AN: I think I'm back. I know I need to finish Comes the Piper, but the past few weeks of Criminal Minds have kind of rocked me and I've had a hard time getting back to that one. This has been swirling in my head, though, and I decided to get it down and started. This is X-Files, and there's sci-fi here, and MSR. But it's also my beloved Criminal Minds Demily, written in the only way I could figure to get them back in the same place given their current cannon statuses.

My life is still somewhat of a mess, but getting better, and I'm hoping I can both finish Comes the Piper and update this story with relative (weekly, maybe?) frequency.

I've missed you and fanfiction!

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My sparse, gray room is a 10 x 10 cell. I've been ripped from everything I know and taken here, into a utilitarian existence that knows no more than the few steps it takes me to shower in a space that hardly allows me to move my arms, a toilet that sits proudly in the middle of my room while cameras in the ceiling capture my every move. My thin bed provides no comfort when I try to sleep, and the nameless faces that visit me daily provide me nothing but agony. There are no windows.

Let me be somewhere else. I chanted this daily. I wanted to be back in the comforting arms of my adoptive parents. I wanted my warm room with its big windows and the sunlight they offered. I wanted Little League and family dinners. But they're dead now, the parents I've always called my own. I know they're dead - I watched them burn.

Let me be somewhere else, I chanted as they stuck their needles in me.

Let me be somewhere else, I recited as they performed test after test on me.

Nothing ever changed no matter how hard I pled. Until one day when I was ten years old, and I changed the diction in my mind. "Take me somewhere else," I said out loud.

The shining, shimmering light in the corner of my cell altered then. In the place where there was always a dim glow I couldn't figure out, I found an effervescent rainbow. And I walked towards it and through it.

I was gripped with nausea and lights that made me dizzy, and I fell hard, flat on my back. Chest heaving, I looked around at my surroundings. I stayed there for several minutes before I felt like I could stand up. And when I did, I was drawn to down the road and to a small office building. Like looking into a dream, my hand reached out and touched the woman I saw there. A woman with red hair who sobbed over the baby in her arms. "Take him," she gasped.

I reached my hand out to comfort her, and I felt it land on her shoulder.

She startled. "Mulder?" she whispered so softly it was nearly silent. She turned to look, but she didn't seem to see me. I couldn't respond then. I couldn't quite get myself to be in the present in the moment, but I wanted to. I wanted to grab that baby. I want to push him towards her and tell her not to give him up. I was ten years old and I didn't totally understand at the moment why I had to keep that baby with her, nor could I understand why she couldn't see me.

I was right there.

A faceless man took the baby from her arms.

I started to scream because I knew, instinctively, that it was so wrong. But I also sensed how right it was for her. The scream cut off in my throat before anyone could possibly hear it, and a man appeared before me in black pants and a black leather jacket. His hair and eyes matched his attire. "You can't stop this," he said. "It's not time. You're just not strong enough yet."

Confused, I reached my hand towards him. While her shoulder felt solid when I touched it, my hand disappeared through his when I reached out. I looked at him, bewildered.

"You have more to learn and I'll help you. Go back. It's not time yet. You being here now won't change anything."

He nodded his head towards the shimmering light and I stepped through, heart aching, blocking out the vision of the woman sobbing in that room, collapsing onto the floor of my cell in a heap. People were there waiting for me. "Where did you go?" They screamed and shook me.

"I don't know," I mumbled. And then I was scared, truly afraid. For if the cameras in my room couldn't see me, it meant I wasn't dreaming; I was really gone.

His murky gray-brown eyes that settled into a deep blue when he was around four months old never phased me. My mother had relatives with blue eyes. Savannah had relatives with blue eyes. I never gave it more thought than that of adoration, as I kissed the cheeks below those deep blue orbs and reveled in fatherhood.

Savannah went back to work, and I stayed home for the time-being, laughing lightly every morning as I held my son close and marveled at Special Agent Derek Morgan morphing comfortably into stay-at-home-dad.

I fell more in love with my son every day, and I had dinner waiting for Savannah every evening. We laid together on our large bed with our son between us at night, grinning and counting fingers and toes and bestowing upon our son kisses and raspberries on his belly that ignited a smile in him that lit up the room.

"He looks so much like you," people said. Strangers at the grocery store, the park. But even Penelope and the rest of the team said it here and there when they visited.

Perhaps he did or does. We share similar features in facial structure, certainly. But how much does an infant really look like either parent? Not much, apparently.

The discovery was made on a fateful day when I decided to clean up the den during Hank's nap. I went through piles of envelopes long-neglected on our desk. While bills went into one pile to be paid, everything else had piled up while we doted on our son for five months.

I recycled most things, shredded others. And then I came across a 9x11 envelope from Fairfax County. Hank's birth certificate. My name and Savannah's name and our parent's names and a date of birth that filled my heart.

I took a picture of the birth certificate and attached it to a message to my mom, along with a few pictures from the park that morning of her grandson that she doted over.

I took a picture of the birth certificate, sent the message.

I took a picture of the birth certificate and then turned towards our fire-safe file cabinet in the closet to store it away with all our important papers.

I took a picture and then flipped through the second drawer in the cabinet and found Hank's folder that held his immunization records, his hospital wristband, his baby foot prints and all other important paperwork we'd collected since he'd been born.

I glanced through it all, still marveling unbelievably in awe at my life and the life of the little creature who had taken up such a large space in my heart.

I glanced at his discharge papers fleetingly and then moved to put the birth certificate into the folder. Then my heart seized up into something inexplicable raw and hard inside me. Something worse than Savannah being shot. Something worse than those long, dreadful hours when I didn't know whether she or Hank would make it. Something worse than anything I'd endured in my life.

Blood Type: AB

Enough years of investigative work had filled me with the knowledge necessary to know.

To know what two blood types could mix together to create a child with a certain blood type.

To know that my O blood type combined with Savannah's A could never, ever make an AB child.

Numb, I sat in the chair in the den staring at the letters AB until my vision blurred, until I didn't feel like I was breathing, until Hank's cries came over the baby monitor.

Propelled into motion at those cries, I quickly put everything back in the file folder, put it back in the cabinet, and made my way upstairs towards a baby whom I loved who couldn't be my son.

That was a month ago.

The first week, I called in a quiet favor to the crime lab at Headquarters and reached a technician who had always shamelessly flirted with me. I couldn't let the team know back then. I brought my son to a virtual stranger and let Sydney take our blood and run the work as a favor that included a lot of winking and hands that were a little too friendly.

And a few days later, I had everything I needed. Blood tests that confirmed there were no errors in Hank's discharge papers. And DNA results that proved unequivocally that I had never, ever been a father.

Still, I kept my mouth shut for a week. Wavering and weighing options. Wondering if I just could pretend forever. I loved him so. I loved the Savannah I thought I knew, but really didn't.

Then she came home from work late one evening, apologizing that she couldn't leave work on time while she gathered her son in her arms, explaining that she had a patient who was a doctor, admitted after a car accident, and demanding to she her son's chart, who was in the car with her.

"Did you ask to see Hank's chart?" I asked neutrally when she was finished explaining her late arrival, while scooping chicken and rice onto a plate for her.

"Of course," she said after just a flash of hesitation, something that wouldn't have been noticed by most, and almost not by me after five months being out of the profiler game. But I did notice.

I turned towards her, extending the plate. "And mine? I've been to Bethesda Memorial a time or two. Have you looked at my chart?"

She didn't take the plate from me. She didn't answer my question. She clutched Hank closer to her and tears filled her eyes as she realized her game was over. I said the only thing I could think of in that moment, the thing that cut me like a knife every time I'd looked at Hank in the past week.

"You let me name him after my father," I whispered bitterly as I set her plate on the table and turned towards the stairs to pack.

That was the night I left Savannah and the son that was never mine behind, with tears streaming down my face and my car pointed towards Chicago, to drive for nine hours and break my mother's heart.

Savannah and I have communicated by email since then. I know the whole story now, or as much of the story as she's willing to give me. I've read her emails and they've sounded like distant echoes down a long tunnel as her words on the screen spill over me. I don't care who he was. I don't care that she got drunk and was sad because I'd missed another planned date due to a case. I don't care about the friend from med school who was in town, nor the fact that she'd slept with him and regretted it. None of it makes a difference now.

She's received simple replies:

"Keep the house."

"I don't care."

"It doesn't matter."

I don't ask about Hank even though the vision of him in my mind breaks my heart every day.

I don't answer emails or phone calls from the team, who by now has pieced together the story.

I don't even know myself anymore. When I look in the mirror, all I see is the man who sobbed over a baby's crib and whispered broken goodbyes to the little bundle that I loved but wasn't mine to love.

I've holed up with my mother, and we often cry together on the couch, clutching hands, grieving what we thought had been found but was now lost. The first two nights I was home, she crawled into the small twin bed of my childhood with me, wrapping her arms around me and soothing my sobbing as best she could.

She's never asked me to go back. She's never told me I should, or asked me if I could. It's incomprehensible, the loss that was handed to us on a dark platter by the woman we both thought we adored - delivered to us with deceit Savannah thought - hoped - would last forever.

When the check came in the mail two days ago, I felt ill. I was about to tear it to pieces, when my mother with her red-rimmed eyes put a hand on my wrist to stop me.

"Maybe you have to go back to heal, my son," she whispered while pressing a kiss to my hand. "Think about it."

I stilled my motions and instantly thought about the dilapidated, abandoned building and fields that I'd jogged past nearly every day since I'd been home with my mother.

Go back to heal.

The words resonated with me at a time that I needed something, anything, to grasp onto.

So I deposited my share of the equity in the home I lived in with Savannah instead of tearing it to shreds. I made my way to the city offices, and I offered them a deal they couldn't refuse.

I'd refurbish the rec center that haunted my memories.

I'd tear down the walls that were part of my childhood hell.

I'd put it all back together at no cost to them.

They only had to agree to staff it when I was done. An offer they couldn't refuse.

I get the keys to the padlocks on the doors of the rec center twenty-four hours after my offer is made. I bring tools. I place two framed pictures in the windowsill of Carl Buford's office, where I lived out horrors over and over again through the years. One is of the BAU team I consider family from about six years ago - me, Garcia, Rossi, Hotch, Reid, JJ and Emily.

The other is of the team, sans Emily, in a hospital room with Savannah and Hank.

I destroy that picture, the devastating fallacy of it all, with my sledgehammer first, before turning to the walls of the office.

Tearing down the first wall in the recreation center where so many of my nightmares live is less therapeutic than I hope it would be. I thought I might find power in this task, and instead I find tears.

I've found tears in so many things since I left DC, since I walked away from Savannah and our house and the little baby that was never mine to have and love. I don't let my tears stop me, though. I bring the sledgehammer over my back again and again and let my tears mingle with the debris and dust until my vision is blurred.

I destroy the walls filled with my earliest nightmares, in hopes of building something from the rubble that resembles a life again.

I'm startled from the dreams of my past by a hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently. I gasp and my eyes slam open, searching. I'm in the only room I've known in the past decade - a cell in its own way, but a warm one filled with a strange kind of love and comfort - and she is hovering over me. "Time for breakfast," she says in a soft monotone before she brushes her lips briefly against my cheek and the slight stubble there.

And so I go. I eat the breakfast she makes from the old stove we've constructed. I know what's coming, and I know I need my strength. The goat milk is rich and the bread she's made is dense. The dandelions balance it in a way I never thought I'd get used to. I eat and drink and we don't talk.

And then we set about our morning chores.

She's tender with the new baby goat; the dewy weeds glisten in the sun as she feeds the kid out of the palm of her worn hand. If she's nervous about today, she's not showing it. Her hair, mostly gray now, is pulled back into a loose bun, and her profile shows that of a face relaxed and a little smile playing on her lips as the goat eats from hand. Her clothing borders on tattered, and I know I'll have to find her some new things to wear soon, with fall and winter approaching.

I stop watching her for a moment and look down at the holes in my own pants. I shake my head, wondering if we'll even still be here come winter.

"Don't over-think it," she whispers. Talking outdoors is always like this - hushed whispers that barely carry through the air.

I look up and smile softly at her.

"It's time," she told me a few weeks ago. That's it, just two words, and I knew what she meant. I didn't argue, I didn't ask if she was sure, I didn't wonder out loud about why now, ten years later. I knew the answers. We had to wait for the right moment, for the timing to be right. And it was time; I knew that from everything she'd told me in the years we'd been together. So I simply put my hand on her shoulder, nodded, and pressed my lips against the wrinkled skin of her forehead.

"We'll have to do this right. We'll have to draw them to us," she said back then, as she rested her hand over mine where it lay on her thin shoulder.

I just nodded with my lips still pressed to her forehead. I knew the plan. We'd had a decade to ponder it. My single connection to the past seemed to be running in parallel to our present, with their days, weeks, months, years marching to the same beat as our own.

At first, she pushed me to find other connections, but it left me exhausted and her vulnerable, and after a few years of trying, she had simply accepted our fate. As she soothed my aching head after my last attempt at creating a portal made seven years ago, she had resigned and said, "So we wait."

And now the waiting is over.

I've followed her plan perfectly to this point, creating mysterious disappearances in their world that would trip their trigger and draw them in. And they're here now, or very near here. I saw them setting up camp about a mile down the hill last night.

I stand from the log where I've been perched watching her feed the goats - guarding her - and stretch my back. "It's time," it's my turn to say.

She nods and grabs the lead on our male goat, handing it to me. She scoops the baby goat up in her arm and grabs the lead on the female goat. We walk carefully around the copse of bramble and weeds and approach the entrance to our home of the past ten years. I take the baby goat from her arms so she can use the handrail to descend the stairs. I follow behind, watching her make the steps slowly, one at a time - left foot down, right foot joining her awkwardly, left foot down, right foot. The bullet wound she suffered a decade ago and then patched up on her own as best she could with few supplies has left her right leg stiff and hurting, especially first thing in the mornings.

Our home smells of goats and the bread we had for breakfast. We bring the goats to their pen, separating the male and female, leaving the baby with her mother. I switch on the nearly-silent generator and watch the vitamin D lights softly fill the goat pen. I watch her pat the kid on the head before she turns and gently pats my cheek.

"Only him," she whispers to me sympathetically, reminding me.

I nod, resigned. She knows how much I want to bring her, too, but I'm not sure I can protect both of them, and I won't risk one for the other. I can't.

"You can do this," she says, full of confidence.

I nod again and take her hand in mine, leading her to her room and the cold box that she'll have to stay in while I'm gone. We've lined it with blankets and pillows so she'll be comfortable and warm. She gets in without hesitation, laying back, and smiling softly at me. This part is almost routine for her at this point, but today is different. I'm not going out to find supplies or lay a trap; I'm going to get him.

She's nervous and excited and scared and sad all at once - all those emotions swirling in her expressive eyes.

"Two hours," I say to her. And she nods, blinking rapidly to staunch the tears that I know are burning her eyes.

"I won't let you down," I whisper as I clasp her fingers.

"I know. You never have," she responds as she squeezes my hand.

I stand and close the heavy lid slowly, so it doesn't bang shut. There's no need for a lock; the protection comes from the thick metal. If anyone manages to get past that and find her, a lock would make no difference.

Her finger pokes through the small air hole on the side, its nail crusted with dirt, waving at me.

My courage falters slightly as she pulls her finger back in. I'm not scared for me, and I'm not worried about making it back to her. All these decades of living have taught me that short of decapitation, death, much like aging beyond puberty, will elude me. There is no grim reaper in my past or present.

But I'm nervous for them. For the woman in the box and the two on the other side, one of which I'll have to leave behind. And for what happens after I bring him in with us.

I take a deep breath and turn back the way I came. I pass my room and then the goats, ascend the steep flight of stairs up to the sunlight. I close and lock the heavy metal door before grabbing clumps of weeds and wood to conceal the door's surface. Once I'm satisfied that this looks like nothing more than overgrown wildlife amidst a charred forest, just like everything else around me, I turn.

Just down the hill from where I stand, the ripple shimmers slightly in the sunlight and looks almost like sun reflecting off a spider's web. I walk towards it with resolve, take a deep breath, and step through, so familiar now with the the pull and twist in my stomach, the bright flash of light and the wave of vertigo that I hardly notice it anymore.

I used to fall when I got to the other side, shaking and sweating, which was dangerous. But now I land on my own two feet, push down the nausea, and find myself in a forest that looks nothing like the one I left behind.

Here the trees are standing strong, the leaves green, and the ground covered in healthy pine needles. There are deer here that eat the weeds and prevent things from getting overgrown. There are birds and squirrels and racoons. And not too far away, there are people - families laughing and camping - in the waning days of summer.

I let the fresh scent of green trees fill my senses. I remember I brought fresh pine needles back for her once and she buried her nose in them, and then cried for hours. I've been careful with what I bring back for her since then, the only living thing being two goats a few years back.

Until a few weeks ago, that is, when I started bringing people back with me, five in all. We kept them blindfolded, though, and she never spoke around them. She did sit and stare at them for the twenty-four hours or so that we held them captive, taking in the features of another, different human face for the first time in so many years.

I returned them to this very forest after their stay with us, planting visions in their heads of bright lights and white rooms and not much else.

And that's what brought them here. I know their timeline like it's my own. They'd barely gotten their jobs back. They were just reconnecting in a way they hadn't in years. They were sad and still in love and confused and heartbroken and it was all too much to bear unless they were together. They needed their work to bond them, and it was just starting to really work. They were supposed to be hunting down a sighting of bigfoot in the Appalachian mountains on this day in their time, but I changed that with my actions.

Mysterious disappearances near a campground outside of Chicago, five in all, where people witnessed a man disappearing into thin air with someone slung over his shoulder, and then those people were found naked a day later on the forest floor with no memory of where they'd been, only memories of bright lights and a white room. Abductions.

Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would never be able to stay away. They're just a mile down the hill from me.

I'm altering their present, fucking with the future, doing all the things I grew up being told I should never do by a ghost, because it would alter the balance of things in unpredictable ways.

Altering the balance of things in unpredictable ways is exactly what we want to do. It's the only hope.

The surveillance van is stifling in the September air. London is experiencing a heat wave like nothing I've ever felt before, especially in September, and I'm watching my team on cameras as they approach the hostage situation at a bank that's practically in the backyard of my flat.

I know what I'm supposed to do. Emily Prentiss, head of UK Interpol, is supposed to sit back and dictate the situation from afar. But that Emily, who has been my bread and butter of stoicism for the past few years seems very far away. I didn't come here in a suit to watch; I came here in clothing more suitable for tactical situations in order to participate.

It's the Emily I've known for the past six months who received the call early this morning about the situation. That Emily didn't look at the emptiness in the bed beside her and pull a sensible suit of her closet; she pulled out pants and boots and a shirt she could move in and strap a vest over.

Six months ago, the Emily she thought she knew would have donned stockings and high heels and a suit jacket with her ID clipped to her lapel.

Six months ago, she had a boyfriend named Mark, who she thought she was happy with - the man she could be with without giving too terribly much of her heart away.

And then she went back to the states and worked a case with the BAU team - a case that should have culminated in eradicating her nightmares and possibly letting herself get closer to Mark. Maybe she would have let that closeness develop, but something about those few days with the BAU made her reevaluate the facade of a life she was trying to carry out.

Perhaps she would have figured it out. Perhaps she would have come to terms with the inexplicable ache in her heart at the idea of Derek Morgan - the man she thought the least likely to ever settle down before she did - being married and having a baby.

But then her mother died, and she had those arrangement to deal with. When Mark asked her if she wanted him to come with her to DC to attend the funeral and deal with the the estate, she shook her head. No, she didn't want him there. She didn't want to explain grief mixed with relief. She didn't want him to know who she had been before, to know that part of her, didn't even want him to ask questions.

Things dissolved quickly after that, and one day Mark ended things.

Clyde told me that was exactly what I wanted Mark to do, and I know deep down that I did. I'm better off alone.

I don't know the Emily of my past or present anymore. All I know is that I'm in a stuffy van with my finger itching to pull the trigger. I know what we're supposed to be doing here - get the hostages, kill who we have to, but keep the head of the group alive. We think he's responsible for far more than a borough bank robbery.

Still, I don't really listen as I remind myself of the facts. I strap on a vest, check my weapon and am out of the van, ignoring the surveillance team as they try to call me back. They've seen this show a few times in the past several months, and they know I'm operating on my own private house money here; Interpol is none too pleased with my erratic behavior these past few months.

I override the agent in charge. I barrel into the bank as the agent under me mutters a "Bloody hell," in my earpiece.

I am Emily Who Gives No Fucks, someone I've become quite accustomed to and kind of like in my lonely world.

I save the hostages and kill the bad guys, head of the group included, the one whom I ordered not an hour before to keep alive.

I stick around for a bit, but I don't bother with the paperwork or clean up. Feeling quite self-satisfied, I avoid the eyes of everyone, bypass headquarters and make the short walk to my flat, intending to toast my victory with tequila and a good book until I can't see straight.

But my plans are foiled when I enter my flat and find Clyde Easter there waiting for me.

"What in the ever bloody hell, Emily?" he hisses from my couch while his dirty shoes are comfortably resting on my cream colored ottoman.

I open my mouth to argue, to justify, but my eyes land on his and I shut my mouth and look down instead. I'm playing fast and loose and I know it, and I knew before I went into that bank that I was blowing it, yet again, but I did it anyway.

I keep my eyes on my carpet and listen to Clyde breathing angrily. "You are buggering yourself, you know that? You do know that. Is that what you want? You want to get fired?"

Instinct kicks in. And fear. No real friends to speak of, no boyfriend, no parents, no life. My job is the only thing I have.

I shake my head firmly in response, but don't look up to catch his eyes.

"The committee has advised me to let you go," Clyde continues, "but they've left the ultimate decision up to me."

I can't glean anything from his tone. Nothing at all. I chance a glance at his face and see him looking at me, tilting his head slightly to the side, like he's pondering hard what to do with me.

"I think you need to step back," he says, and my heart sinks.

I take a deep breath and am prepared to launch into an argument I'd surely lose with him. But then he flies a question at me from left field.

"Do you know Walter Skinner?" he asks.

I nod once, bewildered and curious. "I've met him a couple times at FBI gatherings. Briefly." I clear my throat and try to will my voice into something that sounds less like scared teenager and more like Emily Prentiss. "I don't think he knows me by name, though."

Clyde nods. "And the X-Files?"

I smirk at the memories of bullpen gossip and jokes when I was a green agent, just out of the academy. "I know about them. They're closed now."

Clyde removes his shoes from my pristine ottoman, leaving faint traces of dirt behind. He puts his elbows on his knees and leans forward, hands clasped. "They were closed. They've been reopened. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are back. Do you know them?"

I roll my eyes at Clyde, exasperated with the twists and turns of this conversation. "Either fire me or don't," I say firmly.

He shakes his head. "Do you know them?" he repeats.

Clyde is not a person I'm going to get anywhere with by playing exasperated or petulant, no matter how much I may feel that way in my passive-aggressive state of wanting to be cut loose or absolved because of my actions.

I sigh and I nod with one eyebrow raised. "I went to a pathology lecture conducted by Dana Scully for professional development about a year before you recruited me for Interpol. Fox Mulder was there, though I didn't know it until the end, when Agent Scully introduced him to the class.

I can actually still see that time in my mind, how the lanky man with the nose that was too big and the eyes that were too close together and the arms that were just a little too long combined into a stunning figure that only had eyes for the red-headed woman giving the lecture. How he leaned on the classroom wall, a small smile playing on his lips, while she spoke and tried not to look at him.

Clyde nods at me. "I went to Oxford with Fox Mulder. He was a good friend. He is a good friend, though we've hardly spoken in years, until recently. He's missing."

I move to sit on the chair opposite Clyde, wondering where he's going with this.

"Agent Scully believes he's been abducted. She's not someone for whom I would question the validity of her statements. But she's been cut off from FBI resources as this seems to be a recurring theme with the two of them. She's on her own trying to find him…"

Clyde trails off and realization dawns on me. I shake my head and chuckle mirthlessly. "I'm sorry your friend has disappeared, but you can't be serious. Abducted? By little green men?"

Clyde doesn't laugh back. He doesn't even crack a smile. "They're gray, according to Mulder. And I'd never question his honesty either. And yes, that's my deal for you. Take it or leave it."

My years of knowing Clyde have filled in the blanks he's left out, but I incredulously clarify his position. "You want me to go help Dana Scully find Fox Mulder, because the FBI told them to fuck off a few months after bringing them back?" I clear my throat so I don't laugh, because as much as this seems like a joke, I think it's probably not. "You want me to help find your friend Fox Mulder, or I can kiss my job goodbye?" I question neutrally.

The bastard actually nods. He nods and smiles slightly and I want to smack the smile right off his face. I am the head of UK Interpol and he wants to send me into the field with some delusional woman to hunt down fictitious little green - gray - men. And one Fox Mulder who, if memory serves me correctly, seems to disappear with more frequency than socks in the dryer.

Fuck me.

"Is this a joke?" I venture.

He shakes his head.

"And if I refuse?" I ask.

He looks around my flat and then pointedly at the badge on my chest and shrugs. If I refuse, game over, he's telling me.

I feel the sting of tears behind my eyes. My life is fucked up. I'm fucked up. I'm a hot mess and I know I've screwed up, but I don't know if I can handle this absurdity. And I don't like feeling like I'm being treated like a teenager who broke the rules, even though I know that's exactly how I've been behaving the past few months.

I swallow past the lump in my throat. I think about the people I can't face in my current state. "I can't go back to FBI headquarters, Clyde," I whisper finally. "I just can't."

He stands and walks towards me, places a hand on my shoulder. "Who said anything about DC? Fox Mulder went missing outside of Chicago, and that's where Dana Scully is. She's not going to leave until she finds him. Officially, I'm suspending you without pay from Interpol for a month for your indiscretions. Unofficially, I'm flying you to Chicago to help a dear friend of a dear friend of mine."

I look up and he brushes the tears from my cheeks, holding his palm there warmly, like an apology for all the shit I've mostly only brought upon myself, but he's acknowledging his part in the mess that is my life for the first time.

"Do what I'm asking, Emily. Dana Scully called me because she had no one else. She needs someone willing to go a little rogue right now, and I need someone that can come back to me in one piece. If all goes according to plan, you'll be back in your Interpol office by your birthday."

He bends down and presses his lips to my forehead. "Maybe you'll find yourself a bit again, along with the little gray men."

He winks and stands, walking away from me, his voice carrying in the silence of my flat. "You fly out at nine tomorrow morning. Your fake ID is on the kitchen table. No one should know you're there."

The soft click of my front door closing is the exclamation point on his words.