Scully and Rory had to circle around the mesa after reaching the bottom to reach the vehicles. The moon was reaching towards its zenith and their hands had stopped bleeding by the time they came to their cars. Their tires were slashed.

Agent Pendrell was lying unconscious near the car. His clothes had been turned inside out.

A patch of white skin that looks like a hand print, still wet with sunblock glowed around his newly burnt skin.

Mulder's car was nowhere to be seen.

They sat around his body, waiting for Hotty to wake up.

"That's a nice butt there."

"The word is butte Mulder!" She spun around. "Where the hell have you been?"

Mulder looked down at Pendrell's body.

"You know he has a screen saver of you?" Mulder asked archly.

"What?"


Collision.

It was bound to happen. Rory could see that. It was building on the walk back to the Mulder's car. Scully's walk was full of stiff movements, every step sparked fire. Mulder's shoulders were slouched and resigned. Agent Pendrell hung back, staring up at the sky.

Who knew what was normal for these two? Perhaps staring into the abyss for to long may make you a monster, but it may also make you afraid of the ones who stand watching with you.

Rory wasn't sure if she was a minor player in their story or they minor players in hers. Sometimes it isn't good to be a minor character as they get killed off quickly in stories like these. But to be a main player doesn't mean you'll make it alive to the end unscarred.

Rory did know that she was not a permanent part of this team.

So, when it happened, Rory pulled up a rock and nibbled quietly on one of her Pop Tarts.

It happened when Scully stubbed her foot, again, on a hidden cactus. The needles slammed backwards into the plant; sap started to ooze out of the wound.

"Damn it Mulder, would you say something? Anything!"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. How about 'I'm sorry'?"

"I said thank you."

"Mulder," she spewed something from between her teeth. "When is it going to end?"

"End, end what?"

"This! Everything!" She turned away and looked off into the distance, hugging herself. "I want a life! I don't want to have to worry about my relatives- my pets getting killed! We're never going to know everything, let's just back off while we still can."

"That's exactly what they want us to think!

Don't you get it?"

"Get it? Mulder, listen. They have killed your father, my sister. They're dead. My dog is dead Mulder! And who knows, maybe they do have your sister," she paused. "But this isn't a war! People are dead because of us. People we don't even know. People die because we ask questions. Don't you see?"

"Don't you want to know the truth?" he asked. "Because of what they've put us through?"

"Did it ever occur to you that there are some things that we'll never know? Maybe that we don't want to know?"

"Like why there are air bubbles chicken McNuggets?"

"Stop it! Why can't you ever just answer me?"

Scully turned back to see Mulder staring at the ground, his shoes scuffing the sand lightly. She pressed further. "You know, lately, every time I go to perform an autopsy, I think to myself, what if you're next. What if you are lying on that slab. What if I have to cut you open to find out how they killed you?"

He had no answer.

"Too many people have died because of us," she said slowly. "I'm sick of it."

Fox looked up slowly, his eyes wide and staring despite the glare of the sand and sun.

Scully turned away slowly and spoke into wind.

"And the worst part is that today, you could have died, and I thought that I was too late."

Her words drifted back through the air towards him.

"I'm sorry."

"Look, Mulder. Either from now on you tell me everything, and I mean everything that you think and do or we're finished. Finished, do you hear me!"

He said it again, louder this time so that it carried above the wind.