is rather difficult" over and over again. It
is an odd mantra to be sure, but it is working for her.

Finally, after her mother reluctantly produces some clothes for
her, Scully dresses in ultra-slow-motion while her mother leaves
the room, ostensibly to fetch some reinforcements. If she can 
manage to get her left hand to cooperate she can maybe get enough
of her dastardly shirt buttons done up before...

A knock on the door interrupts her epic battle with the buttons and
she groans in frustration. Ignoring the army of two outside, she
resumes the battle, almost getting through one whole button before
the door opens.

"Agent Scully, I see you've been busy," the doctor comments,
raising his eyebrows in a decidedly unamused fashion. "You know
you're not supposed to be out of bed. You have suffered a depressed
skull fracture and there is major trauma to the blah blah If you
were to be struck in the head again blah blah consequences blah
blah possible subdural hematoma blah blah, or a epidural hematoma
blah blah..."

Well, she supposes he doesn't actually say blah blah blah but that
is definitely what it sounds like to her as she puts all her
concentration towards doing up her shirt. Either way, lecture
finally over and doctor looking sufficiently impressed with
himself, Scully looks up with an expression that makes her mother
cringe.

A mix of extreme stubborness and irritation graces her otherwise
ashen face as she valiantly fights the nausea that envelops her.

"Thank you doctor. I fully understand that I am leaving against
medical advice. I will fill out the form on my way out."

"Agent Scully, you can barely stand - much less check yourself out.
It is my medical opinion that..."

Maggie cringes again as the well-intentioned but clueless doctor is
cut off by her daughter.

"And it is my medical opinion that I'm leaving."

With that she attempts to stride confidently out the door. Neither
her mother nor the doctor have the balls to point out the drunken
stagger in her gait.

----

Having escaped the sickening antibacterial odor and puke green
walls of the hospital, Scully miraculously makes it to the street
and hails a cab - impressing herself by only having to pause twice
to battle the waves of semi-consciousness that try to take her
down. She notes that her mother had not followed her and,
therefore, is probably absolutely fuming.

"Hoover building" she requests in relief as she slides into the
back seat of the cab.

"Ok lady, hey, are you alright?" the cabbie eyes her warily,
imagining an afternoon of backseat vomit removal.

"I'm fine," Scully mumbles, basking in the joy of closing her eyes.

An instant later, it seems, a gruff voice is lodged uncomfortably
in her ear, seemingly repeating "hey lady, we're here."

Scully groans and stumbles out of the cab only to find herself on
the face to pavement express in front of a captive audience of
agents in front of FBI headquarters. Rumour mill properly fed, she
manages to push herself to her feet and staggers into the building,
ignoring the many stares and comments she engenders as she makes
her way into the building. She doesn't have her ID with her and
only vaguely recalls the process of achieving visitor's ID but
thankfully the bored government employee at the desk barely looks
at her as he walks her through the stips. Finally, head apounding,
she gets through security and stumbles down to the basement office.

----

As Scully suspected, the door is locked and it didn't sound like
Mulder was there not watching one of his not-so-secret videos. She
manages to steady her left hand long enough to retrieve and use a
paranoically well-hidden key and sighs at the sight of the deserted
office.

It would have been so much easier to have been wrong, to have
walked in on an embarrassed but definitely alive partner. Then she
could have gone home and dealt with the very small man with a very
large hammer that seemed intent on pounding her cerebrum to a pulp.
That and the dull throbbing that has replaced her right upper
appendage.

Collapsing into his chair, Scully has never been so relieved to
have made it to her partner's cramped and stuff paranormal dungeon.
She pulls the garbage can close and proceeds to cover a mix of
sunflower seed casings and wadded up paper pseudo-basketballs with
a geyser of stomach fluids not meant to exist outside the body.

Body fluids successfully ejected, Scully sits back and examines her
partner's desk with a critical eye. Everything is strewn about with
approximately 67% more abandon than usual. From what she can tell,
he had been there reading a file when he had spazzed out and hucked
the file at his desk before storming off to who-knows-where.

There is something odd about him reading those files in the
basement office but she certainly can't put her finger on it in her
current befuddled state.

She has to find him. If she finds him she can go home, lie down,
and sleep for about 2.6 weeks. She supposes it would help if she
could remember how she had ended up in the hospital but the little
guy with the big hammer is interfering with her memories. She
closes her eyes and sits back in the chair. At least she can
remember bits and pieces of the case - maybe if she starts at the
beginning, her memories will come back to her.

**** 
PART 2b 
March 1993

Scully walked into the Hoover building with a little rain cloud of
embarrassment perched atop her head - one case as a field agent and
she'd already blown it. What the hell kind of agent ran into her
male partner's motel room half-naked on their first case? She felt
a flush of warmth spread up her cheeks just recalling the incident.
At least he hadn't said anything about it since - surprisingly
considering he certainly had the propensity to poke fun for much
milder indiscretions. She prayed it wasn't because he was using it
for grapevine fodder - if he was she was sure it had already made
it around the Hoover at least twice. Even as green as she was, she
knew a rumour started by Spooky himself would be a hot-ticket item.

When she wasn't instantly skewered by the blades of the gossip
machine she felt a bit safer. People did not appear to be
assembling into whispering masses as she walked by and no untoward
comments regarding her virtue had been strewn in her way. Maybe
Mulder didn't score as high on the jerk scale as she previously
imagined - he certainly generally exuded shit-headness but there
was something else there, well-hidden underneath his brash persona.
She had caught glimpses of that elusive something and was
determined to unravel the mystery of Fox Mulder.

And apparently he wasn't as anxious to get rid of her as she
anticipated - it certainly would have been easy - she had basically
set herself up. If she had walked into a building abuzz with
details of her undergarments... well, things wouldn't have been
pretty between them. But he must have resisted the urge to tell all
which was good -because her interest had been piqued by her new pet
paranormal partner.

----

Mulder was sitting at his desk, precariously tipped on his chair,
wearing a pensive expression, a well-tailored suit and an
absolutely appalling tie.

She took careful aim and side-armed the newspaper right into his
hideous choice of neckwear.

Looking up, he flashed her a grin and she automatically quirked a
small smile in return.

"Hey Scully, what's up?" he asked, still lounging dangerously as he
flipped the paper open..

Her minute mischievous side was extraordinarily tempted to reach
out and tip him over but, as usual, her practical side bullied her
inner imp into submission. So she just sat on the edge of his desk
and eyed his ridiculously large cup of designer coffee enviously.
She had been so jittery all morning in anticipation of being
labeled the Hoover Whore that she hadn't needed her usual caffeine
infusion but now, as her system crashed coming off the mild
endorphin rush, a very large coffee was a highly desirable item.
Unfortunately, she would now have to settle for office coffee, a
vile and despicable substance most likely not fit for human
consumption. She almost shuddered at the thought  before turning
her attention back to her lounging partner.

"What do you know about these bodies that have been turning up with
'unknown cause of death'? The article says the Bureau is involved
but I haven't heard much about it..."

Mulder looked at her curiously as she trailed off, unsure how to
finish her question.

"Ooo Scully, you think it's an X-File? What are you thinking -
demonic possession? ghosts? death curses? just plain magic?"

Her look of disapproval was marred by a tiny upturned corner of her
mouth.

"Seriously Mulder, do you know anything about it? Is there really
no cause of death or is that just what they're telling the papers?"

"No really Scully, there have been dozens of reported cases where
people cursed to death display absolutely no discernible cause of
death..."

"Mulder..."

He looked at her and judged her irritation level to be at about a
three out of ten. But it was only speculation based on what he knew
about her combined with personal informal irritation level studies
on other former partners, colleagues, and supervisors. He decided
to push his luck.

"And there are literally hundreds of documented stories in which
the immolation or binding of a wax or clay image of a person has
affected them magically..."

"Mulder!"

He finally stopped spewing paranormal statistics and grinned at his
partner. She should have been pushing five on the scale but she
didn't actually look irritated - more like mildly exasperated. Like
when a kid is misbehaving in a precocious way.

"That's my name, don't wear it out."

"Mulder, do you know anything about it or not?"

Now she looked like she was going to throw something much harder
and sharper than a newspaper at him if he kept it up. He considered
doing it anyways but recalled that the slightly dowdy little
redhead was tougher than she looked.

"Okay, okay. It's true, there has been no determinable cause of
death in any of the five victims to date. Or so I hear."

At that she raised her eyebrow just slightly. "How is that
possible?" she asked.

"Anything's possible Scully," he answered with what he considered
his trademark eyebrow waggle.

"Mulder, people don't just die for no reason. Logically there must
be a cause of death. The ME must have missed something."

"Scully, logically the ME would have gone over these newer victims
with the proverbial fine-tooth comb after the first bodies were
found. So logically, nothing was missed. And there was no cause of
death. Why are you so interested in this anyways?"

Okay, this time she was glaring at him and Mulder couldn't quite
tell if she meant it or not. And he was starting to worry that she
knew something more about the case then she was letting on. Had he
given anything away? He didn't think so but she had a way of making
him a twitch nervous, with her looks of slight disapproval. But why
the hell did he care about her disapproval anyhow?

So maybe he knew a bit more than he was telling her. So maybe an
old colleague or two from the BSU had 'mentioned' the case to him
as a real stumper - no cause of death, no link between victims,
nothing at all - a case that maybe Mulder could look into if he had
some spare time. So maybe he knew it was only a matter of time
before he got fully roped into it. She didn't need to know any of
that and would probably be gone by the time he got caught up in the
long-reaching and horror-inducing BSU lasso. Or so he hoped. Or so
he didn't hope? Goddamn, the shrimpy but
kinda-cute-in-a-wearing-a-frumpy-suit-way physicist slash
pathologist was getting to him.

"Mulder? Is there something you're not telling me?"

"Uh, no. Just thinking," he replied, a little too hastily.

She eyed him suspiciously and he felt his sweat glands fire up a
bit as he quickly scanned the room for any distractions. He focused
in on the coffee cup she had been mooning over earlier and figured
it was worth a go.

"Hey Scully - wanna finish off my coffee? It's no extra-shot
half-foam sugar-free vanilla syrup girly coffee but it's better
than that crap upstairs."

Success! He could tell from the gleam in her eyes and the
more-than-usual fragment of a smile that he had hit the jackpot.
Scully grabbed the coffee greedily and  started chugging it down,
washing away her suspicions for the time being.

**** 
PART 3a 
September 1993

When Mulder wakes again his cranial supernovae have ebbed to mere
solar flares and his swollen wrists and ankles are only throbbing
at medium intensity. Less fortunately, when he tries to look around
the room the walls began to revolve in a nausea-inducing manner. As
asphyxiation from his own vomit is not his preferred mode of death
he closes his eyes and attempts to settle his stomach.

His eyes are still shut when he hears the door open a few minutes
later. Feigning sleep, he watches his captor approach him through
thinly slitted eyes. So this is the man they had been chasing for
so long.

He doesn't much look like a serial killer - more like a professor
or researcher - except for the obviously maniacal expression on his
face. Average height, average hair, lab coat, evil smirking leer,
an ominous glint in his eye, and an unique method of murder...

'Lucky me' Mulder thinks to himself.

He feels his captor towering over him and slowly inspecting him
from head to toe.

"I know you're not asleep Agent Mulder, you can stop playing
possum," the mad doctor finally says upon finishing his inspection.
"Besides, as you probably know, it does you no good to be asleep
here."

Mulder groans inwardly and takes a deep breath before opening his
eyes.

He tries to focus on the doctor-turned-psycho but the room still
hasn't stopped spinning and his roiling guts are not pleased. He
valiantly tries to ignore the desire to violently eject his meager
stomach contents as he considers his options. Basically he can play
nice or play jerk.

He had never been very good at playing nice.

"Dr. Perry, I presume. I'm flattered you're so interested in me.
Too bad you're not my type," Mulder says mock-casually while eyeing
the mad doctor warily.

"Ah, I suspected as much, Agent Mulder. My subjects never seem to
find me as charming as I find them," Dr. Perry answers cooly, with
only the itch in his lip belying his inner glee.

"I'm shocked. A great guy like you? What is it that turns them off
- your sadistic streak or your penchant for murder?"

"Tsk, tsk, Agent Mulder. So antagonistic! I'm going to have quite a
bit of fun with you. Especially considering you made me lose your
pretty little partner. I must say I'm rather angry about that.
Hmmm, I wonder how it will affect your sessions..." Perry says with
more obvious excitement.

At the mention of Scully Mulder's heart and stomach perform
matching loop-the-loops. Even though he'd been pretty sure about
it, confirmation certainly didn't make him feel any less shitty. At
least she'd gotten away - he'd make that trade any day.

Sensing that he has struck a blow, Perry continues on and prods the
open wound. "Yeah, I was looking forward to working with her but
there's still time. Poor thing, I imagine she'll be laid up for
awhile after she made me hit her with that pipe. The way it sounded
when it hit her head you know - I'm surprised she was conscious at
all. And it's pretty far to the freeway from here, I doubt she was
able to make it more than a mile."

Mulder tries to keep his panic under wraps but his treacherous
brain keeps flashing back to his nightmare of Scully on the table,
one he now knew to be based on reality. His heart and stomach
re-enter the loop-the-loop track and queasiness surges through his
body as he envisions Perry hitting her with the pipe. He can still
hear Perry cackling on about the fun he is anticipating but it had
become background noise as a nauseating thumping took the
forefront.

The combination of extreme gastrointestinal distress and severe
fogginess in his head is getting all too familiar. But it had been
awhile since it'd been this bad.

Not since just before all this had started...

**** 
PART 3b 
early August 1993

It felt good to be back at the office even if he was still wading
through a murky pea-soupish fog. Mulder supposed he was lucky to be
there at all - they could have easily disappeared him and continued
to edit his memories. A little cut here, maybe a paste there... who
knows how long his career as a lab rat would have been if she
hadn't come to fetch him.

Now that was something he did remember although it hadn't really
registered at the time.

Adrenaline-fueled intense gaze and a slight glisten of perspiration
with her focus evenly split between her perturbed
reporter-come-military-official-come-hostage and her wayward
partner-come-prisoner.

It had seemed normal enough at the time, or at least it had to his
addled brain, but with over twenty-four hours to reflect on what
had happened, he had to admit to a substantial lack of normality in
the situation.

Over twenty-four hours of puking, groaning, thinking, and more
puking. The post-rescue ride had involved more guttural spewage
than drunken stomach-flu sufferers on an Octopus ride. She must
have pulled over a half-dozen times, each time dutifully rubbing
his back gently as he yakked on her shoes.

He had wanted to fly out right after being denied by Mrs. Budahas
but she had put her vomit-encrusted foot down and, thankfully, had
made him lie down at the motel.

That night had been a potpourri of nightmares and nausea - and
probably screaming and groaning too, but he had successfully
repressed that part.

Unfortunately, he hadn't quite repressed his moments of
asshole-ness - his only defense against her incessant doctori-ness.
Little snippets kept jabbing at his brain, resulting each time in a
small spasm of guilt.

"Go away Scully - go find another patient to play doctor with - I'm
not interested."

"Leave me alone. Just stay away from me."

"Yeah, you wanted to leave so badly before, why don't you just
leave now?"

"I don't need you Scully."

He had wanted to be left alone to wallow in his patheticness. It
was what he knew, the only way he knew to be. It was a hell of a
lot easier than trying to suck it up and maintain some semblance of
manliness in front of the little red dynamo.

But goddamn she was stubborn. And apparently fairly thick-skinned
to boot. She had stayed and put wet cloths on his forehead. She had
stayed and gasped when she spotted the large greenish purple
souvenir on his lower back. She had stayed and admonished him for
not telling her about the soreness in his kidney area whilst softly
rubbing his neck. She had stayed and calmed him with gentle but not
condescending whispers when his nightmares ejected him violently
into wakefulness.

Sure, Scully was a persistent and argumentative pain in the butt.
And there was definitely a part of him that resented his new
skeptical tag-along. He had perfected the 'me against the world'
attitude, effectively building a force field against the constant
onslaught of ridicule he was used to facing. He didn't want to need
her. He didn't want her to see him weak and helpless. He wasn't
exactly the most manly of men but he did have some dignity to
preserve.

But in his heart of hearts, where he actually sometimes admitted
the truth to himself, he had liked it. It had been close to an eon
since anyone had given a rat's ass about him - even when he hadn't
coated their expensive footwear with regurgitated hamburger. Maybe
she just felt responsible for him. Maybe she saw it as a challenge.
Maybe she was masochistic. Or maybe, just maybe, she actually cared
what happened to him.

EIther way, it was a moot point now. She was up in Blevins' office,
most likely obtaining a new asshole for her rather unorthodox
method of rescuing him from the military. Which meant she was
probably going to supply him with a new asshole once she got back.

She hadn't mentioned anything on their trip back to DC. No snide
remarks about reckless this and unauthorized that. No I told you
sos or it's your faults. Not even a single brusque comment
regarding his verbal attacks of the previous night. Just a myriad
of worried glances, a couple of tender 'feeling for temperature'
touches to the forehead, and a possibly imagined quick tousling of
his hair as he drifted amidst the first inklings of sleep on the
plane. All in all it made him feel like a sad sack of something.
Something really crappy.

Guilt, his ever faithful companion, grabbed a hold and refused to
let go. Mulder really wished she'd just freak out at him so they
could fight it out - anger was easy. This... this... this...
whatever it was was certainly not easy.

Sure, she hadn't exactly seemed overly pleased with him. Even
drifting about in fogland he could tell from her stiff-even-for-her
body language that she was pissed. But she hadn't said a thing. He
supposed it was the equivalent of a parent being mad at a sick
child but feeling sorry enough for the miserable whelp to hold off
on the inevitable lecture. But now he was stuck in
angry-partner-pergatory for who knew how long.

She would be back soon - even Blevins didn't take all day to ream
out one agent. And then what? Mulder was
three-year-old-having-missed-a-nap cranky and didn't have the
energy to either fight with Scully or deal with passive aggressive
festering. Maybe he should have stayed home as per her suggestion.

Then, just as he thought his day surely couldn't get any worse,
there was a knock on his door and a vaguely familiar agent
nervously entered his office. It was hard to put a name to the face
as he seemed to be living in a semi-permanent daze but after a bit
of a time delay the ol' photographic memory kicked in. It was one
of the BSU guys. Funny name... German or something. Nemhauser -
yeah that was it. What the hell did he want?

**** 
PART 4a 
September 2003

<Scully is nervous as hell and really hopes it doesn't show. She
hasn't held very many people at gunpoint before and certainly
hasn't ever made an illegal and very-much-against-protocol prisoner
exchange before.

As the jeep approaches the gate she bites down on her bottom lip,
alternately eyeing her hostage and the nearing jeep.

The jeep stops and an inanimate Mulder-like lump is shoved out of
the back end, landing side first, head second, with a sickening
crack.

Then, before she can do anything, a squad of goons jumps out of the
truck and start viciously kicking her unconscious partner.

Hostage forgotten, she runs towards him as he starts to convulse
and spew blood. But somebody grabs her from behind and she can't
get to him. He is writhing and there is blood, blood, blood
everywhere. And she is screaming louder than she has ever imagined
possible but it is no use...>

----

Scully awakes with a scream lodged in her throat and tears
streaming freely down her face. Looking around dazedly, she
realizes she had fallen asleep at Mulder's desk and fights to calm
herself down with deep breaths.

'It is just a nightmare' she thinks to herself. "And it isn't
nearly as bad as before..."

As bad as before?

Suddenly, images begin flooding her sore hippocampus and she
remembers that she had been having many variations of that dream
for months. Ever since Idaho. But then it'd started getting worse
when they started on this Nightmare Killer thing, as Mulder called
it.

Inch by inch the fog is lifting and large chunks of her RAM are
being restored. As the images from her nightmare slowly dissolve
from her visual cortex, Scully recalls that it had really all
started just after they'd gotten back from Ellens Air Base.

**** 
PART 4b 
early August 2003

Oh Scully was pissed alright - it had been a long time since she'd
been called to the 'principal's office' and she wasn't used to the
condescending disapproval she had just received.

Blevins hadn't exactly understood the necessity of taking a senior
military official hostage but then again he hadn't been there, in
the moment, with mister smarmy-fake-reporter invading her room. And
so what if he didn't approve of her 'not-damning-enough' field
reports - she had written the truth as best she understood it -
which meant she hadn't exactly backed Mulder's crazy theories but
hadn't conclusively disproved them either. It didn't even faze her
that Blevins had sternly 'warned' her about being influenced by her
partner's reckless and unacceptable behaviour. Scully was starting
to realize she didn't really care. Sure she'd felt a bit of
discomfort at being admonished by a superior - it certainly hadn't
happened before in her clean-as-a-whistler FBI career to date. But
her dominant good girl persona was quickly being usurped by her
fledgling inner rebel. It wasn't that she disagreed with rules -
she understood that there was a point to procedure - but she wasn't
going to just mindlessly do as she was told.

She had done what she knew to be right for the situation - her
partner had been in trouble and she'd done what was necessary to
protect him. And maybe something rotten had been going down in
Idaho - not that she really believed that his memories had been
erased - but they had definitely done something to him. Sure, it
was his sheer idiocy that had put him in danger in the first place
but that was something she would deal with later. She was plenty
mad enough at Blevins and adding fuel to that fire by thinking
about being ditched by her partner wasn't going to be good for her
blood pressure.

But she definitely was mad at him. Taking off on her, sneaking onto
the base, making her accost that guy at gunpoint to get him back.
Okay - so he hadn't exactly forced her to set up the prisoner
exchange.

As if she'd set up a prisoner exchange!

It had been both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
Especially considering a few months ago she'd been teaching bored
wannabe agents how to properly collect hair samples.

Mulder was her partner and she was supposed to watch his rather
well-toned back. So maybe it wasn't exactly entirely his fault. She
could have done it by the book - reported him missing, filled out
the forms, waited dutifully until they got bored tinkering with his
odd but enchanting mind.

Okay, so maybe she wasn't quite as mad at him as she wanted to be.
Holding back on unleashing her bottled up typhoon of fury at him
had given her ample time to cool down and properly reflect. It
wouldn't have been fair to flip out at him when he'd been so
miserably ill. He'd even done his best to piss her off  - yelling
at her, refusing her help, puking on her - well-maybe the puke
incident hadn't exactly been planned. But he had obviously needed
someone to take care of his idiotic self. And he had stopped trying
to get her to leave awfully quickly after she'd informed him that
he could yell at her all he wanted to if it made him feel more like
a man but she was staying whether he liked it or not. In fact, she
suspected he'd actually appreciated her ministrations, considering
he had semi-consciously sigh-moaned a few times when she'd
instinctively rubbed his temples gently. Scully hypothesized that
it'd been a fairly long while since anyone had taken care of him -
from what she'd seen and heard he didn't have a girlfriend or
really any friends at all. And she wasn't exactly a friend but she
was his partner and he obviously needed someone to back him up if
he was going to pull ludicrous stunts all the time. He had been so
damn vulnerable yelling about memory theft and moaning incoherently
about his headache.

Damn. Why was it so hard to stay angry with him?

He was probably fidgeting away with a new slideshow in his office,
feeling like crap but too proud to admit it by staying home. To her
chagrin, she felt a quick burst of excitement at the thought of a
new X-File to argue with him about. Hanging around with Mulder
certainly wasn't dull. It was a lot of things, many of which were
almost indescribably annoying, but it definitely wasn't dull.

----

As Scully got close to the office she was greeted by a loud
exchange of unpleasantries. Not wanting to interrupt a private
verbal free-for-all yet feeling slightly guilty about
eavesdropping, she stood to the side and waited it out.

"Yeah well you can tell Patterson to stuff it where the sun don't
shine. It's not my problem," Mulder said in a tone somewhere
between a whinge and a groan.

"Look. You know how he is - he wouldn't ask if he didn't need you.
All the senior guys are swamped with this goddamn eye-puncturing
asshole and none of the babies are coming up with anything no this.
Because there's nothing to go on - I bet the old man himself
couldn't pull a profile outta what we got. We need your
spooky-action Mulder."

The second voice was defeatingly wheedling in tone and unfamiliar
to Scully but he was obviously from BSU. Curious and curiouser.

"Look Nemhauser, it's not going to happen. I left the BSU for a
reason and it wasn't cause I was enjoying kissing the old man's ass
too much. If he wants me he's going to have to go through Skinner.
Otherwise, I'm through with that shit."

She had heard that tone before and knew who was going to win this
current argument. Stubborn knows stubborn. And Scully knew
stubborn.

"Alright, fine Mulder. But he's going to kill again and it's
probably going to be soon. The only thing we know about him is that
he's escalating. So when it happens... just know that you could
have done something about it."

With that the unknown BSU man - Nemhauser? - slumped out of the
office looking very much a defeated man. He barely looked up as
Scully walked by him, pretending to have just entered the basement
hallway, and she wondered if he always looked like a member of the
waking dead or if he saved that for appearances at the X-Files
office.

----

Mulder looked like he'd run home from Idaho. Minus the sweat but
plus a few bops to the noggin.

He barely acknowledged her when she slipped into the room.

"What was that about, Mulder?" she asked as she assumed the spot
Nemhauser had just fled.

"Hmmm? Oh, nothing," he grunted, still gazing intently at the file
on his desk.

Either he really felt like crap or  he was hiding something from
her.

"Oh? And I suppose that was no one too..." she replied with a
misting of sarcasm.

He still hadn't looked her in the eye since she'd come in but he
could feel her coming closer and could only avoid her for so long.

As she closed in on him he could feel the synapses in his
sympathetic ganglia start firing like crazy and excess
neurotransmitters began to flood his system. He hid his shaky hands
under his desk but it was getting hard to keep his breathing in
control, especially with Scully eyeing him so suspiciously.

Mulder realized he was having a minor panic attack - it had
happened before but only in extraordinarily stressful situations
and the last one had been years ago. Maybe it was a combination of
having his brain de-memoried, getting no real sleep, and being
hassled by the BSU but whatever it was, his heart felt like it was
gonna erupt any second. And if he didn't get out of the office
soon, there was a good chance he'd hyperventilate and embarrass
himself again. But Scully was blocking his only escape route and he
couldn't figure out how to casually plow past her.

He had known the request was coming - the grapevine had wound it's
way all the way down to the basement and everyone knew that his ol'
not-so-pals at the BSU were hooped. Patterson freaking on the
eye-gouger thing and then this. Close to home, no cause of death,
absolutely nothing linking the bodies except no cause of death. It
had to be the same guy - five in the DC area in the last year as
far as they knew but they'd only caught on a couple months ago.
There had been some serious 'pulling-out-old-odd-death-files' since
they latched onto the connection and eventually they'd compiled ten
cases. Considering every other death in the area in the modern era
had a discernable cause of death, five in a year was clearly
anomalous. And now it'd been leaked to the media somehow so the
heat was on. Right now it was only a gentle glow but soon it'd be a
raging inferno. And then he'd be fucked.

He could only avoid it for so long. His spooky sense was all
atingle. They weren't going to find anything, the public would
start freaking, Patterson would start calling in favours, and
they'd drag him, internally kicking and screaming like a
tantrum-throwing toddler, back to Quantico.

But he'd done it before and, ostensibly, he could do it again. It
would suck balls but that was how it had to be if he wanted to
remain in the basement with his precious red and white striped
files. So what was his problem? What had sent the epinephrine
coursing through his body this time? Why the hell was he having
such a hard time sucking air into his lungs?

Even through the mini-tsunamis of panic Mulder knew the answer. And
if it had been a Daily Double he'd have bet everything. He could
even phrase it correctly.

"What is 'because of the little redhead' Alex?"

----

Mulder thought of it as another lifetime, another dimension in the
quantum multiverse. Where he'd played the quasi-hero - equally
lauded and reviled for his peculiar ability to become the scum of
the earth. Where he spent day after week after month after year
dragging himself out of a neverending abyss of horror. Where he and
everyone around him stopped considering him to be part of the human
race.

He didn't want her to know about this other dimension.

Luckily, if she didn't get out of his way soon he would likely have
a coronary and it would a moot issue.

----

On anyone else the blank expression would have indicated boredom or
blase-ness but there was something amiss with her partner.
Underneath the stoniness he was covered with a slight glint of
perspiration and was pitifully attempting to avoid
hyperventilation.

In short, Mulder was having the subtlest panic attack she had ever
witnessed.

----

Scully quickly circled over to his side of the desk and grabbed his
arm before he managed to make a run for it.

"Jesus, Mulder, don't get up, you're likely to pass out," she said,
sternly pushing him down with one hand while taking his pulse with
the other.

"Your heart is racing, Mulder - try to take deep breaths okay? Here
- breath with me. In...out...in....out.....

Well at least he was still responsive to commands - she could feel
his breathing and pulse slow as she counted ins and outs while
rubbing calming rhythmic circles on his sweat-soaked back.

"It's okay Mulder - everything's fine. Just breathe."

----

Well she had finally gotten out of the way but by that time he
couldn't get his legs to operate in proper body-propelling fashion.
But then he had felt a small hand-shaped pressure on his back and a
soothing voice was helpfully instructing him on how to breath.

Surprisingly Mulder found himself able to follow the instructions
and, as his breathing decelerated, the dancing spot show he had
been watching abruptly came to an end. It was replaced by a
close-up of Scully's concerned icy blues peering deepy into his
dazed hazels.

She was telling him that everything was fine and he wanted to tell
her she was wrong. That he was going to have to go back down the
hole and get cozy with the inner desires of a sociopathic maniac.
That he was going to not sleep, not eat, not be human for however
long it took to become the killer. That he had yet again shown his
utter patheticness to a partner that he was starting to depend on
but didn't yet entirely trust.

What the hell was he going to say to her? Two freak outs in
forty-eight hours was definitely not the way to impress one's new
partner.

So when she just gave him one more comforting squeeze on the
shoulder before going to get him some water and giving him the
chance to compose himself, Mulder silently thanked every deity he
didn't believe in. And when she came back a fair while later with
the water and reported on her trip to Blevins' office as if nothing
had happened he finally felt all the tension in his body dissipate.

Who the hell was this woman?

And what deity-that-he-didn't-believe-in had sent her to him?

****