An achingly full bladder got Skinner out of bed late that night. Swearing under his breath, he promised himself again that he'd do a better job keeping an eye on the clock when he got a glass of soda or a beer after dinner. At least it was just drinking too close to bedtime causing him to wake up, not the prostate problems that plagued his grandfather.

A couple of minutes later he heard something over the sounds of the sink. Shutting the tap off, he strained to hear what it was. By the time he dried his hands, he was sure that it was coming from the guestroom.

He opened the door a crack, confirming what he already suspected: Mulder was yelling in his sleep. Skinner shut the door again without hesitation, and headed back to bed. Mulder wouldn't have thanked him if he'd gone in and woken him from his nightmare, that much he was sure of.

He sighed as he climbed back into his bed, thinking of the experience that made him so certain of this. Jimmy Holmes had been the youngest man in Skinner's company at the beginning of his tour. Jimmy hadn't actually been a man yet, having gotten his parents to let him sign up at 17. Skinner hadn't been very old himself back then, but at least he had his high school diploma and could vote. He'd kind of looked out for the younger boy, but not as much as some of the older guys had (at the time they'd seemed grizzled and world-weary, which seemed odd looking back considering none of them had left their twenties yet at the time. Some never would).

After a particularly brutal and confusing battle Jimmy began to suffer from nightmares, clearly unable to get past the events that had left all of them at least somewhat traumatized themselves. But unlike the rest of them Jimmy got worse as time went on, not better. After a couple of weeks a few of the older guys got tired of waiting for Jimmy to get over it and took it upon themselves to make sure someone woke Jimmy up immediately when he began yelling, partly out of a fear that his squalling would lead the enemy right to them, but mostly because he was depriving them all of sleep which was another sort of danger. Everyone slept better after this, but Jimmy began to look haunted when he was awake too, sinking into himself when not prodded into action.

It didn't really surprise anyone when Jimmy stepped on a landmine about a month later. His folks had been told that it was a tragic accident, and the official excuse was that he'd been sleep deprived and had misstepped, but Skinner knew that wasn't true. He'd been close enough at that last minute to see the look on Jimmy's face. The kid had known it was there. He just stepped on it anyway.

When he thought about it later, Skinner wondered if it had been guilt that prompted Jimmy's final action. If he hadn't been blamed for disrupting everyone's sleep, would he have handled what was now called post-traumatic stress disorder better?

Back when he and Sharon had still been talking about kids, he'd pictured them bickering about what to do when the kids had nightmares. Having a baby never panned out so that fight never happened; it seemed about the only one they didn't have.

So Skinner had no intention of going into the guestroom and making Mulder feel badly for screaming...but he did get up and knock a stack of heavy books to the floor with a satisfying crash.

A loud crash was still ringing in Mulder's ears when he sat up in bed with a gasp. His nightmare clung to him even though he was now awake. The images from the dream tumbled through his mind, refusing to be forgotten.

The building had been abandoned, and in the dream he hadn't been sure how he'd gotten there. All he knew was that he was there to find something. Even what it might be that he needed to find had eluded him; he just felt strongly that he needed to find it there. Dark hallways led nowhere and he'd found himself pushing past what seemed like dozens of pairs of swing doors that might have made sense in a hospital, but not a warehouse like it seemed to be, at least at first. Eventually the place began to look more like the psych hospital he'd been in while that artifact scrambled his brain. Most of the hallways remained dark, but some distant condors were lit. But the lights always blinked out by the time he reached them.

He'd stumbled down the halls at random at first, but had stopped short, standing still and quiet when he thought he heard his name. After a moment he was rewarded by hearing it again. Familiar. Welcomed. His heart raced, and he yelled back "Scully?"

"I'm here, Mulder, I'm here!" her distant voice returned.

Joy turned to frustration when running, no matter which way he turned, just seemed to carry him away from her voice. A stich in his side eventually forced him to stumble to a stop. When he did, he heard her call him again, and a new sound caught his attention too: a heartbroken cry that seemed to be closer.

He stood there, confused, and torn. He didn't know who was crying, but he sensed strongly that he was supposed to care. Should he continue to look for Scully, or head towards the crying? Maybe he should find the source of the crying first because it seemed closer. Maybe the crying came from someone who could help him locate Scully, but a whisper at the back of his mind expressed doubt about that.

Before he broke his indecision, a bespectacled boy appeared in front of him, along with a cadre of slender, gray-skinned figures. The boy wordlessly pointed at him, and the grays surged forward, seizing him by both arms. Screaming and flailing, he was helplessly dragged away. Scully's voice and the crying rang in the bright hallway behind them. Then there had been a distant crash that sounded like the ceiling of one of the corridors coming down-

Awake, his stomach clenched, threatening to bring up the steak and potatoes Skinner had cooked them both a few hours earlier, but a series of deep breaths got it back under control. In some ways he felt worse at that moment than he had when he'd been gifted a flashback upon noting a row of steak knives at the store - that had been bad enough that he'd been pretty sure Skinner had nearly decided to cut his meat for him later rather than give him a knife, at least judging by the looks he'd given Mulder, the steak, and the blade.

At least he was sure that this dream only was a dream. Some of the other things rattling around his mind...Scully hadn't been anywhere near him in the past three years. The only reason he was sure of that was because she'd been right in DC, with her kids. If Skinner was to be believed. And he couldn't think of a reason not to believe him. At least then, though he supposed that could change, considering how many people had taught him that 'trust no one' was a sound life plan. Pretty much everyone but Scully had betrayed him at one time or another. But she never had.

Scully.

He understood why Skinner had been aghast when he said he wasn't going to tell her that he had come back. Truly he did. But she'd moved on. She didn't need another person to look after. Skinner only thought she'd be happier if she knew, but he was wrong. It would hurt her to see him like he was.

Once he was better, he'd go and see her. Just not yet, not while he could be nothing but a burden to her.

But would Skinner go behind his back and tell her, that was the question. Mulder dropped back against his mattress. He supposed he'd find out if his trust in the man was unfounded soon than later.

Mulder was already awake by the time Skinner got up. He sat in an armchair, the throw blanket he'd stolen wrapped around his bony shoulders. If it didn't seem so ridiculous to do so, the AD might have offered to turn on the heat. He just couldn't bring himself to suggest it, not during the dog days of August. "Sleep well?" he asked, trying not to let the question sound too pointed.

''About as well as I expected," Mulder told him with a yawn. "The guestroom bed beats the hell out of sleeping on your porch."

"I aim to please." Glancing at Mulder, and noting that he seemed calm, had him deciding to risk a question. "What about before you slept on my porch?"

To his surprise, Mulder looked faintly amused. "Are you trying to ask me how long I've been back, Walter?"

He nearly snapped at Mulder for being too familiar, but he didn't. Mulder might be back, but it wasn't as though he was still his boss. Or was he? Trying to work that out began to make Skinner's head ache. Flashing him a grim smile instead, he said, "I think I am."

In all honesty it had begun to bother him that he really had no idea how long it had been since Mulder was released. Or had he escaped? It was his instinct to assume Mulder had only just returned, however he'd managed that, but he couldn't shake the thought that he might have returned a while ago, and had just been lost and hungry until he finally had found someone he knew...

Mulder frowned, looking down at his cape nee throw blanket. "It took me a couple of hours to get here, but this is the first place I headed once I was off the ship."

The ship. How many times had he and Scully fought over his insistence that he'd seen a ship separate Mulder from the ground? Too many. But she'd had less energy for arguing once Grace was keeping her up at night...

He wasn't about to admit it to his prodigal agent, but maybe Mulder did have a right to be jealous of Tommy and Grace. Finding them signaled the end of her frantic efforts to find him. At first Skinner had tried to be sympathetic to what a big adjustment it had to be to become an instant parent, but eventually he'd called her on it. She'd given him an unimaginably sad smile and asked him if he was familiar with the old saying about God not closing a door without opening a window. This had left him confused at first until he realized that she was implying that she'd been given the children for consolation. To make up for losing the love of her life. It was only then that he'd become sure that she no longer expected Mulder to come back. Hoped, may be, but no longer expected it.

And now here he was, staring at him and a minute had passed without him saying anything. Blinking in slight confusion, Skinner tried to think of something profound, or at least relevant to say. What came out instead was, "Did you escape, or did they let you go?" That was so ham-fisted he cursed himself and fully expected Mulder to shut down.

He didn't. The cynical look he gave seemed to say 'well, if you really want to know, ask' and Skinner immediately began to wonder if he really did want to.

When he nodded slightly, Mulder began. "It was different at the end. For a while, for what seemed like forever, they'd tried to get something out of me." Mulder paused, looking haunted for a moment, but doggedly went on. "But after...afterwards they gave up on me. They stopped torturing me, but..." His eyes drifted down to his folded hands. "They stopped feeding me too."

Skinner winced. "Mulder..." He was thin because they'd starved him, not because he'd been lost in the world without monetary means to feed himself.

Mulder sighed. "I think it was worse, being left alone but slowly starving, than it was to be of interest to them but fed. I never would have guessed that. Up until then I thought all I wanted in the world was to be left alone. How could I imagine I'd one day try to eat pieces of the ship to quiet the rumbling in my gut?"

"Damn," Skinner swore quietly. Even during the war he hadn't met anyone that hungry. Not quite.

This earned him an unexpected, and joyless, smile. "I damned just about everyone by that point." Skinner didn't really expect him to say 'except for you' and he didn't. "That last night I was stunned when they came for me. It had been so long since I'd seen them, it had to be weeks, that I'd long since resigned myself to being left alone for the pitiful remainder of my life. So when I saw them, I assumed they were going to kill me. And when they began to drag me down a corridor, I became sure of it. All I could think was that they were worried about the smell."

Skinner frowned, puzzled by this. ''The smell?"

He nodded. "If they'd just let me die on my own it might have taken them a while to realize that I was finally dead, and by then I would have stunk op the place. Rotting," he added, as if unsure Skinner caught his drift. "So killing me would mean they could dispose of my corpse before then."

There really wasn't anything to say to that, so he held his tongue. Eventually Mulder seemed to grasp that he'd been rendered speechless and went on. "I waited for blows or a stabbing but they just hurried me along until we reached a hatch...they opened it and pushed me out."

"Jesus."

"I thought I was going to die, of course. My brain helpfully reminded me that I'd once read that there's a height from which you can push a man, a mouse, and a horse, and the mouse will walk away, the man will break every bone in his body, and the horse will explode. I didn't know if I should've expected to be the man or the horse, but they'd gotten low enough to the ground that I was lucky enough to be the bruised mouse."

"Then they weren't trying to kill you?"

'I don't think so. They'd done enough Mengelian experimentation to know how to kill a person. I'm sure of that."

"I wonder why they let you go," Skinner blurted out without thinking.

Mulder just shrugged. "Why do bullies eventually tire of burning ants with a magnifying glass."

This time he thought before speaking. "The novelty wears off and they find someone or something new to torture?"

"Probably," Mulder said, yawning. "I think I just wasn't any fun anymore. So they probably found new toys to break."

"Was there anyone else?"

"Hmm?"

"On the ship," he clarified. "Other humans."

"No," Mulder said quickly, not meeting his eyes.

He was lying, obviously, but Skinner didn't think it was because he was protecting another victim. Maybe they had people working for Them, even there. The smoking bastard really would have been in his element there, if they left him to torture his fellow man. He'd really missed his calling as a concentration camp guard.

Glancing at Mulder, he felt an unexpected pang of sorrow for him. Much of his own memories of war bordered on the hellish, but he hadn't gone to hell and back alone. It was hard to imagine being tortured for three years, all alone, and coming through it sane. But something about the way Mulder reacted to things left a little voice whispering in the back of Skinner's mind that it might be a little premature to declare Mulder whole and hale quite yet...and it might not just be his body that was frail. And that was another thing..."If we can get an appointment, are you up to a doctor's visit today?"

Mulder gave him a wry look. "What kind of doctor?" he asked, suggesting that he wasn't the only one with concerns about what long term effects might have been spawned from three years of captivity.

"The kind that gives physicals."

He expected Mulder to balk and say he didn't want to, not to look at him and ask, "How would we explain? A good doctor would figure out I'm not a drinker or drug user who'd forgotten to eat. And I'm not the right demographic for an eating disorder."

They'd have to see his doctor, Skinner decided, because Dr. Charles knew he was an AD at the FBI. "I'll see if my MD can see you," Skinner told him. "He knows enough about my job to believe me if I asked him to see a political prisoner."

"That makes me sound important," Mulder replied with the faintest of smiles. "Okay."

"Okay?" he repeated, making sure he hadn't misunderstood. When Mulder nodded, he reached for his phone.