AN: I wasn't sure if it was going to be two or three parts. It looks like it's definitely going to be three.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy this part! Let me know what you think!

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Scully sighed in her sleep and shifted next to Mulder. She rolled, still wrapped in his arms, and searched out a more comfortable position. She found it, and settled against him. From her new chosen position, resting on her back, he could see her face. She was still asleep. She hadn't woken.

They'd gotten a room with two beds so that, when they turned in the information in for reimbursement, there would be no questions asked. The second bed, however, hadn't been touched. In the morning, Mulder would ruffle the sheets and blankets for the benefit of the cleaning service.

The lamp in the cheap motel room was still on. They'd never turned it off. Mulder had intended to turn it off at some point he'd simply designated as "later," but he didn't want to move away from her. He didn't want to risk waking her and, more than that, he didn't want to stop holding her. Even if he was almost certain that his left arm was dead, he wanted her to remain as close to him as she was—drawing comfort from him as she slept.

Mulder's body still buzzed from the sex. He could still feel his lips stinging where Scully had playfully nipped them with her teeth. He could still close his eyes and feel her wrapped around him as she rode him, searching out something in particular that she was craving. He could still taste her, even, on his tongue, her flavor lingering from when he'd worked to get the perfect release, for her, that he wanted her to have. His mind still felt pleasantly fuzzy from the chemical rewards of shared orgasms.

Scully had playfully protested sex with Mulder when he'd suggested it. She'd teasingly suggested that it wasn't right to have sex together when they were supposed to be focused on the details of a homicide case. Mulder's argument, of course, was that there was hardly ever a moment, between them, when they weren't investigating something. He had argued that he thought better after the burst of dopamine that he got from an orgasm, and his mind was cleared and opened to ideas by the oxytocin that drew him to savor the moments, afterward, when they could simply remain close to one another. He'd reminded Scully, too, that she slept better after the release of both of those chemicals—and she seemed tired—so he would be sure that she got the greatest dose she could of each.

Mulder nuzzled the side of her face and kissed her cheek. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of her. The one hand he had that still felt like it even belonged to him, trailed gently down her body. He rested it on her chest, felt the steady intake and release of her breath, trailed it over her breast and felt the soft skin there, and moved it down, over her stomach, and let it slide until it came to rest on her hip. He moved her just the slightest bit closer to him, fully aware that there was really no room between them as it was.

There had been a few women in Mulder's life—probably too many by the estimations of quite a few people. There had never been any woman, though, like Dana Scully.

It was so early—too soon, he knew—in their relationship for him to feel the way he felt, but he felt it, just the same. He didn't dare to tell Scully everything he felt, for fear that she'd run away, but he was already thinking of all the times he'd heard other men talk about being tied down to one woman—the old ball and chain—and how they laughed about it being, essentially, the end of life. Mulder was already beginning to daydream about how happy he would be to simply know that he would spend the rest of his life, just like this, falling asleep next to Scully. He was already convinced that he'd consider himself the luckiest man in the world to be, as they said, tied to her.

Mulder kissed the side of her face again. He nuzzled against her. She hummed—moaned, maybe—in her sleep. She was still asleep, though. He watched her face draw up in concern. It was a physical response to something troubling happening behind her eyelids. He moved his undead hand back up her body and rubbed his fingers gently against her cheek.

"Shhhh," he whispered quietly into her ear, wondering if her mind could hear him. "It's OK, Scully. I'm here. I've got you."

He repeated the quiet promise of protection and comfort a few more times. Slowly, the tensing in her muscles relaxed. Her face relaxed. She moved on to another dream that must have been more peaceful than the one before. Mulder didn't know if it was his influence or not, but he liked to believe it was.

The dream reminded him B.J. Morrow and the case they'd been working with. He wondered what truth there might be to Scully's ponderings about whether or not the pregnancy—and, maybe some distressing feelings surrounding the pregnancy—might have something to do with B.J.'s visions. He wondered, in his own way, if the pregnancy might simply work as some kind of amplification system for the things to which B.J. might already be sensitive.

From there, as he started to grow tired, his head resting against the soft skin of Scully's shoulder and his forehead resting against her cheek, Mulder thought about the fact that something that he couldn't quite put his finger on had been different about Scully since they'd arrived in Aubrey. Something had been on her mind—something that had been stirred up by her interactions with B.J.

Scully was, at times, the greatest mystery ever to Mulder, though, and the one that he most wanted to solve. Still, even if he couldn't find the answer to every question that he had about the woman he loved, at least he could hold her while he slept. The light, he decided, closing his eyes and snuggling into Scully, could wait.

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"You OK, Scully?" Mulder asked. "You look a little green around the gills."

"I'm fine," Scully said. She winced. Mulder didn't miss the expression. He only had to give her one look, and she caved. It had been easier than it normally was to get her to give him more than a dismissive answer. "That was the greasiest breakfast sandwich I think I've ever eaten."

Mulder's own stomach churned, but it wasn't the sandwich that had stirred his up.

"Not sitting right?" He asked. It was rhetorical. The look on her face said that it wasn't sitting right. He wasn't sure, but he thought she might be sweating a little. He was immediately concerned that this was at least a little more serious than he'd first thought when he'd started teasing her. "Hey—are you gonna be alright? You want me to pull over?"

"No," Scully said quickly. "No—we need to see this. Brian's waiting."

Mulder didn't pull over, but he also didn't interrupt the concentration that Scully seemed to be putting into looking out the window and frowning deeply at the passing scenery. They'd had breakfast and were just about to head back to the lab they'd been provided to use for their work when Brian Tillman had called.

When they got to the address provided, Mulder walked behind Scully and toward the building.

"Tillman said it looks like another murder like the one we've seen," Mulder said. "Same carving. Same everything."

"It's got to be a copycat," Scully said.

"I guess we'll see," Mulder ceded.

Brian Tillman met them at the door. B.J. wasn't there, and they were quickly filled in that she'd been attacked, herself, during the earliest hours of the morning. She was in the hospital now. Before allowing herself to be taken to the hospital, though, she'd insisted on communicating information to Brian about something she claimed to have learned from a dream. The information, it seemed, had turned out to be at least somewhat accurate. They all followed Brian as he led them down to where the body had been found. The body of the woman was covered with the typical, and expected, white sheet. The blood around the body was enough to indicate that there would have been no chance for survival. Brian walked down and uncovered the body by flinging back the sheet.

Scully's greasy breakfast sandwich got the best of her, when faced with a corpse that had "sister" cruelly carved into the chest, and she rushed back the way that they'd come with no word to any of them. Mulder quickly made an excuse for her—saying that breakfast hadn't settled well—and he'd handled the preliminary inspection of the body and ordered that it be sent in for an autopsy. He'd made a few more suggestions to Brian about how they ought to proceed, and he'd heard what else Brian had to say about B.J.'s visions.

He waited, too, while Tillman took a call, and then he listened to the information that Brian had to share with him about another dream that B.J. had reported—and a "hunch" that had sent another officer off to investigate another possible crime scene.

Mulder found Scully outside.

"I see you're doing a phenomenal job of holding up the wall," he teased as he neared her. His teasing didn't get much of a smile out of her, though, and he had no other purpose for it than a smile, so he dropped it immediately. He offered her a handkerchief and she thanked him as she wiped her mouth with it. Concerned about her, and not at all about what anyone else might think, he reached a hand out and cradled her face. "Are you OK?" He asked.

"I'm fine," Scully said. "I just—needed some air. I'm sorry, Mulder."

"You'll get your chance to redeem yourself," Mulder said. "Once the breakfast sandwich is a distant memory. You've got an autopsy this afternoon. Come on—we've got a few things to check out in the meantime, if you think you're ready to say goodbye to your friend." He gestured toward the wall, and there was the slightest hint of amusement on Scully's features. He would take it, for now.

She left the wall and let herself into the car. Mulder didn't try to argue that he should open the door for her. Instead, he simply got in, buckled his own seatbelt, and cranked the car.

"Where are we going?" Scully asked. "The hospital?"

"Not yet," Mulder said. "B.J. identified her attacker as Cokely."

"The man who committed the murders in the forties?" Scully asked.

"One and the same," Mulder said.

"The man who needs an oxygen tank that we talked to a couple of days ago, Mulder?"

Scully didn't have to say it for Mulder to understand exactly what she was saying. It was all too bizarre. And it got stranger and stranger as the information piled up.

"We're going to pay a visit and talk to another of Cokely's victims," Mulder said. "While you were gone, Tillman got a phone call. It seems that B.J.'s had a busy night with visions. She saw two different victims, in two different locations. For both, she claims to have seen the same perpetrator. Now—we just saw victim number one. While we were looking at this one, though, Tillman sent a couple of his men to follow up on B.J.'s other lead."

"They found another body," Scully offered, filling in part of the story for Mulder.

"If B.J.'s correct, we'll find that they're the remains of Agent Ledbetter, who is believed to have died in the forties," Mulder said. "B.J. positively identified Cokely as her attacker, but she identified him from his mugshot taken in the forties."

"Cokely doesn't have the ability to time travel, Mulder," Scully said. "The only way that would be possible would be if—if it was someone who looked like Cokely."

"I've asked them to go ahead and run DNA on the samples they took from underneath B.J.'s fingernails," Mulder said. "I knew you'd support that idea. They're also going to run samples on the victim's body, in there, even before she's sent over for you to perform the autopsy."

"You don't believe we'll find out it's Cokely," Scully said.

"Maybe not Cokely, himself," Mulder said.

"A relative?" Scully asked. He didn't answer her, but she didn't need an answer. The wheels were already turning in her head. That was usually all he had to do—get Scully thinking, and she was bound to come up with a lot of ideas that, if nothing else, jump started Mulder's ability to think of other explanations. "All kinds of traits can be passed down biologically. There are even studies that are examining the possibility of inheriting trauma and memories from our parents and grandparents. Maybe we could even inherit their psychosis. It's possible that whoever attacked B.J. simply looked like Cokely because they were, in some way, related to him."

"There was one woman to survive Cokely's attack in the forties," Mulder said. "And I've got a hunch that she might have something that helps us put together at least some of the pieces in this case."

Mulder drove for a while, following the directions that he'd memorized from Brian, and left Scully to chew over the information they were speculating about while he pondered something very different. He had to work up the courage, though, to bring his own thoughts to light—especially since he didn't want to be seen as insensitive to the events that were taking place.

As he'd told Scully before, though, between the two of them, they may never have a moment when there wasn't something happening that should have all of their attention.

"Do you believe in the visions and dreams now?" Mulder asked.

"I don't understand them," Scully said, "but I have to believe there's something to them. You could argue that B.J. might have been responsible for the death of that woman. You could even argue that she may have made it look like she was attacked, herself. But the fact of the matter is that she couldn't be responsible for those murders from the forties. She had to know about the location of the bodies in some way and, right now, a vision, or a dream, is the only explanation that we have. As of right this minute, though, I don't have an explanation for where those visions come from."

"What if—visions really do come because…we want to see something so badly, Scully? What if dreams are just what I said they were yesterday?"

Scully laughed quietly to herself.

"Did you dream about the answer to all of this last night, Mulder?" Scully asked. "Because—I know that's what was on your mind most of the night."

Mulder's heart pounded in his chest. He reached his hand over. He touched Scully's thigh. He found her hand and caught it in his. She let him hold it.

"It wasn't on my mind nearly as much as maybe it should have been," Mulder admitted.

"You eat, sleep, and breathe work," Scully said, entirely without accusation.

"Not as much as I used to," Mulder said, defending himself. "Not in the same way. And last night, I had very different things on my mind. Maybe it's the Black Motel that stirs them up, but I had some pretty deep dreams, too, Scully."

Her hand tightened around his and released its pressure quickly—almost like a spasm.

"What'd you dream?" Scully asked. "You know—dreams can usually be explained by things that are on our minds. Things we've heard, or thought, or interacted with throughout the day. Ideas that are already in our minds when we go to bed."

"Maybe," Mulder ceded. "Everything I dreamed I can explain away with rational thought and some careful attempt to make it nothing more than the manifestation of things we talked about…or I thought about…yesterday."

"But you'd rather not explain things away with rational thought," Scully offered, her voice going quieter with each word. "What did you dream, Mulder?"

Mulder smiled to himself. The dream had been wonderful. It had been one of the nicest dreams that he'd ever had. Still, when he'd woken from the dream, he'd woken in something like a state of panic. If the dream were true, it meant a lot of things would be changing, dramatically, in his life. It meant there was a great deal for them to handle—hopefully together.

Still, he smiled to himself because the dream—although a prediction of a lot of possible work to be done in their relationship—had been beautiful.

He squeezed Scully's hand.

The little country road was quiet. Linda Thibedeaux was quite old, but she'd still be there when they arrived, even if it took them a few minutes longer than they'd expected to get there. Mulder chose a place to pull off where the ground was even and they'd run no risk of getting the tires stuck. He slowed the car and pulled it gently off onto the shoulder.

"Mulder? What are you doing?" Scully asked when Mulder switched off the engine.

He laughed to himself. She almost seemed afraid. He knew she couldn't be afraid of him. He'd never given her any reason to fear him, and he never would. Her palpable anxiety only made him feel a little more nervous as it communicated, almost directly to his nervous system, that she might have already suspected what he was going to say—and she might be confirming it without even knowing that's what she was doing.

Mulder unbuckled his seatbelt so that he could face her easily and without restraint. He reached a hand out and touched her face. For a second, she was wide-eyed. Then she relaxed, as she often did, when he touched her. It was the same as the night before when, in her dream, she'd found some comfort and escape, from whatever she'd feared, by hearing his voice and recognizing his presence.

"I dreamed about you, Scully," Mulder said.

She let him see the smile.

"You saw me all day, Mulder," Scully offered. "And I was the last person you saw last night—unless you had other things going on once I went to sleep."

He returned the smile, his churning stomach making him feel a bit uneasy.

"I dreamed we were together," Mulder said. "Really together. Married. Domestic. Comfortable. The whole nine yards, Scully." He laughed to himself. "And before you try to explain that away for me, let me do it for you. I was thinking about—how much I love you, just before I went to sleep. I was thinking about what the future might hold for us. If I'm lucky." The smile he got, this time, flashing across her lips was softer.

"I love you, too," she said, almost whispering the words. "But I don't—understand…"

"I saw you in the dream, Scully," Mulder said. "But there was one little difference between you in the dream and—I fell asleep thinking about the fact that I've been feeling like there's something different about you. Something going on with you." He forced a smile at her because she'd begun to look a little uncomfortable. Her eyes were darting around, mostly watching his lips for signs of something. "Call it a sixth sense," he teased, to put her at ease. "I wanted to know what was going on with you, and the dream showed me something that was different."

"I haven't changed," Scully offered.

"You were pregnant," Mulder said. There was no reason to bite back the words. "In my dream, Scully? You were pregnant."

He saw the change in her expression.

"We talked about pregnancy yesterday," Scully said. "About B.J.'s pregnancy. The effects of pregnancy on women, and the changes they can undergo as a result of chemical and hormonal imbalances."

"It wasn't B.J. in my dream, Scully," Mulder said. He held her hand in his. His heart pounded. He knew the answer he wanted, even as he found the words to ask the question—and it wasn't an answer that would release him from any of the responsibility that seemed to be on the verge of falling on his shoulders. "Are you—pregnant?"

Scully looked away from him, but he'd already seen the answer, as plain as day, when it flashed across her face.

"I haven't had much time to deal with it," Scully said, her voice sounding like it was cracking a little. "I didn't know how you would feel about it…so soon."

"How I would feel about it? Scully?"

He turned her face back toward him. There were tears pooling around her lower lids, but she was willing them not to escape. He moved, free from his seatbelt, to kiss her, and she pulled away from him. He asked her, with nothing more than a look, to explain herself.

"Mulder, I was just sick," she said.

Mulder laughed to himself.

"For once in my life, Scully," Mulder said, "I don't care at all." She allowed him a tight-lipped kiss, and he accepted it for what it was. What meant more to him, in that moment, than the kiss had, was the sigh that escaped her lips when the kiss had broken. She'd clearly drawn in a breath and released it, sending out some of the anxiety that had clearly been choking her. "A baby. We've got a lot to talk about."

"We do," Scully agreed. "But—first, we've got to solve a murder. I think we've got a little while to handle everything that goes with the baby."