Notes: Heeeeeeeeyyyyy, everybody (scratches back of neck)... so it's been a while. Like, years awhile, and the majority of this chapter has been sitting in my Google Drive for all of those years.

When I started this story, I was invigorated by the first season of the reboot and the Origins novels. I also was hitting up the con circuit and making connections with my wonderful Spooky Tribe, so everything X-Files was fresh and popping in my brain. However, I also was pregnant with my second kiddo, and after they were born, I had pretty terrible postpartum depression, my eldest needed surgery, and the second reboot season left me feeling a bit disappointed, so I pretty much pulled back from the fandom.

I considered coming back to the story once life settled, and I was reconnecting with the fandom again during a rewatch with my husband. However, during COVID, our third baby was stillborn, and as you can imagine, giving birth to death does a number on your head. Our world was turned upside down, and I went through many months of therapy for both mental and physical healing. Therefore, I was just going through the motions of life and hadn't really had time for writing for fun. We did get pregnant again, and while it was a white knuckle journey until the end, I am happy to say that baby number four was born happy and healthy on Valentine's Day. Currently they are sitting on my lap as I type this, with one hand that isn't coated in drool.

So, while the last few years have been scarring, life right now is pretty, damn good. Anyway, I noticed that people were looking at and commenting on this story again, and I remembered I had not posted this chapter, so I figured I would finally do it. I am not sure if or when I will be able to write more. Where my brain used to be a dumping ground of XF trivia and knowledge, it's not so much anymore. I am sure that the info is stuffed into some filing cabinet back in the recesses of my mind. I would likely need to go back and rewatch the series and reread the books for the 1000th time, to continue with this story, which is a time consuming endeavor, and honestly, I have gotten surprisingly sucked into the world of anime and manga over the past five years. It's been my new escape from reality, and I never thought that would happen as a woman in my 30s. However, my students were right, there's a lot of great storytelling in that world! So, my free time has kind of been redirected into enjoying those fandoms with both my family and my students.

Basically I am saying, I will try my best to continue this story, but I can't make any promises that it will happen any time soon.

Finally, I want to dedicate this chapter to my Spooky Tribe. They are the best group of fandom friends a girl could ask for, and when I was a teen, during the original run, I would have loved nothing more than to have them as my online friends then. However, I am so grateful to have had their friendship and support over the last five years.

Oh, and this has not been beta'd or formatted...

Chapter Thirteen

Route 320A

Outside Craiger, Maryland

April 1995

Original Timeline

As dawn broke, the sun threw coronas of tangerines and blushing pinks upon vernal trees. Its brilliant intensity consuming the evidence of night, causing Mulder squint and readjust his body, and Scully's, in the bed of the ancient truck that had picked them up somewhere at the border West Virginia and Maryland, after they had been chased out of the bunker of "lots and lots of files."

Mulder felt his heart prick a little at the sight of her furrowed brow and the strain of her face as her eyes moved rapidly beneath closed lids. It was hard not to dwell too long about what she was dreaming, particularly given recent events. Trying to keep him in check and alive. Finding her name not only in the encrypted files on the data tape, but also on file in the bunker. And then to top it all off with her sister gunned down in her own apartment. He hated how much had befallen her since being partnered with him. He hated knowing that more turmoil would only come if she stayed. He hated knowing that she would never let him talk her out of leaving. But what he hated most, was that he did not think he could ever bring himself to do it anyway. He felt so full of cowardice or something. Mulder generally did not try to ponder what that something was for too long. That felt like dangerous ground.

The pickup hit a massive pothole. It moaned in protest and nearly sent a sleeping Scully careening out the back. It was not until Mulder squeezed both arms around her to prevent it that she even woke. She startled and looked up at him dazed, remnants of drool glistening against the edges of her mouth. Mulder could not help but smile widely at her and feel some of the gloom lift off his chest.

"Scully, it never ceases to amaze me what you will sleep through."

"Sorry, folks, roads are pretty bad 'round these parts this time a year. Nobody fillin' in those potholes yet," apologized the Elmer Fudd-esque driver through the open, rear window. "Not far now."

Mulder watched dug the heels of her palms attempting to fully wake herself, before grumbling, "Mulder, where are we going?"

"Craiger, Maryland."

He heard her breath hitch, and she quickly pulled her hands away from her face, which was awash with so many emotions, that Mulder was unable to pinpoint them all. He drew back to look at her more carefully, quizzically, to get a read, but just as quickly as her emotions had come, he watched as she buttoned them up and stowed them away.

"Why, Scully? You know it?" He didn't want to give away too much of his concern to her response at the name of the town.

Suddenly he thought she seemed very interested in her hands, which were rubbing at her thighs, "Yeah, actually, um, we lived there for a short time, when I was teenager, after my father was transferred out of the base in San Diego. Before we moved to Annapolis. How do you know of it? It's not even on a map, Mulder."

The fact she had lived in Craiger was a tidbit he did not know about her, and he squirreled away this new piece of Scully trivia in his memory. He nudged at her in hopes that she would look up at him. She did, and Mulder thought she seemed cagey beneath her faux composure. Perhaps sharing his own piece of Mulder trivia would get her to relax.

"When I was a teenager, me and some friends visited some new age shop that was there. It was called Beyond Beyond," he said in sing-songy voice while making some sort of shimmying, jazz hand arc in front of him, hoping she might crack a smile.

She did, and he felt like he won some prize, as he always did whenever she smiled at him.

"You know it?"

"Yeah. Believe it or not, I used to go do yoga there with Missy," he heard her voice melt into a bittersweet tone along with the smile on her face.

"Shit, Scully, I am sorry."

Before he could launch his internal war again, Scully held up her hand and shook her head, "No, Mulder, please, it's okay. It was a long time ago. How would you have known? Talk about strange coincidences, huh? It must be an X-File."

Now she nudged at him, trying to lighten the mood. He could only groan and roll his eyes.

"But seriously, how did you end up at a Beyond Beyond in Craiger of all places?" She inquired. He knew this was probably a move to take any of his questioning off of her.

"Well, Scully, I am sure you would not be surprised to know that I began some of my Scooby-Dooing long before I joined the bureau."

He saw he cock her eyebrow from the corner of her eye before interjecting, "I could see you as a Shaggy, Mulder."

"You don't think I could have rocked the ascot there, Velma?"

He looked directly at her as she shook her head and tried to hold back a grin, while narrowing her eyes at him in mock anger at his own jab. Mulder took it as another Scully smile score. At least there was that, despite all the negativity surrounding them.

He continued, "There were some abductions and murders of kids that had happened in the DC area, and I just happened to see one of the crime scenes near where I was living with my father. Because of Samantha, I felt compelled to find some answers about them. They had occult underpinnings, connections to some new age belief systems, and me and two of my good friends decided to do some research. Beyond Beyond just happened to be listed in the phonebook as a new age bookstore. So off we went.

I won't tell you the rest of the story after that, because you will probably tell me how foolishly I had acted, but the killer ended up being a guy named Earl Roy. And his brother, and accomplice, was none other than Monty Propps."

Mulder looked at Scully, and she looked genuinely amazed, "Are you serious, Mulder?"

"Yeah," he suddenly felt a little bashful, "During my research, I had inadvertently written my first profile. I ended up meeting with an agent from the BSU shortly thereafter, and the rest is history."

"Mulder that's crazy," Scully replied in a way that suggested that she was in awe, not in the way she normally meant it when she pulled that line on him. "You know you will have to tell me that whole story someday, even if I will have to call you out on being a stupid teenager. We all were, Mulder."

He felt her lean into him again. In a move that spoke of their always increasing closeness, and his eagerness to consistently test the boundaries of her personal space, he put his arm back around her shoulder. She silently accepted the maneuver, and they both grew quiet together. Mulder could see their destination ahead, as promised by their driver. A run down diner looking more like a run down house, exactly as Mulder had remembered it. Before the pickup pulled into the lot, he recalled an encounter with a man from Beyond Beyond that had unsettled him.

"Hey, Scully."

"Yeah?" She replied drowsily, as if she was read to fall asleep again.

"When we were at Beyond Beyond, we briefly met this odd guy named Sunrise or Sunshine. Something like that. Did you know him?"

Mulder felt like her body stiffened against his, but the truck had pulled to a stop and Scully had swiftly scooted out from under his arm, moving toward its tailgate. Before hoisting herself out the back, she supplied "Sunlight, Mulder. His name was Sunlight. It was probably for the best that your encounter was brief."

He was uncertain about the meaning of her statement, and before he could question her again, she was out of the truck and heading toward the diner without him. Against his curiosity and toward his better judgment, he decided to let it go there. It was best not to question her any further about the topic until perhaps they got settled in the diner, if at all. Mulder didn't want to bring up anything more that would get Scully thinking about her sister, and besides, they had a lot to figure out concerning their current circumstances.

Later. He would feed that curiosity and inquire later.

However, he never did.

Ottawa National Forest

Upper Peninsula, Michigan

March 15, 1992

Current Timeline

The door to the trailer gave a rusted squeal and moan as it swung back to catch the latch, a rush of chilled air sucked into the trailer with its sigh, pulling Mulder out of his memory. He watched as Scully's auburn head blurred and disappeared through the snagged and torn screen. When he had heard Erica mention Craiger it was like someone had pushed a button, and into the moment with Scully in the truck he was pulled.

He turned to look at the rest of the table. Erica was looking down at her hands, clasping them back and forth, her face unreadable. Byers looked like he was formulating some sort of diplomatic response to break the uncomfortable silence that had settled over them. And Melissa, well, Mulder had seen a Scully woman mad more times than he wanted to count, often on his account, but the look on her face was head and shoulders above anything he had ever seen on Scully or her mother. Her eyes closed as she drew in a deep breath through flared nostrils. Mulder was certain that when she opened her eyes again, the trailer would burst into flames. Obviously, whatever the circumstances were of the situation between Scully and the experiments her father had apparently allowed to be carried out, had deeply impacted Missy as well.

However, when she opened her eyes again, the trailer did not set alight, and instead the icy eyes she shared with her sister seemed to cause the room to drop even further in temperature. He could not help but shiver. The Scully women really knew how to throw a look.

She locked eyes with him, "Fox, could you please check on Dana?"

He nodded as he stood and both Byers and Erica looked at him with almost pleading eyes that he didn't leave. But while Mulder could be foolish and stubborn, time and experience taught him that if a Scully woman said jump, you damn well better do it. Not that he always did.

As Mulder turned to leave, it was surprisingly Byers' gentile voice he heard redirect the conversation in order to siphon away some of the tension that blanketed the room, "While Mulder goes to check on Scully, could you share more of the specifics about how you were able to do this, Erica?"

Mulder heard Erica reply with a quiet yet eager yes, and then Byers' reassurance that they would catch him and Scully up upon their return, so Mulder gave a nod as he ducked through the door and out into the daylight too.

While the air outside was still cold, there was definitely the promising warmth of spring in the sunlight, and Mulder felt his eyes tear up against the brightness. He pulled a pair of sunglasses from the pocket of his parka, and allowed his eyes to adjust as he perched them on his long nose. Once his pupils appropriately apertured, he scanned the forest before him for Scully's petite form. A few hundred yards away he saw the teal and purple of her oversized coat peekaboo from the other side of towering pine. He would never not be surprised over how quickly her little legs could cover a long distance.

As he approached her, she didn't make any acknowledgement of his presence. She was a diminutive statue in the stark, white gallery that mother nature had created with the blanket of snow. He sat quietly next to her. A quiet "hey" was all he could manage at the moment.

She turned and looked at him after a beat, and it was clear to him that she either had spilt a few tears or was attempting to hold them back. He saw little trace of the bold, playful woman that had been around lately. This deeply vulnerable look meant she had been truly rattled by what Erica had divulged.

"I am not here to press you about anything, Scully. I just want to make sure you are okay."

A snort escaped her, and he watched as she shook her head. "Okay, Mulder? No, I am not okay." Her voice was a mixture of controlled anger and deep sorrow, "My life..."

She didn't necessarily need to finish the sentence, he understood her point. As it turned out, she probably never really had any control over it. Her life. As it seemed, she had been a puppet to the men who had wronged her long before she met him. Decisions and choices made without her consent. And her own father had been privy to those in some respect. The senior Bill Scully had allowed them to use his daughter for their pursuits, just as his father had with Samantha. The pain that came with that knowledge was excruciating.

However, Mulder would be lying to himself if he didn't feel some sense of relief too: it wasn't solely her involvement with him and the X-Files that had caused her to fall prey to their schemes. Regardless of him in her life, she had already been theirs to use and abuse. Even if they had never met, he was fairly certain that she would have remained a person of great interest in their endeavors. Would she have been abducted, had her body violated and left ravaged? Would she have lost the ones she loved? Would she have lost out on some semblance of a normal life or career? It was hard to say, but based on their dealings with those pulling the strings, once they got their hooks in, usually the person's fate was sealed. He thought briefly again of his sister, then Cassandra Spender and others like her they had encountered along the way.

Sometimes, during their early run-ins with the military, Mulder wondered if Captain Scully may have had knowledge about some of the government's more nefarious dealings given his own military rank and his unease with his daughter choosing to work for the FBI. Now it was clear that he did. There was also a high probability that Scully's pairing with him was far more divisive than what had been presented on the surface. It was a thought he did not want to ponder for too long. He was there to check on Scully.

To break their companioned silence, he reached his hand to the back of her head and gently beckoned her to his shoulder. The hand moved down and rubbed her arm in an act of comfort. She looked up at him, and he knew from the look in her eyes that she was ready for him to listen to whatever she needed to tell him. However, the deep sigh she drew before she bit her lip and furrowed her brows, told him that she wasn't quite sure how to say what she wanted.

"I honestly don't know where to start, Mulder. The more I think about what happened, and I haven't thought about it in a very long time, the more I realize that there is a lot to unpack."

"Start at the beginning?" He offered with a weak shrug and a grin.

Scully huffed and with it a cloud of air haloed around them, "The beginning. Yeah."

She started by telling him about dreams she had as a child that would seem to manifest themselves in reality, but only became troubling once her father transferred the family to Craiger upon a promotion. The dreams turned from prophecies of fluffy, trivial moments of childhood to dark encounters with death and seduction and a dark angel that she had thought, at the time, could have been Lucifer. And then in April of 1979, they moved from cover of her dreams at night to reality of her days.

"That first vivid, day time vision was of a girl named Maisie Bell. She had died in a supposed car crash that was brought on by the use of a drug called 'Eclipse.'"

"Did you know her?" Mulder asked as she paused.

Scully frowned and shook her head, "No... I mean I knew of her, but I didn't know her. I just remember walking into the girl's locker room during gym class one day, after her accident, and there was this girl pleading for help. She was bleeding everywhere. After I got help, and everyone came running into the locker room, she was gone. It wasn't until I had made a complete spectacle of myself and the gym teacher had reamed me out in front of every girl in my class, that I realized who I saw. I felt like everyone thought I was the crazy new girl or just some cruel delinquent using her death to get attention. But as much as I wanted whatever was happening to stop, I also wanted to know why it was happening and what had happened to that girl."

"She didn't die in a car crash, I take it."

"No, she had been murdered just like the rest," she replied somberly, shaking her head.

Mulder felt himself nod as he remembered pieces of his conversation with Missy about the situation, and Scully's own reaction to their long forgotten conversation about Craiger another lifetime ago. He looked over at her, but Scully didn't return his gaze. She merely continued with her story, as she looked out into the forest.

"There had been a string of deaths between our high school and another local high school. All had been labeled as accidents too, but it seemed highly improbable. A friend of mine had an uncle that was a detective in our town. We snuck into his office and started pouring over his case files, looking for clues. While we did find evidence of a drug with which neither of us were familiar, not that we were the type of kids to be, I noticed that their fatal injuries mimicked those of key biblical and religious figures. Maisie Bell had signs of stigmata."

"Look at you, Scully. Fifteen and you were already a superstar of investigative deductions," he replied with a gentle bump of her shoulder with his. He was not certain if the increase flush to her cheeks was from the increased exposure to the cold or to his comment. Either way she gave him one of her shy, tight-lipped smiles for the briefest of moments. Unfortunately, he did not feel the surge of joy he normally got with them. The feeling only turned more grim as she continued on.

"I also noticed that another victim had a tattoo of an eclipse, which Maisie Bell had a necklace of, and which I later found out was the name of the mystery drug. Missy knew what was going on. She urged me to seek help and felt that two local psychics who owned a new age shop in town I would visit with her. She felt they would be the ones that could help me make sense of the visions, of what I had experienced, what I found."

"That wouldn't have happened to have been someone named Corinda and Sunlight?"

She looked at him with questioning eyes, "You know who I am talking about?"

"Yeah, don't you remember, Scully? When we went to Craiger together, I told you I had been there before. To the shop Beyond Beyond."

Mulder watched as Scully appeared to double back through her memories of their former lives and as realization dawned over her face.

"You met with them when you were there?"

"I spoke with both of them briefly. Sunlight," he felt himself say with disgust, "tried to get one of my friends to join his 'Psychic Emergence' group. However, like every hormonal teenage boy, who had a crush on one of his friends, I found a way to end that conversation quickly. Scully, would you believe that I can be territorial over women I care about?"

She ignored his question.

"Mulder, all of the murder victims had some connection to that group," Scully replied in the frank, serious tone she used when she did not have time for his bull shit.

"So you are saying he was the murderer of all those kids?"

She nodded silently.

"Fuck, Scully," he hissed in concern, "And Missy got you involved with that guy? Did he try to hurt you?"

She nodded again, "But not immediately, and not during our session. I am not even certain if that was ever his intention with me. However, during our private session together, he did begin to administer Eclipse to me without my knowledge. There was a special incense he used during that session and then gave to me to use at home too. The things I saw when I was on that drug, Mulder. It was like that vision of Maisie but tenfold. The world was turned on its head. I was a paranoid mess. Accusing people of things they had not done. Looking for fights where they didn't exist. I found out I was exposed to the drug after I failed a mandatory drug test my father agreed to at our school…"

He watched as she stopped, attempting to scrub away the confusion and distress that advanced upon her face.

"What is it, Scully? We can stop if you want. We don't have to talk about this now. I know I tried to push you before. I don't want to do that now."

"No, you aren't. I just… I am trying to make sense of it all. My father was there in the office when the school nurse and police told me about the drug in my bloodstream. He was outraged. He acted as if he didn't believe me when I said I had not taken it willingly. I was shattered by that reaction. That distrust in me, but if it was part of the experiment that he signed off on, he would have had to have known about it too. Right?"

Scully looked at him, and he swallowed hard. He rarely saw her this lost or confused. He felt himself drowning in her gaze just as he felt she must be in her own head as she tried to make sense of everything that was happening. What had happened.

He honestly did not know what to say to her, but he heard himself say, "Maybe he didn't, Scully. I don't know. You know more about the situation than I do."

She broke her gaze. He thought she almost looked disappointed in his response.

"But we can try and find out," he offered.

"Yeah. Do you think what happened to me then has anything to do with what happened before we were brought back here?"

"What do you mean, Scully? Erica said that experiment made you a better candidate for all this, but I take it you mean something else."

He thought she was going to chew off her bottom lip as she worked it between her teeth. Years of watching her internally weigh the incredible things they had encountered together and try to make sense of them told him that she was trying to edit her response in a way that might downplay the extreme nature of the situation. He hoped he was wrong though, and that she would be completely open with him. Share with him exactly what she was thinking and what she was remembering.

"Did Corinda and Missy know about this?"

"Some of it, yes. However, in my paranoid state of mind, I thought Corinda Howell was somehow part of the problem, and after I found out that she had approached the police with some things Missy and I had shared with her, which ended up in the wrongful arrest of another young man. I still feel terrible about that."

"Jesus," he sighed, "You know, Scully. I don't know how much you remember of that conversation that we had when we went to Craiger together. I could tell something had happened, but I didn't want to press you. Not given everything that was going on with us and your sister. How did I go more than twenty years without ever knowing all this happened to you? That, that... creep did such a number on you. Why did you never tell me?"

"I recall the conversation, Mulder. I suppose I just had it buried so deep. I did consider sharing what happened to me from time to time. Certain investigations made some of those memories resurface, but like I said the other night, your own reactions to some of my feelings on those cases, had me questioning myself again, just like I had as a girl. Those memories were painful to recall, and after a while I had so many new demons to face that up until today, I just rationalized it away as the reactions and dreams of a teenage girl feeling awkward and out of place. And then eventually, it was as if it never happened at all," she mused with a serious frankness, before allowing her grin to return. "God, Mulder, how well can we ever really know someone if we don't even know ourselves?"

"Well we just met, Scully," he returned her grin. He was glad that her mood had lightened some.

With his comment her grin cracked into a full smile. She extended a hand to him.

"Hi, I am Dana Scully. I have been assigned to spy on you."

"Ugh, I knew it all along," he groaned and shook his head as he leaned it into the rough bark of the tall pine at his back.

"I was really in it for the long con, Mulder. Now that I know your every move for the next twenty years, I can go back and report to them."

He felt her nudge at this shoulder and looked back down at her. He was relieved that she was smiling, even if the sadness still lurked behind her crystal eyes.

"Well, given at least the circumstances of our first decade together, you are one dedicated masochist. Though, I do know the kind of things that get you off, Scully, so…"

This time his comment earned him a hit to his stomach, and he feigned hurt as an "oaf," escaped his lips.

"Feeling better?"

He noticed that she was playing with the edge of her gloves now. Her ivory skin had grown red from the cold air, particularly the tip of her lean nose, and the smile had escaped her face as quickly as it had appeared.

"I will get there, Mulder. This," she gestured between them and then the trailer behind them, to indicate the layers of her meaning, "is still a lot to take in. Even if we have a 'fresh start,' clearly I have always been a part of some agenda of theirs, and that worries me...a lot. And the fact that my dad was involved somehow, just..."

The words fell off the cliff of her lips, and she fell into another somber silence next to him. His own levity also quickly deflated along with hers. This time he grabbed her gloved hand in his own.

"But according to Erica, he stopped whatever they had started too. That has to mean something, Scully."

"He allowed it to start too, Mulder. He lied and deceived. Mulder, he made me doubt myself and his trust in me. I am certain it does not require a psychology degree from Oxford to see how deeply that probably impacted my perception of the world, my relationships, and the choices I made."

"I-I don't doubt that, Scully," Mulder stumbled over his response as he really took in all of the implications of what she had told him. "Maybe it was the only choice he thought he had at the time. I mean look at the alternative."

As he held her gaze, he knew she understood what he was implying. He wondered briefly if William Scully had not agreed to the experiments on his daughter, would she have been taken like Samantha. Would she have died like his sister? Would she have been like Cassandra Spender? He shuddered to think about it. They could have never met, and the idea of not having her as a part of his life made it feel as if his heart was being sucked from his chest.

Silence befell them again for what felt like an eternity. Thoughts of what could have and had been thundering internally in the external silence. Finally, Mulder stood up, pulling her hand with his.

"I know we can't fix what's already happened, but maybe we can fix what's ahead, Scully."

She nodded with a sad smile, not meeting his eyes while doing so, but still allowing him to pull her up. And with that, they both followed their own footsteps in the snow, back to the trailer, hoping to set straight the sins of the past.