Thin Air, a x-files fanfic

Author's Notes: Another story that I thought of while idly speculating. I was walking home from the corner bakery when I wondered what would happen if I just disappeared. And so the idea was born.

Summary: Mulder discovers a case where a person appears to disappear into thin air. Scully, of course, sets out to prove him wrong.

Spoilers: Season 3, takes place right after Teliko

Mimic117, you are the beta driver to my keyboard

Thin Air
Rated PG
Suzanne L. Feld

August 1996

"People don't just disappear into thin air, Mulder."

"Apparently this one does."

Scully glared across the office at him from where she was seated at the bench, going over the samples from their previous case and preparing to file them. "Because a homeless man who probably had the DTs said he saw her disappear?"

Mulder was sitting in one of the chairs in front of their desk. He was sprawled with his legs spread, suit jacket open, absently playing with the end of his tie. He had that almost smirking, amused look which often drove her up the wall. "Don't forget the restaurant owner, Scully. A religious family man with five kids and a successful business. Don't think he had the DTs."

She finished packing the vials into a small box that she had previously labeled "Samuel Aboah" then got up and tucked it into the larger banker's box further down on the counter which contained the case files and other evidence. After putting the lid on it, she went over and set the box on the floor just inside the doorway to the office.

"So what do you think happened? David Copperfield was nearby and hocus-pocus, she disappears?"

"Hey, he did pretty good with the Statue of Liberty," Mulder said with amusement in his voice. She suspected that he lived for bantering moments like this. "But no, I suspect a parallel dimension."

For once he totally floored her and Scully stopped halfway across the office, equidistant between the door and back room. After a beat she uttered, "What?"

She couldn't see him as she had her back to him, but could hear the grin in his voice. "I think she walked into an alternate or parallel dimension."

Scully got her feet moving again, shaking her head. "That's what I thought you said."

"Well. Enough loitering around here. Want to go check it out?"

She turned to see him rising from the chair, straightening his tie and suit jacket. "Check what out?"

"Back to Pennsylvania but this time for the fascinating case of the amazing disappearing woman, Camila Ibáñez. Our flight to Pittsburgh leaves in an hour." With a flourish of his arm that mimed a magician flourishing his cape, Mulder bowed her though the door.

"I not kid you, I am not lying, she just walk inta nothing—I was watching, wondering if she come by for breakfast after that box of donuts, maybe too full for meal," the middle-aged man said excitedly in his accented but easily understandable English. "No one believe me!"

Scully laid a hand on the man's sleeve briefly to help calm him, forcing herself not to recoil from the slightly greasy feeling of the material. He spent hours every day in a restaurant kitchen so she understood where it came from, but that made it no less unsettling. "We're the best chance you'll have to be believed," she told him. "So just start from the beginning."

They were sitting at the chrome-and-red-vinyl counter of a medium-sized Greek restaurant which, interestingly enough, was owned and run by Serbian refugees. The man they were talking to, Aleks Ćetković, was balding and in his mid-fifties, but fit, handsome, and virile-looking. They already knew from his witness statement that he had immigrated to the US eleven years ago with his wife and two children, had three more since, and owned the restaurant for seven. He was as clean as anyone could be, never having been in any kind of trouble either in his home country or here. His family were well-known at the Serbian Eastern Orthodox church they attended not far from their home, part of a small enclave of refugee and immigrant families. Though eyewitnesses were notoriously untrustworthy, you couldn't get a better pedigree for a reliable one than this man.

The restaurant was getting ready to open, wait staff bustling here and there. Scully could hear several different languages-Spanish, English, and what she guessed was Serbian, enunciated with a musical yet staccato sound. Everyone seemed to get along fine, although she noticed two of the waitresses jostling over who would get to the coffeepot first.

They had flown into Pittsburgh the previous evening but the restaurant was too busy to interview the owner. He asked that they come back the next morning when he would have time to talk to them. Instead they had met with the local police, checked in at the FBI field office, and taken care of a few reports before spending the night. Though Scully was not a fan of getting up at five a.m. to do interviews, Mulder looked nearly as rough as he had during the feral woman case. He was neatly groomed as always, but looked very tired. She wondered if he'd gotten any sleep at all.

"Okay. So, this lady, Camila, she been living here last five years or so. Very nice, very friendly, gives music lessons in house. Did for my son for a while, but he got bored and she say let him stop. Comes by every Sunday for our after-church brunch special, though she not go to church." He crossed himself, shaking his head almost sadly.

Movement caught her eye and she glanced over to see Mulder lifting his coffee cup to his lips. His eyes cut to Scully with open amusement. As she'd had much practice doing, she ignored him and returned her attention to the man on the other side of the counter.

"Anyway, I was grilling meat out back, you know, to give food good flavor, fire-grilled flavor. I see Camila go into doughnut shop on corner, then got distracted by bum digging in my trash. When I look again she coming out and around the corner. I was thinking, big box of donuts she got, why she buy so many and will she be by for brunch?"

Scully noticed that he seemed to relish the word "brunch" when he said it. She wasn't sure if it was because of the meal he served, or if it was just a word he found amusing.

"Then, as I watch, she walk into—nothing. She just disappear, like she go behind an invisible curtain." He shook his head, the few black hairs from his comb-over waving like kelp over his freckled skull. "I never see nothing like it. I turn to bum, say 'You see that?' and his eyes big as mermer—uh, little glass ball kids play with. He see it too."

"Marbles?" Mulder supplied, and the man nodded.

"I don't know what happen, but I tell you what I see," he said with a stubborn, bullish air, frowning. "You talk to bum?"

Scully flipped through her notes. "Alvin Burley, yes," she said. "He said pretty much the same thing, like she walked behind an invisible wall."

"Yes, that it," Ćetković said, nodding eagerly. Scully forced herself not to watch the gluey-looking hairs on the top of his head bob about. "You got any idea what happen?"

Scully glanced sharply at Mulder, who cut his eyes away from her. "Not yet," he said.

"Well, you let me know when you do," he said, stepping back and stretching. "Nice lady, hope she ok. Now, have to open, after six."

Scully tucked her notebook into her pocket and took one last sip of her milky coffee. "Thank you very much, Mr. Ćetković, you've been a huge help," she told him as they stood.

"You want stay for breakfast? Got fresh eggs and feta cheese from farmer market, make you a Greek—haha—omelet like you never had before," he said with a grin. "Best Greek—haha—food in the 'Burgh."

She didn't have to look at her partner to see his pleading eyes; her grumbling stomach made the decision for her.

III

Camila Ibáñez's house was an unprepossessing small brick bungalow, little different from the other 1950s and '60s-era houses on the street. Scully guessed that it had been a booming neighborhood post-WWII. It still retained a genteel shabbiness. She knew that over the last decade or so Pittsburgh had begun to rebound from its rough years of the 1970s steel bust, and was now becoming a top technological center. When she told Mulder as much during the drive down the street from the restaurant he said, "You know an awful lot about the city. Are you harboring a secret lover here, or what, Scully?"

She didn't rise to the bait.

"My Aunt Rachel used to live here and we visited a few times when I was a child. When we moved to Maryland my mom hoped to see her more, but she passed away from a stroke when I was fifteen."

"Oh." That put paid to the conversation until they arrived.

Several people, including her music students, had reported Camila missing over the last two days so the police had come by to do a welfare check. One of the neighbors had a key and let them in. They found nothing out of the ordinary except that the elderly woman was nowhere to be found. There was a cold, empty teapot on the back burner of the stove and four cups set out on the counter next to it, four placemats on the table, but no other signs of activity in the house.

It was when the police were at her home that Aleks Ćetković had come forward with his story. Camila's house was within sight of the restaurant and when he spotted the black-and-whites in her driveway, he knew something was wrong. Mulder and Scully had discovered that the homeless man—who, they found out, was a veteran with mental illness and PTSD—previously reported seeing Camila Ibáñez vanish but had been blown off as a lunatic before being tossed in the drunk tank where they'd found him.

Not any more, she thought as they went up to the house between beds of small white flowers that flanked the walkway. He may have mental problems and be homeless but he was no longer being ignored.

They used the key provided by the police to enter the house, though Scully left the inner door open as it was stifling inside. The little bit of fresh air coming through the screen door barely made a dent in the heat, but it was better than nothing. "Didn't she have air conditioning?" Mulder said as they moved through the tiny foyer into the living room.

"I don't know, but I wish we could open some windows," Scully said, feeling sweat begin to bead along her hairline at the stifling heat. Her light, linen summer blazer suddenly felt like smothering wool.

Mulder had spotted the thermostat on a wall across the room and went over, pulling on latex gloves. After a moment of poking and prodding he exclaimed "Aha!" and the sound of a distant fan was heard. Within moments cool air began to sweep through the little house and he closed the door.

At Scully's meaningful look he said defensively, "There's no evidence to be ruined, Scully. We can at least be comfortable while we search for clues."

She shook her head and went through the open archway into the dining room pulling on her own gloves. The first thing she noted was the amount of dust; it looked like nothing had been touched in weeks, not just days. There were well-worn footprints through the powder on the floor, but otherwise no signs of usage. Even the couch had a fine layer of dust on the cushions. "Either she's a lousy housekeeper or she doesn't use these rooms," she remarked. "I've never seen so much dust in a lived-in house."

"Yeah, I noticed that too. You think maybe she just stays in one room? Could be she's a hermit like Howard Hughes was, and we'll find bottles of urine in the basement?"

She huffed. "This house doesn't have a basement, or an attic or second floor for that matter. It barely has a crawlspace. Talk about your basic slab house."

"Okay, then, in a closet," he said in an annoyed voice. She knew he didn't like it when she wouldn't banter back, and secretly enjoyed his annoyance. Now he knew how she felt most of the time.

They both walked cautiously through the tiny house to make sure it was clear, then met back in the dining room. "Do you notice something unusual, Scully?"

"Other than enough dust to guess that she hasn't been in these rooms in weeks? What else is unusual?"

He ignored her waspish tone. "She doesn't have anything alive in her house. No plants, pets, not even a canary. Don't you find that kind of odd for an old lady, Scully?"

She shrugged, peering into a tall, thin china cabinet with glass-inset doors. It was filled with two dozen or so knickknacks of all shapes and sizes. They ranged from tiny seashells to a five or six-inch cut-glass sculpture of a lion standing on a hill. That was, she realized after a moment, Simba from The Lion King. But none of the items seemed to be related in any way, not like her late grandmother's collection of angel statues and plates. The pieces were dusty but not as bad as the rest of the house, she noted. The cabinet probably protected them more but they obviously had not been touched in a long time either.

"Not all little old ladies have canaries that say 'I tought I taw a puddy tat,' Mulder," she said, glancing over to see his eyes light up. "But I get your point."

"One would think she'd at least have an African violet or two," he said, prowling around the living room. "My grandmother didn't like animals and never had any pets, but she had the requisite African violets on a windowsill."

Scully nodded. "I think most grandmothers do, or an ivy plant that grows all over the place," she agreed. "But you're right, there's nothing like that here." She moved on to the kitchen. They could still hear but not see each other as Mulder headed down the short hallway which led to the two bedrooms and small bath. There was a noticeable lack of dust in this room; it appeared to be the most lived-in of the entire house.

Glancing around, she once again noted the four cups and placemats set out. It looked as if Camila was having someone over; was that why she'd bought such a large box of doughnuts? They could question the neighbors, she supposed, and find out if anyone knew.

She opened the refrigerator carefully, aware that there could be spoiled food, to find that was not the case. It was sparkling clean and barely occupied. There were several bottles of what appeared to be hot sauce labeled in Spanish and a jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise in the door. A package of what looked like homemade corn tortillas sealed in plastic wrap was on the top shelf. Next to it was a large jar, the type whole dill pickles were kept in, which looked to be full of reddish sun tea.

The freezer, however, was packed full. It was a side-by-side refrigerator with an icemaker, and every space around the ice bin was jammed with what appeared to be TV dinners and frozen vegetables. Scully pulled a few out, carefully so as to not start a cascade, and found that much of the packaged food was ingredients for other dishes or stored, cooked foods in neatly labeled Tupperware containers, and freezer bags of refried beans, pulled pork, and homemade soup.

"No pictures of herself, family, or friends," Mulder called from another room. "In fact, I haven't seen anything personal except for the stuff in the china cabinet."

"Good point," she said, closing the freezer door and heading for the cabinets by the doorway that led to the back door. "Is she renting this house, Mulder, do you remember? Or did she buy it?"

"I believe she's renting," his voice rumbled in return. "Why?"

"The odd mix of new appliances and old furniture," she said, walking past a rickety, timeworn wooden table set next to the kitchen windows. "But that explains it."

She went through the cabinets, finding nothing unusual in a house occupied by a single woman. Coffee and tea, staples such as sugar and oatmeal, condensed milk, and bags of dried beans, rice, and herbs. There were, she realized, no processed foods such as canned soup or jars of peanut butter or jelly. The mayonnaise, milk, and hot sauce were the only packaged foods she found outside of the freezer. It seemed that this woman must cook from scratch, though Scully found no fresh vegetables, produce, or meat.

Mulder appeared in the doorway that led to the hall, leaning one shoulder against the wood. "Anything interesting in here? Cause there's nothing of any significance in the rest of the house, that's for sure. Unless you're into old lady dresses and face cream."

Scully leaned back against the spotlessly-clean Formica counter, folding her arms. "Nothing out of the ordinary. I don't know if that's interesting, but it is telling."

"How so?"

"This woman doesn't have any family that we can find and though a lot of people around here know her, no real friends. She seems to live in three rooms: the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom."

"Don't forget the music room," Mulder interjected.

"Okay, and the spare bedroom where she gave music lessons. And unless she's got a storage unit, she doesn't keep any papers or mementos other than the ones in the cabinet. And that's not much for a woman her age."

Mulder straightened. "I didn't find any ID, a passport or anything like that, in the bedroom. Did you?"

"No. But if she went to buy donuts, she probably had her purse and wallet on her," she pointed out. "What do we expect to find here, Mulder?"

"The life of a woman who exists in two dimensions, or parallel universes," he said with an utter lack of fanfare, much like he had in the office. "This is how you live when you don't know when you'll leave or how long you'll be gone or when you'll come back."

They walked down to the corner to where Camila had allegedly disappeared. It was a square of sidewalk next to the brick wall which made up one end of the strip mall of stores that flanked a large street. "This is even more unremarkable than her house," Mulder remarked, looking around. "I don't think there's a rift that anyone else can see or access, just her."

"Mulder, where in God's name did you get this idea?" Scully said, exasperated. She didn't use a few adjectives in front of the word "idea" that she thought of.

"Not sure," he admitted. They began to walk back towards where their rental car was parked in the Ibáñez driveway three doors down. "I got to thinking, and it occurred to me that one way a person could disappear into thin air was by going into another dimension, or parallel universe. Didn't you postulate such ideas in your dissertation?"

"Theorizing and proving are two totally different things, as you well know," she said. "There still is no proof of anything along the lines of what you're proposing. Not string theory, the multiverse-slash-meta-universe, or the Many Worlds theory."

"Well who knows," he said far too cheerfully for her state of mind, "perhaps we'll be the ones to discover it, on this case."

A line about pigs flying occurred to her, but then she got distracted as they walked closer to the house. Standing on the minuscule front porch, frowning at their car in the driveway, was an older woman who matched the description they had been given of the missing Camila Ibáñez.

Scully knew that Camilla was tall for a woman, 5'8", but now appeared to be stooped due to age. Her hair was in a long, thick silver braid that fell down to the small of her back. She had medium-brown, reddish skin; her ethnicity was Colombian Native, having emigrated to the US with her parents when she was twelve. She was wearing the clothes she'd been reported last wearing, a loose, striped knee-length sundress, with tan sandals on her feet. A small brown leather purse was slung across her chest, and Scully noted that she had a brass house key in one hand.

Though wrinkled and aged, as they got closer Scully noted her incredibly high cheekbones, firm jaw, and high, arched brows that gave an idea of how beautiful Camila must have been when younger. She still was, in a regal, aged way.

As they got closer she called with clear irritation, "Is this your car in my driveway?"

Mulder nodded, reaching into his inside jacket pocket for his ID. Both he and Scully held the small wallets up next to their faces as they reached the bottom of the steps and looked up at her. "I'm Agent Mulder, and this is Agent Scully, from the FBI. We were called in to investigate your, uh, disappearance."

She put a hand to her chest in obvious distress, eyes widening. "What?"

"Can we come in, Ms. Ibáñez?" Scully asked, feeling the sun beat down on the top of her head. It wasn't unusually hot for August, but standing out here was going to give her a sunburn in a very short time. The curse of fair skin.

"Uh, yeah, I guess so," she said, clearly uncomfortable and nervous as she unlocked the inner door and led them in. "Why are you here? What brought you?"

Mulder explained that the local FBI office had been notified when she was reported missing as it was, at first, considered a possible kidnapping. Besides the restaurant owner and homeless man, two of her music students' parents had notified the police when they couldn't get ahold of her. He had then overheard a description of the case from another agent, and when he requested it the local feds were happy to hand it over.

They were standing in the living room talking when Camila suddenly whipped her head around. "Is my air conditioning on?" She frowned, then stalked over to the thermostat which was on the wall next to the archway leading to the dining room. "I know I turned it off before I left."

Scully told her how the police had gotten a key from her neighbor to do a wellness check, which they'd given to the agents. She handed it to the other woman who, though well into her seventh decade, had penetrating black eyes and a no-nonsense attitude. She could believe that Camila had been a teacher for many years, with that manner. She had a very slight accent, reminiscent of the Trego American Indian accents that she'd heard during the shapeshifter case in Montana a couple of years previously.

"Why did you turn your air conditioning off in this weather if you were just going to be gone for a few minutes?" Mulder said in a too-casual tone.

The older woman frowned. "Don't you pay HVAC bills, Agent?"

"Actually no, I live in an apartment with utilities included," Mulder parried. "How long did you expect to be gone?"

"Is that your business?" she snapped back, clearly getting annoyed. Her voice was climbing higher and shriller the more upset she got, her faint accent becoming more pronounced. "Look, I'm back, can we just drop this? Forget it?"

"Not until you tell us where you were." Mulder said flatly, his friendly relaxed manner gone. He was frowning at her, standing straight with arms crossed over his broad chest.

"Uh-uh, I know my rights," she argued right back, not moving. "I don't have to tell you shit."

Scully was torn between laughing at the look on Mulder's face and admiration for the other woman for standing up to him. This couldn't go on, however. They had no reason to question this woman and yet her curiosity had also been aroused. Time for Good Cop.

"Ms. Ibáñez, you're right, you don't. But my partner here has a theory on where you were due to how you appeared to, literally, disappear, and it would do us all good if you could just satisfy his curiosity."

The older woman moved her jet-black eyes from Scully back to Mulder. "Oh? This I've got to hear. And who told you that I just 'disappeared'?"

They explained about the restaurant owner and homeless man watching as she apparently walked into thin air. Camila seemed distressed about the restaurant owner having seen her and mentioned that she would go apologize to him later for having scared him. Then she turned back to Mulder and asked, "So where do you think I went?"

For once Mulder squirmed before spouting his latest outlandish idea, and it did Scully's heart good to see it. Too often he popped out with his irrational theories without thinking and embarrassed them both. But then he straightened and said bluntly, "I believe you may have gone into a parallel universe, or a neighboring dimension."

If not for Mulder's quick reflexes, Camila Ibáñez would have hit the floor. Her face drained of color and she collapsed in place at his words.

"I never thought anyone would believe me—the few people I have told thought I was crazy," Camila said, clutching her mug of tea as if it was a life preserver. "How did you figure it out?"

The kitchen was awash in late morning sunlight, clear beams falling across the flaking varnish of the old table they were sitting around. When they weren't talking it was so quiet that Scully could hear a clock ticking in another room, although the occasional sound of a car passing on the street or a distant dog's barking also broke the silence every so often. Now that she wasn't being so defensive Camila spoke in a lower, calmer voice that was slightly husky and much more pleasant.

"Good guess," Mulder said, smiling slightly. "How were you able to explain your absences? Didn't you work as a teacher for years?"

"I always told them that I could get called away by a family emergency at a moment's notice and, up until cell phones came out, that worked fine. Luckily, I was about to retire at the same time they came on the scene so it did all work out."

Scully had no idea what to say. Either this woman really, honestly believed that she traveled between dimensions or universes, or she really did. Since it was patently impossible, she was a very good storyteller. Mulder, of course, believed every word without question.

When Camila passed out and Mulder caught her, he'd laid her on one of the living room couches but the cloud of dust that raised set them all to coughing. Instead he had carried her down the short hallway and put her on her small bed. Once she came to, her entire attitude changed, from bristly defensive to quietly accepting.

Scully had served them all tea, though Mulder hadn't touched his yet. Camila had directed her to use the Aromática de Frutas in a jar in the refrigerator, a sweet fruit tea from her native country which was heated up in the teakettle on the stove. Scully found it absolutely delicious—it was several different fruits, mint, and honey simmered together—and was going to ask for the recipe before they left.

"Is that why you've moved so often?" Mulder asked.

"Figured that out, did you?" She heaved a sigh. "Uh-huh. Ten years is the most I've ever managed before people began asking questions or something bad happens. Been here six years and had some of my students coming over for a little farewell party since I was leaving again, for good this time."

"For good?" Scully repeated. "What do you mean?"

She turned to face the agent, and Scully saw the deep pain in her eyes. "I mean I was going over to mi hogar for the last time, Agent Scully. Last week I was diagnosed with advanced acute myeloid leukemia and there's little hope for survival past a couple of months, even with chemo. I'm going to die in the place I love best, even if it has been the bane of my life."

No one said anything for a few beats, the ticking of the clock suddenly sounding as loud as a drum in the sudden silence. "I'm so sorry to hear that," Scully said. "So you're, uh, going to…"

"I call it mi hogar, my home, which it is. I also say that I 'go over' to it, although to other people that often means death." Camila lifted her cup and took a sip, then smiled slightly. "It's more of a home than anywhere I've lived in this dimension or universe, whatever you want to call it."

"Then why do you, uh, stay here at all?" Mulder asked. His long fingers played idly with the fine handle of the cup in front of him.

"Try your tea, Agent Mulder, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised," she urged. "To answer your question, because there are no people there. I've never been able to take anyone else with me, though I do transport whatever I'm carrying. Those doughnuts were a rare treat over there, let me tell you." She chuckled briefly. "I know you're not supposed to give birds and fish bread, but I had to share and they loved it."

Scully's mind filled with images of giant half-human fish walking up out of the water to accept a donut from this tall, elderly woman, or an eagle stooping to delicately snatch one out of her upstretched hand.

Camila laughed outright this time. "Your faces! Yes, there are animals there. I don't know if it's a product of my own mind or a construct of some type or a real parallel dimension, but myself and a host of wild animals-fish, birds, even insects-are the only inhabitants. It's a fully functioning ecosystem, as best I can guess, even if it's not very large. I can walk all the way around it in two days."

Both Mulder and Scully started to ask a question, then paused and looked at each other.

"Wait—wait," Camila said, her smile fading. "How about I tell you from the beginning, and then you can ask questions?"

"That would work," Mulder remarked then, at a pointed look from the older woman, lifted his teacup to his mouth gingerly. He made it clear to Scully on more than one occasion that he didn't like fancy-dancy teas, just good old plain black Lipton if anything. But his face changed from half-frowning to pleasantly surprised as he tasted the tea. "That is good," he said, then took another, longer sip.

"I make it from scratch, with real fruit and honey," she said proudly. "You can have it either hot or iced, although hot is better even this time of the year. Now, here's how it all started…"

The tale she told was straightforward, without much exposition, but she was a good storyteller and neither was bored during the hours it took her to tell it. There were bathroom breaks and more tea poured, but as the afternoon wore on both agents barely noticed.

She was thirteen the first time it had happened, just weeks after beginning her menses.

(Later Mulder told Scully that the onset of puberty was often when "gifts" manifested themselves. She told him there was no proof of that, to which he dragged her down to the local occult bookstore to prove his case.)

Camila had been walking along a dirt country road, daydreaming, when suddenly the light changed and she was standing in a wide green meadow. There were mountains in the distance, though she saw the glint of deep blue water in the other direction. It wasn't silent, however; the air was full of the calls of birds and buzzing of insects, and smelled fresh and green with a hint of salt water. When she began to walk grasshoppers leapt from beneath her feet and, as she passed a stand of trees, a red squirrel ran up one of them chittering at her. It was a moment she had never forgotten although it had happened nearly sixty years ago.

Though scared Camila had, at the time, thought it was a dream. Then she saw a house up on a low cliff over a pond and discovered a neat little home for herself.

"It was like something out of the stories of the Colombian mountain village my parents grew up in," she told the agents, smiling softly. "Not a thatched hut like you might think, but a nice little wooden house with a shake roof and real glass in the windows. Fully furnished including a bed, desk, stone fireplace, and outside toilet, as there's no electricity. It's only one room but large enough to be comfortable; about half the size of this one. I don't know if I made it up out of my mind or someone else built it, but I've never questioned it. It's perfect."

Camila returned to the "regular" world the same way, daydreaming while walking, after just a few hours. She came back to the spot that she'd left and while it seemed like barely any time had passed for her, she found out that it had been several days for her worried family and friends.

She had always been forthright and honest, she explained, which was how their parents raised her and her three sisters. However, it did no good this time. No one believed her and they badgered her for weeks on where she'd really gone—until it happened again.

This time Camila managed to stay for a few days. She found it eerie and quiet in the little house at night, but there was enough light from the fireplace so that it wasn't pitch dark and no one, or thing, ever bothered her. During the days she roamed, soon discovering that she appeared to be on an island in the middle of a large ocean. She wasn't sure because the forest became so thick in the direction of the mountains that she'd never traveled more than a couple of hours into it before being forced to turn back.

There were plenty of wild-growing fruits and vegetables that she harvested, some unfamiliar but many of which turned out to be edible as she researched them when she got back. Later, she managed to take a fishing rod and tacklebox; her parents were outdoorspeople and often camped and fished. "I could make a garden, I suppose, or a captive fish pond, but I like living off the earth," she explained. "It isn't easy, and I go hungry sometimes, but it feels good to be responsible for myself in that way."

There were plenty of fish, both in the river which ran down from the mountains and formed the pond, or in the ocean. She had also learned to trap squirrels, rabbits, and other small rodents. Her only surprise was the cliffs—Camila had never cared for heights though she wasn't exactly afraid, and this land had a lot of cliffs falling down to the ocean, switchbacks to get to lower ground, and a narrow land bridge that went high over the river at one spot. "It was the only way I could get from the house to the beach so I had to go over it, but I never trusted it," she said, frowning. "At first I crawled across on hands and knees, though I did get used to it enough to walk. I never, ever go over it after dark."

There were leeches in the pond, she'd quickly discovered to her horror, and after that only used it for fishing and swam in the ocean instead. "That's why I'm sure it's not a figment of my imagination, or that I built it somehow, because I didn't even know what a leech was. I had three of them on my legs after wading in the pond and freaked out. I got them off by scraping them off with a stick and I bled everywhere. I remember that I didn't want to touch them. But when I came back here my mother saw the scratches and marks and took me to the hospital. The doctors did say that I'd had leeches on me, which made my parents think I was running off to a remote area somewhere.

"When I was fifteen, they had me institutionalized."

VII

"Oh no," Scully commented sympathetically, the only thing either agent had said for the past half hour. "That must have been awful for you."

"Ever see that old TV movie from the '70s with Linda Blair about the innocent girl who goes into reform school as a virgin and comes out a hardened criminal? It was like that, though no one gang-raped me with a broom handle nor did I turn into a criminal. But yeah, it was bad."

No matter what anyone did, through shock treatments and all sorts of drugs, Camila remained true to herself and never changed her story. "At one point I'm sure they gave me LSD, or something like it. I know I was tripping. Sadly, I never went over during the months I was there, probably because I never relaxed enough to daydream."

But shortly after getting out she disappeared for three days, which had been just hours for her, and upon returning, overheard her father talking to a doctor on the phone about having her re-admitted. So this time she really did run away.

"We lived in rural Oklahoma and I holed up in an old abandoned barn about six miles from town. I was afraid to let my guard down and get caught, but I finally did go over to mi hogar and managed to stay there almost a month. It was wonderful at first, but then I began to miss people. You have no idea how lonely it gets when you know that there's no one around. I began talking to myself, mostly chronicling what I was doing, but it became too isolated."

"Could you, uh… wish… yourself back? Did you ever try?" Mulder asked.

"The only way I can go back and forth is daydreaming while walking or jogging; I could never do it intentionally, though I can usually relax enough to go on autopilot to transfer when I want to," Camila said matter-of-factly. "Unfortunately, I am prone to daydreaming and often go over there when I don't intend to, as I did this time. I was thinking about saying goodbye to my students when next thing I knew I was standing in the meadow with my box of doughnuts."

She then continued her story. When she got back after running away, Camila found that she had been gone seven months. Her parents were so frantic that they welcomed her with open arms, and promised not to lock her up again. "This was in the late 1930s, when anything odd or unusual was looked at with fear," she explained. "My parents were rural farmers, outdoorsmen, and couldn't understand why I would run away. Somehow my mother got it in her mind that I should go to a Catholic boarding school for girls, but we didn't have the money. I managed to not go over too often until after my eighteenth birthday, when I decided that I was going to college no matter what."

The Winfield College for Young Ladies, not far across the state line into Kansas, drew her. She had wanted to be a teacher since helping raise her younger sisters, and they had a well-known teaching program. "I knew I'd have to stop the daydreaming and get serious," she said, her eyes faraway and expression thoughtful. "It was more difficult than I could have imagined, and I almost got kicked out a couple of times, but I did it."

"I thought you said that your parents didn't have the money for school?" Scully asked, thinking that she had caught an inconsistency in the other woman's story.

"They didn't, but there were scholarships back then just like there are now, and I was determined enough to find out about them," she said. "One of the leading families in Topeka had founded the college and funded many scholarships to help young women get ahead."

(Later Scully researched this and found it to be the truth, as well as that Camila had graduated at the top of her class but with a few demerits on her record for "unexplained overnight absences.")

"I thought that moving to a big city would be good, although I was scared to be by myself where I didn't know anyone," she said. "But it was too noticeable when I was gone for days or weeks in the smaller towns, so after I graduated I worked in factories in Topeka for a few years and saved up money. I moved to Chicago after the war."

She meant World War II, Scully realized. What this woman had seen in her life.

Camila had no trouble finding a job with her teaching certificate, though getting used to northern winters took some doing, she explained. Then, about eleven years after moving there, she found herself in mi hogar and couldn't seem to get back. By counting sunrises she thought she'd been gone nearly three months, and came back unexpectedly to find that over a year had passed. "That was the roughest one of all," she said, getting up and bringing the teapot to the table for refills. "Everyone assumed I'd been kidnapped, or killed and disposed of in Lake Michigan, which was not unusual for women in those days. They wrote me off after just a couple of months. All of my stuff was gone, thrown out or stolen, since they couldn't find my family. I was homeless and with absolutely nothing to my name."

"Didn't you have your family listed as next of kin in your employment records?" Mulder asked. "Why didn't they contact them?"

Camila shook her head. "I didn't want to see, or have anything to do, with my family, Agent Mulder. I was terrified that they'd lock me up again if they found me. I told everyone that I was orphaned and had no living relatives."

Caught up in the story Scully asked, "What did you do? Go home?"

Camila sighed. "No, I went to the police and told them that I'd been kidnapped and held hostage by the mob, who were a huge problem in those days. I hinted that it was a sex slave sort of thing though I never did outright lie and say so. They bought it without a qualm and got me help. There was a ladies' society at the time that helped 'wayward women'—what we called prostitutes in those days—and they managed to help me get back on my feet. My job was gone, but I managed to get a good referral from the previous school once they found out what had happened and was able to continue teaching."

That was, she explained, when she began taking precautions. After saving up enough money she moved, this time to New Orleans, where no one looked at her askance for the color of her skin as they sometimes had in the Windy City. There she began what would be her lifelong rule of hiding her important papers and enough money to relocate, paying her rent months in advance, and deliberately moving every five or six years whether she needed to or not.

"I loved New Orleans, hated to leave, but I knew I was doing the right thing when the school administration began to question my sudden absences," she said. "From there I went to Atlanta, but left after Dr. King was killed; it was just too dangerous for any person of color."

She was talking about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Scully realized. She had been right there in the middle of it.

"I moved to Detroit, where it was safer and there were lots of teaching jobs as it was a boomtown at that time. But then the car industry began to fold and the city became dangerous, so I decided to try the Big Apple."

New York during the 1980s was her greatest and worst adventure, Camila allowed. It was more autonomous than anywhere else she'd lived. Eventually there had always been questions about why she wasn't married and where she was from, but in New York she was barely noticed outside of the schools where she taught. "It was then that I decided to go into just teaching music, since the full schedule of a middle school was getting too much for me," she said. "And unlike now, you could specialize in something mostly by just doing it. Certifications were easier to get than they are nowadays. I've played five instruments since I was a child so it was no trouble to specialize."

Scully, who had been teaching at Quantico on and off for the last five years, couldn't agree more about getting certified but didn't want to interrupt her to say so.

"I probably would have lived there for the rest of my life if not for 'the incident'," she said darkly, her clear black eyes clouding. "New York was not a safe city in those days, although I hear it's getting better, and I'm afraid I got a little too comfortable. I was walking home one night when I was grabbed and dragged into an alley, and I don't think I have to explain exactly what happened. I thought since I was in my fifties no one would bother me in that way, but I was wrong."

"I'm so sorry to hear that," Mulder said, shaking his head sadly.

Scully reached over and laid a hand on the other woman's bare wrist, meeting her eyes. No words were needed as Camila patted her hand.

"Well, that opened my eyes, especially the way the cops reacted when I reported it, like I was lying or had somehow asked to be attacked. I was terrified to stay in the city after that, and decided to move South again where it was warm. I chose Charleston, but then discovered that they didn't have a good mass transit system and I was getting too old to walk all over hell's half acre."

"Mass transit system? Didn't you have a car?" Scully asked. "How did you move around the country without one?"

"I used moving companies," Camila said simply. "And took the train or bus to the next city."

"You couldn't own a car because if you were gone for a while, it could be stolen or repossessed," Mulder guessed.

"Pretty much, yeah. Besides, I never did learn to drive other than the old tractor on my parents' farm. I also don't know if I could go over while driving, and never wanted to find out."

"Where did you go after that?" Scully asked. True or not, it was a fascinating story.

"Here," she said succinctly. "I hadn't planned to spend my golden years in the cold but that's how it worked out. And from now on I'll spend the last of them in the everlasting warmth and safety of mi hogar."

VIII

"I really don't think we should have left her alone, Mulder," Scully said as she drove to their motel. Though they hadn't originally planned to stay overnight again, he was far from done with this case. He'd reported to Skinner that they still hadn't found out where Camila had been and that it might have been a kidnapping. Somehow he'd gotten their boss to buy it.

"And do what? Take her into custody? On what, suspicion of unknown hanky-panky?"

Scully frowned, irritated by his sarcastic tone. "She all but told us that she plans to end her life," she said flatly. "Suicide watch, maybe."

"Oh for Christ's sake, Scully, really? Did she seem crazy, or at all unaware of reality, to you?"

She slammed on the brakes maybe a little harder than she had to as the light ahead turned yellow. Squealing tires came from behind them and her glance in the rearview mirror showed the pickup behind them shuddering to a stop, probably inches from their bumper. She was too annoyed to care; they always got rental insurance. "That's not the point, Mulder," she snapped. "It's not the moral thing to do, leaving someone alone in that situation."

"She never said she was going to kill herself! If she was flying off to the, uh, Bahamas to live out her last days on a tropical island you wouldn't be reacting like this," he retorted.

"Really? When she's refusing chemo that might be able to give her a few more months?" she snarled as the light turned and she slammed on the gas. Both of them were jerked back in their seats; the rental Taurus had a little more under the hood than she expected.

"That's every person's choice, one that no one else should have a say in," he said. "As you damn well know. And if you're going to drive like Mario Andretti in this crowded city, I wish you'd let me take the wheel."

Scully realized that she'd been weaving in and out of traffic, driving very aggressively and carelessly. Though still annoyed with him, she did calm it down. "Even so, are we sure she knows all her options? I'm going to research her cancer and see what treatment plans I can find."

"Fine, you do that. I'm going to talk to her again tomorrow and find out more about how she transfers between worlds."

Scully didn't reply, instead pulling into the Blue Moon Motor Court. Yep, another lovely motel courtesy of the Bureau bean-counters, complete with scratchy white towels, malfunctioning air conditioners, and grody carpet. She had been somewhat disgruntled to find that Mulder had gotten them adjoining rooms since she was pissed at him, but soon forgot in their dinner quest for the perfect Philly cheesesteak.

She woke thrashing against restraints, confused as to where she was and what was going on. Then Mulder's familiar voice murmured comfortingly in her ear and moments later reality snapped into place. She stopped fighting what she realized were his arms around her and let herself relax for a moment, knowing that he was holding her and enjoying the feel of his hard body against hers in a muzzy sleep-dazed way. It had been so long since she'd been held by a man.

The dim bedside lamp was on, showing the dull Pittsburgh motel room. It was then that she really realized the ramifications of Mulder holding her. She was half under the covers, with him sitting on the bed next to her. His warm arms were loosely around her shoulders, her breasts against his firm chest. His head was bent down next to hers, his breath warm on her cheek as he murmured comfortingly to her. What am I doing in my pajamas in my partner's embrace? she thought with shock, and tore herself away from him.

He remained sitting on the edge of the bed as she leapt up and stumbled from the covers on the other side. "You all right, Scully? You were having one hell of a nightmare, you woke me up with your, uh, yelling even in the next room."

"I dreamt that I was in Camila's make-believe world, that I couldn't get back, that there was some kind of, um, invisible membrane holding me back when I tried to get through," she said groggily, sitting on the edge of the bed on the other side from him. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of grey sweatpants, and it was all she could do not to stare at his long, lean, muscular torso. "What a strange nightmare. I could see everything clear as day, but it was dark and scary and this—thing—wouldn't let me get back here. There were big boulders everywhere, going up the cliffs, and I was afraid they'd fall on me. I ran and ran but the membrane, like a big loose balloon, was everywhere I tried to get out."

"Wow, her story must have made quite the impression on you," Mulder said mildly as he got up and went into the miniscule bathroom. She heard the sound of plastic tearing and water running, then he returned and handed her a white Styrofoam cup of water. She nodded her thanks before taking a long drink.

"Well, now that you're awake I'll head back to my room, see if we can get a few more hours," he said, gesturing at her little folding travel-clock set up on the nightstand. It was ten after three. "Hope you can get back to sleep."

"Thanks for waking me up, Mulder," she said, setting the cup on the nightstand and crawling into the narrow bed, tugging at the mussed covers. He came back just long enough to help her straighten them out, then disappeared through the connecting door and closed it behind him with no further ado.

Good thing we always keep the doors between our rooms unlocked, she thought, snuggling down into the bleach-smelling sheets. Moments later she had gone back to sleep, and had no more interruptions until the alarm went off with its pushy, annoying buzz several hours later.

Scully stared down at the scattered photographs in surprise. They were standing at Camila's rickety kitchen table, going through dozens of photographs they'd found in a manila envelope. There had been no note, but the front door had been unlocked and when they walked in, it was the first thing they saw. Also, all of her possessions were gone, including most of the food, her clothes and instruments, and the contents of the china cabinet. One way or another, Camila had bugged out in the hours between when they'd left her yesterday afternoon and their arrival this morning.

The photographs scattered across the old wooden table ranged from curled old black-and-white ones to color-faded Polaroids to brand-new, clear 35mm shots. Apparently Camila had been taking a camera with her for some time. Every one showed a picture of the place that the older woman had described—the high cliffs, the tiny house on the ridge, the ocean disappearing into a vague blue horizon, thickly forested mountains climbing into the distance. There was a burbling stream crossing a wide green meadow that ended in a pond just beneath the ten- or twelve-foot-high cliff that the house sat on. In many of them were normal-looking animals: a bounding whitetail deer; a red squirrel sitting on a tree branch; a mother opossum with babies on her back; the silhouettes of hovering seabirds over the rippling ocean. The place looked idyllic and bucolic, like a travel brochure for an island in Maine or the Pacific Northwest. It definitely wasn't tropical, Scully mused, though Camila had mentioned that it was warm all the time and that it only rained at night or early in the morning.

Off to one side was the medical folder Scully had brought with information on leukemia treatments, half-covered with photos and now completely forgotten.

"This is exactly what I saw in my dream last night," she said with disbelief as she gazed over the photos. "Precisely. Right down to the river. I was here," she pointed at a spot in one photo near the bottom of a cliff, "trying to get out when you woke me up. How can that be, Mulder?"

"Maybe she took you with her, or you managed to somehow cross over," he said excitedly, like a three-year-old on a sugar high.

Now that her astonishment at seeing the photos was wearing off Scully began to rethink her first reaction. It was impossible, what he was proposing—she had been suggestible after hearing the woman's fascinating story. And it was just a nightmare; she hadn't actually gone anywhere.

"Oh be real, Mulder, it was just a dream," Scully snapped.

"Didn't sound like that a minute ago," he countered, gazing over at her with narrowed hazel eyes. "Did you catch the detail you described about your dream last night that Camila didn't tell us?"

"What?" she retorted defensively.

"The boulders. You said, and I quote, 'There were big boulders everywhere, going up the cliffs, and I was afraid they'd fall on me'. How did you know about those boulders if Camila didn't tell us?"

Scully stared back at him for a moment feeling like a trapped rat, then gathered her scientific knowledge around her like a coat of armor. "She must have said something, Mul—"

"She didn't, Scully, I assure you," he interrupted, growing even more excited. "You know I have an eidetic memory. There must be a psychic connection between you or, um, maybe she can take you there through your dreams, or maybe when you touched her—"

"Oh for Pete's sake!" she exclaimed, pushing several of the nearest photos away from her. She'd had enough of this nonsense to last the rest of her lifetime. "Mulder, seriously!"

"I am being serious!" he said insistently. "You know there's gotta be—"

"There's 'gotta be' nothing, Mulder, you're reaching at straws!" Scully turned on her heel and left the room, not looking back at the scattered photos.

They left the house, pausing only to lock the door, still arguing. Scully got into the driver's seat and pulled away from the curb. She glanced up into the rearview mirror just once before turning off the street; the little brick house sat silent and already abandoned-looking. Even as she wondered, yet again, if someone could indeed disappear into thin air as Camila had apparently done, she shut down that train of thought. It could never be proven either way, she knew, and it was time to move on.

Which, as long as her partner was by her side—infuriating or not—was what she looked forward to the most.

finis

For those who would like to try the Columbian Aromática de Frutas tea, here is the site where I got the recipe from. It really is wonderful both hot and cold, though I (also) prefer hot.

Google aromatica-de-frutas-fruit-tea as FF doesn't allow links. Or you can find it on my A03 copy of the story.