V

It was almost four a.m. before Mulder got back to the motel. Scully heard him in her sleep, the slam of the car door penetrating a dream about cruising along the Chesapeake Bay with her family. It was a good dream. She could taste the salt air and feel the solid warmth of her father's shoulder as she braced against him when the boat began to heel. She wanted to stay there, but something—duty, or loyalty, or even just plain old force of habit—forced her eyes to open. She sat up and looked at the clock.

Fucking Mulder.

For a moment, she was tempted to just roll over and go back to sleep. But she knew that she wouldn't be able to do that even if she tried. So, she crawled out of bed and pulled on her robe and slippers, and then she went outside and knocked on Mulder's door.

He opened it immediately, a brown plastic ice bucket dangling from one hand, his mouth half open in surprise. "Scully, it's almost four in the morning. Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"I could say the same to you." She paused. "Mulder, what the hell happened to you?" Because besides being covered in mud, he was also sporting an impressive shiner over his left eye.

Mulder shrugged. "My flashlight crapped out on me halfway back to the car," he said sheepishly. "I stumbled down an embankment and then I sort of…ran into a tree…before I could catch myself."

"You ran into a tree?"

"The ground was wet and I had my momentum behind me. I'm lucky I didn't break my ass in the bargain."

Maybe it was residual sleepiness, but the mental image his words evoked struck Scully as wildly funny. She found herself laughing at him as heartily as she had laughed at Pendrell some six hours before.

Mulder watched her with a bemused smile. "Well, I'm glad my misfortune could bring you a little joy, Agent Scully."

"Always," she assured him. But when her giggles subsided, she reached up to touch the edge of his cheekbone. "It looks pretty swollen. You should put some ice on it."

He waved the bucket at her. "Already on it, doc."

"I'll go with you," Scully offered.

Mulder didn't argue with her. She knew he wouldn't.

They walked along the covered breezeway to a little alcove that housed the vending machines. When they got there, Scully leaned against the chipped stucco wall as Mulder examined the ice machine. At some point, the cooler must have malfunctioned, because the mound of loose ice chips in the bin had melted and then refrozen, leaving a solid slab that looked like a miniature glacier—something not exactly easy to remove with the metal serving scoop the motel provided.

Mulder looked over at Scully with a sigh. "That's Murphy's Law at work again," he deadpanned.

"Do you want to try to find another ice machine?" Scully asked. "There might be a gas station or something near the highway."

"I think I can manage." He set the bucket in the middle of the slab and picked up the serving scoop.

Scully waited a bit. Then, when it became obvious Mulder would not volunteer the information, she asked, "So what did you find in the woods tonight, Mulder?"

Mulder gave the ice an experimental jab with the metal scoop. "Not much," he admitted. A few slivers of ice fell free, so he began chiseling in earnest. The loud, scraping sound that followed sent shivers down Scully's spine. She winced.

"So, does that actually mean not much…or does it mean nothing?"

He looked over his shoulder at her. Scully couldn't quite tell if his pout was sincere or if he was teasing her, but his voice was even when he asked, "Do you want me to tell you that you were right, Scully? Is that what this is about?"

"I don't need you to tell me that." She watched his face carefully as she spoke, but his expression didn't change.

"No?" he asked. He turned back to the ice machine.

"No. As a matter of fact, I received a call this evening from a Deputy McGinnis at the Braxton County Sheriff's Office." The deputy had interrupted her conversation with Pendrell, which had been annoying even without taking into account what he had said.

Mulder stabbed at the ice a little harder than necessary. "Sheriff's Department," he repeated. "What did he want?"

"He wanted to pass along some information about the case," she said. "He wanted to let me know that he had picked up your friends the McDonoughs…and that they're currently being housed at the Central Regional Jail here in Flatwoods."

"What?" Finally, she had succeeded in getting a reaction out of him. Mulder dropped the ice scoop back into the bin with a clatter and turned to face her. "When did that happen?" he demanded.

"This evening. Around the time you headed into the woods, actually, although Deputy McGinnis didn't call me until a few hours after."

"And the charge?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Driving under the influence and possession of a controlled substance. Methamphetamine, to be precise." Mulder groaned and put a hand to his face as she went on. "Apparently, they were picked up when they drove down an off ramp onto Interstate 79. They continued in the wrong direction for almost half a mile before an off-duty state trooper happened to spot them. It isn't just that, though," she added.

"What do you mean?"

"I requested medical background checks on each of them."

Mulder's face reddened slightly.

"When did you do that?" he asked.

"Two days ago. I received the results via email this evening."

"And?"

She drew a breath. "And they aren't exactly surprising. Both of them have been under psychiatric treatment over the past ten years. As it happens, they met each other in a ward. At the Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital, a state-run facility in Huntington, West Virginia."

"Victims of abduction often experience psychiatric symptoms," Mulder began, shaking his head. Scully cut him off.

"They aren't victims of an abduction, Mulder—or even of some random visitation from a woodland monster. Not even close. He's schizophrenic, diagnosed in 1988. According to his chart, he's prone to paranoid delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thinking."

"What about her?"

"Schizoaffective disorder. Among other things, her chart describes her as 'fantasy prone' and 'easily led.'"

"I suppose it's a good thing you requested those charts, then. Isn't it?" Mulder spoke without emotion, but anger seeped out of every pore.

Scully crossed her arms over her chest and stared back at him. "You think I shouldn't have?" she challenged.

"I'm just wondering why you thought it was necessary—particularly since you didn't bother informing me before you did it."

"It was necessary because those people are neither rational nor honest, Mulder! Anyone could see that except you!" Scully hadn't meant to shout, but it was a relief to speak so plainly. A relief to let him know how frustrated she felt.

Mulder looked at her as though she had hit him.

"You could have talked to me about it, Scully. You didn't have to go behind my back."

"I did talk to you," she answered wearily. "You just didn't listen."

Silence. Mulder turned back to the ice machine. He picked up the scoop and began gouging at the ice as if he wanted to hurt it, although his voice was calm when he said, "Well, I've listened now. You've made your point. I'm sorry I wasted your time."

"I never said that, Mulder." As much as she longed to be free of this ridiculous wild-goose chase of a case, Scully would never have told him that. It would have been too cruel. Especially now, when her time was so limited.

"Maybe not. But it's true, isn't it? We both know that."

"What do you want me to say, Mulder?"

"I don't want you to say anything." Giving up on the ice, Mulder hefted the half-full bucket into the crook of his arm. He didn't look at her as he moved out of the alcove and back to the walkway.

"There's no reason to be angry," she said, following him.

"I'm not angry," Mulder insisted, although he still sounded as if he were. His head was down, his words directed at their feet as they headed back down the walkway. Scully had to trot to keep up with his long strides.

"No? What are you, then?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "That's it. That's all."

"Sorry for what ? It was a bad lead. It happens."

"Not the case," he snapped. "I'm not talking about the case . God, if it was just that I wouldn't even—"

They had reached the door to his room now, but Scully knew that wasn't why he had stopped talking. She caught him by the arm as he reached for the doorknob.

"What?" she asked. "Tell me."

He stood there, shoulders slumped and head drooping, looking so defeated that, for a moment, Scully's anger drained away and she wished she could pull him into her arms.

Instead, she reached up and touched his chin. He lifted his head, but he still wouldn't quite meet her gaze. His eyes looked wet and sad in the dim light from the parking lot, but they persisted in focusing on everything except her.

"I wouldn't…" His voice cracked a little over the words, but it was soft now. Gentle. He cleared his throat and went on hoarsely, "I never would have had this happen to you. You do know that, don't you?"

The cancer, she realized. And something inside her seized with a pain that was almost physical. That was what this was about, not the case at all. Not really even about her. He felt guilty about the cancer.

She dropped her hand to her side.

"You didn't 'let' this happen to me, Mulder. You aren't responsible for it."

"If you hadn't followed me—if you'd kept to the assignment they first gave you—"

"I chose to follow you. I don't regret that." Scully looked out at the empty highway as she spoke. And she meant what she said. She did.

But—

Mulder shifted his feet, turning so that his body angled toward the motel room and away from Scully. The space separating them couldn't have been more than half a foot, but it suddenly felt enormous. Impassable. Yet what hurt her most was the way his voice changed, became almost normal, as he said, "Let me grab a couple hours of sleep and we'll head home. No point in wasting more time here."

"No, there isn't." She cleared her throat. "But I don't want to wait that long."

He paused. One hand on the doorframe now, and the other wrapped around his room key. Scully could see by the set of shoulders alone that he had no idea what she meant, so she clarified.

"We'll go home now, as soon as you get cleaned up and packed. I'll drive."

The whole line of his back tensed, then. Scully tensed, too. She felt as if she were waiting for a battle to start, maybe even as though she wanted one to begin.

But all he said was, "Okay."

"Okay," Scully echoed.

And she wondered why it didn't feel like more of a victory.

Almost five hours: that was the length of their journey home. They spent the majority of it in silence. Mulder slept, or pretended to sleep, while Scully navigated the long stretch of highway with only the radio to keep her company.

At a doughnut shop outside of Hagerstown, Maryland, she pulled over for a cup of coffee and a chance to use the restroom. Mulder was still lying in the backseat when she returned, his long legs folded at right angles to accommodate the small space, his mouth slack. He looked dead to the world, so she didn't feel awkward about answering Pendrell's call when her cell phone rang a few minutes later.

He just wanted to know how things were going, he said shyly. He'd woken up thinking about her.

"I'm, uh, on my way back to D.C. now, actually." Scully looked in the rearview mirror as she spoke, relieved to find Mulder's eyes still closed. She would have hated him to see the blush creeping across her face just then.

I woke up thinking about you.

Pendrell meant it innocently, of course. She was pretty sure of that. Everything about Pendrell was innocent. But it felt good, damn it, to have male attention for a change. To hear a man say he was thinking about her. To know a man cared.

They chatted about work and weekend plans for a while. Pendrell said he was having a few friends over that evening to celebrate completing his first full week of respiratory therapy. Nothing crazy, he said. He wasn't up to that much yet. Just takeout and maybe a movie. But if she would like to join them….

Scully was noncommittal in her answer, partly because she wasn't sure she wanted to meet his friends, but mostly because she enjoyed listening to him try to persuade her.

"I'm not very much fun at parties these days." She reached for her cup as she spoke, and the car began to drift alarmingly toward the center of the road. Quickly, she cradled her phone against her shoulder and corrected her steering. She even managed to do it without dumping her coffee into her lap—not an easy feat considering how distracted she felt by the conversation.

"It's not a party," Pendrell was saying. "It's just a few people hanging out. No pressure."

He said that, but meeting his friends felt like a lot of pressure to Scully. It felt like a declaration of his intent. She took a slug of coffee to give herself time to think before answering.

"It's a long drive today…and I have a report to finish when I get back…"

"Sure. Yeah, of course. And if you don't want to come tonight, maybe we could plan something tomorrow. Just us, I mean. Anything you want."

That sincerity was what got to her. It was impossible to refuse the man out of hand when he was always so damn accommodating.

"I didn't say I didn't want to come," she began. Then a movement in the rearview mirror caught her attention.

In the back of the car, Mulder was sitting upright, awake.

Watching her.

Fuck.

"I'm going to have to hang up now," she told Pendrell. "I think my cell battery is about to die."

"Oh."

Pendrell sounded startled by her abrupt change in tone, maybe even a little hurt by it, so she went on. "If I can make it tonight….what time should I be there?"

"Eight o'clock?" He said it as though he needed her permission. "Or any time after that. Or, hey, any time before that, too. I just—I really—" He stopped.

And even though Scully knew Mulder was listening, she couldn't keep herself from asking curiously, "You what?"

"I would really like to see you, Dana."

An unexpected shiver of pleasure went down her spine, at that. The way his voice dropped an octave when he said her name. That little edge of yearning in his tone.

"I'd like that, too," she said softly. "I'll—I'll do my best."

She told him goodbye and tossed her phone onto the passenger seat. Behind her, Mulder was busy rocking his head from side-to-side as if trying to loosen a crick in his neck. For a long time, neither of them said anything.

Then, "Who were you talking to, Scully?"

The words were deceptively casual, but Scully knew his hackles were up. She shrugged.

"It was, um, Agent Pendrell." She didn't bother telling him it wasn't a Bureau-related call. She knew she didn't have to.

"Agent Pendrell. " The emphasis Mulder placed on Pendrell's name was anything but flattering. Scully knew what he meant by it, what he was implying—

Agent Pendrell, huh? Is that really the best you can do?

—and, strangely, it was the slight to Pendrell that irritated her the most, not the insult to herself. She shot Mulder a look over her shoulder.

"What about him?" she asked.

Mulder shrugged.

"Nothing. He just seems a little young, that's all."

Pendrell was twenty-eight. Scully knew that because she had finally gotten around to asking him the night before. And it hadn't struck her as so terrible at the time. A five-year age gap between educated professionals wasn't anything at all, really. If he had been the older one, nobody would have given it a second thought.

Still—

"He is young," she admitted.

Mulder nodded. Rather complacently, Scully thought. She clenched her jaw.

"But so am I," she added pointedly.

Their eyes met in the mirror, but only for a second. Mulder looked away first.

"Yeah," he said. "I suppose you are."