We're caught in a trap, I can't walk out
because I love you too much baby

Why can't you see, what you're doing to me
When you don't believe a word I say.

We can't go on together, with suspicious minds
And we can't build our dreams, on suspicious minds

Old Miller's Road

1:13 AM

Doggett put the car in park and looked around his surroundings. There was a road, some fields, and there were houses that were on the other side of a wasteland like field. The night was nice if a bit cold—the stars were shining like millions of fireflies dancing across the heavens—but there was nothing special about this place. It was nothing he could see anyway.

"So what's up with this field?" Doggett asked, stepping out of the car. Scully had already shut her door.

"Why does there have to be something up with the field?" Scully replied. The coy smile that crossed her lips told Doggett that she was hiding something, that she was being intentionally vague. As she positioned herself on the trunk of the car, his curiosity grew. He didn't have to say anything because, with the moonlight, she could see suspicion in his face. "You…you would laugh if I told you," she said, blushing like a schoolgirl.

"I won't laugh. Try me."

"Well…Mr. Smith said that this place has a history of some UFO activity."

"Oh, so that's what this is about," Doggett said. He laughed, and it made Scully laugh too.

"I told you that you would laugh at me."

"No, no, I'm not laughing at you," Doggett said. "I just can't get over how you UFO nuts can just drag people to the middle of nowhere at all hours of the night just because someone saw flashing lights."

"I'm not a UFO nut, I just…I just thought this would be a good place to come and think, to get some fresh air," Scully said. She played with her hands and looked up at the stars. Truth was, she wasn't sure what she was anymore. Believer…skeptic…did she even still believe in God? She stared at the stars only for a moment, looking to them for an answer. Then she turned to the ground because she didn't like the answer they gave. They reminded her of something she did not want to remember, and Doggett knew exactly what it was.

"We're going to find him, you know," he said, quietly leaning against the car and next to his partner. "I promise you that we'll find him."

Scully wiped her eyes, more out of habit than because of tears. "I know you're doing your best," she said. "I just…I had a dream tonight that I came so close to seeing him. I could have almost touched him, but then he was taken away from me. I'm…I'm so afraid that's what's really going to happen. That I'll never see him again."

"You will though. We'll find him."

Scully sighed and patted Doggett on the hand. She knew in her heart that Doggett believed in what he was saying, that he thought he was promising her the truth. She appreciated his dedication and strength, but she knew that his promise was one destined to be broken. "I know," she lied, nodding her head. "I just…I miss him so much."

"I understand," he said. Things got quiet between the two of them, and there was no noise except for the occasional croak of frogs in the distance. In silence, they stared up at the stars; the stars stared back at them, though they were oblivious to the agents' existence.

"How many of us are like stars?" Scully asked out of nowhere.

"What do you mean?" Doggett asked.

"Well, look at them. Here we are on earth, and they are completely unaware that we're sitting here, staring back at them. How many times do we go through life, going about our business, oblivious to what's going on in the lives of the people around us? How many times do we actually stop to take notice, to realize that what people see in us is the culmination of years and years, and that what we do today is not fully seen nor appreciated until the future? How many people go through life burning brighter and brighter or how many people just have that occasional flash of brilliance; yet there's so many people, nobody notices when we burn out and die?"

Doggett shook his head. "I think that maybe…" he started, hesitating as he tried to string his words together as eloquently as she had. He knew that was futile, so he just said what he thought. "I think that every once in a while you get a star, or a life, that is different from the others. Take the North Star for instance. When it burns out and dies, people are going to notice because it's different from the others. Sure, it's still made out of the same stuff, but it's affected people's lives more. Even if it didn't know it was doing so. It'll be missed because it's touched the lives of people."

Scully smiled. She missed having these types of talks with Mulder, and talking with Doggett helped a little. They continued watching the stars, and again the conversation slowly faded into the quiet fall air. The stars twinkled and blinked at them, and the wind passed over their bodies causing them to draw their jackets tighter. The frogs kept croaking, but it was late for them too, and one by one they started to quiet down.

"May I ask what your dream was about, Agent Doggett?"

Scully's words caught Doggett off guard.

"Aw, you don't want to hear about it. It's kind of a downer."

"Yes I do."

"Nah, it'll just depress you."

"I don't think that's possible anymore. Besides, I told you about mine. You have to tell me about yours. It's a rule or something."

Doggett chuckled distantly. "Are you sure you want to hear it?"

"I insist."

"It's about Luke."

"Go on."

"Well…" Doggett said with a sigh. "It's a few years back, so I'm still a cop for the NYPD. I'm chasing this guy through an abandoned warehouse or something, and I'm doing a pretty decent job of keeping up, but I can't make no ground on him. I chase him up a flight of stairs and across some catwalks, and then he rounds a corner. And for a second, I lose him. I follow him, and I see him, outlined in shadow, holding a gun. He's got it pointed at me, so instinctively I tell him to drop his weapon and point my gun at him. When he doesn't, I warn him some more, and I pull the trigger. He falls, but he doesn't scream or groan. Instead, he starts crying. He just starts this pitiful, whimper like crying.

"I walk up to see what's wrong with him, and I realize it's not a man I've shot at all. It's an eight-year-old boy. It's Luke, and he's…he's holding a toy gun. I look around, and I realize I'm not in a warehouse or anything like that…I'm in my backyard. We were playing cops and robbers, and I guess I was the robber…and…

"God… I pick him up and I hold him against my chest, hugging him so close to me that I can feel his little body struggle for each one of its last breaths. So I start pounding on him, breathing in his mouth, doing everything I can to try to keep him alive. Then he just looks at me with these big, stunned, betrayed eyes of his that say, 'How could you do this to me, Dad?' And then…then he dies." Doggett looked down, drawing in a long, sad breath of cold autumn air. "He always dies."

Scully put her hand on Doggett's shoulder, and he leaned his face against it quietly. "I'm sorry," she said. "I can't imagine what it's like to lose a child."

"It's funny. Sometimes I can't either," Doggett said. He was in a trance. Though he was looking at a million stars and the houses outlined against them, he saw nothing but a little boy losing faith in his daddy. "Sometimes, in the morning, just before I wake up, it's like I can hear him calling my name. It's like he's telling me to get up so he can go watch cartoons… Then I wake up, and I realize it was dream. It's all one sick, damn dream."

Scully, though she was no stranger to loss, had no words for John Doggett. She knew nothing she said would be appropriate, nothing she could say would ease his pain. So she said nothing, and merely kept her hand on his shoulder, reassuring him that there was at least one person in the world that noticed his life and would support him until he burned out.

"I told you it was a downer," he said, with a small laugh.

She nodded, and they spent several minutes in silence. Even their thoughts, for once in their lives, were quiet, and their demons stayed put; they did not haunt the agents on this morning.

Eventually, one of them would have to break the silence. Scully was the one to do so. "This reminds me of the…I guess it was the second or third assignment I had with Agent Mulder."

"How's that?"

"Well, we went to check out this report from the wife of this air force pilot. He had come down with some strange illness, some kind of amnesia or senility, something like that. Mulder, in his own Mulder way, deduced that it was acquired by test piloting an aircraft with alien technology. So eventually we end up outside of this air base, staring up at the sky for hours, waiting for some kind of sign, and the whole time I couldn't help but think, 'Why am I wasting my time with this bozo? Who did I upset at the Bureau to deserve this?' I guess it's kind of funny how things eventually worked out between that bozo and me."

"So did you ever see anything?"

"Actually, we did. There were lights, two of them. They hovered in the air, then did maneuvers impossible for any aircraft I'm aware of, then they danced up into the sky like angels ascending into Heaven."

"So that's when you started believing in UFOs?"

"Actually," Scully said, drawing it out, "I still think they were lasers…"

Doggett laughed, and Scully patted him on the back. "Are you as tired as I am, Agent Doggett?"

"Yeah. This cold country air did me some good; I think I can get back to sleep now," he said.

Scully hopped off the car and walked over to the passenger's seat. Doggett made his way to the driver's side, but, after he opened the door, he didn't sit down. He hesitated for a moment, thinking something over. After rolling the idea around in his head, he sat down and asked Scully, "Isn't it kind of strange that we both had dreams about our worst nightmares at the same time tonight?"

"I'll admit it's kind of odd."

"Do you think it means anything?"

"Well…Mulder once said that a dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet learned how to ask."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that I think it means that we both just needed somebody to talk to." She smiled, and the moonlight lit up her face, hiding the dark circles under her eyes, and making her look more beautiful than usual.

Doggett said nothing, only nodding with a smile as he started to car. With the engine, the radio came on, and Doggett quietly exclaimed, "Hey, could you turn it up? I like this song."

Scully smiled. She liked it as well; it reminded her of an Elvis fan she knew.

So, if an old friend I know, drops by to say hello
Would I still see suspicion in your eyes?

Here we go again, asking where I've been
You can't see these tears are real, I'm crying

We can't go on together, with suspicious minds
And be can't build our dreams, on suspicious minds

And as the two FBI agents in their rental car started off down the dusty road, two stars seemed to sigh with relief and say, "They finally left." They twinkled, like they were stretching from being still too long, and moved closer towards each other. They hovered about, playing tag in the sky, and then they danced off like angels ascending into the heavens.

* * *

Thompson House

3:13 AM

Caitlin Thompson strained her ears, struggling to hear if the noise repeated itself. She swore she heard a scratching at her window, but when she opened her eyes, the noise stopped. She told herself it was just a cat or the wind, but somehow she knew it wasn't. She knew it couldn't be a cat or the wind, that something evil was outside her bedroom window. Now that she was alert and waiting for it, it would not make its presence known again. It had been silent for a whole two minutes, and she was finally starting to convince herself that it had, indeed, been nothing. She laid her head back down on her pillow and rolled over to go back to sleep.

Skkrrrritch. Skkriiiitch!

The scratching, like metal nails being dragged across the glass, was back. Caitlin sat up, her back already covered in cold sweat, and her heart was beating itself senseless against her chest. She looked at the window, straining to see a silhouette against the moonlight.

She couldn't see anything, but she had to know if something was there. Slowly, as if the carpet was made of burning coals, she eased herself out of bed, swallowing hard each moment another toe touched the floor. She forced herself out of bed, and she crept, oh so quietly, towards the window. Her mind began to conjure up all kinds of images she had seen in movies of masked men, murderous men, lurching outside of bedroom windows. With each step, each time she moved closer to the window, she expected the glass to shatter and a terrifying beast to lunge out.

"I know it's you, Jason," she said, picking up a curling iron from her dresser. She held it like it was a Louisville Slugger. "You're not scaring me," she said as her voice caught in her throat. She was at the window now, leaning against the wall so she was not in front of it. She bit her lip and summoned all of her courage, and she lifted up the shade.

There was nothing outside of her window.

She sighed, dropping the curling iron to the floor. She slumped against the wall, and sat down on the carpet, curling herself up into a ball. She almost laughed as she pushed her hands through her hair. "You should be ashamed of yourself, girl," she muttered. She cursed herself for getting worked up over nothing.

Krack-kooom!

Like a shotgun blast, lightning struck outside. The room flashed in dazzling grey light, and Caitlin was so startled she jumped to her feet. Before she could even draw a breath, she heard an evil whisper echo around her bedroom.

Chee-chee-chee-chee-chee. Haw-haw-haw-haw-haw.

The girl saw nothing, but immediately she knew she was not alone in the room. She leapt for the door, but something grabbed her out of the air, and threw her down to the floor. She banged her arm on her dresser, and she tried to cry out as a rough, wild smelling tentacle wrapped around her arms. Her cries did not pass her mouth as a second tentacle—a second vine—covered her lips to suppress her screams. As she kicked and struggled on the floor, she realized there were six vines all together. A vine for each arm and leg, one covering her mouth, and one that was in front of her, almost watching her. She began to cry, feeling their awful serpent like grip around her, and she felt the sixth vine start to move up her leg.

It caressed her thigh almost lovingly, but its thorns and leaves scratched her, drawing tears and blood. It only lingered there for a moment, and it, like the dreadful thing it was, crept up further, and further, tearing at her clothes, until it reached its ungodly target.

The girl, as if losing her sister were not enough, had a new reason to cry.