Scully was sifting through a file that had sparked an interest in the back of her mind. She didn't understand why she was so set on solving this case; it was something so incredibly straight forward that the local police would take a while to figure out, but would figure it out for sure in given time. Scully asked herself. Wondering if an unexplainable addiction to something hidden deep within a case is what made him so passionate about his life's work. What if he saw Samantha in each and every case and saw it as a small step towards finding her, dead or alive? Is that what drove him, like this case was driving Scully?

Scully removed her glasses and set them on the desk calendar on Mulder's desk where she'd been sitting studying each and every detail for the past 12 hours. She rubbed at her stinging eyes, fighting the urge to sleep. She'd been in the small, damp basement office of the X Files since the previous day at 7:30AM, the time she normally arrived at work, 30 minutes before she expected Mulder. It was now 7:50AM the next day and she knew Mulder would be bouncing through the door any minute now, so she told herself to close her eyes for just a few minutes.

It was exactly 8:00AM when Mulder rounded the corner stirring his warm cup of coffee to heat himself on that chilly and frigid winter day.

"Scull--" he stopped his voice and his footsteps when he saw her red hair sprawled over his desk in the midst of open files and photographs.

He caught himself starring at her and snapped out when he heard her moan and wake herself up. He noticed her clothes were the same as yesterday's, but asked, "Didn't get much sleep last night?"

"You could say that," she moaned. She pulled her head up, her hair falling in front of her face as she tried to face Mulder.

"So why didn't you go home last night?" he asked.

"How'd you--" she got out before he cut her off.

"You're wearing the same clothes," he told her.

"Oh," she responded. "I came across a case that got my attention."

"What's so important about it that you're not sleeping over it?" Mulder asked her.

"I don't know...it's a simple case that the local police could handle in a matter of time, I just got into it so much that..." she shrugged. "I don't know."

"You gonna tell me what it's about?"

"Oh, yeah," she muttered. "10 8 to 18 year old girls have been murdered. I don't know what's hooking me, but I can't keep my mind off of it. I've been going through this stuff for 12 hours and I can't find any other connection other than all of the victims are ages 8-18."

"Well," Mulder sighed. "I guess if it's a case that hooks you, it's worth looking into."

She leaned her head to the side with a small grin.

"I can ask Skinner for jurisdiction. But I wouldn't count on getting it, it doesn't seem like something he'd want to send us on."

"It's worth asking for," Scully said.

They'd been sitting on the runway for almost 45 minutes. Scully was becoming anxiously and making Mulder a little frustrated in that she would grab both of the armrests in hopes of calming down.

"Scully?" Mulder asked when he saw her knuckles go white as she clutched the armrest.

"Yeah?" she breathed.

He peeled her fingers off of it, feeling the sweat in her palms, "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing."

Mulder fought the urge to roll his eyes, instead he raised his eyebrows and returned to reading up on the file Scully studied so meticulously. He lost concentration easily in hearing frustrated and annoyed sighs from Scully every so often. She was so wired that she needed either a drink or some sleep.

"Scully?" he asked.

"What?" she snapped urgently.

"You want to switch places with me?" he asked, offering her the window to lean against to sleep. "So you can get some sleep?"

"Why?"

"You need sleep."

"No I don't," she replied.

"Yes you do, and if you don't get some now, I'm making you take a nap when we get there. Which do you prefer?" he supplied her with an offer she couldn't refuse.

"Fine." Scully unbuckled her belt as did Mulder, letting him out into the aisle so she could manage her way to the window seat. Mulder sat down, loosened the belt and returned to his reading.

Something about this case was severely disturbing Scully, and Mulder got the drift when she kept moving around and readjusting in her seat and making painful and pathetic faces as she did so. Through all the years that they'd been flying all over the country, she'd never fully adjusted to the accommodations of coach class flying, and never once could she manage to sleep on the plane. Mulder could only hope that her body would force her into a deep and peaceful sleep this time since it needed the rest so desperately.

When Mulder could FINALLY concentrate COMPLETELY on the file that lay before him, Scully began fidgeting again. He let out a deep frustrated sigh, and didn't stop to think before raising the armrest between them that they needed to be lowered for take off. If he were called into question, he'd flash his badge and the attendants would be on their way. He closed the file and sat it between his leg and the armrest facing the aisle. He reached over and pulled Scully from the wall of the airplane down to his lap. She groaned at being moved, but she turned over so that she faced the seats in front of her and found her the place she was most comfortable in.

Mulder read his file to the side and out of the way of Scully's head. He didn't want to chance waking her, although he knew that when the plane finally started to get moving and began it's ascent that she'd be disturbed. It turned out that they were beginning take off almost right after Scully got comfortable, so at least she hadn't fallen asleep. All he could hope for was that in 2 1/2 more hours that when he went to wake her to exit the plane and be on their way that she didn't get grouchy or moody.

The stewardess gave Mulder a rude look, but his cocky one in return told her to leave him alone, which she didn't do until he flashed his badge. It took longer than 2 1/2 hours to arrive in Chicago due to unexpected weather and having to go around it to avoid landing at another airport for a few hours until it passed. It took closer to 3 1/2 instead, but Mulder was grateful that Scully was getting the much needed sleep she was aching for.

"Scully?" Mulder said just above a whisper. "Hey, Scully? We're here."

She moaned and tried to push herself up into sitting position when she realized where she was. "We're here already?"

"Already? It took 3 1/2 hours," he told her.

"I've been asleep the whole time?"

"Yeah."

She didn't know how to respond, so he got up to retrieve their carryon luggage from the compacted overhead compartment. He pulled his down, then Scully's considerably larger one down.

"Thanks," she mumbled at some point.

They deplaned and hopped over to the rental car place. Scully sat on a bench, obviously exhausted while Mulder got them their same old car. He began walking over to her when he saw her head drooped over her suitcase and her mouth open slightly, eyes shut. He proceeded in walking towards her, put his arms around her to help her up. He took her suitcase in his free hand until she woke herself up enough to take it.

"Sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me," she told him.

"You're tired, you haven't had enough sleep, you're mind's not thinking clearly..."

"You're starting to sound like me."

"Isn't that what you planned all along?"

She forced a smile as they exited through the glass sliding doors. They approached a black vehicle, one very much like the one they usually drive. Mulder headed towards the truck and took Scully's bag from her hands as she waited patiently for the door to be unlocked. Mulder quickly stuffed their suitcases in the large trunk and unlocked the door.

"Try to sleep," Mulder said as he got in. "Or you're going straight to the hotel and to bed."

Scully reclined the seat as Mulder started the car and pulled out of the lot. "Scully, can I ask you something?"

"Yeah," she replied simply, her eyes closed but the light of the sun still seeping through.

"Now that we're here, you can tell me what really has you so fixated on this case."

Things went completely silent, "Mulder I told you, I don't know. I just think it's something that should be solved."

"Are you sure that's it?"

"Yeah, what else would it be?" she asked.

"I don't know, but there are a lot of things I don't know about you, Scully. If this is something that's close to you, I should know before you do something stupid."

"I appreciate your concern, Mulder, really I do," she began. "But it's nothing that's close to me. I just got hooked onto this last night and I can't manage to stop thinking about it. It's one of those cases that disturbs someone until it's solved. I think it's better that we try to get out there and solve it rather than wait for locals to get to the bottom of it. Who knows how many lives we can save by solving it sooner than the police."

Mulder nodded. "Well, we've got a about a half an hour's drive, so I suggest that you try to sleep during that hour. I don't know how much sleep we'll be getting while we're on this case."

"Feel better?" Mulder asked as the walked through the doors into the cool breeze of the hotel.

"Much," she told him. They got on an elevator, "Mulder?"

"Yeah?"

"There's something I just realized," she said starring at the floor.

"Yeah? What's that?"

"Hold on. Let me see that file," she reached for the file he held loosely in his hand. "Yeah, I'm right."

"What? You're right about what?" he asked.

"They didn't live in just the same TOWN, but they all lived in the same NEIGHBORHOOD," Scully studied the files more. "It's a large upscale community in the suburbs of Chicago. That's about 10 minutes from here, right?"

"How large of a neighborhood are we talking?" he asked.

"LARGE...but from what this says, he could easily kill all the 8-18 year olds..." she glanced down at the list of residents under 18. "There are plenty of kids, but surprisingly not that many between 8 and 18."

"Yeah...because he's killed them all," Mulder muttered.

Scully didn't stop to give his statement notice, "There are only about 16 more kids that fall under our killers category, and he doesn't show sign of stopping."

"Does it say what time these kids are killed? Is there a pattern?"

"Um..." she searched the file. "Each one was taken from their home in the morning, most likely on the way to school or to catch the bus, and their body turned up the next evening."

"That's the police for ya," Mulder chimed in.

"Huh?"

"These kid's aren't being killed in the morning, they're being killed later, but no one knows they're gone, you see what I'm saying?"

"I think so," she said. "He's taking them on the way to school, because no one will suspect anything's wrong if they miss a day of school."

"Right," he said. "No one suspects anything until later that evening when the kid doesn't come home. It would be easier for our killer to kill them during the day and hide them, but I don't think that's what he's doing. He's killing them at night, as if to torment the family and the police even more. Because the local police MUST wait 24 hours before investigating a missing persons case."

"Yeah," Scully agreed. "That makes sense. He kills them at night, after the parent has called in the report, as if he were taunting them."

"Exactly, it's almost that by killing them at night he's saying, 'Yeah, you made the report, and if the police would have gotten out here before 24 hours of waiting, your kid would be alive.'"

Scully didn't respond, she didn't know how. "The killer...he, um, he's most likely a male, he's able to over power an 18 year old female."

"I'm guessing that either he lives in this community and has something against...."

"Blue eyes."

"What?"

"Blue eyes, brown hair. They all had blue eyes and brown hair."

"OK, so it's like he's got something against 8-18 year old Caucasian females with blue eyes and brown hair."

They stepped off the elevator at the very top floor of the hotel that attempted luxury. "I don't see the significance of that, though. I've been studying this file for hours..."

"Maybe it's his mother," Mulder joked.

Scully went back to the file ignoring her surroundings and where she was going, her only instinct was to go straight until Mulder stopped her and gave her her room key.

"I don't know how much that narrows it down," Scully told him as he glanced from one side of the hallway to the other. "It doesn't say the color hair or the color eyes the kid's that are residents have."

"I wasn't expecting it to," Mulder said pointing to two doors. "Here we are."

Scully held out her hand to receive her room key, "I think we should go over there."

"Yeah, I'm just gonna put my stuff down and we'll head out."

Both of them disappeared into their rooms. Scully walked further in and laid her suitcase on a bench across from her bed. Why they were in a hotel instead of a motor lodge, she was at a loss for answers, but she was more content with their surroundings.

She began to unzip her suitcase when Mulder knocked at her door, "It's unlocked," she called.

He walked in, "That's not safe," he joked. "Ready?"

"Yeah, I..." her voice trailed off as she continued to search for her belongings. "I'm looking for my purse."

Mulder looked around the room to help speed things up from where he was standing.

"Wait, here it is," Scully said just as Mulder was giving up.

They left her room and began the 10 minute drive to the neighborhood of rich kid's they would be interviewing. They arrived at a guard shack, flashed their badges and were permitted through.

"How is the killer getting through when there's a guard shack?" Scully asked.

"It's possible he lives here...or even works here. It's a pretty well kept neighborhood, maybe he's a caretaker or a waiter at that country club," Mulder pointed to the large white building with lights shining brightly into the late afternoon of the day, as if they were nearing their dining hours.

"Or he doesn't, and he's found a way in."

"Yeah, but how would he manage to locate all of these brown haired, blue eyed kids if he were just an outsider? AND know where they live?" Mulder questioned.

"I say we go to the country club and talk to them," Scully directed him to make a quick right turn into the barren parking lot with an exception of a few workers cars.

They exited the car and began their walk up the tall white steps to the large French doors. When they walked in, a waiter promptly greeted them, "We're sorry, but we're not open for dinner yet, sir."

"We're not here for dinner," he told him, pulling out his badge. "We're here to ask you a few questions."

"Oh, sure," the waiter took them to a table where they could sit and ask and answer questions. Mulder walked briskly behind the uniformed man ask Scully lagged behind examining the luxuriousness of the grand dining hall. She caught up almost immediately when she felt Mulder's eyes on her.

"Have you heard about the murders that are happening here?" Mulder started abruptly.

"Oh, the ones around here...the girls being murdered?" the waiter clarified.

"Yeah," Mulder asked.

"Sure have, it's the talk of the neighborhood."

"Were you aware that the targets are only brown haired and blue eyed girls between 8 and 18?" Scully cut in.

"Well, no," he replied. "I really didn't see a pattern...I just here parents that come in to eat talking about how worried they are for their kids."

The man was merely a college student trying to earn a living and make his way through his courses.

"Do you live here, sir?" Scully asked.

"No, but my parents and sister do," he said. "Actually, I have 2 sisters, one of them is in college, she's a freshman and I'm a senior, she's back for a while to take care of my other sister while my parents are away."

"Do you have to live here to work or eat in this restaurant?" Mulder asked.

"Yeah, basically. They ask for your ID when you come in," he told him. "It's a special ID that only residents have."

"What's on it?"

"Your address, and the amount of occupants in your household," answered the dark haired man.

"So someone could find out where you lived when you showed your ID?" Mulder asked.

"Of course."

"Sir?" Scully had to speak up in her distant silence. "How old are your sisters?"

"Well, the one in college turned 19 just a few weeks ago," he said. "But Anya's turning 10 today."

"What color hair do they have?" Scully asked.

"Kathleen's hair is jet black, but Anya's got long brown hair."

"What color are Anya's eyes?" Mulder asked with urgency.

It was as if the waiter just realized it, so he look down at his hands cupped on the table, and said lightly, "Blue."

"Alright, sir. We're going to need the address. Your sister may be in danger, so we're going to take her into protective custody," Mulder said, retrieving his notepad and pen.

"Don't worry, sir," Scully said. "She's safer with us than at home. No alarms can save her from this killer. He takes them when they leave for school."

The waiter gave Mulder their address immediately, and told him that he's going to advise that the older sister, Kathleen, return to her dorm at college or stay with someone else until things are solved.

As they were walking out, the waiter said, "Sir?"

They both spun around, "Yes?"

"It's Anya's birthday...and I know you're FBI agents, but try not to scare her too much," he requested.

"Yes, sir," Scully replied for Mulder.

They pulled up to an immaculate house on that seemed empty. Scully couldn't help but feel sorry for the child...her parents were away, it was her birthday and it didn't appear as if she was having a party.

"Mulder?" Scully asked.

"Yeah, Scully?"

"Do what Mr. Kelly asked," she said. "Try not to scare her. She's just a little girl."

He nodded.

They walked up a lit walkway, by this time, being winter and the days shortening, the sun was fading away, leaving the sky with a royalness to it's azure color. They climbed yet another set of exquisite marble stairs to a walk below a porch that hung a chandelier so large that it wouldn't fit through a normal set of double doors. They walked through large columns and up to the tall set of mahogany double doors. Mulder was the one to knock. Instead of attempting a knock on thick doors that he guessed wouldn't be heard, wherever they were in the large estate, he rang the doorbell. He could hear the sound of a grandfather clock chime behind a window next to the doors.

Through another window next to the other door he could see a woman in jeans and a sweater approach the door. She pulled it open, letting the draft of the cold Chicago wind blow through the door.

"Can I help you?" she asked rather politely for a rich kid who'd been no doubt given everything in her life.

"We're agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully with the FBI..."

"FBI?" she asked before Mulder could finish.

"Yes, ma'am. May we come in? We need to speak to you," Mulder asked.

She let them through in to the foyer that the ceiling seemed to go up forever and ending with an almost dome with a large chandelier hanging down from the middle.

"What's this about?" the tone in Kathleen Kelly's voice was worried, and Scully wished Mulder would hurry and get to the point to put her at peace with herself.

"You're Kathleen Kelly?" he asked.

"Yes," she responded.

"You've heard about the recent murders around here, have you not?" he asked again.

"Yes."

She was quite formal in a casual kind of way, making Scully AND Mulder feel less awkward with their surroundings.

"Were you aware that they target brown haired, blue eyed girls aging between 8 and 18?" Mulder asked.

"I knew all these kids were between those ages, but not the hair and eye color thing. Anya has brown hair and blue eyes," Kathleen said.

"Yes we know," Mulder said. "We just came from talking to your brother."

Kathleen seemed to be at a loss for words.

"Where are your parents, Ms. Kelly?" asked Scully.

"They're in Australia," she responded.

This took Mulder AND Scully aback, they both had assumed they were only gone for a small weekend getaway or something of the like.

"Australia?" Scully clarified.

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"They left Monday, they'll be gone a month."

"A month? On business or vacation?" Scully asked.

"Business. And they haven't been able to get a call over to here from what I can tell. We haven't heard from them."

"Well, we're going to advise that you go back to your dorm or find someone to stay with away from this area until this problem can be resolved," Mulder told her.

"Wait...what about Anya? She's only 10..."

"We know...we have to take her into protective custody."

"Now?" Kathleen asked. "Does it have to be today? It's her birthday."

"We're very sorry, but if we don't, it could be her last."

Kathleen sighed, and led them to Anya. She was in the den that was fully decorated in the Christmas theme. It looked like not only was Anya going to be away from her parents on her birthday, but Christmas too. Christmas was two weeks away, but her parents weren't coming home for another month. As much as the Kelly children must have gotten for Christmas and for their birthdays, and just in every day life, it didn't seem that their parents cared too much about the special times that children needed to share with their parents.

They starred into a room where a large and extremely oversized yet real Christmas tree stood lavishly decorated by none other than a professional. Presents littered the floor beneath it, most wrapped neatly with bows protruding from the tops of them. Next to the Christmas tree was a plush couch that people with an average salary wouldn't dare to sit on, yet there was a little girl bundled up beneath a chenille blanket holding on to a matching pillow watching TV.

Mulder and Scully gazed around the room. They noted that there was a balcony from the second story of the house, something a younger child would no doubt hurl him or herself from on accident someday being that the balcony was obviously much higher up than a normal second story balcony. They saw an immense fireplace with a flaming fire bouncing behind the glass case that enclosed it. 5 stockings hung from the decorated mantle, one for each of the kids and the parents, each name monogrammed in it. It went from Lucas, to Corrine, then to Ryan and Kathleen, and lastly, with the most decorated and shining stocking, Anastasia. This must have been Anya's full name, and a name that was blessed with beauty and tragedy something one knowledgeable on the last Czar of Russia's Royal family exile.

Above the mantle was a large portrait of the entire family, it had been hand painted and looked as though it'd taken quite some time to complete. They stopped awing at the beauty of the family's home and began to concentrate on Anya. Scully stepped forward towards the couch and sat down in the middle to face Anya at the end of it.

"Anya?" she asked. "My name is Dana Scully. I work for the FBI."

As Anya turned to face her, she saw her beauty. She was so tiny, so fragile and small, but her beauty was that of a fairy tale princess. Her eyes were deep blue pools of royal blue complimented by long, luscious, dark eyelashes. Her skin was fair, along with long brown hair pulled back into a clip letting the ringlets at the end hang free. Her cheeks were rosy and her lips were a dark blood red. Scully nearly melted at the thought of this little girl with the gorgeousness of something porcelain or unreal being destroyed at the hands of something equally unthinkable.

Anya was still silent.

"And that," she pointed to Mulder, "is agent Fox Mulder. We're here to take you with us."

Suddenly Anya's big blue eyes widened even more, "Why?" she asked urgently.

"We have reason to believe your life is in danger," Scully had to finally say.

"What? By who?" she asked. For such a squirt, she was sure intelligent and knew what she wanted out of people.

"We're not sure. That's one of the reasons we need to keep you with us."

Anya looked totally objectionable to the idea, and look to Kathleen to get her out of it, but when she looked at the floor, Anya knew she was on her own. So all she could do was let out a frustrated sigh and slump back to her previous position and close her eyes.

"You should go pack some things," Scully told her.

"For how long?" Kathleen asked.

"I'm not sure, but I would bring enough things for a week," she responded.

Anya threw the cover off of her and began to walk towards the winding staircase. Kathleen's head drooped down, not really understanding or comprehending what to do.

"Kathleen?" Mulder asked. "Do you know of any other kid's in the neighborhood with brown hair and blue eyes?"

"No, some with one or the other, but not both. But I can't be sure. Not many of the people who live here have older kids. I mostly see kids under 8 around here," she explained.

Mulder nodded. "Give me a second," Mulder said, stepping away from Scully and Kathleen and dialing a number on his cell phone that had been jotted down in a hurried rush on his notepad.

Scully could hear him speaking to someone obviously high up in the neighborhood's homeowner's association. She heard him request a list of everyone in the neighborhood AND their addresses. This had to include children too. Just as he hung up the phone, Anya came downstairs with a duffel bag in hand that compared to her small size looked bigger than she. She was well prepared for the cold wearing a bubble jacket, scarf, and hat.

"Ready?" Mulder asked.

She gave him a nod. Both Mulder and Scully could tell that their first impression wasn't the greatest as regards to Anya, but they'd have plenty of time to get her to come around. Mulder head for the door and pulled it open as Anya was bidding Kathleen farewell. Scully followed slowly behind in order to give the little girl just one more second, one more breath, one moment in time to say goodbye to her sister.

They exchanged a hug and as if Anya was blocking all the horror that she knew surrounded her, she turned away and walked out the door. Scully followed quickly behind her as Mulder lagged back to say one more thing to Kathleen that would add to her worry. "Ms. Kelly, I can't ensure her safety, no one can. But I CAN ensure that she IS safer with us. And if something DOES happen to her, it will have happened later then it would if she'd been home."

Kathleen nodded, "Just try your best to bring her back alive."

Mulder nodded, turned around and left, Kathleen closing the door and locking it behind him. Mulder didn't doubt that she'd be off making arrangements to stay with someone else for a while.

They sat in the car and ran through the list of residents who had children living with them of ages 8-18, and found close to 7 more. To avoid taking time, they hurried through their calls and inquiring immediately of hair and eye color, then assuring that their kid's weren't in any danger. Not another one had both things in common which struck them both as odd.

"I think we should just go back to the hotel," Scully said. "All we have to do now is catch this guy."

They drove through the streets of Chicago to find their hotel and were grateful, although being a pretty city at night, to get away from it; to get inside away from the horror the night brings. The pulled into the parking garage and as they parked, Mulder mumbled, "Home sweet home," as he unbuckled his seatbelt.

Mulder got Anya's bag as she and Scully headed for the elevator. They took it all the way up to their floor, Mulder barely making it inside in time. As they stepped off onto their floor, Anya removed her winter hat and gloves and shoved them into her pocket. The walked down the hall all the way down to their rooms, knowing automatically that Anya would sleep in Scully's room. Mulder and Anya waited for Scully to unlock the door to her room so he could put her duffel bag inside and she could see her surroundings. Although Anya was raised in riches, she seemed to pass no negative judgement of where she would lodge for the next few days.

Mulder stayed for a second, discussing with Scully how things would have to go the next day in order for them to begin to solve the crime, "You stay here with her tomorrow, and I'll ask one of the field agents around here for their assistance. Then if all's not solved, we'll switch the next day."

"Sounds like a plan," she replied.

"Alright," he came back. "Try to get some sleep tonight, will you?"

She nodded in return as she closed the door behind him. Anya laid on one bed twirling her hair with one finger as Scully crossed the floor to the bed parallel to hers.

"Make yourself at home," Scully told her in a sarcastic voice.

After minutes of silence, Scully attempted conversation, "So, I hear today's your birthday?"

"Yep," Anya responded.

"Your 10th right?" Scully confirmed, knowing the answer already.

"Yep."

"Great way to spend it, huh?" Scully asked.

"Oh yeah, GREAT," she replied. "I guess it's not much worse either."

Scully knew what she meant, but she had the yearning for Anya to say what she meant, "What do you mean?"

Anya felt as if she'd said too much, she was dealing with a FBI agent and she didn't need to be making her parents sound bad, "I don't see that it matters if I'm in a hotel room or at home, no one's there anyway."

"You have your sister."

"She doesn't want to be there. She's gotten sick of me after a week," the child explained.

"That can't be fun," Scully said.

"Nope. My parents aren't home. They never are on my birthday anyway. It's like they purposely leave when my birthday comes along."

"I don't think they really want to leave," Scully tried to make her parents glued to their businesses seem a little more caring than they were, but both of them knew it wasn't true.

"I don't think they care either way," she replied. Scully didn't know how to reply, so she remained silent until Anya asked, "Do you have any kids?"

"No, I don't," she told her, looking down at her hands.

"What about him? Your partner...does he?"

"No, he doesn't either," Scully responded.

"You guys don't like kids or something?" Anya asked.

"It's not that. Neither of us are married," Scully explained. It was something she really didn't want to bring up, but for the little girl across the room's sake, she would. "I did once. Her name was Emily."

"What happened to her?"

"Well...she went to Heaven," Scully managed to say without sounding too dramatic.

"How old was she?"

"3," she told her.

Anya got a surprised look on her face, "I thought *I* was too young to die...I'm sorry." "It's OK," Scully said.

"I guess just because you don't have kids doesn't mean you don't like them," Anya said. "I mean, hey! My parents had 3!"

"They never said they didn't want you," Scully said.

"Maybe not in so many words...but I'm sure you've heard the phrase 'actions speak louder than words'?"

"Yeah," Scully put her head down again.

"Anyway, I should get ready for bed."

"Me too," Scully replied.

Anya disappeared into the bathroom with a pair of satin pajamas that looked like something out of Victoria's Secret for Kid's, if such a thing existed. When Anya returned, they had both changed. Scully watched the little girl as she stood in front of the mirror, taking down her luscious hair. It bounced as it dropped, then returned to it's regular position. Then she saw her take it up into a ponytail, the large ringlets hanging down just above her shoulders. Then she thought of Mulder. He was probably sitting on his bed in a T-shirt and boxers flipping through the channels with nothing on, OR he was still in his suit and would be for quite some time as he spoke to various people on the phone. No doubt he was the second one. He was probably trying to find an agent who would help him.

"We should probably go to bed," Scully suggested.

"Yeah," responded the dazed girl.

Once they both were snuggled in their beds, Scully leaned over to the bedside stand in between their beds and turned out the lights.

Mulder had knocked on the door when he was getting ready to leave, and told Scully to keep a close eye on Anya while he was gone.

"Who are you? Her father?" she asked with sarcasm.

Mulder's face didn't express humor, and with Scully having failed at an attempt at relating with him, she asked, "What's wrong?"

He grabbed her arm and gave her a gently tug into the hallway of the hotel, closing the door behind him.

"What's wrong with you?" Scully asked, looking down both sides of the hallway as she realized that she was standing there in a robe.

"When I say to keep a close eye on her, I mean you do it," he said sternly, forcing Scully to give him an appalled look. He realized his actions and the way he was speaking and forced his tone into something more pleasant. "Listen to me," he said calmly. "Her name is Anastasia Victoria Kelly, is this name ringing a bell?"

"No, should it?" she asked.

"Well, at first it didn't. But I've felt like I've seen her before. So I checked on her name, and Kelly isn't her real last name."

"So what is?" Scully demanded.

"Laurie, now put that together."

"Anastasia Laurie," Scully said, searching her mind for occurrences in the past 10 years involving her name or her new one. She vaguely remembered something, but wasn't sure what. "No, Mulder, I'm sorry, I can't remember."

"Alright, Anastasia Victoria Laurie, born December 11th, 1989 to parents Patrick and Celeste Laurie in a hospital in upper Manhattan. At the age of 2 her parents packed her up and moved to Egypt. Her father was an important man to the British government, but moved to the US temporarily when he met and married Celeste. He continued to work for the British government out of other countries until Anya turned 3. Mr. Laurie was exposed in Egypt as a spy for the British. Men from their government were sent to execute him and his family as traitors to the country since he'd become a resident," Mulder paused for a brief moment to catch his breath, then continued. "Fortunately, the Egyptians didn't do their homework. They only knew that Mr. Patrick Laurie should be murdered, and anyone else in his presence. Thankfully, Mrs. Laurie and Anya were in town for a day of shopping at the time of his death. They arrived home that evening to find the man of the house lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor."

Scully was listening intently to every word Mulder was saying. She'd already felt an emotional attachment to the girl behind the door and she'd not even heard the rest of her biography.

"His throat had been cut. So in hearing of his death from a hysterical Mrs. Laurie, in fear that she might accidentally expose the government of Britain, they flew her and Anya back. They kept Mrs. Laurie and Anya in a palace of Britain with the royals for a while to keep them protected. While there, Celeste made a will, knowing she was the only parent Anya had left. Mr. Laurie's body was shipped over to Wales where a small funeral was held at the Westminster Abby. Mrs. Laurie was to deliver a statement of her husband’s death a few weeks later to the European public, but her plane crashed near London. Anya was left at the age of 3 with no parents and no one to turn to. The British government executed Mrs. Lauries will and found that she'd left Anya to American royalty second only to the Kennedy family. That's where Corrine and Lucas Kelly come in the picture."

Scully dreaded what the next 7 years of her life held, but she didn't have much time to dwell on that fact for Mulder's mouth was moving a mile a minute.

"So they adopt her into their family and her name is then changed to Kelly as to keep up the family name and hide who her parents were. The Kelly's welcomed Anya, but gave her no extra attention with the exception of the two kids, Ryan and Kathleen. Kathleen even at once decided she wouldn't have anything to do with Anya due to her princess-like beauty, but once she realized she was younger than her and didn't stand in competition with her at that point, she changed her mind. Kathleen took Anya under her wing more than her new adopted parents did. Lucas was a wealthy business man as well as his wife, and gained the title of American Royalty second only to the Kennedy's because the Kennedy's were family people whereas the Kelly's didn't seem to love their children as much as the Kennedy's. Anya's life settled down for nearly 3 years until she turned the age of 6. She was seen more by the public and they raved over how gorgeous she was. Some conspiracy nut once took a shot at her when she and her family went to a meeting at the White House. It's said that he was working with the Egyptian's and was part of the group who killed her father. He grazed the back of her shin, taking quite a chunk out of it. She fell in front of millions watching on television. Not only was she shot, but she got an infection from something on the ground, and it took nearly 7 months to heal completely. By this time she was nearly 7 and forced to stay away from most public places, confined to household quarters. At this time she was living in Manhattan, so when her parents kept getting threats tied to bricks and thrown through their penthouse windows, they decided to move to Chicago where they are now. They built this house they have now to keep away from people. The Kelly's traveled more and more for business as the years went by so security systems and guards were hired until recently when they did away with all but the security system. Threats were still made, the tabloids ran stories constantly of why Anya was bound mostly to her home and school and what her parents did to her," Mulder took another breath and started again. "Then as the tabloids finally settled down, our killer comes up and is targeting brown haired, blue eyed girls and Anya's name and face is hitting the front page of every major newspaper. And if I'm right, this is going to make it easier for the killer to find her, so she needs extra supervision."

Scully was shocked and silent, "Is that it?"

Mulder smiled for a second, "Surprisingly, no. She had a few other family members killed that she doesn't know about because she doesn't know or remember her history, and a few adopted family members who've got cocaine addictions. Besides a few other chilling details, yeah, that's it."

With that, Mulder left, leaving Scully to stand in awe and force herself to walk in and face Anya. It appeared as if she hadn't heard anything, and no doubt she hadn't, she was in the shower at the time, but Scully could only pray that she hadn't heard a single word of that conversation.

Around noon, Scully was preparing to take Anya to lunch against her better judgement, when they realized they didn't have a car and didn't know where the hotel restaurant was. Scully stopped by the front desk to ask when Anya drifted off to another part of the hotel to examine something that caught her eye.

Scully'd gotten her information and turned around to ask, "Any--"

She didn't see her anywhere. "Anya? Hey, Anya!"

She walked around a few people and around a couple corners but couldn't find her anywhere.

"ANYA?" she yelled. "Anya? Where are you?"

Scully fumbled for her cell phone and quickly punched in the speed dial for Mulder's.

"Mulder?" she asked breathlessly when he answered. "Get over here now."

"Why, Scully? What's wrong?"

"She's gone! The killer isn't where you are, he's here!" she yelled, getting dozens of pairs of eyes directly on her. The people behind the desk called the police after Scully flashed her badge and yelled, "Get the police over here! NOW!"

"Scully, just calm down, where was she?"

Scully took a deep breath, "We were asking where the restaurant was, and she went off somewhere to look at something, next thing I knew she was gone."

"Alright, Scully, just hold there for a minute while I get over there. Don't do anything, got it?"

She nodded, "Yeah."

Mulder arrived within 5 minutes, obviously he'd sped. He walked in to find Scully completely distraught.

"Scully, calm down," Mulder begged. "Just cool it."

She took in another deep breath. "Yeah, ok."

"Let's check the stairs," he directed her towards a stairwell leading to a lower level where the restaurant would be.

They barged through the doors to the dimly lit stairwell. Mulder went trudging down the steps at breakneck speed until he had to whip around to see Scully clutching her stomach, "Scully?"

She moaned and her gun dropped down numerous stairs as she slumped against the wall. "God..." she mumbled. "Mulder..." she whined.

"Scully, what's wrong?" he shook her as she turned a ghostly shade of white. "Scully?!"

At that moment, he only knew of one thing to do, and that was to grab her gun and then scoop her up and take her back up to her room. When the reached the lobby, he yelled to the agents and police, "Keep looking! Check down there!"

He headed straight for the elevator and punched in the number of their floor.

"Scully? Scully, come on," he tapped her cheek. "What's wrong? Scully? Come on, Scully..."

The next thing he knew they were at their floor and he was charging down the hallway past the housekeeper and into his room.

He laid her down on his bed and watched her break out in a cold dripping sweat with pale skin lying beneath. "Scully...what's wrong? Tell me what's wrong with you!" he begged.

"I'm...col--" she stammered. "Colddddd..."

He yanked the covers back and threw them over her. Cold sweat POURED down her body yet she was freezing. He didn't know what to do, for only the second time in his life - almost as if he were paralyzed with fear.

She started to cough like something was stuck in her throat, then suddenly, gorges of blood come spewing from her mouth like a geyser. She fought fruitlessly for breath between coughs, Mulder running for a towel then putting it in front of her face to catch the blood as it rose out of her in gushes. Finally she stopped, gasping for air choking on some blood left inside her mouth. She spit it out into the towel, and as she laid back down her eyes rolled back into her head and her eyelids fluttered rapidly.

"No! No! Come on, Scully, wake up! Scully? What's going on?! Scully?!" he hollered.

Her chest rose and held tightly in the air until her arched back gave in and let her fall back to the bed. She struggled as if she were being tied down by something, and down TO something. Finally, after 5 minutes of seizure-like movement, she stopped and rested down on the bed. "Dark..." she whispered.

He looked around the room, all the lights were on and the window curtains drawn open, "No, Scully..."

"It's dark and cold.... and dirty..." she breathed.

Mulder was beginning to catch on.

"There's no light...nothing...I can't see...," she mumbled.

"Scully, just hold on, OK...wait for this to pass," Mulder frantically scanned the room as if it would provide him with answers to what was going on.

Scully suddenly settled down in what looked like comfort, so he asked, "Scully?"

She said nothing.

"Scully? Scully? Are you OK?" he asked. She still didn't reply. "Scully, are you OK?"

She mumbled, and looked up, "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Scully?"

"Yeah?" she asked.

"I think that you're experiencing what Anya's experiencing," Mulder suggested.

Scully's eyebrows arched, "No, Mulder. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I feel fine now. We need to find that little girl."

"No, Scully, you need to rest," Mulder told her, trying to lightly push her back down.

"Look, I appreciate your concern, but I'm fine now, and our first priority is to save this child. She deserves to be saved Mulder, and we can do that. We need to."

Mulder looked at her and finally said, "OK, but we should get as much ground covered now in the event that whatever's wrong with you starts up again."

"I think I should change first," Scully said.

Mulder nodded but didn't move until Scully repeated the fact that she was going to change, "Right, I'll be out in the hall," he'd responded.

In less than 5 minutes, a refreshed Scully came out of her room and was walking down the hall ahead of him. They sat in the car as they passed different places that seemed likely. "It makes sense that she was taken from the hotel. It's not your fault if that's what you're thinking," Mulder told her as they drove.

"I know it's not. But I feel sorry for her. She's been through so much, and half of it we think she doesn't know about, we think that she was too young to remember it. But if she walked into her home to find her father dead on the floor, wouldn't that be something you'd remember at any age?" Scully asked.

"I'm not sure. Maybe she remembers but doesn't know what she's remembering."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe she remembers a dead man, but she doesn't know that man as her father, she knows her adoptive father as her dad. She was never told of her life before then, she's probably never thought of it, she's only 10. But if she remembers this, she might think it was something from a movie, or something else that she can't name," Mulder offered.

"Could be," Scully mumbled. "In any case, she needs to be found alive and returned to her parents. No matter how big of business people they are, hearing that their daughter is gone and suffering isn't going to make them happy."

"Ye--" he stopped and turned when he saw Scully grab her head. "Scully? Scully, what's wrong?"

She shook her head slightly but said nothing.

"Scully? Do you want me to pull over?" he asked.

"No, no...keep going," she said, shaking herself out of the headache that stung her so suddenly.

She sighed and Mulder asked, "What happened? Do we need to turn around?"

"No, don't turn around," she told him. "I saw..."

"What did you see?" he asked immediately.

"I saw a cellar...it was dark and cold, and there was a man there..." Scully wasn't sure what she'd seen herself, shocked at what she was telling him. This was almost like admitting that she was suffering what Anya was.

"Scully why won't you believe me? That was you're going through is the same as what Anya is?" Mulder begged.

"Mulder that's ridiculous," Scully explained. "It defies--"

"It may be ridiculous, but that's all we have to go on right now," he explained. "What else did you see?"

Scully's lips pursed as if she was going to protest, but instead she gave in with another sigh, "Trees. There were a lot of trees. I guess it was a forest or something."

"In what order? Tell me what you saw in the exact order you saw it."

She took in a deep breath, then began, "I saw a rock, then it went black. When the black went away there were tons of trees as there were before and below were tons of dead leaves. There was a door that lead to an underground cellar and it was dark and cold, and that's it."

"Alright, we're looking for trees," he said. "Trees...trees..." he mumbled as they drove down the highway. He sped up when he didn't see any forestry areas nearby. "Did you see ANYTHING else?"

"No."

"Nothing? No landmarks? Nothing?"

"No," she repeated. "But the rock was pretty big, if that means anything."

Mulder saw a sign off the interstate that said a campsite was at the next exit, so he increased his speed to reach it sooner.

"We've got to find a way to drive around to the back," Mulder muttered to Scully.

"Why?" she asked as if her FBI functions were shutting down.

"Why would this guy take a kid to a populated camp site? Why not the back of it? If there's a path through it--"

Scully winced and bowed her head, and the second she did, Mulder spoke up, "What are you seeing Scully?"

"A sign...a sign for a trail, it's tacked up on a piece of wood..." she choked out.

"What did it say?" he asked. "What did it say, Scully?"

"Tarturus Trail..." Scully said.

Mulder swerved the car into the unpaved parking lot of the camp and jumped out to run up to the forest ranger's small headquarters. He pulled out his badge, flashed it in front of the window and asked to see the most experienced ranger there. The rookie holding the clipboard dropped it anxiously on the table and ran to get his colleague.

"How can I help you, sir?" asked the man in a casual tone.

Mulder's voice was more urgent and frantic compared to the man with a mustache behind the window. "Where is Tarturus Trail?" he asked, not even sure if he had the right forest let alone city.

It scared Mulder when the ranger said, "Tarturus Trail?" to clarify.

"Is that here?" he'd asked.

"Sure does," said the man.

"How do I get to it? The quickest way," Mulder asked.

"Well, you need a pass to get in, and that depends on how many people plan to go on that trail..."

The ranger seemed to Mulder like he was deliberately taking forever to tell him how to get there. "Whatever, just tell me what to do to get up there," he told him. "Do you keep a record of who goes up? Liability or anything?"

"Of course," he told him.

"Can I see that?" Mulder asked.

The man handed over a clipboard that had been stashed away in the corner of the desk. Mulder took it and ran his eyes down the list of names that didn't even qualify as a list. "How long does this list date back?" he asked when he realized that one name wouldn't provide him with answers.

"Weeks," he said. "That person checked in just a few hours ago if you check the time."

"Why has only this person gone up?" Mulder asked.

"Well, it's the hardest trail. It's deadly and easily fatal. Tarturus is Greek for Hell, sir," he took a moment to type something in a small computer and asked. "How many are going up?"

Mulder peeled his eyes away from the clipboard and the information the man listed to be up on that trail had written down, "2."

The ranger glanced over at the only other car besides his and his workers in the lot, Mulder's car, and he saw Scully sitting in the front leaning over, "You sure she's going up there? She doesn't look too well."

"Yeah," he said. "We're federal agents. We don't have a choice."

The ranger seemed like that was the first he'd heard. Possibly his younger ranger hadn't informed him through his nervousness.

"Where does it say how many people went with this man?" Mulder asked, pointed to the yellow copy of a liability form on the clipboard he was holding.

"Down at the bottom. It's clearly marked, if it's not, then no one went up with him."

"Can you take cars up there?" Mulder asked.

"Only part of the way. I'll give you a map and it shows the clearing where you have to leave your car. That's as far as they go," he told Mulder.

The ranger printed out the pass for their car and handed it to Mulder. Mulder took it and left a business card in place of a liability form, "If you have any problems call the FBI."

Mulder jumped in the car and sped off, handing the man that went up before him's liability form to Scully who'd regained herself. "I think that's our guy. He just went up a few hours ago."

Mulder looked at the small map the ranger had given him and found his way to the parking clearing easily. As soon as he arrived at the summit and got out, Scully looked at him with shock painted across her face. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"We have to hike the rest of the way," he informed her.

Scully's mouth seemed to drop as she forced herself out of the car. She stretched for a moment then followed Mulder as he began his ascent. They walked for only about 20 feet when Scully stopped and pointed. "This is the rock," she bent down next to it to examine it. "Mulder, come look at this."

He walked back to the rock where Scully was, "See, this is it. Do you see that?"

"What?" he asked.

"There's blood. He must have thrown her down on it. And if what you're saying is true, that I'm feeling what she is, then the headache would mean she hit her head and when I couldn't see anything, she had blacked out," she told him. "When she woke up she was being drug through leaves. She's in a cellar right now. He drug her down the steps of a cellar."

It was hard to argue with Scully, when something like that came along, a situation where she was forced to believe, would he chance disagreeing? Not this time, instead, he said, "I hope you're right."

They walked on, Scully thinking silently, and Mulder aloud, "Why, if he killed all those other kills within close range to their home, did he bring Anya all the way out here?"

Scully wondered that herself. Wondering why Anya was being brutally tortured by this man, so much more than any of the other victims, and why he was keeping her alive. What was he waiting for? "Maybe she's who he's been looking for," Scully suggested.

"What do you mean? Like he's been trying to find her? Why would he do that?" Mulder asked.

"Just think about it. It makes perfect sense. Her real father was a traitor to Egypt, so they had him killed. They skipped over the wife and daughter. Later, the wife moves back to Britain and dies in a plane crash, she's out of the way. But, the child is immediately sent over here to the US and out of reach with a new name and new family. Maybe this man is an Egyptian working for the men that killed her father, and maybe he feels, or was told that it's his duty to finish the job," Scully offered. "And the name, family, country, and state changes in Anya's life could have messed up their chances of finding her."

"Right..." he mumbled in returned.

"Seriously, Mulder," Scully said. "He may not have known her exact age, which would explain the 10 year age differences, but he could have known her hair and eye color. The break in the pattern of these killings would suggest that he's found the one he's looking for. And being that her face has popped up on so many newspapers around here because of this man, it's lead him to her."

"You're starting to sound like me," Mulder whined.

"Go with it, Mulder," she retorted.

"It's possible, and does sound most likely," he said. "In one of your flashes, you said you saw a man--do you remember anything about his appearance?"

"Not really," Scully responded. "I could only see the back of his head. But he was tall, with dark hair, muscular..." her voice trailed trying to remember other details. "His clothes were worn, but that's really all I saw of him."

The walked on for almost an hour, jolting and jerking at every animal call, drawing their guns at anything they thought was someone in the bushes. They eventually took a fork in the trail, which was making a giant leap because there was no telling where it was. Mulder couldn't leave Scully, she could collapse at any moment and left in the middle of a forest with no help. The mountain took a giant leap into the sky and increased its steepness. Mulder trudged behind Scully in the event that she should fall until they both reached the top of the somewhat small incline. Once having arrived at the top of this obstacle, they brushed themselves off and looked around noting how flat it was where they were for a mountain.

"Now what?" Scully asked.

"Let's go straight," he pointed as he dusted his hands off so he could blow hot air into them.

They walked forward in silence and in cold, rubbing there hands together trying to produce some kind of warmth.

"She must be so cold," Scully said after a while.

"I bet," Mulder agreed. "If she's in a cellar, it's probably just as cold as it is outside. But the wind won't be blowing so hard."

Scully nodded. When she raised her head she saw smoke in the distance, "Mulder," she whispered. "Mulder...come take a look at this."

"What?"

She pointed to the smoke rising above dying trees, "There, you see that smoke?"

"Yeah," he said.

"That must mean there's a house up there. Maybe it's got a cellar," Scully told him.

He nodded and they began what would be a short trip into the fiery pits of hell. Their feet moved swiftly on the ground below them, hoping to be that much sooner to rescuing a tortured child from the grasp of hate. They approached the house with caution and walked around it in its entirety in hopes of located a cellar door. They didn't have to go far to see it on the left side of the dilapidated wood and stone cabin. The porch was rustic and falling apart, wood had been eaten away by termites, stone had been stained with dirt and fungus, and the bottom of the entire cabin had been crawling with small mites and weeds creeping up further and further.

As they cautiously tiptoed to the cellar door to check if it was locked, they couldn't see the face appear in the small window to the underground basement. Scully's gun was ready, out and propped up in her hands as was Mulder's.

Down in the basement as Scully and Mulder quietly worked at opening the lock, Anya's captor turned to her and spoke with a heavy accent, "This is great. We've got company."

The words made Anya want to smile, but the soreness of her lips and the cuts littering her face prevented her from displaying any reaction at all. "These your friends little girl?" her captor asked her. "You know these people?"

Anya shook her head "no" the best she could without giving bringing pain to herself. The shadowy man rushed over to her, just as Scully was wedging her nails down into the lock to assist Mulder, the man grabbed Anya forcefully by the neck.

Scully grunted and struggled for air, nearly falling on the top of the cellar, exposing what little cover they had. "Scully?" Mulder asked. "Ssh, Scully...I know it hard, just try to catch your breath."

He reached his arm around her back and brought her close to him to muffle the sounds of her gasping. Beneath them, the dark man released Anya's neck and slammed it against the back of the chair she was tied to. Scully's body reeled from Mulder's arms and to the ground landing with a thump. Soon blood clotted in her hair, forcing it to stick together and pick up leaves from the ground. Her eyelids fluttered and soon all Mulder could see of the once deep blue pools were the whites.

"Scully?" he asked again. "Jesus Christ..." he muttered, leaving her on the ground and busting open the cellar door with his gun aimed at Anya's attacker.

"Let her go!" he hollered.

The man kept smashing the girl's head against the cement behind the chair through the threats of the agent.

"Let her go or I shoot!" Mulder screamed.

Finally, the man let go, "Where's your pretty partner?"

Mulder could hear the accent in the man's rough voice and he knew Scully was right.

"Huh? Where is she? No doubt lying fighting for her life somewhere nearby, I saw her coming up with you," he said.

"Thanks to you," Mulder sneered. The man headed for Anya again with what seemed to be a metal pole that he gripped in his right hand. "Put that down!" He inched a little closer to the man.

"Why? To spare your partner's life? Hasn't she done enough suffering?"

"Hasn't SHE?" Mulder nodded towards Anya.

"You only want her alive to save that woman's life," the man coughed. "It's true isn't it?"

"No, that's not the only reason," Mulder stalled. "This girl has a future. You don't need anything from her."

"And how do you know that?" the man asked him. "I've got to finish my job, or *I* get killed. Do you understand?"

"What's that? Kill her? She had nothing to do with her father's actions! She was *3*! How can you expect a 3-year-old to know what her father was doing? Let alone remember it!?"

"It is my duty, sir," the man raised a gun in his other hand. "And if you do not back away from me right now, I'll put you down with her and your pretty partner."

Mulder looked at the little girl and saw a flash of Scully's shining eyes in the girl's bloody but beautiful ones. He searched her eyes as if it would unlock a window to her soul, as if he could find an answer that she had stored inside that would save her life and Scully's. The glistening glaze of the eyes that didn't shine with beauty anymore, but fear, pain, and suffering sent a chill of enormous proportions through Mulder's spine.

"I don't fear you," he said taking the pipe and hurling it down on Anya's leg, sending shooting pain through her entire body. A high pitched scream muffled by a cloth tied around her mouth burst from her lungs, followed by a deep moan above ground. "You come close to me, not just her life is lost."

"Let her go, she hasn't done anything wrong to you or your country. There's nothing you can get from her death," Mulder negotiated.

Mulder saw the man drop the weapon as if he felt defeated, and just as Mulder had retrieved the handcuff's he saw him raise his gun to the little girl's head. Her eyes that were filled with tears grew wide with a fear she couldn't scream about. The cloth prevented her from letting out what needed to be released. Mulder began to lunge forward to knock the gun out of the cruel man's hands when a shot rang out. After a bone-chilling echo, silence dropped upon the damp underground cellar. The Egyptian fell to his knees with barely even a word escaping his throat. He grasped his chest and jolted seizurly in place, coming to a final stop seconds later. His hands fell limply from his chest as Anya watched in terror as the man before her lost his life. Mulder looked up the stairs of the cellar to find Scully having just turned on her back, breathing in and out deeply and forcing herself up on her feet.

Mulder closed his eyes before he stood on his feet to untie Anya. He yanked the cloth from her mouth with one slight tug and slashed the ropes that tied her feet and hands to the chair with a pocketknife. She closed her eyes and Mulder scooped her up in his arms and began walking with care up the cement steps.

Through all the emotional trauma that Scully and Anya suffered together, she parted bangs that stuck to Anya's bloody skin and placed a kiss through her tears on her forehead. "It'll be OK," Scully whispered, thus beginning their journey out of hell.

Later That Night
Hospital, Chicago, Illinois

Scully sat by Anya's bedside having suffered no permanent injuries. In the unnamed Egyptian's death her pain ended. Mulder had suggested it was some kind of ancient curse he placed on her at the hotel to prevent her from discovering Anya's location. When recognizing Scully's confusion and frustration, he also mentioned that if there were anyone else to break the curse as Scully had, it wouldn't have been broken.

Scully hadn't suffered injuries, but she was surely disheveled and looking absolutely damaged emotionally. What she experienced had changed the way she would be able to view things in her life from then on. She would find herself questioning if superstitions and folklore and legends really were true and her science mislead her for all these years.

She stopped thinking about herself and her beliefs and switched over to the child lying unconscious in the hospital bed in front of her. She asked herself why God or any superior being would allow something so brutal and so cruel happen to a child of her age. She wondered if Anya's beliefs changed as hers did; they might not be of beliefs in things such as in the paranormal versus science, but of how her life was. She was there, she heard the Egyptian explain that he was killing her to finish the job; because of something her father did; and she also heard Mulder yell in response that she was only 3 and not expected to remember anything about treason. What was running through her confused mind?

As Scully stared at the unconscious child, Mulder appeared in the doorway, remembering the second that Anya slipped away. She'd been breathing heavily and rapidly the entire walk out of the forest and she suddenly stopped it all. Mulder tried dozens of remedies to test if she was awake or simply asleep; dead or just unconscious. He'd knelt down to the ground and laid her down, leaning over her as Scully watched wondering what was happening. Mulder reassured her that she'd just gone unconscious, and if they could hurry and get her to a hospital something might be done about it.

That's when they arrived at the door of the emergency room. Orderlies with stretchers had been waiting for them upon receiving a call from Mulder as he was speeding down the highway. Scully nor Mulder had heard a word on her for over an hour, but she was returned to a hospital room designated for her cleaned up. She'd been stitched, bandaged, and treated to the best of anyone's ability. Now she lay with internal bleeding, a sprained shin, a concussion, a nearly fractured skull, and many minor and major bruises and scratches.

Scully had thought that all the blood from her head wounds was making her injuries look worse than they really were, but when she was completely cleaned up, she could see the serious extent of it all. Scully almost wished the blood had stayed to cover up the splitting of a cut or the stretch of the stitches. Suddenly, Scully noticed Mulder in the doorway. When Scully acknowledged his presence, he walked over to her and kneeled down next to her after taking a glance at Anya and her life monitor.

"Have you heard anything?" Scully asked.

"She's not out of the woods, but she's doing OK," Mulder said. "They figure that in time she should physically recover. Emotionally, I'm not sure anyone could say."

Scully nodded.

"And she's got more bad news coming her way," Mulder said. Scully cocked her head indicating to Mulder that she wanted to hear the rest. "Her parents heard of this and found a way out of their meeting..." he began.

"That's great," Scully said with sudden energy, forgetting Mulder had said bad news, not good.

"But the weather in Sydney was terrible and they weren't letting commercial flights take off. Her parents were so determined to make it back that they hired a pilot to bring them back. They surprisingly made it out and changed over to a commercial flight in London, but their plane went down just as they entered Chicago airspace," he explained.

"And?" Scully asked, needing to know their condition.

"Her mother died instantly," he told her. "But her father's in critical condition just a few rooms down."

Scully bowed her head, "My God..."

"Either way, it looks as if they would have crashed," he said.

"Don't tell me you think it's a curse, Mulder, please I don't need that right--"

"No, I wasn't. But I think that just as other families in public situations have their tragedies, Anya has her own. And I think it's something that will follow her until the day she dies," he told Scully.

Scully's eyes slowly came to a close. "I don't know what she's going to do after she's gotten all this information."

"I don't either," Mulder said. "But whatever it is, I have faith that it'll turn out for the best in the end, whatever the outcome may be."

2 Hours Later

Scully had almost drifted into dream world when she heard a scratchy cough. She blinked the fogginess in her eyes away and came to focus on Anya trying to catch her breath. After another couple of coughs, she was fine and sitting up.

"Agent Scully?" she asked. "Is that you?"

She blinked her eyes to get a clearer picture of her surroundings, realizing she was in a hospital that under other circumstances she would hate, she became more aware of her situation.

"Yes, it's me," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"Drugged," she responded.

"I bet that's because you are," Scully came back with a small smile.

"Are my parents here? Did they come back?"

Scully's eyes dropped to the floor. Mulder had just approached in the doorway, making a complete stop in his tracks nearly tipping the coffee he held in his hands.

"Anya," Scully started. "I know that things have been really rough for you lately, and that I should probably wait to tell you this, but I think that you want to know now. So you can have the chance to say good-bye."

Anya's eyes were once again wide with confusion, "What do you mean?"

"Anya," she paused for a moment. "Anya, your parents were in a plane crash this afternoon trying to come home."

The little girl's mouth dropped open in opposition. She looked as though she wanted to say something, but couldn't get the words out. Finally, she got something to come out, "Are they OK? Where are they? I want to see them, where are they?"

Anya had already started tearing the sheets off of her, searching the room as if she'd find some answers in the walls.

"Anya, stop," Scully said. "You're mother didn't make it."

The child couldn't even bring tears to her eyes she was so shocked, "Daddy...what about my father? What about him?"

"He's in a room down the hall," Scully told her.

Anya began ripping away cords that protruded from all places of her body, trying to get up, "He's not doing too well, you shouldn't go down there."

The girl wasn't listening, she finished taking all the cords off of her and let her feet drop to the floor.

"Anya, be careful!" Scully raised her voice when she saw Anya grip at her shin. "You've got massive head injuries, you shouldn't be moving around like this."

"I want to see my dad," she demanded.

"I understand that, but you have to think about yourself, too," Scully told her.

Anya wasn't having any of it, she didn't want anyone rationalizations, she wanted nothing but to see the man she'd called her father. She hobbled quickly out of her room and down the hall, deciding which way she should go and making a quick decision. She peeked into many other dying patients’ rooms trying to locate her father. Scully brushed past Mulder in the doorway and stopped to watch her limp helplessly and pitifully down the hallway desperately trying to find her loved one.

Scully thought back to the death of her father; thinking about how she never bid him farewell or was able to hear from him that he loved her and was proud of her in whatever she chose to do. When she saw the fact that Anya's father was still alive, she saw the opportunity for her not to have to go on suffering through her life wondering if her businessman father ever cared for her.

Scully began a slow jog down the hallway and picked the girl up in her arms and took her down to the very end of the hallway to where her father lay with his eyes open. Scully walked around to the left side of the bed and set Anya down on her feet in front of her father's line of vision.

"Daddy," she whispered.

"Anya," he responded. "Come here," he requested.

Anya obeyed and edged closer to her dad's bedside. He leaned forward to her and whispered something quietly into her ear. When Anya leaned back, she had tears welling in the pits of her eyes, shaking her head and mouthing the word, "no."

"No, daddy," she said. "No, please don't, Daddy."

"Anya, it's the way things are," he tried to explain. "It's the way things have to be. It's the way they WILL be."

Anya let her tears flow freely down her bruised cheeks, landing with a boom on her father's sheets. She crawled up next to him and buried her face in his chest, crying and sobbing sorrowfully, knowing what she was to expect.

Mr. Kelly gathered enough strength to bend his finger to ask Scully to come near him. She did so, and leaned her ear down next to his mouth to hear his faded voice. "Please take care of my little girl," he asked.

Scully stood, "Mr. Kelly, I--"

"Please..." he rose his voice. "She's got no one left..."

"But, I--"

"Promise me," he begged.

Scully tried once more to protest; to state that she wouldn't make a good mother for the child raised among wealth and jewels, but he stopped her, raising his voice so that she could hear him, "PROMISE ME," he struggled.

Scully swallowed and nodded, "I promise."

His gaze then became fixed on his daughter, "Good-bye, Princess," he whispered.

Anya looked at him in terror, "No! Daddy, no!" she screamed as she heard his monitor flatline. "Daddy! Daddy, no! Please don't go, Daddy!"

Nurses and orderly's came rushing in with a crash cart, leaving Scully with no option then to grab Anya away from her father and let them do their job to attempt on bringing him back to life. Anya's tiny body rested on Scully's hip as she reached out for her father pathetically. Scully held her back and rested the girl’s head on her shoulder, allowing her to cry all she felt she needed to.

Scully watched pessimistically as they tried the defibrillator's on Mr. Kelly, whereas Anya watched over with a silent beg of optimism. Anya's tears came flooding back when she heard them pronounce the time of death and cover his body and face with a white sheet.

The heartbroken girl buried her face on Scully's shoulder as Scully walked out of the room. To her surprise, Mulder was, and had been, waiting just outside the doorway against the wall. He'd heard everything that'd gone on, something that could haunt him for the rest of his life as it did to Scully's and Anya's.

Scully looked up at his eyes, eyes that looked so inviting, and tears formed in her own eyes. She let Mulder take her in his arms so she could relieve all of her emotions. Mulder's eyes came close to tears, but they reflected the pain in the two people he held in his arms and in his heart's tears instead. He couldn't talk his way out of anything this time, nor could he think his way out, so all he could bother to do was stand their and comfort two aching souls in their time of need.

2:40AM

Scully lay drifting between being asleep and being awake on a small couch located in Anya's room. Her head was softly laid on Mulder's chest to the point where she could feel the rise and fall of his breathing. His arm was around her, holding her so that she'd feel safety and protection through the midst of hurt and confusion. She was unable to determine whether Mulder was awake or not, but she figured he was bordering sleep just as she was.

The sound of Anya's heart monitor kept her up willingly. She wanted to hear the rhythmic beats that reassured her that everything was fine and running according to plan. Scully hadn't been crying again, but she was still sniffling, switching her eyes between Anya's life monitor and Anya. She looked at her and remembered how just an hour ago Anya'd been balling hysterically for justified reason in her arms. And just an hour ago she'd walked out and let herself be taken in by someone other than herself; she let Mulder into her heart, letting him know her emotions for once. They'd turned around after a while and walked down the hallway, the injured girl nearly cried out and tired with her legs wrapped around Scully's waist and her head lying on her shoulder.

They'd walked into the room and Scully put Anya back down in her bed, she'd assured her that they'd work something out. Anya managed to drift her tired self to sleep with a little help from the doctors hooking her back up to the monitors and cords necessary to keep up with her most current conditions. Scully waited patiently for Anya to fall asleep, and when she did and she began nodding off herself, Mulder told her to lay on the couch. So she did, where her head slowly dropped to his chest. She was too tired to move, or even think about moving, and when Mulder's arm draped across her back, she forgot about moving.

She'd taken a small catnap for almost 30 minutes and then awoke to the sound of the heart monitor when she feared she hadn't heard it anymore. Scully'd been staring wide-eyed for the past 20 minutes at the rise and fall of the green line that determined her life. She looked on at the girl not as someone who'd rescued her, but as someone who was going to be spending more time with her than once expected.

Mulder could hear Scully's sniffles, and he sat more upright, "Scully?"

"Yeah?" she asked after a few seconds.

"You OK?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she gave him the automated response that he should have known to expect.

"You really should try to get some sleep, Scully," he suggested.

"Now YOU'RE starting to sound like ME," she joked.

The small joke lasted but a couple tiny seconds. She hadn't meant to be humorous, so neither took it to be. Mulder smiled for a second then let her readjust herself to try to get some sleep. Scully AND Mulder both managed to fall asleep for nearly an hour when they heard a small coughing and choking noise, followed my heavy footsteps bounding down the hospital corridors.

Scully sat up immediately, and Mulder's eyes became attentive. They searched the room with their minds and watchful eyes, then soon laid their concentration on Anya. Red blood came slowly oozing from the corners of her mouth, but that was blocked by a nurse in lavender scrubs applying tubes and medical instruments to the girl.

Scully jumped up and tried to get in to see what was going on, but they pushed her away. Scully could see them transferring her to a gurney and soon after wheel her out the door and down the hall.

"Where are you taking her?" Scully asked someone following briskly behind the gurney and filing something out in her chart at the same time. "WHERE ARE YOU TAKING HER?!"

The woman stopped, "We're taking her into the ICU, miss."

"Why?" Scully's voice had calmed.

"She's got internal bleeding, we thought you knew," she explained.

"I did," Scully searched her mind for an answer. "But I was told she would be fine."

The nurse suddenly seemed sympathetic. It's seemed so obvious to everyone on the inside about what was going to happen, but someone had mislead Scully from the very beginning. Telling her this child would be OK when the doctor's couldn't be sure. The red haired woman standing in front of the nurse didn't seem like the kind that would lash out on anyone unless it was important to her, so the dark haired nurse asked her to follow her.

Scully signaled for Mulder to catch up. He got up right away and made a slight jog to arrive next to her. The entire medical staff attending to Anya arrived in the ICU with Mulder and Scully trailing behind. They wheeled the gurney behind a glass-viewing window, and in front of the window, the nurse stood, ready to explain the child's situation.

"What's going on here?" Mulder asked.

"Whoever told you that Anya would be alright shouldn't have," she began.

"What are you saying?" Scully questioned.

"As you've been told she's got internal bleeding in severe amounts," the nurse was clarifying.

"Yes..." Scully responded.

"You were aware she had a broken rib," the nurse read as if she were going down a list.

"No, we weren't," Scully piped up.

"You weren't?"

"No."

"Well, normally that's not a big problem, but in Anya's case, it punctured her lung."

Scully, being a doctor, knew the odds of a child surviving a lung puncture. She still didn't know the degree of the puncture, so she begged the nurse to tell her, "How bad is it?"

"Well, it's not too bad, but because she has internal bleeding--"

"It's filling her lungs," Scully finished for her. Scully fought off tears and muttered, "Oh God."

Scully frantically looked around and found a chair right beside her.

"What are you planning to do about it?"

"They're prepping her for surgery right now," the nurse told her. "But this is only to drain her lungs. We can't promise that she's going to make it."

Scully looked down at the floor, Mulder bending down by her side. Scully had collected herself in time to see Anya being wheeled out of the prepping room and down the hall to surgery. She could see Anya drifting away into a deep sleep, but still looking at her with pleading eyes.

Scully covered her eyes with her hands and bent her head down. "She doesn't even know what's going on," Scully whispered to Mulder.

Mulder nodded, "We should call her brother and sister."

Scully nodded in return. He waited for her to get up then began walking to a desk with a courtesy phone. Mulder picked it up and dialed the number he had jotted down in his notepad where Anya's sister could be reached.

"Ms. Kelly?" Mulder asked as someone answered the phone.

"Yes?"

"This is Fox Mulder with the FBI," he said.

"Oh thank God, I heard Anya went missing on the news," her voice was shaky.

"We found her today," Mulder said. "But she's not doing too well."

"She's not?"

"No, I'm afraid not. She was beaten up pretty badly, and she was fine for a while, but they just took her into surgery," he told her.

"Is she going to be OK?"

"We don't know that yet," he said. "Have you heard about your parents?"

"My parents?" Kathleen repeated.

"Were you aware their plane crashed?"

"No," her voice was getting even more unsteady. "I heard about a plane crash over the radio, but they weren't supposed to be back for a few more weeks, I didn't think that was them." Her voice was getting higher and she talked more rapidly. "Are they OK? What do you know about them?"

Scully could see that Mulder wasn't enjoying relaying the news to the college student he was speaking to.

"They didn't make it, Ms. Kelly," he finally said.

Scully and Mulder both hated that part of their job the most. They hated telling people about the death of a loved one, or explaining the details. They felt it wasn't up to them, it didn't come with their territory to deal with human feelings, it was someone else's duty to deliver the morbid news.

When Mulder didn't say anything after a while, Scully figured that Kathleen was either breaking down or on the verge of it. Finally, Kathleen asked, "Where are you? Where's Anya?"

"We're at the hospital here in Chicago," Mulder told her gratefully, hanging up the phone.

Mulder looked at Scully for a moment then sat down in a chair in the waiting room, "I guess all we can do now is wait, huh?"

"Yeah," she breathed.

Once Scully sat down he looked at her and said, "I know this is hard for you. I know that what happened to you is going to change the way you think of things. And I want you to know that if I could go back and change things, I would erase everything that's happened to you since you joined me on the X Files, even if it meant never meeting you."

Scully's emotion lost control. She wasn't sure how to respond, she wasn't sure what to do or to think now or ever in the future. Instead all she could do was take his hand in hers and say, "I wouldn't."

After a few minutes they were interrupted by a frantic woman walking in. It was Kathleen Kelly searching for either of the agents.

Mulder and Scully stood up, collected themselves and approached her. "Is she out of surgery yet?"

"No," Scully her. "We haven't heard anything yet. But I imagine she'll be in there for quite some time."

"You should have a seat," Mulder offered the chair he'd been sitting in.

Kathleen nodded, moving over to the seat.

"Maybe someone should call your brother, Ms. Kelly," Scully suggested.

Kathleen looked up at her, then at Mulder and closed her eyes, "I'll do it."

She took a moment to gather herself and began to dial her brother's number. Mulder and Scully gave her the privacy to speak to her brother alone and explain the grim details. He was the last to know. He was the only one left to know. The family had diminished into a brother and sister left standing alone while their family and friends dropped dead at their knees.

Kathleen stood with her arms crossed stuck in a trance as she reflected back on the day that Anya was brought into her life. She had been 12, entering a stage where she'd need her parents more than ever and she had this traumatized 3 year old enter her life and family. Anya and a butler arrived at their door, a little girl with sparkling blue eyes and luscious brown hair, china-doll skin with a tint of rose in her cheeks. Her eyelashes were thick, long and dark, moving up and down as she looked around at various places. Her mother had just arrived home from work and welcomed the chauffeur and the little girl into her home. Corrine asked if Kathleen would show Anya to her new room, so she obeyed, liking Anya. From then on, Anya was the littlest princess of the family, they showered her with more affection than anyone else. She was spoiled more, but she'd had her real mother's heart and values already and grew into a lovable, caring, and beautiful young girl. They'd had many tough times, deaths of many family members, cousins, uncles and aunt's, whether it be to cocaine addictions, accidents, or murder, they made it through, Anya turning out the best in the end. She never let the tragedy affect her.

Corrine and Lucas had explained to Ryan and Kathleen as blatantly as they could about what she had been through before she arrived there with them. They, being young, were expected not to understand, but deep down they did, but didn't pay her pity like their parents did. That was why Anya attached to them more than anyone. She valued their time together as if every second, every breath was the last one she'd ever spend with them. Never leaving a room in anger, never going to sleep with hate, never forgetting to say "I love you" before parting.

Over the years that she'd lived with the Kelly family, the success of the adults soared. Time with the children decreased and time at the office increased in immense amounts. Corrine wasn't the typical wife or mother, she didn't cook, she didn't clean, she didn't do her own housework. She didn't take time out just to look at her children as most mothers did. She chose to take time out to rest and catch up on her deprived sleep. Lucas wasn't the typical husband or father figure either. He was a wealthy businessman concerned with his work, not family. He did, however, take some time to tuck Anya in each night, telling her she was his princess no matter what she thought. He would turn off the light and not look back on her as he shut the door. Every morning after each night he appeared as if he didn't remember any of what he would tell her. Anya got the sense why. He didn't tuck any of his other children in at night, and he didn't call them royalty. It was just her, and it was between just them.

Corrine and Lucas didn't play the perfect couple at home that they appeared to be in public appearances. They looked completely in love when seen on television or in public, but when at home, it was as if they were siblings or roommates, not lovers.

Because of this silent depression among the family, they grew apart and the children grew together. Anya became dependent on Kathleen, and Ryan became a good brother that was never really around. He simply played the role model, he didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he didn't do drugs that were easily accessible to him in his financial situation, and he did so for the sake of his sisters. Then he grew up and went off to college, as did Kathleen only 3 years later. Anya was left alone with no one who understood her. Kathleen and Ryan both sent her letters and pictures on many occasions and out of the blue would send her a T-shirt or sweatshirt or some other item that she would appreciate not for the materialism of it, but for the knowledge that she hadn't been forgotten. Ryan was a calming down senior, so he wasn't as busy as Kathleen had always been as a freshman, so he rarely failed to visit Anya on weekends and take her somewhere. Kathleen did her best to call each week when she didn't make it home, knowing that being left alone would break Anya's fragile heart.

Now things were where they were. This seemed to be the final stage. All the family was dead with the exception of the children, there was no one for any of them to turn to but each other. It was extremely worrisome to Anya's siblings on where she would go if she pulled through, they were both in college and couldn't take her in with them. Scully had been wary of telling either of them when Ryan arrived that their father lived long enough to beg her to take Anya.

Everyone sat around quietly until nearly 7:00AM when a nurse walked out of surgery who'd been seen earlier with Anya. Everyone stood up upon seeing her, but said nothing believing she would know what they wanted to ask.

"She made it through," she spoke without a smile, that lead the group of people to believe there was bad news to come. "But we're not sure if she'll live much longer."

Kathleen turned to Ryan with her head ducked down and Scully took in a deep breath. This told the nurse that she'd spoken the news the wrong way, so she continued.

"That's not to say that she won't live a long and fulfilling life," she told them. "But we can't say for sure right now if there will be any negative side effects or if her condition is treatable."

"When can she get out of here?" Mulder asked.

"We're asking that she stay at least for a week so we can keep a close watch on her," the woman said. "And if she's doing fine, we'll release her."

3 days had passed slowly. Anya's health was off and on, and she'd had 2 minor surgeries since the last major one to rid her lungs of any fluid that entered that shouldn't be there. The days were slow and uncertain, each night wondering if it were Anya's last, each morning wondering if she was just asleep or gone. It was increased stress on everyone.

The next 2 days passed without worry, she was fine, and was due to be discharged in 2 days. Scully could see the more minor cuts and bruises closing shut and slowly disappearing; she saw nurses remove a few sets of stitches and bandages, and wounds being cleaned out.

It was Mulder's unspoken duty to bring Scully's clothes back from the hotel and to bring her food, otherwise she wouldn't change or eat. She had already appeared to have lost some weight. When Anya started doing better, Mulder convinced Scully to go and take a bath or a shower and that he'd call her if there was any change. She agreed and was glad she did when she found herself soaking in a large tub almost long enough to fall asleep.

When she realized she'd fallen asleep, she got out of the tub immediately and returned to the hospital. Anya had a clean bill of health when she arrived. She'd had 1 day to go until she could leave and she was more than ready and anxious to jump up out of bed, change into her own clothes, and jump in someone's car and speed off.

"Can't I go?" Anya begged anyone who was listening.

Kathleen was the closest to her, and she'd been frustrated by funeral arrangements for her parents and the fact that Anya was holding on by a thread of her life, so when Anya begged to go home, she blew up. "Anya, stop! OK? Just stop! You're not going home today, you're not going home tomorrow. You'll go home the day after, OK? Bright and early, promise. Just get that into your mind."

Scully, Mulder, and Ryan had been turned their heads that were once concentrating on magazines they'd read more than once in their time of being at the hospital, towards Kathleen. When Kathleen saw the 3 pairs of eyes on her, she turned back to Anya and let out a frustrated sigh before looking into the glassy eyes of her sister. Anya didn't know that she'd pushed Kathleen over the edge, it was the first she'd ever SAID about wanting to leave and no one blamed her. Kathleen realized this and said, "Look, Anya, I'm sorry, but there's so much going on right now that I--" she looked at her and saw a girl who didn't need an explanation, she only wanted an apology. "Nevermind, I'm sorry."

Anya nodded in response.

Kathleen stood up and walked out of the room to the lobby leaving Scully to occupy the seat she once sat in.

"I know you're sick of being here," she told her. "I can understand that, believe me, I can. But it's just one more day. It's almost time for bed anyway, just look at it as one more day and you're out of here."

She nodded, but didn't seem to want to understand.

"I think you know that your sister is under a lot of stress right now. She's got a lot on her mind and I don't think she realized that she would hurt your feelings by snapping at you," Scully tried explaining. "But it'll be OK."

Anya returned a nod once again and didn't say anything until Scully said, "You should get some sleep. See you in the morning."

"Night," she responded.

"Night."

Mulder and Ryan stood as Scully shut out the lights. They all walked into the lobby where Kathleen was trying to keep her calm. Ryan took a look at the agents and decided he'd accompany his sister in her period of grief. Scully wasn't sure what she should be thinking at that moment, just as Mulder was unsure what he should be doing. Scully looked briefly around for seat, and found one just a few feet away. Mulder followed her over.

"You should be getting some sleep, too, you know," he told her.

She glanced up at him, "Yeah, I know, it's just--" She didn't know what to say, or if she should say anything, so she just let what needed to come out be released. "I don't know what I'm doing. I promised her father that I'd take her, but I don't know what to do with a 10 year old child."

"I wouldn't either, Scully, but if I were in your place," he started. "I'd play it by ear. Just see how it goes."

She nodded lightly and stood again. "I think I'm gonna go back to the hotel and try to get some sleep."

"Want me to take you back?" he asked, offering her a ride in order to keep her from making a fatal driving error due to her grogginess.

Scully tempted turning him down, then as she thought more about she said, "Yeah, I'd appreciate that."

The next morning Scully woke up to a banging at her door. She glanced at her clock first to shock the visitor with the ungodly hour they were waking her up with when she saw it was already 10 o'clock. She jumped out of bed and ran her hands through her hair at a cheap attempt to straighten it. She desperately tried to locate her robe, but it wasn't in sight quick enough. She'd left the person standing outside way too long.

She forgot to bother to look through the peephole, so she was thankful that when she flung open the door that it was Mulder.

"We've got a situation down at the hospital," he told her.

"What? What kind of situation?" she asked.

"Anya's relapsed," he said. When she didn't respond with words, he said, "Get dressed."

Scully grabbed a pair of clothes that she wasn't even sure if they matched and threw them on in the bathroom. She ran a comb through her hair quickly and managed to brush her teeth thoroughly in less than a minute. She grabbed her coat and was out the door before Mulder.

She jumped in the passenger side of his car the second she located it in the crowded parking garage and impatiently. He saw her anxiousness and did his best to get the car started up fast. As she drove over with Mulder, she thought about how the little girl's life was once again threatened and she realized how selfish she was being through this whole time - wondering the entire time what she would do with a 10 year old girl; how she would handle it. Just then she noticed that she'd only been thinking about herself. Not once did she stop to think, "what is Anya feeling about this?" and she never once bothered to ask. And now it could be too late.

Mulder drove the car up right to the front entrance and let Scully out. He sped over to a handicap spot and raced to catch up with Scully on foot. They darted up the stairs for the elevator was taking too long. They reached the floor they needed to be on and sprinted down the hallway into Anya's room, "Anya," Scully breathed.

She rushed over to try and push pass the nurses that blocked her view. She saw Anya struggling for a breath of simple air, just the feel of cold air slid down her throat and only one, but she wasn't getting it. They had her sitting up, blood pouring out her mouth coming up from her clogged lungs. Each time she inhaled, blood would shoot back down her throat and come right back up when she exhaled. There seemed to be no way to get her to breathe.

"Can't you take her into surgery?" Scully asked someone, anyone. "What are you doing? Why are you waiting?"

"Ma'am, she won't live ‘‘til surgery," one insensitive nurse said, silencing Scully.

Scully wanted to chime in and help Anya herself, but she knew it wouldn't do her any more good. She was choking on her own blood, what could anyone do? It was endlessly spewing forcefully from her mouth, turning her blue in the face making her eyes seemingly bulge from their sockets. Scully couldn't bare the site of a child simply sitting and dying, so she yelled, "You're just going to sit there and pretend to help her while you let her die?!?!"

"Ma'am, if you don't calm down we're going to have to remove you," the same nurse told her.

Scully was screaming inside, 'I'd like to see you try, Barbie!', but she kept it in. The blonde nurse had a way of keeping her uninformed and out of the loop that she so hopelessly tried to get inside. She got through enough to see Anya's face go to the color of the ocean as she took a few last slow cough and tried to breath just a little more.

"Can't you give her something?!" Scully begged, tears forming in her eyes.

No one responded to her.

"Please?" she begged, her voice cracking as she watched with tearful eyes along with Mulder, Ryan, and Kathleen standing back watching in silence. "Please??" she pleaded.

Anya's body fell spastically to the bed, the nurses holding her wrists and feet down. Scully all the while yelling, "Let her go! Don't restrain her! Let her go, please!?"

Someone let go of her legs and eventually the two nurses holding her arms leg go. Scully's hands fell to the footboard of the bed as she saw Anya's struggle stop and her eyes come to a restful close. Scully dropped to the floor in defeat as the nurses recorded time of death on their clipboards and covered her with a sheet then left the room to go get the doctor. Scully was on the floor covering her face with her hands as she cried for the dead girl who once shone such gorgeous beauty. For the girl who stunned everyone with her radiance as she walked by, being only 10 years old. For the girl who had been told that she'd be fine and the next day she would have arrangements made for her burial. For the girl who's life was a living hell but overcame it selflessly and was ready to live her own life. For the girl who touched everyone's heart with her eyes and soul who was suddenly battered beyond recognition and whose beauty was stolen by an act of cold blooded cruelty.

Kathleen was weeping and sobbing in her brother's arms. Ryan was staring at his deceased sister's covered body with awe and disbelief. No one could blame them for not wanting to believe it, everyone in their lives were all now dead. Mulder opted to leave the siblings alone and go to Scully curled up on the floor.

"Scully...." he whispered. "Scully, it's OK."

He couldn't think of anything else to say to her, so he waited for her to respond, "They just let her die, Mulder. Did you see it? Did you see her? Did you see how much pain she was in? Did you?"

His eyes hit the floor, "Yes, Scully, I did...but as they said there was nothing they could--"

"Bullshit, Mulder!" she yelled. "They could have taken her into surgery and put her under. If she died then at least she wouldn't have been in so much pain! Didn't you see that? She choked on her own blood, Mulder! They could have helped her!"

"Maybe this was for the best, Scully," he said calmly.

"For the best? Look at her brother and sister. They've got no one left now, no one, Mulder," she told him, trying to keep her cool.

"But, Scully," he said, grabbing her attention. She looked at him with water covering her azure colored eyes as he said, "She's out of Hell."

THE END