Title: The River

Author: CeilidhO

Summary: What if Scully had accepted the transfer to Salt Lake City? Three years later, she and her new partner are assigned to a bizarre string of kidnappings, with terrifying and dangerous results. (Prequel to "Disciple")

Disclaimer: I own nothing, Chris Carter owns everything. (Except the characters I invent.) We all know the drill. Please don't sue me.

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All right, this is the second new, improved chapter, incorporating the former chapters of Jolene and Inconsistent.  It picks up after Scully and Dan have interviewed Jolene and are headed back to the Sheriff's Department, extremely disturbed by what they've heard.

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Millard County, Utah

August 24, 2001

12:42 pm

The drive back to Delta was tense with anxiety, the beauty of the landscape outside of the window almost unnoticed by the occupants of the car. The noon sun blazed overhead, but the tiny space was chill with fear and air conditioning. Dan finally broke the silence, glancing over at the redhead at the wheel.

"Dana, what the hell are we getting ourselves into?"

"I don't know," she sighed. "But these women need help, and I suppose we're the ones to give it. I can only hope we're up to it."

They flashed past the Delta town limits, and within two minutes were pulling up to the lot of the Sheriff's Department. The usual sea of multihued cruisers were splashed out front, but to their surprise the press seemed almost renewed in energy, eagerly flashing photos and interviewing each other, for lack of any more forthcoming official.

Scully and Morris pushed through them, ignoring the popping bulbs and shouted inquiries. All were on the subject of the Choir case.

Once through the doors, they were met by Deputy Kemp, and, for the first time, his partner, Deputy Orrens.

"Agent Scully, Agent Morris," Kemp asked politely. "How's Jolene today?"

"Better," Scully replied. "Her disposition is- Hey! Watch where you're going!"

The tall man in the Italian suit who had collided with her turned around, leering arrogantly.

"You were standing in my way, Officer." He replied coldly. "I'm an FBI agent, and I'm waiting here for some of my colleagues." His accent was northern, and for a moment it sounded almost foreign to Scully's desert-acclimated ears.

"Well, Agent," she spat out. "I'm an FBI agent as well, and you are extremely disrespectful. God forbid that I should ever be your colleague."

As they glared at each other, Sheriff Perkins bustled up behind them. "Ah, Agent Scully, Agent Morris. I see you've met Agent Fuller. He's the profiler Chilton sent up, and he's all yours."

          There was a long pause, laden with the incessant buzz of the ringing telephones. Scully finally choked out a humorless laugh.

"You've got to be kidding."

Sheriff Perkins shook his head, bewildered. "No, ma'am, I'm not. AD Chilton just sent him down on the morning flight. He's all the way from Washington. The capital," he added, as if she wouldn't understand. "He's here to help y'all. I thought you'd be more grateful."

Fuller smirked. "As did I, Sheriff. Most agents are more appreciative of my ability to aid them with floundering investigations."

Scully raised her eyebrows incredulously. "Floundering, Agent Fuller? We've been out here for only two days. What, are we supposed to have a conviction by now, be wiping our hands, congratulating each-"

She was cut off. "I honestly don't see why not, Agent Scully. It's only rape."

She thought her eyebrows couldn't reach any further. Dan was beginning to go dangerously red. "Only rape?" she exclaimed, her voice rising. "Only… Only rape?"

"Listen, Scully," Fuller smirked. "I realise that as a woman, you're more sensitive to things like this, but to the rest of us…"

Scully put up her hands, speechless with incredulity. She turned her gaze to Sheriff Perkins. "He's going back, right now. I do not want to hear anything about it." She began to walk away, and Dan went with her, but shot back over his shoulder:

"Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out."

It took them both a while to calm down, once they were safely back in their office, cushioned against the tumult outside. Dan smacked his hands down onto the table, making the photos jump into the air.

"I've met some assholes in my life…" he began.

"But now we've met their king." Scully finished.

"I was going to say their God," Dan said wryly. "But king works." Scully began to pace.

"Of all the arrogant, self-absorbed, sexist, bigoted…" The door burst open. The smirk was the first thing she saw.

"I'm afraid it's not that simple, Agents," Fuller said. "Understand this: I was assigned by your superiors. I don't answer to you, to Sheriff Perkins, or to Assistant Director Chilton. I answer to the Section Chief at Headquarters, and I'm not going anywhere."

"Fine," Dan responded, his usually twinkling eyes steely and hard. "But understand this: this not 'only rape', and we are the senior agents here. You will be polite and reasonable and above all, professional, or I will have you hauled back to headquarters so fast it will make your ass spin. Are we understood?" A vein stood out on Fuller's forehead, and he opened his mouth, but Dan cut him off. "Are we understood?"

Fuller nodded slowly, resentment etched on every line of his face. Dan promptly ignored him, and turned back to Scully, who was beaming. "Right Scully, let's get back to work. I wanted to ask you about these abrasions here…"

By the evening, Scully's eyes were like sandpaper. The grisly photographs were strewn in front of her, along with pages of hastily scrawled handwritten notes. Dan sighed, and flipped over another sheet of his notepad, glaring at it through the reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He clicked out the nib of his pen, and set it to the paper.

"Right, so, we have victim number one, a secretary. Taken from the street just outside her office building in Salt Lake. Found by the Jordan River outside the city. She described various bizarre sexual acts the abductor forced her to perform, many of which recur with the other two women. However, not all of them do."

"Which is really screwing around with cataloguing sexual preferences," added Fuller. "If I could just narrow it down, I could define a lot more about him."

Scully thought for a moment, then sifted through the masses of paper, retrieving a stapled printout. "According to this, from the Behavioural Sciences database, many of these acts don't correlate. For example, victim one described being…" She consulted the case file briefly. "Hung from the ceiling beams while blindfolded, and the same occurred with victims two and three. This usually means that the offender is someone with an preference for control scenarios, for power. He's someone who prefers complete domination of his victims, someone who usually has a power disorder."

"That's correct," said Fuller. Dan ran a hand through his hair.

"Where're you going with this, Scully?"

"Give me a moment," she said, and then continued. "Now, victim one also described being placed in a bed, restrained only by the knife that the abductor held, and forced to complete a scenario that seemed meant to simulate consensual sexual relations. The same thing happened with Jolene. That type of behavior, of personality, is completely incongruous with the type of personality that would commit the previous type of assault. This, according to the BSU, should not be the same person. The list of similar discrepancies goes on."

"Are you suggesting, Agent Scully," Fuller sneered. "That, although we have three separate women who are adamant that they were only attacked by one man, you know better and are therefore theorizing that it was more than one man?"

"I'm not sure that I'm theorizing anything at the moment, Agent Fuller," Scully shot back. "I'm merely putting forward a problem that requires an explanation. I'm doing my job, which is more than I can say for y-"

"Okay," interrupted Dan. "Why doesn't one of us get coffee?"

Scully stood at the bubbling coffee pot, watching the tiny trickle of liquid slowly fill the plastic jug. Her attention was caught by the click of the office door. Fuller slid out, and walked over to the snack table, where another clean-looking man in a suit stood nibbling on a day-old danish. Scully recognized him as Agent Hugh Adams, the profiler on the Choir case.

"Good god, Adams," Fuller said. "I've got to get out of here. This case is such a piss-off assignment."

"Well, Fuller," the other agent responded. "You certainly pissed off, so it kind of makes sense."

Fuller flushed. "It's fucking Mulder," he snapped. "He doesn't accept anyone. It wasn't my goddamned fault."

Scully's hand shook violently, shook so hard on the handle of the jug that she spilled just-brewed coffee all over her wrist. Muffling an exclamation, she listened harder.

"Yeah, sure. It's never anyone's fault if Mulder rejects them. He's got half the section on his 'not' list. But hey, aren't you working with his old partner, from the X-Files? Agent Sculler?"

"Agent Scully. Yeah, I am."

"And?"

Fuller smirked. "Let's just say, that lame old Ice-Queen nickname is the understatement of the century. She's wound tighter than a nun's-"

Scully turned and walked back to the office. Even news of Mulder wasn't worth listening to talk like that. Shame and anger pricked her cheeks with tiny red needles.

As the sky melted into complete darkness, Scully felt the plane lurch into the air. The desert was flat and pitch black under the flashing lights on the wings, and the mountains stood dull against the starry sky.

Scully sighed and settled back into her seat, fiddling with the strong edge of the file folder on her lap. Something still wasn't sitting right with her; it felt wrong to leave the town before the case was closed. She felt like she was abandoning Jolene. The plane's upward motion pressed on her head.

Dan drummed his fingers on the armrest of the seat between them, turned sideways in his own seat on the aisle. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, whispering to himself as he reviewed their case notes. All around them, the plane was virtually silent and empty, except for the young family toward the front of the cabin. Fuller shifted impatiently in the row in front of them.

A low, gnawing ache of loss. Regular swells of nausea. She's as cold as she's ever been, and the whine of the engine presses on her ears like water, like a foot on her temple.

Beneath the window, the city is lost to Scully's view as they reach the cloud layer, her entire life vanishing under opaque water vapour. In the row across the aisle, a baby begins to wail, piercing and wrenching, raw with pain.

She knows just how he feels.

The plane landed in Salt Lake City with a bump, and Scully was jolted out of her reverie. Dan swept together his papers, grumbling under his breath as he did. Fuller stood with a grateful moan, and slid his briefcase out of the overhead compartment. Scully shook her head to clear her mind, and stepped after Dan out of the plane, the case file clutched tightly in her fist.

The airport was eerily empty, and the agent's footfalls echoed on the shining floors. In the baggage reclaim, the carousel started with a screech of gears, and stopped within a minute and a half when the pitiful four bags appeared. Back down the hall, out of the Gate window, Scully could see their tiny plane taxi back into the darkness of the tarmac.

When the frosted glass 'Arrivals' door slid open before them, cries of delight filled Scully's ears unexpectedly. Two small girls burst out from behind the barrier, and slammed themselves into Dan's legs, squealing in joy. Dan swept the smaller into his arms, and crushed the older against his side with his free hand. He dropped kisses on their heads, and murmured in their ears.

The curly haired woman who had been standing with the girls stepped forward now, and Dan leaned forward and kissed her deeply, to a serenade of disgusted exclamations from the children. The two adults beamed at each other.

Scully stood awkwardly to the side, shifting her bag between her hands, and glancing down at her feet. She caught Fuller's eye for a split second, and in that moment they both registered the absolute lack of a greeting party for the other, and what that meant about their life. They knew each other, and then Fuller flinched away.

"I'm getting a taxi," he snapped, and stormed away through the far doors. Dan glanced at him in surprise.

"I'd better go too," Scully said softly. "You should, um, be with your family."

"Don't even think about it." Dan replied. "Here, let me introduce you: Janie, Rachael, this is my new work partner, Dana Scully. Say hi."

"Hello," they chorused, each with the faintest southwestern accent. The older girl giggled, and said: "Daddy, it's funny."

"What's funny, sweetheart?"

"Your names, of course. Your Dan, she's Dana. They're spelled almost the same. It's funny!"

Dan grinned at Scully. "I suppose it is," he said. "I'd never thought about it like that."

The curly haired woman leaned forward, extending her hand. "My husband's forgotten me, like always. I'm Peggy Morris. It's very nice to meet you, Dana."

"It's nice to meet you, Peggy," she answered.

The woman smiled. "Dana, you'll have to let us drop you at home. Come on, we'll all fit in the car somehow."

In a decidedly better mood then when she'd arrived, Scully left the airport behind her, to a chorus of '99 Bottles of Beer…'.

Late that night, Scully's phone rang, shocking her awake and stupefying her senses. After an eternity of the shrill noise, she managed to roll over and slide the receiver into her hand.

"Hello…" she mumbled.

"Dana? It's Dan Morris."

"It's three thirty in the morning…" she whined, feeling like a small child awakened for school.

"This is important. I think I've got the solution for the inconsistencies in the sexual behaviour."

"Oh?"

"Dana, this is big. Now, I noticed that on the first and last days the behaviour was very compatible, but it was a complete mess in between. That seemed really odd, but when I thought about it…"

"What?" He had her attention now. Every inch of sleep was shaken form her body.

"It's just him doing the attacks, we know that. But what I think…"

"Dan…" Her every nerve was taut, waiting. Her fingertips were cold.

"Dana, he's taking requests."

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A/N:  All right, Mulder's up next with the chapter Spanish Moss.  Enjoy!

Also, please let me know what you think of the new amalgamated chappies, by (what else) reviewing!

Thanks so much!

                               ~ Ceilidh