"Hey, Scully, what's your favorite deep-dish pizza place."

Scully blinked. She had answered the phone because it was Mulder and she had assumed it was important. "I don't know, Mulder. I haven't eaten the stuff in years."

She set her suitcase down inside the door of her apartment with a sigh. She had just gotten back from Irvine, California, where she had been asked to help in the UCI presentation of findings in the Rob Roberts case. She'd been in town long enough to answer some questions, marvel at the strangeness that was the young man she and Mulder had linked to a series of serial murders in Orange County, and have a dinner with Bill, Tara, and Matthew before flying out of John Wayne Airport back to DC. No sooner had she made it to her front door, as if sensing she was home, Mulder's call came in. Now she had a sneaking suspicion she would just have enough time to unpack the overnight things she had taken the day before and throw in a fresh change of clothing before heading out again.

"What's in Chicago, Mulder?" That was the only place in the world she knew carried good, deep-dish pizza.

"Besides Gino's East? The Organized Crime Division had a case it was running in Chicago, something hinky came up, they gave me a call to come take a look."

"Is 'hinky' a technical term?"

"In this case, yeah. That's exactly the term they used. Something to do with someone they thought was a victim of one of their suspects, but he turned out alive and well."

"And this is an X-file?"

"I think it is for the manner in which the victim was supposed to have expired. I'll know more when I get there."

"You aren't in Chicago yet?"

"Taking the red eye. I waited till your plane landed in DC before calling you."

Scully glanced at the glowing screen of the VCR in her living room. "It's already two AM here, Mulder, if I catch a direct flight in first thing in the mornings I can be there in two or three hours."

"That's fine. How was the conference?"

"Fascinating but inconclusive." Scully drug her suitcase into her bedroom, setting it on the bed and opening it up. "Rob Roberts was something that nobody has seen before. He exhibited features that can't be explained in a mammal, hairless skin, black eyes, his tongue, the teeth, but he was human all right. He just had extreme mutations. Akin to several others we have seen on the X-files.

"Can they even begin an explanation?"

"No," Scully admitted, throwing dirty clothes into a hamper in her closet and reaching up to grab a fresh set from the clothes hanging above. "The problem is that no one has been able to track down where he's from. There's a string of previous addresses in Orange County, but before that he just disappears. Likely his name wasn't even Rob Roberts. I guess he learned the art of pseudonyms from you."

"Funny," he snorted from the other end of the cell phone line. "They don't have a trace on where he might have been before that?"

"He didn't have fingerprints, so they couldn't trace those. The most they can do is see if there were any reports anywhere of children who display the same sort of defects that Roberts had, and that's if he was born somewhere where they would report something like that. If he was born at home, in a rural or poor area, we may never know the truth about him."

"So he's reduced to nothing more than a freakish footnote in a case file."

"He wouldn't be the first person that's happened to in one of our cases," Scully pointed out, carefully folding blouses and slacks to slip into her suitcase. "I think that sad part of this entire case is that his real story will never be known."

"Except by us," Mulder interjected.

"And what will we do with it?"

"I don't know? Write books? Maybe do one of those cheesy shows that you see late at night discussing wolf men and psychic surgeons?"

"Is it sad that we've had cases on both of those?"

"What can I say, Scully, I like variety." He laughed as she moved about her room, gathering clean pajamas and throwing them in the open case. "We would be set for retirement."

"You would, I don't think I'd admit to my part in any of it."

"What? Who's going to give it all scientific credence?"

"One of your bevy of crazy experts, I suppose. Think Chuck Burk would like to be on TV?"

"You afraid being tied to something like that will hurt your professional credibility?"

"No," Scully clarified, closing her case again and zipping it up, now fully repacked. "I plan to be a simple doctor somewhere, anonymous and unknown, doing my part to help the world and cure its ills."

"How altruistic of you, Scully."

"It's true," she protested mildly, lifting the case to the floor. "Face it, Mulder, after this…what in the hell else could I do in the FBI?"

"You could return to pathology."

"And return to inspecting victims of car bombings and DEA murder suspects?" While she hated to admit it, the idea of returning to what she once did before she was partnered with Mulder no longer held the appeal for her it once did. "How can I return to that after Rob Roberts?"

"True," Mulder admitted. "But being a doctor somewhere isn't any more glamorous."

"Clearly you haven't dealt with strep throat, my friend." She began to wearily take off the clothes she had come home in. "Perhaps there are more truths in this life than are found in all of the Rob Roberts and alien conspiracies in all the universe."

"The simple life for Dana Scully? I don't know, wouldn't you get bored with it after a while?" She could hear the cracking sound of a seed shell in his mouth on the other end of the line.

"Mulder, if I never have to come home from a cross-country flight at 2 AM, only to have to turn around and fly out to Chicago at the crack of dawn, I think I would be a happy woman."

"No sense of adventure, Scully." He sniffed, then yawned, a tell tale sign.

"Sense of adventure, Mulder, are you planning on getting some sleep?"

"I can sleep when I'm dead."

"Which with your track record won't be long from now if you keep this up," she snipped, searching for pajamas and trying to slip off her suit coat. "You aren't that far removed from major trauma, Mulder…"

"Don't get all country doctor on me, not till you are one." He clearly was not in the mood for her admonishing his horrible habits, most of which were not that far removed from his college days. "I'll see you in the morning then?"

"Yeah, I'll call you when I land and find out where to meet you."

"Hope you can handle the all meat, deep dish."

"Just as long as there is a vegetable somewhere in there."

"Onion is a vegetable," he shot back. She could hear his impish grin on his face.

"See you in the morning, Mulder." She snapped off the phone at the sound of his soft laughter, tossing it on the bed as she undressed. A few hours sleep and back to the airport she would go to hop on the first flight she could get. She hadn't been lying, there was a part of her that would kill to have a life where she wasn't going and coming all at once. Where she could just come home, day after day, and not wonder what city she was going to wake up in. Where she could possibly raise a family.

Without thinking her hand slipped to her flat abdomen, wondering, hopeful. Perhaps that was as good a reason as any to settle down and life as a doctor. Raise her child, should her procedure succeed, go to the office everyday and pick up her child every night. The scariest thing in the world would be the monster under the bed and the bully at school. Scully could see herself being very happy in a life like that.

Would Mulder ever settle for that life? Somehow Scully doubted it. The thought pained her somewhat. There was that part of her that secretly wished he would. It was the same part of her that wished he'd settle down with her. And yet, would he even still be the same man she cared for so passionately now if he did choose to leave everything, the X-files, the search for his sister, the adventure of a new case, behind? In all honesty, she didn't know. And frankly at 2 AM, she didn't need to know. Tiredly she slipped on pajamas and tossed her travel-creased clothes in the vague direction of the hamper. She didn't even bother picking them up. Sleep tugged at her as she curled up under her sheets and set her alarm. What she wouldn't give for a life where she could just rest for as long as she wanted all of the time.

Mulder was right, she thought dreamily as sleep tugged her under. She probably would get bored.