APISON POLICE DEPARTMENT

2:31 PM

"There has to be some kind of mistake."

Harrison grimaces, palms up and splayed in apology. The desk next to him is stacked high with papers and manilla envelopes teetering precariously on top. "We thought so too, ma'am, so I had them run the results through the FBI database again. And, well… you're a 99.99% match."

Scully opens her mouth slightly to respond but doesn't know what to say. She turns to Mulder; he is perfectly composed. "But how could that be?"

Mulder squints, meeting Harrison's gaze steadily. The dark wood of the floor and wall paneling makes Mulder's eyes take on more of a brownish hue instead of his usual drab green. The effect is sobering; it darkens his whole face. "I'm assuming all of your lab equipment is up to date? All of your computer software?"

"Listen," Harrison says, pulling his mouth to the side and resting one hand on the nearest stack of papers. The whole tower wobbles a bit but ultimately stays upright. "I was skeptical at first, too. But the DNA doesn't lie. Now," he breathes in deeply, looking at Scully, "the question is how did your blood get on that knife?"

"I'm sure I don't have to tell you that Agent Scully is just as confused about that as you are." Mulder says shortly. He feels strangely energized after his previous anger with Scully, itching for a fight. If he weren't grounded by the soles of his feet, the charge running through him might electrocute someone.

The thing is, it makes some weird, perfect sense to him that the blood was identified as Scully's. He doesn't know why it didn't surprise him, but if he thinks about it, he realizes that his subconscious made the unlikely discovery long before he was even aware of it. He just… knew.

"Oh, don't misunderstand me!" Harrison says. He places a hand on his fleshy hip and rocks backwards slightly. "I'm not implying anything. It'd be easy enough to prove you weren't involved, if it ever came down to that." His genial wink and tone of voice suggests that he does, indeed, think it might come down to that. Scully swallows, irritated. His nonchalance is really pissing her off.

"I'd like you to run the blood tests again."

"But, ma'am, you don't understand." Harrison smiles, indulging her. Scully's blood boils at the condescension of his flippant little laugh, that special Good Old Boy brand of misogyny she'd encountered, memorably, right from the time she was eight, killed a snake with a BB gun, and vowed to everyone afterward that she would become a veterinarian. She clenches her jaw before Harrison even finishes his thought. "DNA evidence is concrete. When you test a sample, it-"

"I know how DNA works, dammit. I'm a scientist." Scully snaps, her body tense and taut as a rubber band. She pulls herself up to her full height, lips pursed and eyebrows drawn. "I am requesting, as a federal agent, that you run the test again. So I suggest you either do your job and run it again, sir, or I will do it myself."

Harrison puts his cap back on his head quietly, smoothes it down over his shorn hair. His neck reddens deeply; it climbs all the way up his chin and over his ears.

"I'll have the lab get right on that, ma'am." He says, and disappears into an outer room.

Mulder waits a beat and then lets out a long, low whistle. "Jesus, Scully. You castrated him." He is oddly proud. Mulder turns to her slightly, his excess of energy satiated for the moment as he gathers his suit jacket from the back of a hard wooden chair. He lowers his voice. "Do you think running the tests again will turn up anything different?" He's not exactly convinced; Scully can hear it in his voice. She doesn't answer him, just closes her eyes and touches her fingers to her sinuses. She thinks about all the other blood tests she's subjected herself to, lately, in hopes of getting different answers.

Scully cups one elbow and turns her necklace in her fingers mindlessly as Mulder puts his jacket on. She must have been quiet for too long, because he places a gentle hand on her shoulder and leans in. "Hey," he says, "don't worry about it. I'm sure they've got some pimply grad student back there doing all the labs. There's bound to be some errors, statistically." He gives her shoulder a squeeze. "Besides, we've got a hot date with some filing cabinets."

HAMILTON COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT

3:34 PM

Mulder's badge gets them access to an upstairs room with a few computers and a couple bookshelves, and a resigned admonition to "be quick, because we're closing in half an hour."

The room is well-lit; a row of tall windows covers one wall and the late afternoon sunlight coming in highlights the red in the hardwood floor. Scully sits at one of the computers, a giant, bulky thing that runs noticeably slower than her sleek, government-issued laptop back at the motel. She accesses the data profile from the desktop and begins skimming the information there. Mulder leans over her shoulder, reading, until Scully looks at him in a significant way. He sighs, places his hands behind his head and moves to a window.

He feels restless, full of radio static and electrical current, his extremities like coiled wire. There is something here he can't put his finger on. He closes his eyes. The feeling is grating, frustrating, like he knows he's missing something but he doesn't know what. He can almost feel the leftover hallucinogen still in his brain, dulling the knife edge of his intuition and making him sloppy.

He's not completely useless, however. It hasn't escaped his notice, for instance, that the severity of his seizures seem to be directly related to the time he has spent in or near the field. How exactly that ties in to the recent murder/kidnapping, the possible sighting of Sarah Kavanaugh, and Scully's DNA match, though… he's not sure yet.

"Look," Scully says quietly. She points to several charts wrapped in thick black paragraphs of text. "According to this, it looks like the frequency of cancer in Hamilton County is statistically insignificant when compared the state rate. Not just brain cancer, either; breast cancer, lung cancer… the numbers are fairly close to average, with brain cancer being relatively rare. Statistically speaking, Ruth Tedlow and April Stadler are anomalies."

"Hell of a coincidence that they've both got it, then."

Scully sighs. "Got any other theories?"

"Plenty. But if you mean about the cancer, then no." This casual remark is jarring to Scully's ears. The glibness with which they can discuss other people's cancer makes her throat feel dry and her stomach clench in guilt. She places her elbows on the computer desk and touches the fingers of one hand against her mouth, skimming the document until something catches her eye.

"Mulder, look at this. The Tedlows were cited during an inspection just last month for a roach infestation."

"So?"

"So, do you think maybe the pesticides used in the extermination could be causing the cancer? Formaldehyde is sometimes used in fumigations and it's a known carcinogen."

"But what about April Stadler, then? She was in the hospital for most of the last month, according to her husband."

She doesn't answer. They're both quiet for a long time, thinking, until Scully stands and stretches her back. "Let's call it a day, Mulder. I'm exhausted." She knows he thinks she's saying this for his benefit, because he's pushing himself too hard after this afternoon. And really, he'd be partially right. But the truth is, she is so physically tired and mentally drained, the unsettling DNA results from Harrison occupying every spare corner of her mind, that all she wants to do is cocoon herself in the starched white of the motel sheets and sleep for days. She looks up at him. "We'll interview Mrs. Stadler tomorrow."

Mulder starts to protest, then stops. A strange look crosses his face. "Scully." Awkwardly, he rests the tips of his fingers on her cheekbone and uses his thumb to wipe away the beginning of a nosebleed.

She pulls away quickly when she realizes what he is doing.

"It's okay, I'm fine." She says, standing and turning away from him and toward the door. She fishes in the pocket of her suit jacket for a tissue. Mulder doesn't move. "It's all right."

He looks down at the smear of blood on his thumb and rubs it between his fingers until it dries up and flakes away. They leave, then, and nothing more is said about it.

BROWNING MOTEL

ROOM 26

12:56 AM

The air conditioner in Scully's room is broken, turned permanently in the ON position. She curls up on the bed with the extra blanket from the closet near the bathroom. The room is dark, the only light a yellowish grey flicker coming from the TV. It's some infomercial, some kind of exercise thing, she thinks. The volume is too low to make out clearly. She's not really watching it, anyway.

This case is getting too bizarre, too personal, and Scully had retreated to her bed right after their take-out dinner, expecting to have to stubbornly decline Mulder's wish to continue discussing the case. But he'd agreed with her, forlornly, that they should probably make it an early night.

She feels clammy and unnerved, now, too preoccupied to think of anything else but the blood on that knife. She knows testing it again is useless. The results will be the same. But how could she possibly be a match? She saw the knife only once, in the evidence locker. And she'd never handled it directly, just through the evidence bag… anyway, the DNA sample had already been taken from the knife by the time she and Mulder had gotten to inspect it. Different scenarios run through her mind; she might have thought they were ridiculous, once, but now she's not so sure. Is her blood stored in some refrigerated vault somewhere, taken from her during the dark, lost months of her abduction? In that case, someone could've physically put her blood on the knife blade. But for what purpose? To somehow frame her? If that had been the objective, the suspect certainly could've done a better job.

Scully rubs her face with a hand, resigned to getting only a few hours of sleep tonight. She can hear Mulder's TV through the wall. He's flipping channels, which means he's having a hard time sleeping, too.

What would happen if she just opened the connecting door and went to him, she wonders? What would it feel like to lay bare all her insecurities and fears about her cancer, all of the things she doesn't even have the guts to tell her own mother?

She's so sick of running into her abduction and its aftermath in the most unexpected of places. Lately, she's even taken to bringing her own pillow and pillowcase when they stay at motels, just in case she gets a nosebleed.

Back when she was first diagnosed, she used to play this twisted game with herself. Or maybe game isn't the right word for it, she doesn't know. But she used to think back several months at a time to significant events and wonder what stage of growth her tumor was in, like a pregnant woman might do with a fetus. When they were in Tennessee last November, was her tumor already in its first stages of development, nothing more than a tiny bundle of cells that would barely have registered on any MRI? Or did that happen later, perhaps when Mulder was imprisoned in Russia?

Sometimes, though, little things make her life feel almost normal: the slight mustiness of the basement office, the timbre of Mulder's voice through a cell phone, the cool feel of her bed after a week away. She never really forgets she has cancer, exactly, but it's occasionally easy to push it to the back of her mind. Until something happens- and it always does- to bring it back into focus.

Scully pulls the blankets up above her nose. This growing mass in her head is nothing but a constant reminder of how much of her own life is out of her control.

THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 1997

STADLER RESIDENCE

10:02 AM

They knock on the door this time, using the bridle of the horse head doorknocker. Pete answers, like they knew he would; he smiles and waves them in. Mulder pauses to give the dog a scratch behind the ears.

"Morning. She's waiting for you." Pete leads them down a short hallway, past several closed doors, to one that is cracked open at the far end. He knocks lightly and peeks in.

"They're here, April. You need anything?" Mulder can hear a voice answer from the other side of the door. Pete turns to address them quietly. "So far, so good today. I'll just be in the kitchen. Let me know if you need anything at all." He nods and leaves them in front of the partially closed door, an air of expectation causing them to pause briefly.

Scully turns and walks in first, leaving the door half open behind her.

"April? Hi." Scully's voice is strange. Too high-pitched and personal; too much bedside manner or something. It's such a sharp contrast to her usual cool, detached tone that it makes him uncomfortable and he tries to get a look at her face as she walks further into the room.

April Stadler is sitting propped up in the bed, casually dressed in sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt. The clothes absolutely swallow her frame. She looks so small and fragile, her arms as delicate as twigs and the skin thin and nearly translucent. Mulder imagines he can see every struggling, reedy vein. A thick crocheted hat covers what he assumes is very little hair, though dark wisps escape in some places and frame her eyes. Her face is drawn, almost gaunt, cheekbones and nose standing in stark relief. She was probably very pretty, once.

April coughs bone-rattlingly. Mulder's chest feels tight, like the air in here is all acceptance and no oxygen. He feels ansty, uncomfortable; he needs to get out of this room, needs to do something productive.

"Scully." He says, voice low, beckoning her back to the doorway. She approaches him slowly. "You can handle this, right? I'm going to have one more look around outside, see if we missed anything last time." He looks fleetingly over her shoulder at the bed.

Scully lowers her eyebrows. "Sure, Mulder."

He nods and then, abruptly, he is gone.

"It's really not as bad as it looks," April smiles a little, knowingly. Scully approaches the side of the bed and pulls a chair close. "This isn't all from the chemo. I caught the flu or something like a week and a half ago and it's really hanging on. As if the chemo wasn't terrible enough, right?"

Scully swallows thickly. "He just…" She hesitates, not sure how much to say but feeling the need to form a connection. "I think it just hit a little too close to home for him." Her voice sounds flat and tired to her own ears.

April studies Scully silently for a moment but, thankfully, decides not to ask.

Scully looks around the room for a distraction and finds it in some watercolors hanging on the wall and a pencil-marked canvas sitting nearby on the bed. "Do you paint, April?"

Her face lights up. "I used to be an art teacher. That's how Pete and I met." The nostalgia makes her seem younger, somehow; her eyes brighten and her cheeks flush with color. "We taught at the same school. It was my first job right out of college, and Pete thought up this elaborate English project for his students that involved them coming to the art room to paint and draw during my free time. I wasn't stupid or anything; I knew he was shy and he was just looking for an opportunity to meet me. Ugh, he was so handsome! He still is, even more now." She says. The love in her voice is obvious and sweet, and Scully can't help but smile a little. She stands and moves to one of the paintings, a chickadee perched on a snowy fence.

"These are really lovely." Scully says sincerely.

"Thanks. They're easy for me to work on when I'm laid up in bed." There is no awkwardness to April's tone, but Scully suddenly feels strange all the same. She returns to her chair by April's bedside.

"April," Scully starts. "I'm sorry to impose when you're obviously not feeling well, but I was hoping you could answer some questions about what you witnessed."

She smooths the bedspread underneath her. "What would you like to know?"

Mulder makes sure to keep his composure until he's a good distance from the house.

Under the guise of once again surveying the area near the fence, he moves toward the shady grouping of trees, crossing through them so that he is mostly hidden from view. Mulder lets out a breath and wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of a hand.

God dammit.

He stands, looking up, angry with himself. He's seen people murdered, for Christ's sake. He's kept his cool around pieces of shit like John Lee Roche and Eugene Tooms. Hell, show him a flukeman, no problem. But this… this weird limbo he and Scully are in, this stasis, is almost more than he can handle.

Unlike Scully, Mulder's not good at just pretending things are okay.

Comfortable and predictable have never been words he would use to describe his own life, true, but it feels even more unstable now, like a building struggling to stay upright after an earthquake rips apart its foundation. He wants to talk to Scully, really talk to her, about her cancer, and how scared he is, and how he's glad she was sent to spy on him four years ago. He wants to tell her all the personal things he never told her, but that would feel too final, too much like a goodbye. So he doesn't say any of it and they keep plugging away instead, dancing awkwardly around doctor's visits and sick time, talking and not talking.

He's not unaware of the changes in her. He can't help but notice everything now, even little things. Like how she always carries a packet of tissues in her purse, and how she touches her face often, inconspicuously checking for nosebleeds. Or how her hair has become dull and brassy, like she is fading away right in front of him, and eventually she will become too unstable to go on and she will burn out, smoldering like the sun.

Mulder flattens his lips together, kicking a little at the ground. Every time he thinks he's one step closer to getting some answers, it turns out to be only a tease. He hates feeling like a horse with a carrot dangling in front of his nose.

Though, he thinks dryly, his carrot is definitely more flying saucer-shaped.

But the fact remains that he needs to feel like he's accomplishing anything at all, so he pushes himself to dig a little deeper, go a little further undercover, in hopes that he'll crack the secrets behind Scully's cancer wide open. Which brings him back to this case, and to the women involved in it.

Mulder is more sure of the links in this case now than ever, now that he's standing in this field, listening to the wind in the tall grass, the insects buzzing. The sun is warm on his face. He just stands, thinking quietly of April and Ruth, of the crime that was committed here, and thinking, always, of Scully.

He thinks of Melissa and her untimely death. He can almost feel his letter to her in his pocket: perhaps a love letter, perhaps an apology. He doesn't know why, but he has the strangest feeling that whatever's in that letter has something significant to do with this case. He just knows he needs to get it to her.

This time his seizure creeps up like a slow, dense fog, invading gradually until he is entirely immersed. He is falling, maybe, or floating, down, down, down, until his cheek rests gently against the cool grass, the smell of wet earth pungent in his nose. Somewhere distant in his mind it occurs to him that his eyes are closed; he breathes in, opens his eyes and becomes-

-"Sullivan!" Sarah whispers. She appears suddenly, quiet and ghost-like, from behind a beech tree. She has come down the hill from the ridge where the nurses have set up their camp. They are near the fence again, he notices; he leans slightly against the post bearing the broken slat. The chilly November air freezes in his nose a bit as she nears.

Sarah picks her way slowly through the frost toward him, delicately lifting her long skirt above her ankles. He feels for the bulkiness of the folded parchment paper in his front pocket. It's there, a constant reminder of his connection to her, his cross to bear.

Suddenly, Mulder feels a sense of urgency that he can't really explain. There is an electricity in the air now, the atmosphere prickling with foreboding and wildfire. He pulls his cap down on his head. He beckons her closer, quickly, looking over his shoulder as he reaches into his pocket. This is it. "Sarah, I-"

She grabs his wrist tightly, halting its progress. Her fingers are hot on his skin, burning with an icy fire that makes him jerk his hand back, just a little. She doesn't let go; instead, she takes both of his hands in hers and cups her fingers around them. "It is so heartbreaking to wait," Sarah says, breathing shallowly. Her voice is too loud, too laced with meaning. Her eyes are strangely bright as a red dawn begins to crest through the trees. "I miss you."

And Mulder knows, suddenly and with conviction, that this is a code.

She has been followed.

His body knows the click of the revolver a split second before his brain, and he turns slowly with his hands up. Even though the man in front of him is sun-spotted and weathered, with deep leathery wrinkles that make him appear as though he is hewn hack-and-slash from the very trees surrounding them, Mulder knows this soul.

Ephesian.

"The guy with the gun looked so familiar to me." April narrows her eyes as if she is looking far into the distance. It's hard for Scully to imagine this frail woman standing at the window witnessing a murder.

"Do you know him from somewhere?"

She shakes her head. "No, that's not it. I don't know; it was more like… his presence. Maybe the way he was standing? I'm not sure. Something about him, though…"

Scully is quiet, letting her remember. When they have sat in silence for several long seconds, she gently prods. "What did he look like?"

April makes a clicking noise with her tongue. "He was pretty far away." She says. "All I really saw was brown hair and light pants when he pulled the other guy into the field. But," April hesitates once more, debating with herself. "I know this sounds weird, but I think the man with the gun and the victim were wearing army uniforms. But not, like, modern army uniforms. Old ones."

"Now, now, Sarah," Ephesian spits out of the side of his mouth, adjusting his stance by spreading his feet a little wider. A small bit of spittle stays glued to his chin, settling in a pockmark. "You know it ain't proper for a gentlewoman to go out galavantin' with a man without proper supervision. Wouldn't want to tarnish your reputation, would you?"

"We were just-" Sarah tries to step forward, but Mulder puts an arm in front of her.

Ephesian indicates Mulder's hand with a jab of his chin. His voice is low and dangerously calm; his mustache is long and greasy and keeps getting stuck in the corners of his mouth. "What's in yer pocket, Biddle?"

The revolver is a steady weight in Ephesian's hand. Mulder doesn't have to check to know that his own large, cumbersome weapon is not here.

Mulder reaches into his pocket and feels the letter there, waiting for Sarah. He pulls it out and hands it to Ephesian instead, who unfolds it slowly, teasingly. "Well, well." He chews on the inside of his cheek disgustingly, making small smacking noises until he reaches the end of the page. It takes him a long time. "Bragg enroute to Dalton. Looks like what we got here-" he re-folds the paper and puts it in his breast pocket. Licking a thumb, he runs it lewdly over one bushy eyebrow- "Are a couple'a goddamn spies."

He'd been a spy?

Oh god, Scully was just going to love the irony in this.

Scully lowers her brow in confusion. "You mean they were dressed like war reenactors?"

"...Yeah," April says, drawing out the word as she thinks. "I guess so. But the murder sure wasn't reenacted, I can tell you that much." She pauses, studying Scully's face. "He just shot the guy, point-blank. I saw the blood. It… was horrible." Her voice wavers a little but doesn't break. "I've never seen so much blood. I mean, there was so much it actually made little rivers in that field. Rivers! I thought I was going to throw up when I saw it." She pauses now, looking down at her hands while she collects her thoughts. "I've never been a shrinking violet, but this whole thing has really scared me. I haven't been outside for days. I mean, who wants to think there was a murder and kidnapping right in their own front yard?" April's voice is quiet and raspy. Scully wants to point out that, technically, they don't have much evidence that a murder even occurred, but she doesn't want to be insensitive.

"April," she says. "You shouldn't be concerned. We're doing everything we can to figure out what happened here."

"I know. I believe that, I do. We're just all nervous and on edge. Even Pete, though he wouldn't admit it." She sighs and rubs her forehead, eyes closed. "It's hard feeling so vulnerable. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I felt like my body was taken away from me. No warning, no nothing. All of a sudden it just wasn't mine anymore. So I started spending more time at home, because that was still my safe place, you know? I still had that." She looks up at Scully. "But now that's been taken away from me, too."

"On your knees, Biddle." Ephesian says lazily. "You can face me and die like a man, or turn your back like the coward you are."

Sarah is crying, leaning heavily against the wooden slats in the fence and trying desperately to maintain her composure. "Please don't kill us. Please."

Ephesian sneers, his teeth crooked and black from tobacco. His tone, when he speaks, is high and falsely reassuring; the effect is chilling. "'Us'? Why, Sarah, my dear, don't you worry your pretty little head. Biddle's going to die," he says, looking meaningfully over her body, "but you might be able to convince me to spare your life." Sarah stands stoically, biting a lip and trying not to sob. Her breath hitches audibly, just once; Mulder swallows. "Get on your knees, Biddle, or I'll make you watch."

There comes a rustling from a little ways behind Ephesian, a slight play of early morning light on ice that catches Mulder's eye. From between the trees there is a flash of color, a glint of steel, and it's gone.

He might've missed it.

Mulder bends excruciatingly slowly, exaggerating each movement, playing for time. He laces his fingers behind his head for extra measure. He hopes Sarah hasn't seen. Oh god, if she noticed and she gives it away... If he can time it right… if he can just hold Ephesian off long enough…

An inky black shadow remains, despite the dawning sun, in a dense grouping of trees behind Ephesian's right shoulder. There is movement right at the center, there, a sort of cascading of velvet or a settling of the cosmos. From this darkness steps a familiar face. His pistol is pointed straight at the back of Ephesian's head.

"Stand down, son."

Mulder sees Ephesian swallow tightly. His arm wavers once under the weight of his revolver, considering his options. Finally, finally, he lowers it to his side and drops it to the ground. Sergeant Warren creeps closer, revolver outstretched, until he is directly behind Ephesian. Mulder stands slowly; he lets out a long breath and studies his sergeant's face carefully.

"How did you…?"

Warren barely spares him a look, his dark eyes instead searching for signs of injury on Sarah. He is disgusted, or pitying, or some combination of the two. "I followed you. I've suspected for a long time."

Mulder says nothing.

"There's no honor in treason," Warren says, adjusting his weapon. He places a hand on Ephesian's shoulder, holding him stiffly at arm's length. "But there's even less honor in killing in cold blood without trying a man first." The look on his face is jarring; Mulder can see the battle happening there, the fight between what is morally right and what is his obligation as a sergeant. He makes his decision, jerking his head to the side and refusing to meet Mulder's eyes. "Get the hell out of here, Biddle. Get as far away as fast as you can, and don't you ever come back again."

Mulder breathes shallowly. He can't move. With Ephesian as a witness, Warren will surely be hanged for letting a traitor go. The thought makes him sick, and he almost doesn't see the little glint of metal near Ephesian's side.

A pocket knife.

"No-!" He shouts, but the sound chokes off when it reaches his tongue. With a speed unexpected from a man his age, Ephesian spins on his heel and plunges the knife up to the hilt in Warren's throat. Sarah screams. A horrible gurgling sound forces its way out of his mouth; blood bubbles up and out onto the ground, and a forceful, foamy spray hits Mulder squarely across the face. It is coppery and warm.

Warren's hands, blood-tinged and slippery, grasp at his throat desperately. In his panic, he pulls the knife out and it drops to the ground a second before Warren himself does.

For one long, terrifying second, Mulder is frozen in place, horrified and sick. Then, something clicks.

Sergeant Warren.

Scully.

It's Scully!

Mulder rushes to Warren's side and falls to his knees, pressing his hands flat and hard against the wound. Blood is everywhere, spraying from Warren's throat and dripping thickly from his mouth and nose.

Nosebleeds, he thinks, before he can stop himself.

With the back of one hand, Mulder impatiently brushes blood from his eyelashes, but it's useless. The blood coats his face and freckles his arms, the sheer amount of it making his stomach turn and his eyes water. Warren grabs the front of Mulder's uniform in a fist. His eyes are wild, unfocused; the desperation in his features painful to see. He draws a rattling breath.

"It's okay," Mulder says quietly, his voice hitching. The acrid smell of Warren's blood makes him cough. He pushes harder against the knife wound, willing it to close. "It's all right."

Without warning, Mulder is thrown to the ground again, curled in on himself and holding his face. He feels an intense pain in his head and for a moment his brain erroneously recognizes it as a seizure. He tastes blood; it may be Warren's but he's not sure.

"I'll show you how we treat turncoats 'round here." Ephesian says. His voice is a tinny whine at Mulder's temple, one he barely recognizes as speech. Mulder can feel something crunching in his jaw and he's sure his nose is broken from Ephesian's well-placed kick to his face. "And it sure as hell ain't a free ticket to the North."

When he can open his eyes, Sarah is cowering at the fence and Ephesian stands over him, holding both his own revolver and Warren's.

Warren is dead.

Scully voice gets caught in a sharp lump in her throat, a thick, painful constriction that prevents her from making any sort of comforting sound. She places a hand on April's arm.

"Don't think I'm feeling sorry for myself, because I'm not." April says. She has an unused tissue in her hands that she pulls apart a little as she talks. She is silent for a moment, perhaps waiting for Scully to move forward with the interview. When she doesn't, April seems to come to some conclusion, the weight of Scully's hand too comforting on her arm to ignore.

She sighs and continues, quietly, glancing at Scully and then away again. "People sometimes ask me if I've made peace with the fact that I'm dying. Oh, they don't mean any harm," she says at Scully's incredulous look. "It's mostly the religious ones. But I think, you know," -she laughs once- "fuck that. I don't have to make peace with anything. I'm allowed to be angry about it." April grins slyly at the look of surprise on Scully's face. There is a little spark in her, reminiscent of a firecracker, that Scully has just now seen snap behind April's eyes. It's a small glimpse into April as she once was, Scully assumes. Lithium, calcium, sodium, barium, lit on fire and shot into the sky. "Sorry. I get so mad, sometimes, but I have no one to be mad at. The whole thing just feels so... pointless." She picks at the comforter. "But the truth is, sometimes I feel like I have accepted it. Death, I mean. And that… that is so terrifying."

Scully can hardly breathe. Her voice, when it comes, is thick and raspy. "Why?"

"Because," April says, "I don't know if it's because I've given up- that I have no fight left in me-or if it's more like me…" she trails off as she tries to think of an accurate phrasing, "... taking charge of my fate. Like I'm not letting the cancer tell me when my time is up, because I'm giving myself permission to die first. Do you know what I mean?"

Scully clears her throat. "Yeah, I think I do."

Scully is dead.

It's the only thing he can think, over and over. Scully is dead, and it isn't because of cancer. It's because of him. Just like he always feared.

His eyes roll blindly into the back of his head. He recognizes vaguely that he is being dragged, but his vision flickers like a old Super 8 film of his childhood, choppy and sped-up and underexposed. There are stretches of complete darkness. The grass is cold and wet on his back where his uniform has ridden up to expose his skin, and that coupled with the rocking motion of being dragged makes him think of floating helplessly in the ocean. A dead man's float. He feels seasick.

And then he stops moving all together.

Ephesian nudges Mulder onto his back roughly with the toe of his boot. Mulder's head lolls indelicately to one side near his shoulder and he opens his eyes.

The sky is vast and dawning blood red above him, filling his range of vision entirely. For a minute, he believes he really has been floating in the ocean; then he realizes that Ephesian has just dragged him into the field, away from the protection of the trees.

"Here's your 'fair trial,' Biddle. Out in the open, with God as your judge."

Time seems to slow down. Ephesian's words stretch long and low in his ears, nonsensical and falling over each other. Mulder thinks of waves breaking on rocks.

And then, Ephesian raises Warren's revolver, aims directly for Mulder's heart, and pulls the trigger.

Silence.

It's not uncomfortable; in fact, it's the strange, fragile, understated sort of silence that she finds herself in with Mulder sometimes, now that she's sick. But with April, there is an understanding involved that Scully feels the need to neither acknowledge nor ignore. April seems to notice it, too. Scully is reminded, suddenly, of Penny Northern and Betsy Hagopian.

April starts to stir, shifting the throw blanket off of her lap. "I hate to ask, but do you think you could open that window for me? I've had a fever and this room gets so stuffy." April points to the far side of the room, where a window looks out into the backyard. Scully unfolds herself from the chair slowly and cracks the window. She stays for just a minute, looking out. There is a low rock fence framing a beautifully landscaped garden; she'd seen it from a far distance yesterday at the Tedlows', but close up, Scully thinks it must be absolutely beautiful in late spring and summertime, when more flowers are in bloom. She imagines Pete out here, digging this garden, turning the soil over and planting every bulb, one by one, for April. Her throat feels tight.

A warm breeze blows through; Scully closes her eyes and feels it on her face. "Can you believe it's only spring and we've already had temperatures in the 70s?" April shakes her head. "That's the one thing I haven't been able to get used to about moving from the north to the south. That, and all the cockroaches." She laughs.

Cockroaches?

Something settles into place in Scully's head, something she must've unconsciously been puzzling out for days. She turns around. "April, how long did you say you've had flu symptoms?"

"Um… It started probably a week and a half ago, maybe two weeks. I'm not really sure. Why?"

"We need to get you to a hospital."

The pain is white hot; Mulder cries out involuntarily, arching his back and gasping for air. A dull ringing fills his ears; it's all he can hear. Suddenly, Sarah is there, cradling his head and crying. She is speaking to him but he can't hear what she is saying, so he watches her mouth move instead until Ephesian pulls her off of him and out of sight.

There is a shout somewhere beyond him, and then there is swell of noise that he feels rather than hears.

There are other soldiers here, everywhere in the field, running past him. He recognizes in passing the souls of Pete and April Stadler, of Ruth Tedlow. They will all die in this field, every one of them, gutted and cold like Scully. And they will all return to it one day, called back just like he was.

He couldn't save her. Oh god, he couldn't save her, in this past lifetime or the present one. He lifts up his hands in front of his face and sees her blood, crusting over his fingernails and drying, rust-colored, on his skin.

Gun shot, knife wound, cancer. He is doomed to lose her every time, every single god damn time.

If this is his eternity, if every lifetime he lives without her is the penance he is forced to pay for some unknown transgression, he instead wants nothing more than for his body and soul to rot in this field forever, never living again, enveloped by darkness and nothingness until the very end of time.

Mulder closes his eyes in acceptance and feels a steady vibration in the ground.

The Union Army has come.

The ambulance is on its way. Scully hangs up her cell phone, intent on finding Mulder to let him know she will be accompanying April to the hospital.

She knows something's wrong the minute she walks outside. It's too still. There's no breeze, no insect sounds. The heat falls around her shoulders like a shroud; it's oppressive and hard to breathe through. She makes her way quickly toward the group of trees.

"Mulder!" Scully sees him then, flat on his back and motionless in the field. She runs the rest of the way toward him, kneeling down and cupping his face. "Mulder. Mulder, come on. Wake up."

He opens his eyes. The evaporating sweat on his skin makes him feel cool, clammy.

He feels as if he's been gone for years; it is so good to see her.

He touches the papery skin of her neck with the very tips of his fingers. Grinning lopsidedly, he runs his thumb along her cheekbone, just once. "Hey, Sarge."

APRIL 24, 1997

LAKESIDE MEDICAL CENTER

12:39 PM

"April Stadler tested positive for encephalitis, a swelling of the brain resulting from severe toxoplasmosis, which was likely transmitted from contaminated cats on the farm to the cockroaches we saw at the Stadler residence. That would explain her initial hallucination of the murder, at least partially, and why it was so much more detailed and intense than her husband's hallucination." Scully crosses her legs. "Your theory about the magnetic field produced by the wind turbines and electrical equipment on the farm seems to have merit. The magnetic field around both residences measured unusually high, which probably stimulated brain activity to produce hallucinations of the perpetrator and victims in Peter Stadler and Ruth Tedlow after the suggestions first made by April Stadler. As for how it could have been a shared hallucination…" she pauses, tapping her fingers a bit on the heavy plastic rail separating Mulder and herself. "I don't have any theories, except that maybe they unintentionally fed off of each other's descriptions."

Mulder is turned away from her, looking out the window from his hospital bed. He's been in a bad mood all day.

Scully continues, sighing. "Furthermore, the brain cancer diagnosed in both Ruth Tedlow and April Stadler seems to be a side effect of constant exposure to the same magnetic field, as far as I can tell. It was probably just a matter of time before Peter Stadler and Ruth's family were affected, too." No response. "Incidentally, your seizures also appear to have been triggered by the magnetic field, which accounts for their increased frequency and severity. You were made significantly more susceptible by your brain injury." Scully pauses, waiting for some indication of his interest. Or any reaction at all, really. She is sorely tempted to end with an 'I told you so,' just to see what he'd do. "Mulder, did you hear anything I just said?"

"Magnetic cockroaches," he intones, "got it."

Scully blinks once, owlishly, and chooses not to engage. "The second DNA results were the same; the blood on the knife matched mine. I don't have a scientific explanation as to how it might have gotten there, so I can only assume there was a computer error or contamination somewhere in the process that resulted in a false match."

"It was a match because it was your blood, Scully." He clenches his jaw, irritated. "I watched you die with that knife in your neck."

"Be that as it may," Scully says stiffly, "the case has been closed."

He turns to face her, pursing his lips. "Then what was the point of any of it, Scully? The visions, everything? We know what happened. So what? It doesn't change anything. It's not like we can prosecute a guy who's been dead for a hundred and fifty years." He scoffs. "We still don't even know how the weapons got there."

"No," Scully concedes, "we don't." He snorts derisively, leaning back on his pillows.

Truthfully, Mulder mostly feels angry with himself. He tries to remind himself of that as he runs a hand over his face. "I just hoped… that knowing for sure what happened to me as Sullivan Biddle would change things, somehow. That things would make more sense. I guess that was selfish." It's unbelievably frustrating and disheartening that his life still feels the same, all the good parts and shitty parts and the parts that were just okay still intact, exactly as they were before. Melissa's still dead. Scully still has cancer. And he's no closer to the truth, whatever that even means now.

Scully's eyes soften slightly. "Our time wasn't wasted here, Mulder. In fact, I owe you an apology." She reaches out to place a hand on his arm. "You're the one who figured out the wind turbines and electrical equipment were partially to blame. Ruth Tedlow and especially April Stadler have a better chance at survival now." Scully stops, squeezes his arm slightly. He turns to look at her. "And that… that's a big deal." They lock eyes for a moment until Scully leans back in her chair once more. "Both properties are being exterminated as we speak. Though," she admits, "I'd like to think that would've happened anyway even without my recommendation." He says nothing. She continues, softer. "And as far as the visions are concerned, just because there's not a satisfying resolution doesn't make them insignificant. Maybe they were something you needed to see. Maybe the fact that we may have potentially helped save a few lives in this lifetime is resolution enough."

She squeezes his arm once more, meaningfully, and stands up. She crosses to the door, and after stepping through closes it softly behind her.

Mulder leans back against his pillows and runs a hand through his hair, swallowing against an unexpected lump in his throat. He'd asked Scully, once, if knowing they were friends in previous lives would have changed the way they looked at one another. But now, after everything that has happened here, he thinks he understands.

They chose each other; fate didn't choose for them.

And really, Mulder thinks, isn't that so much more meaningful?

End.