IV

There was nothing in Flatwoods, West Virginia. Scully couldn't say she was surprised by this. The entire town consisted of a scant collection of fast food restaurants, a few houses, and a whole lot of open farmland. That was it. Despite a wooden sign at the edge of town proclaiming it the "Home of the Green Monster," there was absolutely no evidence that such a thing had ever existed, let alone returned after a forty-year hiatus to terrify the locals. The only real mystery was that Mulder refused to see it. For four days, Scully trailed after him through fields and forests, mobile homes and houses, diners and gas stations. She listened to him wheedle stories out of residents who were varying degrees of unfriendly, if not downright hostile. People who, for the most part, didn't appear to have the faintest idea what her partner was talking about when he inquired about shadowy creatures in the woods. The few that did know seemed more concerned about being made to look foolish than ending up the victims of an alien probing.

The subjects of their case, a married couple in their forties who claimed to have seen the monster while hunting for morel mushrooms the previous spring, changed their stories at least as often as they changed the methadone patches on their upper arms. Each day Scully sat while Mulder went over their accounts of the sighting again.

And again.

And again.

And each day her patience wore a little thinner.

"These people are a couple of tweakers, Mulder," she finally told him.

"That's an unfair stereotype," he protested. They were having dinner on their fourth—and, Scully hoped, final—evening in Flatwoods. Having exhausted the familiar chain restaurants, Mulder had dragged her to the only other promising-looking game in town: a diner called Maude's Place.

Now, he pointed a French fry at her accusingly and added, "You're making snap judgments about them based on the locale. If this were San Francisco, or New York, or Boston, you wouldn't say that."

Actually, she would. She had watched the McDonoughs pick and twitch through every one of their interviews. She'd seen their dilated pupils and the sores at the corners of their mouths. She had heard their stories, which only served to highlight their tenuous grasps on reality—and she knew, without a doubt, that methadone was the least of their vices.

But there was no point in arguing with Mulder. He would follow this road to its inevitable conclusion, and he would figure it out. But she couldn't rush him. Experience had taught her that.

So, she drank her coffee and ordered a slice of pie that she forgot to eat, and she watched him sort through the scads of notes and images he had collected over the past few days. And she tried to be patient.

But the mention of Boston made her think of Pendrell, and her attention began to drift. She hadn't tried calling Pendrell while they were in Flatwoods; she wasn't sure why. Although she had consistently forgotten to ask him for them herself, both his home and cell numbers were listed in the FBI directory. She knew he wouldn't mind that she had looked them up. Hell, he would probably be delighted that she had looked them up. And she was concerned about him, if only from a purely medical standpoint. If she called, she told herself, she could assess the sound of his breathing over the phone. She could ask him how his respiratory therapy was going. She could find out if he had gained weight, or if he'd gotten the dressing removed from his chest. She could reassure herself. She could let herself be reassured.

But she didn't call. She just couldn't bring herself to do it.

She toyed with her cell phone, wondering if perhaps there was something fundamentally wrong with her. She could face kidnappers, serial killers, and literal monsters and not lose much sleep over any of them. Yet the idea of fostering a real human connection with someone decent and good—someone very likely worthy of it—left her feeling anxious and out of control. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to know he was all right.

But she wasn't sure she wanted to want that.

Mulder was more than enough to think about, to worry over. Why should she burden herself more? It was foolish, she thought. Especially now. It was shortsighted and it was selfish—

"Scully?" Mulder looked up from his notes, distracting her from her own thoughts.

"What?"

"I'd like to go to the woods again."

The sentence hadn't fully left his mouth when Scully let out a groan. "Mulder, why?" Because they had been to that spot half a dozen times already and they hadn't found a damn thing.

"Scully, I know you think these people aren't trustworthy, but you saw the pictures. Something was out in the woods that night. They have proof."

"They have a handful of extremely blurry images of a shadow, Mulder."

"A shadow of what, though? That's the question."

Scully leaned back in her chair, studying the excitement in his face. Six months ago, she might have found his blind devotion to the idea charming.

"An owl, maybe? The shape of the face would fit…and the gliding movement they described. Whatever it was, it wasn't a monster—or an alien," she added.

"You're so sure."

"About this particular case? Yes, I am. These people are looking for attention, Mulder, and they found it in you. There's no monster here."

Mulder looked hurt by her words. "You know what your problem is, Scully," he began. And she braced herself for a soliloquy on faith and its connection to the supernatural.

Then he stopped, and his hazel eyes widened almost imperceptibly. Scully whipped her head around to see if someone had pulled a gun on them.

And then she felt the blood.

"Fuck."

"Let me help you." Mulder grabbed a wad of napkins from the dispenser and reached for her, but he was clumsy. His elbow brushed against her glass and tipped it over, spilling water all over his paperwork. "Fuck!" Now he said it. It would have been funny under different circumstances.

"I've got this; you get that," Scully told him. She slid out of the booth and jogged toward the ladies' room with a napkin held to her face.

Inside, the facilities were filthy and poorly lit. Scully twisted the handle at the only sink and lukewarm water issued forth in a feeble drizzle that smelled faintly of sulfur.

I'll probably end up with hepatitis next.

She stuck paper towels under the water anyway, figuring that the hepatitis couldn't possibly kill her before the cancer did, and, anyway, she had to clean herself up. Her lips and chin were a mess.

Two nosebleeds in less than a week. It might just be a one-off. A fluke. It might be a reaction to the humidity of the West Virginia spring, or the copious amounts of pollen in the woods. It might be from the stress of this ridiculous case.

Or, it might mean that the cancer was progressing. Dr. Donovan had called the tumor's growth "negligible" at her last appointment. But what did that mean, really? A millionth of a millimeter sounded like nothing until it was pressing against the capillaries in one's nasopharynx. Maybe the tumor's interference had become such that her nose would bleed frequently from now on. Maybe this was going to be her life.

Until it wasn't anymore. Until it ended.

The face in the mirror crumpled, and Scully fought hard not to give in to the impulse to cry. Because she wasn't weak, damn it. She wasn't going to let this thing beat her.

"Scully?"

She lifted her head at the sound of her name. According to her watch, almost a quarter of an hour had passed since she left the table.

"Are you all right?" Mulder's voice sounded faint, but fearful. Scully knew he was seconds away from kicking down the door. His usual method of problem-solving—just plow right in like a bull through a China shop and hope for the best.

"I'm fine, Mulder." But Scully knew that she didn't sound fine. She sounded angry. All of a sudden, she was angry. She was so mad she could have reached into her pocket and thrown her cell phone at the door.

But she didn't.

Instead, she smoothed her hair and straightened her clothes; she buttoned her jacket to cover the water spots on her blouse.

And then she opened the door for him.

"All set?" Her smile was so stiff it hurt her face.

Mulder held a sheaf of sodden printouts in his fist. His eyes were tired and anxious. "Sh—should we call a doctor?" he asked. His free hand hovered over her arm as if asking for permission to touch it.

"I am a doctor," Scully answered. She pushed past him and walked back to the dining area. A busboy was wiping down their booth, which meant Mulder must have paid the bill already. She strode by it without pausing and he trailed along behind, uncharacteristically quiet. Out the door and across the gravel parking lot to their rental car—crunch, crunch, crunch—without a single word spoken between them. It might have been a record.

It occurred to Scully to walk to the driver's side of the car for a change. To make a stand for herself, to take the wheel. Mulder never let her drive—

But she didn't do that, either.

For one thing, she didn't feel up to fighting him about it. For another, she was afraid that he wouldn't fight her. That he would do that thing where he was tender and accommodating, which was even worse than when he did that thing where he acted like an asshole. She didn't want him to do either. She just wanted him to behave normally, and to treat her normally and not like a hospice patient.

Her head began to hurt as she climbed into the passenger seat. The strange, singular throbbing that she knew was the tumor pressing down. She rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead and exhaled slowly.

Not tonight, damn it. Not in front of—

"We should probably get back to the motel." Mulder was glancing over as he spoke, dividing his time between her face and the highway in front of him. Scully tilted her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes, willing her features into a neutral position.

"If that's what you want." She tried not to sound too relieved, but the idea of spending another night wandering through tick-infested woods did not appeal.

"I think it's for the best," Mulder answered. He reached across the gearshift and took her hand. "I'll go back out to the forest alone. It's all right."

Scully was careful not to react to this. She didn't pull her hand away; she didn't even lift her head from the seat. After all, she wanted him to treat her normally, didn't she? Well, this was normal for him. For them. Mulder running off into the dead of night in pursuit of something absurd, while she waited for him with only the most vague understanding of what he had planned—this was what they did. It wasn't fair for her to say she wasn't okay with it now.

Still, she could tell that Mulder was struggling with it, his concern for her conflicting with his desire to find the truth. "You sure you'll be okay alone?" He was drumming his fingers against the steering wheel as he spoke, taking the final turn in their journey a little too sharply.

Scully opened her eyes. The motel loomed ahead in the darkness, its faded walls and empty parking lot somehow even more depressing because they were becoming so familiar to her. Mulder pulled the car into the usual spot, just between the entrances of their two rooms. Scully sighed.

"I'll be fine, Mulder. Will you?" Of course, she knew even before he answered. He would be perfect. There was no monster in those goddamn woods anyway.

"I just…" He looked at her with those eyes. His puppy look, she privately called it, even though it almost always accompanied the divulgence of something terrible—or something he believed to be terrible. Now was no exception. "I don't want to be a bad…"

A bad what? Scully wondered, but she knew he would never put it into words. He couldn't. And she found herself thinking about Pendrell again. I have lots of good friends; I don't need another one.

"You're not a bad anything, Mulder," she said. And she meant it, even though she knew it wasn't strictly true. "We're here to solve a case. I'm not going to think less of you for striving to do that."

He nodded slowly. Scully patted his arm and opened the car door.

"I'll call you when I get back in." His voice sounded uncertain in a way that she hated. Mulder was never uncertain; in his profession, he couldn't afford to be. Only the cancer brought that out in him.

"If you want," she said, climbing out. "I might not answer right away. I think I'm going to take a bath."

"You should. You should rest." He spoke so gently, so unlike himself, that Scully felt another surge of irrational anger. She slammed the car door harder than necessary just to relieve her feelings.

"Good night, Mulder. And good luck."

She could feel the weight of his gaze on her back as she walked to her door, so she kept her head up, her spine straight. Because she knew, without having to look, that he would wait until she was safely inside before he drove away.

What she didn't know was why he thought it would make a difference. Mulder couldn't keep her safe anymore. No one could.

The motel bathtub was too shallow for soaking; Scully was irritated with herself for having forgotten that. She opted for a shower instead, standing under the blessedly adequate stream of hot water until her skin lobstered and the pounding in her head eased back into minor discomfort.

Afterward, she tried to summon the energy to drag out her laptop and type a few paragraphs in her case report, but it was no good. The assignment felt too meandering, too pointless, to commit to words. Anyway, the headache had left her tired. She curled up in bed to stare at the television instead. The local station was showing a snowy "Thursday Night Movie" edit of Escape from the Planet of the Apes. Mulder would be sorry he missed it.

At half-past nine, her cell phone rang, pulling her out of a doze.

"Scully." She tried to stifle a yawn as she spoke.

"Dana?"

Drowsy as she was, a smile spread across her face at the sound of her name. Quickly, she pulled herself into a sitting position and reached for the remote to mute the TV.

"Sean."

Pendrell must have caught the note of surprise in her voice, because his own became just a little more diffident. "I—I found your number in my cell," he explained. "From returning calls at the lab. I guess I should have asked first, but I…Well, I hope it's okay that I…"

"Of course it's okay," she reassured him. Then, a little wryly, "Actually, I looked you up in the directory for the same purpose, so I don't suppose I could mind without being something of a hypocrite."

Ten full seconds of silence followed. Scully knew the effect the words must have had on him, and she didn't try to prompt him. Instead, she listened to the sound of his breathing, the faint beat of music playing somewhere in the background. It took her a moment to recognize the song.

"Is that 'Love Rollercoaster?'" She found herself laughing at the incongruity of it—shy Agent Pendrell listening to raucous 1970's funk while he struggled to find something to say to her.

"It happens to be, yes."

The way he said it—with a kind of obvious put-on dignity—made her laugh even harder.

"I never would have taken you for a fan of the Ohio Players, Sean."

"Red Hot Chili Peppers, actually, and it's a good cover." But he laughed, too, as if conceding to the ridiculousness of the song. Scully had forgotten how nice his laugh was and how easy it was to laugh with him. She could feel the knotted muscles at the base of her skull beginning to relax for the first time in days.

"It's really good to hear from you," she told him.

"Yeah?"

"I kept meaning to call but…" She trailed away, at a loss as to how to finish.

"It's all right," he said. "You've been busy. Are you still in West Virginia?"

"For tonight. I'm hoping we can wrap things up tomorrow and head home."

"You sound ready. Isn't the investigation going well?"

"It hasn't been very productive," she admitted. He was being so kind, so intuitive, that part of her wished she could go on, that she could vent all her frustrations about the case, her partner, her job, life in general, death in particular. She knew he wouldn't think less of her for it if she did.

But she also knew that wouldn't be fair to him. Or to Mulder, either, for that matter. So she said, instead, "Actually, I'm ready to think about something else for a while. Tell me about your life."

"My life?" Pendrell seemed at a loss as to how to answer. His life was evidently not something he found particularly newsworthy.

"Tell me how you're feeling. You don't sound as hoarse."

"Oh, I'm all right. I'm supposed to start taking walks every day…to build up my lung function." She could hear him fiddling with the radio as he spoke, switching stations as rapidly as Mulder surfed channels on TV.

"How is that going?"

"It's boring. I'd like to get back to work."

Scully thought of him in the Sci-Crime lab—his quick movements, his quick mind. He must be miserable stuck at home, she realized suddenly. It must be driving him crazy.

"How long do you expect it will be?" she asked.

"A good two weeks according to my doctor. Then light duty." He gave a chuckle and added, "Whatever that means. I told her I work in a forensics lab; it's all light duty."

Scully knew that wasn't true, but she liked the self-deprecating way he said it. She liked, too, the impatience she heard in his words. The desire to be active and useful was something she could appreciate.

"Well, we'll certainly be glad to have you back at the lab."

"You will?"

Scully had spoken without much consideration, but Pendrell sounded so flattered she found herself elaborating. "The other techs aren't as versatile," she told him. "They aren't as thorough. There's a reason Agent Mulder and I always ask for you."

Pendrell made a soft sound in his throat. "Well that's—"

He didn't finish, but Scully thought she knew what he meant. She lay back against her pillow and smiled.

"So what are you doing?"

"You mean right now? Besides talking to you?" He gave the matter what she thought was an inordinate amount of consideration. "Nothing, really. Listening to music. I've been having trouble sleeping."

"Are you uncomfortable?"

"Not really. It's more like…when I go to sleep I dream about it. That night." He forced a laugh. "It's probably stupid."

"Of course it's not stupid. It's natural; it will pass." But Scully knew she was lying to him. Years after the fact, she still dreamed about her abduction. Decades after the fact, Mulder still dreamed about Samantha. Some traumas had lasting effects; some wounds would not heal. It made her sad to realize that she had given Pendrell his first permanent scar. She stared up at the water-spotted ceiling and wished she had the words to tell him how much she regretted that.

Pendrell had finally settled on a new station: a Paul McCartney sound-alike singing about starting a revolution from his bed.

"Can I ask you something, Sean?"

"Sure."

"How did you know you wanted to work for the Bureau?"

He hesitated. "You want to know the truth?"

"Of course."

"I didn't. They recruited me."

"You're kidding." Scully was impressed. The FBI rarely bothered looking for employees; qualified applicants came to them. "How did that happen?" she asked.

"They contacted me when I was finishing grad school at Northwestern. There was a shortage of qualified people applying for the lab, I guess. I was getting my PhD in biotechnology, so they must have thought I was a good candidate."

"You must have been thrilled."

He laughed and turned up the radio a little. "Well, my dad was excited."

His dad, the Lieutenant Colonel. Scully couldn't remember exactly what he looked like, but she pictured him as something like her own father. Ahab in an Army uniform. "And you weren't excited?" she asked Pendrell.

"It isn't that. I was working on my dissertation; I hadn't considered what would come after it. I didn't know what I wanted, so when he seemed so pleased I just went along with it and enrolled in the Academy. I'm happy that I did," he added quickly. "I love my job."

"Then you're fortunate." Scully spoke with more bitterness than she intended. She could feel Pendrell's surprise, his concern, from almost three hundred miles away.

"You don't love your job?" he asked softly.

"I used to. Sometimes I still do. It's taken a lot of out of me." She touched her forehead as she spoke. Although the headache was nearly gone now, the spot between her eyes felt tender, like a bruise.

Pendrell was quiet for a moment. Scully imagined him chewing on his bottom lip as he thought of something to say. It might have been annoying, that premeditation; she might have distrusted it. Except she knew him now, and she knew that whatever consideration he gave his words was only because he cared about her reaction to them.

"You've put a lot into it," he said finally. And she smiled in spite of herself, knowing that he was silently kicking himself for being so awkward.

"That, too," she agreed.

"Dana, for what it's worth…"

"What?"

"I think you're brilliant at what you do." His voice dropped very low then, barely competing with the guitars in the background as he went on, "And the things you put into it—they make a difference in the world. Even if it doesn't always seem that way, they do."

For the second time that evening, Scully felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes. Not from sadness this time, or pain, or fear, but some indefinable emotion that made the ache in her heart ease just a little bit.

"That's actually worth a lot, Sean," she said. "Thank you."

"Hey, any time. Any time at all." And even though she couldn't see his face, Scully knew that he was smiling at her.