In the end Mulder would survive. Despite the numerous snakebites and real fears that he would go down to poison he pulled through the experience. Days on his wounds were starting to itch and he was already complaining about the food, a sure sign he was feeling better.

Scully wandered into his hospital room, perching at the end of his bed. Once again she had been close to losing him. She supposed this was becoming a habit with Fox Mulder. He got right to business, however, raising dark eyebrows in his still pink face.

"Mackey?"

"Still no trace, even though every law enforcement agency in Tennessee's out looking for him." She highly doubted that Mackey was anywhere still in the state. He could be in Kentucky or North Carolina by now.

"People won't find him." Mulder echoed her own thoughts. "People think the devil has horns and a tail. They're not used to looking for some kindly man who tells you what you want to hear."

Scully didn't know about that. She could think of one man who loved to tell people what they wanted to hear. Problem was his cigarette smoke was a dead give away he was Satan.

"He's just a man, Mulder. Just like O'Connor."

"Not like O'Connor," he replied mournfully. "If this was some kind of test, looks like I failed."

Scully wasn't sure about spiritual tests as much as pure, plain stubbornness on Mulder's part. "I'd say if it was, you passed with flying colors. You're alive, aren't you?"

Something sad crept into his expression before he chased it away, smiling broadly up at her. "Proud and fancy-free."

Scully couldn't help but smile back. For all of his scrapes, Mulder always managed to come back in one piece.

Neither one of them heard the footsteps outside of the door. It was only the rap of knuckles against the doorframe that caught their attention as Mulder lifted his gaze to his visitor. Scully spun around in the bed, surprised to see Gracie O'Connor standing there, shyly holding flowers in her hands.

"Hope I'm not interrupting," she asked softly, her accent drawling slightly as she held up the vase. "Thought you might like some cheering up."

"Thanks," Mulder offered with a smile as she set the simple, glass filled with pansies and daisies. It was cheerful and friendly, much like Gracie's expression. Scully noted the girl's now lithe form, no longer burgeoning under the simple cotton skirt and sweater she had on.

"You feeling any better?" She frowned with worry at the red, puckered fang wounds on Mulder's face.

"I guess it takes more than a snake to get me down."

"That wasn't just you, Mr. Mulder, that was the Good Lord watching out for you." Gracie's expression became serious as she regarded him. "It was your faith that saved you."

All smiles went out of Mulder's face as he stared at her in puzzlement. "Gracie, I'm not a believer."

His declaration didn't seem to bother her. "Maybe God sees you're a man of faith. Maybe he's just showing you that you are and reminding you he's still there, waiting for you to notice him."

Gracie's words were almost the same ones that the priest had told Scully just days ago. She blinked at the girl, all sweetness and smiles, wondering just whom her message was for, Mulder or herself.

Mulder for his part deemed it more appropriate to change the subject. "We haven't caught the Reverend Mackey yet, Gracie. I'm sorry."

This news didn't surprise her. "I don't think your going to. Like any snake he's slipped off into the night, but he'll be back again, harassing some other poor innocent." There was a wealth of sadness and bitterness in those words. Curiosity peaked Scully regarding the story behind the pastor of the respectable town church and the daughter of the spurious fundamentalist pastor.

"What did Reverend Mackey do to you, Gracie?"

The girl's pale cheeks flushed, her eyes dropping to her practical tennis shoes as she dug one toe into the tile floor. "I was foolish to even listen to him."

"Better people have been fooled by him," Mulder reminded her gently. "Think of Iris Finster."

"Poor Iris," Gracie sniffed, looking up finally. Scully sensed this would be a long explanation and slipped off the bed to get Gracie a chair, pushing it near the girl who accepted it gladly.

"Iris was just trying to help." Gracie sighed as she settled her skirts around her bare knees. "Jared and me, we knew her from school. She used to be the secretary over there. She'd been at Blessing Community Church forever. She seemed real trustworthy, a nice woman. We thought she would be someone reliable to go to."

"To go to about what," Scully prompted as she settled back on the bed next to Mulder.

Gracie sucked her lower lip between her teeth, clearly uncomfortable with the turn of conversation. "Jared and me…we wanted to run away together."

"And your father wouldn't allow it?"

"Daddy wanted Jared to go through with the snakes. He wanted to see if he was a God-fearing man enough to be my husband. Jared was scared, so was I. I remembered." She stopped, staring at her hands in her lap quietly.

"You remember what happened to your mother," Mulder prodded gently. Gracie looked up, surprised, tears pooling in her eyes.

"Momma didn't have the sort of faith she needed. She died."

Scully wanted to retort that none of it had anything to do with faith but found she couldn't bring herself to do it when she stared at Gracie's woebegone expression. It was so unfair, the idea of letting this girl believe her mother died because she lacked the faith to handle the snake poison that her mother's soul was forever in peril. And yet, Scully knew her own church had their very own set of beliefs on those sorts of matters. Did she really have room to talk?

"I didn't want that happening to Jared," Gracie continued. "And he didn't either. We had both…well, we'd given into temptation, you see." Her face was now a fiery red. "We didn't think that if he tried it he'd survive. So we ran away. Iris was the only person we could think to run to. She took us in and brought us to see Reverend Mackey the next day."

"You thought he'd help you," Scully offered, knowing full well what happened next and feeling utterly disgusted by it.

"At first he did. He spoke to us about how his church was accepting of people of all ideas and how we wouldn't be persecuted just because we made one mistake. When Daddy showed up the next day, demanding that they send Jared and me back, the Reverend he stood up to him. I ain't never seen anyone stand up to Daddy like that. Daddy…he just backed down. He grew all angry at me, told me and Jared we were siding with the devil and that we'd be cast out of the grace of God if we did. He said he'd turn his back on us."

A father's rejection, a pain Scully knew so well. She knew something of it when her father had reacted so negatively to her plans to join the FBI, a plan she had hoped would make him proud. It had hurt her for years, especially when he had died, and she could see that wound had profoundly affected Gracie as well.

"Anyway, Jared and I, we thought we were doing the right thing. We were going to do things our way. We didn't see anything wrong with it."

"But that's now how it all worked out, was it?" Mulder was the one who pressed her. Scully found that she couldn't.

Gracie shook her head, tears that had been pooling now finally tracking down her face. "When I was pregnant, I honestly thought it was Jared's. We were so happy. We even talked to Reverend Mackey. He was disapproving, as he was supposed to be, but he said that he would never turn out a young woman in need. He encouraged us to come see him for counseling, maybe lead us to marriage."

"Did you even suspect anything was wrong with your pregnancy?" That was the part Scully couldn't comprehend, but Gracie shook her head.

"We didn't have money for the doctor, so I didn't go. Reverend Mackey, he offered, but I didn't want to take his money, Jared neither. So we figured we'd just hope and pray."

"When did you figure out that something wasn't right with all of this?" Mulder couldn't help but be curious. He leaned forward in his bed, and Scully resisted the urge to push him back into the pillows and tell him to rest.

"Not at first. I should have." Gracie wiped at the tears with the back of her hand, looking ashamed as she continued. "I'd had dreams. You know, the sort of dreams you know are real. I'd had dreams of snakes…of them doing things to me. Dreams I was ashamed to think of. I thought it was just all my imagination, guilt for running away from Daddy and everything I knew. I told Jared about them. He got scared. So we went to see the Reverend. He said it was only natural I should have those reactions to everything, he said I was…traumatized."

"But something must have tipped Jared off," Scully pointed out. "We saw the receipt in his room for the fertility clinic."

"I didn't know about that," Gracie admitted. "Not till he told me at least. He came tearing into the church. I was there with Iris, helping get bulletins together for Sunday. He said that he got checked out and he knew he couldn't be the baby's father cause he can't have kids. He accused me of cheating on him. And he said he knew with who, and that my sole was in danger. I thought he was talking crazy. He wanted me to leave with him, to go to Kentucky. He had some family there. I was scared. I didn't want to go, not with him like that. And after all Iris and the reverend had done, I didn't want to leave them neither. So I said no. He said he had to go, he wasn't going to let his soul be damned anymore. And he left."

Gracie stopped, aching sadness etching her young face. "That was the last time I talked to him. He was dead that night. The snakes….I guess in the end he didn't have enough faith after all."

It hurt Scully to hear those words from a girl so young. "Gracie, what happened that night in the church? What happened to your baby?"

At this, the girl shifted in her chair, hands gripping the fabric over her knees. "I was cleansed of my sin, Ms. Scully. I let it go. Let go of the burden of it. And God took that sin away from me."

"But what about the baby?"

Gracie looked down at her knees, either unwilling or unable to answer.

"There was never a baby, was there?" It was Mulder who finally spoke. Scully turned to stare at him as if he were crazy. "The snakes…you had snakes in your womb. A symbol of the sin that you were carrying inside of you."

"I was sinning every time I was with Jared. And Reverend Mackey was telling us it was okay to sin cause Christians do not turn away people."

"You carried that sin and guilt, the guilt of you and Jared's actions."

"The guilt of trusting Mackey," Gracie replied, eyes flashing as she spoke of the other reverend. "I don't know how he did it, but he did."

"He played upon your own guilt, Gracie, to use you and drag you down further."

"He tried," Gracie shot back, chin lifting. "But my Daddy, he saved me that night, him and his congregation. They are the ones who brought me back from sin and into the light. It's their prayers that freed me of that burden."

Something in Scully ached to hear that, even if her logical mind wanted to tell her that it wasn't possible. "So there was no baby is what you are trying to tell us?"

"Nothing but the sin I carried, Ms. Scully," Gracie replied. She smiled slowly, a warm, beatific smile. "And it was amazing to be free of it. I got rid of that sin…and for the first time I knew what love really meant, what forgiveness really meant. My Daddy, he's forgiven me, you know that. He's taken me back with open arms. And I now understands what he means when he says he loves me."

The prodigals return. A story that now had a totally new meaning for Scully as she blinked back against a hazy film that had risen over her own eyes. "I'm glad for you, Gracie, that you've worked things out."

"Me too," she murmured, her smile still angelic and inviting. Her gaze met Scully's then, holding it as she nodded encouragingly. "It feels good to get all of that off your chest…that burden. To let go of that sin, to let go of the past, that shame of what you done. It feels good, because even though you know you can't change the past or fix what you done, you know that now you've let it go, you can move on into your future. You can move on to better things. You can let people love you who are standing there, waiting for you to let them do that. It's an amazing feeling."

In that moment, she wasn't sure how, Scully understood that Gracie knew the most secret sins of her heart. Her words weren't a testament. They were a message, a revelation to Scully personally. It was time to let go, to be free of her sins, to move on and be free.

"Mr. Mulder, I hope you heal up from those snakes." Gracie was moving from the chair, smoothing her skirts as she stood to exit. Scully shook herself as she too rose to see the girl out.

"I think I'll be up and on my feet soon enough, Gracie." Mulder shot her a smile of gratitude. "You take care of your father. Try to listen to him for once."

"I will." She nodded towards Scully as she turned towards the door, the rubber of her tennis shoes squeaking on the clean tiles as she made her way down the hall. Scully watched her as she left and stood, listening to her footsteps as they disappeared in the distance.

"She's a girl of great faith," Mulder finally said into the silence. "She sort of makes me wish I could believe like she does."

"Yeah," Scully sighed as she turned back to her injured partner. "She makes me wish the same thing as well."