AN- This story is a little bit of a mystery and requires careful reading. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter One

As she shifted her tired feet through many layers of fallen leaves, Dana Scully could not resist the evocative call of the deep woods. Looking far up she could see traces of an azure sky through a veil of a million naked branches. Enormous oaks and maples surrounded her like organic tombstones. The only sounds were of her steady breathing and the crunch of nature as she walked; the soles of her boots found rotting leaves while the fresh, bright orange ones skimmed lifelessly across her ankles, and she recalled the days of her youth spent in the woods with her brothers, claiming the lives of innocent snakes that she would mourn forever. It is late September in Maine, and she was out in the woods all alone. She was working on a case; locals had reported noises and other strange going ons; they believed the woods to be haunted. She could have asked for help; she could have asked Mulder or Doggett to accompany her, but the case didn't seem to merit two agents, and frankly she felt she could use some time alone. To think.

While she was, as always, on the look out for paranormal activity, she found none and continued to lose herself in thought. Night fell faster than she had ever known it to. One minute the sky seemed shadowed, or was it just by tall branches or a wayward cloud, and then the shadows seemed to yawn and creep, smothering sporadic patches of daylight on the ground. For a time Dana thought absently that it must just be clouds shading the forest that did not relent. Perhaps there was a storm coming. Perhaps she had wandered into a patch of woods that was denser and allowed less light to filter through its rugged canopy. She sniffed around, hoping to catch a waft of burning leaves that she had smelled earlier that day when she was closer to homesteads. She smelled nothing but the dirt floor of the woods and the cool autumn air. How far had she traveled? How far had she wandered into the wilderness, lured out by her minds need to untangle? She pulled her lined camel trench around her; at least she had dressed warmly.

The gloom continued to unfold as she circled and tried to find her way back; a lone owl hooted in the distance, and when she looked up she saw a star. Muttering under her breath in consternation, she pulled out her phone while reprimanding herself for having gotten lost like an errant child. She called the local Sherriff she spoke with earlier, and he too reproved her but reassured her that the woods were not that deep, and he would send someone out to look for her. Scully was just feeling thankful that she had a signal this far out when she noticed that her battery, which she had charged that morning and barely used, was suddenly in the red. She checked the time and knew it was too late at night to expect anyone to be in the X-Files office, but she called anyway. The man who answered the phone had a low, gravely voice that always made her fingers and toes tingle inexplicably.

"Agent Doggett?"

"Agent Scully? Where are you?"

"I'm still in Maine, and I think I might have been wrong. I think there might be more to this case than meets the eye." She mused, wondering if the suspicions the locals harbored about the woods had anything to do with the ease of her misplacement.

"You want me to come up and help you?"

"Yes…" She looked down in the darkness and her eyes focused on where she thought her boots ought to be.

"Ok, no problem, Agent Scully, I'll be on the next flight out. Where do you want me to meet you? Agent Scully? Dana?"

The use of her first name pulled her back. She had paused, not wanting to admit to him the blunder she had made but she could see no way around it. Although she felt foolish, she was glad that she had reached him before the Sherriff surely would have; he would worry less this way, having heard from her first.

"I'm here," she emitted an octave higher than normal, but before she could speak another word her phone went dead. The glow from the screen, the only illumination now except for the faint stars above extinguished as quickly and as completely as someone blowing out a match. A bird cried out again, softly in the distance, a low and doleful sound. No longer sure of the direction she came from, she wondered if it would be best to keep moving or to stay put. The most logical action would seem to be to stay put so someone could find her, but her instincts told her to keep moving.

If she was an average woman, perhaps this situation would startle her, and although she was less than relaxed, she was experienced, intelligent, held a strong constitution, and was far from being unnerved. Predominantly she felt embarrassed as she continued her trek though the blackened woods, occasionally scraping her face on a low slung branch or tripping over a knotted root. About a quarter of an hour had passed before she thought she saw a light up ahead. Logic told her it ought to be flashlights, and that she should hear in accompaniment to this sight the far off sound of men calling back and forth, but she stood still and the woods were silent. She followed the lights with her eyes, ears pricked for human voices but she heard none. "Hello? Is someone there?" She called out; hoping to be answered by the Sherriff's men, as she knew it was far too soon for Doggett to even be in the state. She calculated that if he managed to board the soonest flight, it would still take at least two hours for him to reach town. Her words hung in the air, unanswered and then were swallowed by silence. The lights she saw flicked and faded. "Swamp gas…" she muttered to herself, fully knowing she was far from any swamp.

Then the air seemed to rush at her, not like a wind but like a force outside of nature, and a ringing boom obliterated the silence of the woods. The blast and the sudden sourceless noise knocked her backward. Her heart banged loudly in her chest and she groped in the darkness and found a thick tree to lean on for support. Shock stilled her, and then the woods were quiet again. Her racing pulse slowly returned to normal and she regained mastery over her cognitive functions. She thought about every single X-File that had anything to do with reports of ghosts or hauntings, but none of them were quite like this. The townspeople she spoke to had been so vague that she had considered skipping her perusal of the forest altogether. All they could really say was that something strange was going on. No levitating objects, no possessions, no areas that were perpetually cold for no apparent reason, not even ghostly figures strolling across the backyard at midnight. All anyone said was that there was just something strange.

Scully collected herself. She drew in the stillness of the woods and relaxed herself by tracing her fingertips over the scarred bark of her supporting tree. She wished she could check the time, but with her phone dead and not enough light to check her watch, it was impossible. She tried looking up to see the moon, but it was not visible. She sighed.

Just when she was relaxed enough to try and choose a direction to walk in, she heard a howl off in the distance, a sharp and terrible cry. Abruptly she smelled the pungent odor of fresh blood so strongly she could taste it. For the first time her hand darted down to her gun. She listened closely for another sound, but none came. The smell of blood lingered with such potency that it made her dizzy. Then again she heard the bay of the wolf. Without knowing why she began to run. Whether she was running towards or away from the noise, she didn't know. Where she was running, she couldn't tell. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark long ago, but there was so little light coming from above that all she could see was blackness punctuated by formless outlines. She ran for what felt like miles through the layers of leaves that coated the forest floor; she ran at top speed leaving a confused debris of nature in her unknowing wake. She ran until her legs screamed for her to stop and her lungs burned for oxygen, and she slowed, but her foot slipped over an unseen slope and she slid at least six feet down, landing on her left leg. If she cried out in pain or fear, she didn't know, she only knew the constant blackness and the new frenetic pain in her ankle that meant she could run no more. This pain she somehow likened to a recent argument she had had with Mulder.

"He's a good agent. He's not what you think he is. He is not a spy, he's not here to watch us, or follow us, or to report back to anyone. Trust me, Mulder. If you trust me, you can trust him."

"Well see now Scully, that just doesn't work for me, because I do trust you, but I don't trust him."

"Why not, Mulder? You know him now, you've worked on cases together. What possible reason could you have for doubting his motivation?"

"Because he doesn't belong here, Scully. Nothing about him or his background qualifies him in anyway to be on the X-Files. He's an ex-marine and an ex-cop with no interest in anything more paranormal than gym socks disappearing from the washing machine."

"We both know why Kersh put him here, but that's irrelevant, you can't tell me Agent Doggett had not shown dedication to his work."

"It's his dedication that I question."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"We both know that Agent Doggett was up for a promotion recently that would take him out of the X-Files, and he didn't take it. Why?"

"Because we were both gone and it would have left the X-Files in serious danger of being closed down, you know that."

"Why does he care?"

She stared at him blankly. She knew that caring was as second nature as breathing for Doggett but she didn't know how to convey this to Mulder.

"It's because of you, Scully, and I don't mean this as a slight on you, I really don't, but I think that he became your partner at a time when you were very vulnerable, at a time when you had lost someone close to you, and you were pregnant and alone, at a time when you would have given anything to be able to trust someone."

"So you think I trusted him because I was desperate? That's not what happened, Mulder! I distrusted him. I avoided him. I mislead him, for Gods sake, I threw water in the man's face and he still did everything he could to help me!"

"That's exactly my point."

She shook her head. "You don't get it. You don't know him. You haven't worked with him as long as I have. He is a good agent, Mulder, and he is a friend to the X-Files."

He contemplated her for a long time.

"You know, if I didn't know you better, I'd say you'd fallen in love." he said sardonically.

"Mulder, be serious. Think about Skinner. Didn't it take a long time for him to earn your trust? And hasn't he proven himself time and again?"

"That he has. Look, we know we can trust Skinner, but that took years..."

"It doesn't have to take years. Do I have to tell you again, how many times Agent Doggett has saved my life?

"No, you don't have to tell me. And I am grateful that he has but I still question his motivation in wanting you alive."

"So I could bring William to term? So that when I did, he could help deliver our child to the government for further alien research, well you're wrong. He helped me with that too, Mulder."

"Tell me again," he asked quietly.

"Tell you what?"

"Tell me how he saved your life."

"Which time, Mulder? The time you weren't there for me, or the other time you weren't there for me?"

He rolled his eyes and she turned on her heel and exited the X-Files office in such a huff it barely came to her as a surprise, at first, to find Doggett standing just outside the door.

"John? How much did you hear?"

"Enough."

"Enough? Well I've had enough for one night too. Goodnight, Agent Doggett."

"Goodnight, Agent, Scully." He watched her leave as her heels clicked down the hall.

Her thoughts returned to her body, which lay on the forest floor in agony. A sprain, she thought. I've sprained my ankle running away from ghosts. Now all I have to do is lie here until someone finds me. A bird cooed in the distance while she rubbed her injured part. Someone will find me soon, she thought. Someone will find me soon.

She had seen and experienced things that evening she could not being to rationalize. She had, by her own fault, allowed herself to become lost in the woods and subject to bizarre events; the unexplainable lights and noises, the inexplicable desire to run when she knew, logically, that she should have stayed where she was. But what annoyed her the most was the inability to track time. It felt like hours had past but she had no means of confirmation. She pounded buttons on her phone to no avail; it was as dead as an animal on the road. She tried in vain, straining her eyes to track the elusive moon, but all she saw when she looked up was a canopy of blackness punctuated by stars. Two thoughts elated her and distracted her from the pain in her ankle, from the grumbling in her belly and the growing coldness of her skin. One, that dawn will come again no matter what, and two, at this moment John Doggett is out there looking for me. She closed her eyes and thought only of slightly bent ears.

AN- Long chapters on this one, I know. At least two more to come, not entirely sure yet. If reviews are gold, than constructive criticism is diamonds! Hello to Jude, if you're still around!