PART TWO

*****

Wednesday night

The last beautiful "amen" resounded through the chapel, and the marble floors rang with its echo until the nuns retired for the night. Scully, her hands clasped and her head lowered, turned away from the rest of the group, and headed toward the infirmary.

Aware that the head of the infirmary, Sister Michael, had doubtless gone to bed, Scully went straight inside and found Sister Rosario propped up on several pillows as she finished her rosary. Scully watched as the patient's square fingers told the beads and her thin, bloodless lips moved in quiet prayer.

Scully's trained medical eye saw the signs of rapid deterioration, recognizing with chilling sorrow the sunken eyes with dark rings beneath them, the sharpness of the cheekbones and chin, and the unearthly pallor of flesh more accustomed to the darker hues of her Hispanic origin.

When Sister Rosario finished, she fell back in exhaustion and turned her head toward her visitor, motioning with a feeble hand. "Dana," she rasped in a voice as rough as a carpenter's tool.

"I wanted to stop by and say good night," Scully murmured as she helped Sister Rosario sip water from a plastic cup. "I've been worried about you."

"I'm feeling much better."

Scully saw the feverish determination in those dark brown eyes. "I'm glad you feel better, Sister, but I'd feel better if you were being cared for in a hospital. Won't you let us..."

"NO!" The hoarse cry was so unexpected that Scully dropped the cup. A fit of coughing followed, leaving Sister Rosario drained and pale, blood dripping over her upper lip.

Taking a tissue from the bedside table, Scully dabbed tenderly at the blood, unable to keep up her facade of professional detachment. "Sister, you need proper medical care. Please let me go with you to Mercy or General. I know people on the oncology..."

"No...no..." Her voice was weakening, but her gaze was intense and serious. "Please. Let me stay here one more night. I'll be better. I know I will."

Knowing that the case was lost, Scully watched, frowning, as Sister Rosario fell into an uneasy sleep. She placed her fingers on the nun's bony wrist and took note of the thready pulse, feeling her own heart pumping faster at the memory of being in just this state, hoping against all odds for a miracle.

A miracle.

Scully tucked the blanket around Sister Rosario before striding to the Mother Superior's room, her soft-soled shoes silent against the wooden floor. Her hand shook as she knocked on the door.

"Come in," was the response.

Scully entered and closed the heavy door so carefully that it did not make a sound. The room was immaculate, the bed turned neatly down, and she saw the nun sitting calmly at her desk. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Mother."

The Mother Superior's kind face registered her alarm as she looked up from her prayers. "Dana, whatever is the matter?"

"It's Sister Rosario. I just went to check on her - her condition is deteriorating rapidly and I believe that she should be hospitalized as quickly as possible."

"We had Dr. Banks check on her this afternoon. He said that she's doing as well as can be expected." The old nun rose, her habit whispering against the desk. "I understand that you're very close to the situation, Dana, that you had cancer just over a year ago and that you were cured."

"Not cured. I'm in remission."

"God be praised for it, either way. But because of this, you must feel the weight of mortality in ways that most of us do not."

"Yes, I do. And I know about this type of cancer, about a possible treatment for it. I can't just stand here doing nothing while Sister Rosario dies."

"A possible treatment?" The Mother Superior put her hand on Scully's shoulder, light as a falling feather but warm and comforting. "Father McCue told me that you made your miraculous recovery just hours after you prayed."

Scully touched the back of her neck. "It was also just a day after I had this chip implanted in my neck to replace the one that was destroyed. It's probably the same type as Amanda Broadman's or even Sister Rosario's. I can't say with certainty just what brought about the remission, but I think it's foolhardy to dismiss the idea of traditional treatment out-of-hand."

The nun removed her hand slowly, but never broke eye contact with Scully. "And I think it's foolhardy to dismiss the idea of divine intervention outright, Dana - particularly with what you know about the power of faith."

Scully bit her lip, but held her chin high as she watched the Mother Superior go to a bookshelf and return with a musty, well-worn volume. She placed the book in Scully's hand as gently as if the book were a frail dove.

"Saint Peregrine Agosi," Scully read aloud. "I'm afraid I don't know anything about him."

"He had cancer in his foot and was scheduled to have it amputated, but prayer healed him. I suggest you read this tonight, Dana, and pray to him for Sister Rosario's sake. Remember that it was the love of Jesus that brought us here."

"But..."

"Dana." Scully saw the firmness in the Mother Superior's gaze. "If you are to remain with us, I must insist on obedience. When you say your prayers tonight, include a request for intercession from St. Peregrine. That is all I intend to say on the matter. Good night, Dana."

Scully felt the blood rushing past her ears, the stigma of shame at having disappointed this woman whose guidance she was requesting, yet at the same time her years of knowledge and training pulled at her, telling her that she was making a mistake.

She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself with thoughts of God's love, but Sister Rosario's haggard face continued to haunt her.

God's love, God's will.

Obedience.

Her heavy wool dress could not ward off the chill.

*****

Journal entry, early Thursday morning

I was doing as Mother told me, reading about St. Peregrine Agosi and keeping my thoughts about Sister Rosario's condition as positive as I could, when my meditations were interrupted by a ticking sound against the window.

Hail? I didn't think it was raining, and the sound was too localized. I got up and let the book close, groaning as the corner of a brittle page broke off and fluttered to the floor. I looked through the clean glass to peer into a darkness almost as profound as that in my own heart.

I ducked when I realized that something was coming at my face. It hit the glass with a faint tick and lay on the windowsill. Gravel.

At last my eyes adjusted to the nighttime darkness and I saw the forlorn figure standing in the flower bed, something clutched in his hand.

Mulder.

Young David in a dark gray t-shirt, throwing pebbles against his own personal Goliath.

I opened the window and leaned out. "How did you know which room was mine?" I asked in a loud stage whisper.

"I've been watching this side of the building all night. I saw you come in."

"But I've been in here for an hour..."

"I thought you might be busy. With...Him." Mulder gestured to the sky.

I couldn't repress a chuckle at the idea of Mulder waiting for a convenient moment to interrupt my conversation with the Almighty. I forced my features into a stern expression as I faced him again. "Mulder, you can't BE here."

"Scully, I have to talk to you. Please." The agony in his voice tore at me, even at this distance. "Please?" he asked again, his tone needier than I'd ever heard it.

I knew I should beg him to leave me in peace.

I wanted to tell him my fears about Sister Rosario's condition and my fruitless conversation with Mother.

I was afraid I'd tell him that his was the first name brought up in my prayers, even before those of my family members.

I had to get him out of the garden before anyone found him and called the police.

Against my better judgment I whispered, "Come back tomorrow evening, and we'll talk then. INSIDE, Mulder."

He seemed to consider this for a moment and I could feel the weight of his indecision. Would his need for me overcome his common sense?

The way it did in Antarctica, for example?

"Okay, Scully," he said at last.

I watched him walk away, his shoulders hunched against something I could only imagine, and I was overwhelmed by guilt. I had failed him as a friend even as I had tried to protect his soul.

I was too disturbed to go back to my readings. I wanted to sleep, but when I closed my eyes I saw myself as if in a mirror, as I had looked those last days when the cancer had almost beaten me. That Dana Scully stared at me and begged me not to abandon those who were not so fortunate.

I could not sleep.

I whispered the words of St. Teresa of Avila: "Let nothing trouble you, let nothing make you afraid. All things pass away. God never changes. Patience obtains everything. God alone is enough."

But nothing could make me sleep.

*****

Thursday morning

"We are doing her no service by letting her die," Scully argued, her patience at an end with the implacable Sister Michael.

The older woman let Scully have her say, watching patiently through hooded eyes until Scully had finished. Then she said, "Dana, I appreciate your medical training - which is far greater than my own, and far more recent. However, our Sister has expressed her desire to remain here and we are in no position to countermand that wish."

"I don't believe that she is mentally competent to make that kind of decision. Her blood volume is obviously depleted, so of course her faculties are affected. It's possible that with aggressive treatment, she might..." Scully's hands fell to her sides. "I realize that she probably would not recover, but she could be made more comfortable. She might at least gain enough time to make peace with her family...."

Sister Michael frowned at the word "family" and she wrapped her thin arms around herself as if to ward off a chill.

"Is there someone we should contact?" Scully's persistent question was interrupter by Sister Rosario's rasping, brittle voice.

"My family...is here. Don't...send me...away..."

"Hush, Sister," soothed Sister Michael. "No one is sending you anywhere."

Scully opened her mouth to protest, but was silenced by Sister Michael's stern expression.

"Dana...don't do this..."

Defeated, Scully let her shoulders slump. "It's all right, Sister. Don't worry." She cast a look over her shoulder at Sister Michael, whose face was relaxing. "Stay here with us. Your family."

Only later would she come to understand the look the two nuns exchanged.

*****

Thursday evening

"Oh Great Saint Joseph, you were completely obedient to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Obtain for me the grace to know the state of life that God in his providence has chosen for me. Since my happiness on earth, and perhaps even my final happiness in heaven, depends on this choice, let me not be deceived in making it. "

Scully said the words clearly and with reverence before rising from the kneeler. She brushed stray pieces of lint from her skirt, warming her hands in the folds of gray wool. The rays of the setting sun were just coming through the clear, leaded glass of the little chapel where she had been praying for guidance - and for enough strength to survive her meeting with Mulder.

Sister Joan, a strong, muscular woman in her early thirties, came up behind Scully. "Dana, your visitor is here."

"Thank you," she responded smoothly, not allowing her voice to betray any of her trepidation.

"Dana?"

Scully turned around and saw Sister Joan twisting her hands. "Yes?"

"I just wanted to say...I never told you how grateful we are for what you did a few days ago, saving Sharon from that man..."

Scully saw the nervous gestures - the hands clenching and unclenching the front of the habit, the licking of the lips, the way that Sister Joan looked down at the floor as she spoke. "Sister, is there something else you wanted to tell me?"

"I'm worried...that is...oh, dear. I'm sorry, I'm keeping you from your visitor. Please excuse me." She made a hasty exit through a side door, leaving Scully to puzzle over her words on the way to her appointment with Mulder.

Her steps were heavy. As hard as seeing Skinner had been, this was going to be even worse, and she felt a sharp pang of regret at having given in to Mulder's plea. The parlor door was open and Mulder was standing by the fireplace, both hands stretched out on the mantel and his head drooping as if he were too tired to hold it up.

"Scully, do you still pray for me?" he asked without turning his head.

Not surprised that he recognized the sound of her footsteps, Scully said in a dark and earnest tone, "Of course I do."

"Not to St. Dymphna, for the insane?"

She smiled and walked over to him, leaning against the wall to his right so that he could look at her without moving. "You've been reading up - but no. To Saint Vivian." At Mulder's bewildered stare, she pointed to his head. "For hangovers."

"Oh. So Skinner talked to you."

"Yes. Yes, he did. I'm not racking up any points for solitary meditation at this rate." She ducked a little, forcing him to meet her eyes. "What were you doing that night, Mulder?"

"Burning my bridges," he muttered, turning his head again and lapsing into silence. In the distance they could hear someone playing a recording of Schubert's "Ave Maria."

Scully's breathing quickened, her fingers flexing in frustration. "Mulder, you threw rocks at my window last night and said you had to talk to me. So, talk."

Mulder went to the door and closed it, muting the strains of music. "I can't think with that in the background. It's so sad."

"It is sad," Scully agreed. She took long strides to Mulder's side and caught him by the wrist. "There's a nun here who's dying of cancer. The same kind I had, Mulder."

He looked at her for a moment, his eyes widening. "And for the same reason?"

"I believe so."

"How many nuns here WERE abductees, Scully?" Mulder began to pace the room, and Scully could see outrage adding strength to his limbs.

"I don't know. At least two, maybe more. I haven't been here long enough to hear the whole story - I'm not even certain that I want the whole story. But Mulder, I wish I could do something for Sister Rosario."

He stopped, his heels coming to rest on the metal strip that separated the carpet from the floor. Rubbing his eyes with his knuckles as he rocked back and forth on the uneven surface, he spoke in a dull monotone.

"I could never get back into the Pentagon, Scully. And even if I could, there's no way I could possibly know which chip to take - I could kill her with nothing more than a wrong guess."

"Mulder!" Scully collapsed onto the divan, her hands outstretched. "I would never ask you to do something like that. And besides - we don't know for certain that it WAS the chip that caused the remission."

She regretted the words the instant they were uttered. Mulder said nothing, but he stood absolutely rigid, as if he had been frozen in place, his mouth turning downward in the expression of self-loathing that Scully had seen a thousand times for a thousand reasons.

When at last he spoke, his voice dripped ice. "It didn't help you. That means I didn't help you."

"Mulder, no, I didn't mean that. Please - sit down and listen." She moved enough on the little sofa to give him room to join her, but instead, he took a chair from the table and brought it across from her, his downcast expression sullen.

Using a soft, soothing voice in lieu of an apology, Scully spoke. "I'll never be able to thank you for what you did for me. Whether it WAS the cure or not isn't the point: it's the fact that you even considered taking such a risk."

"I would never have REFUSED to take that risk. Or any risk, Scully, where you are concerned." He met her gaze at last, his eyes large and full of sorrow.

Scully's lips trembled for just an instant before she regained control. "I know that, Mulder, and that's why I pray for you constantly. I owe you so much..."

"So you left me when I needed you most. Strange way of repaying the debt, Scully."

"That's not fair." She heard the rising pitch and forced herself to remain calm. "You want me to love the X Files more than I love God, and that is just not possible."

"The X Files." His voice was flat. He got up and turned his body away from her, fumbling with the buttons on his jacket. "Yeah, Scully, that's what I wanted. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting with my mother's attorneys. She's dead, you know."

"You bastard!" She leapt to her feet, grabbing his forearms, looking at her hands and seeing the blood drain from her fingertips. "I was with you for all of that, Mulder. I performed the autopsy on her and I put her back together afterwards, then I put YOU back together. Don't you DARE tell me..."

The shadow of the Mother Superior fell over them like a pall.

The combatants separated. Mulder's face was contrite. "I'm sorry. We shouldn't have been talking so loudly."

"That's not the point, Mr. Mulder. What I'm concerned about is not the decibel level of your conversation, but rather Dana's spiritual progress and the well-being of the Sisters at this convent. We are here to help others, to contemplate and to pray. We simply can't have stray men wandering our gardens at night."

Scully lowered her head, covering her face with her hands. She listened to Mulder's guilty throat-clearing noises as her own embarrassment tore at her conscience.

The Mother Superior continued. "Mr. Mulder, I do understand that you've suffered a terrible loss, and that you feel you have lost Dana, as well. Believe me, you have our sympathies and our prayers. But please, consider what it is you are doing to Dana, the suffering you are causing her."

"But he's suffering, too," Scully found herself saying, the need to defend Mulder as automatic a response as breathing. "You don't know what he's been through..."

"Scully, stop." Mulder finally looked at her, and she saw his eyes, dim but dry, full of tender remorse. He put his hands on her shoulders and leaned forward to whisper in her ear. "I won't hurt you any more."

She swallowed hard, leaning into his touch to keep her balance.

The floor shook.

"Mulder..." Scully pulled up just in time to see a plaster statue fall off of the mantel. The Mother Superior cried out in dismay as the tiny fragments turned to powder. The chairs and tables rumbled with the sound of an approaching freight train.

"Earthquake?" the Mother Superior managed to ask, but Mulder shook his head.

"No. Not Earth."

The lights were extinguished as if by an enormous, heavy hand as the tremors stopped. A scream filled the ensuing silence. Mulder reached for his weapon and moved into the hallway before Scully, motioning for the Mother Superior to stay behind, but she refused and followed closely in Scully's footsteps.

Nuns raced out of their cells, their pale faces visible in a single thin stream of light that came from down the hall. Mulder and Scully followed the light, their footsteps careful and silent. "What's down there?" Mulder asked in a whisper.

"The...oh, God, the infirmary..."

Scully took one look at the horrified Mother Superior and raced for the door, Mulder at her heels. She threw the door open and had to put her arm over her eyes because of the aching brightness of the light.

The light filled the room, obliterating all shape and color. "Sister?! SISTER?!" Scully cried. She heard nothing except a faint humming sound.

As the sound moved away, the light faded as well. Scully opened her eyes and scanned the room with a quick turn of her head. She saw a shape in the corner, a huddled black form rocking back and forth.

"Mulder!" she called, and they went to the stricken nun, lifting her face.

Sister Michael looked at them, her hands clasped firmly in prayer, her expression filled with rapturous delight. "Oh, Dana, Dana, she was right..."

"Where's Sister Rosario?" Scully asked, her breath coming harshly from her parted lips as she turned to look at the empty bed. "Where is she? Where did she go?"

"She was right...she was right..." She pointed a quivering finger at the window.

Mulder and Scully exchanged a wide-eyed look. "She was right about what?" Mulder asked softly.

The nun looked out of the window into the darkening sky.

"They came."

*****
End part two.

Go to part three.