AUTHOR: "GenieVB" plus contributions by my husband, Ade'.(Author's notes appear at end)

RATING: NC-17! Language, violence, sexually explicit scenes, hmmmm,... what else? oh, yes!: slash (a wee bit), rape, adult situations).

SPOILERS: Folie A Deux, The End

THANK-YOU'S:This story is free for archiving anywhere with my full permission and gratitude.

SUMMARY: MT/MSR. Mulder is abducted - for real - and returned eight years later.

DISCLAIMER: The X-Files series, movie, characters, and related props: guns, ugly ties and sunflower seeds are all the property of Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Product- ions and the Fox Network. I don't want any credit, fame or fortune from X-Files, I only want to write about your show and characters to entertain myself and others. Also, Star Trek and its Universe are owned by Gene Roddenberry and his heirs and Paramount and not me, I don't want any fame or fortune from any of YOUR stuff either.

*This is book one of a 4 book series.

*****

"PhaHks" - Prologue.

"Impounded."

Startled, "What?" she asked.

"His vehicle wasn't at his apartment because it was impounded Friday night, Agent Scully."

It was Sunday.

"Why? What's happened, sir?"

"Sit down." F.B.I Assistant Director Walter Skinner directed her to a chair opposite his desk with a wave of his hand. "That's the question of the day."

In other words, he thought, nothing new. "It's why I'm here so early in here on a Sunday, Agent Scully." He leaned forward, slumping, as if his head had suddenly grown very heavy. It was an unusual posture for him and she noted it. "And now that you're here-"

"-Sir, what is going on? I wasn't able to reach Mulder all weekend - "

"I tried to contact you about this late Friday." Skinner interrupted. "Where were you?"

"Oh. I'm sorry, sir. I was...at my godson's until today. I, uh, I didn't have my Cell' with me, I'm..." she twitched her eyebrows, an ironic, facial shrug, "I've been leaving it at home so Mulder,...I mean, when we have no current case,...so my weekends off are weekends off."

Skinner nodded. There was no accusation in his tone, "You couldn't have known, Agent Scully. But something has happened. We don't yet know what." He handed her a thin manila folder. "The investigation began Friday night."

Pulling a lock of her red hair back behind one ear, Agent Scully read the police report contained within. There wasn't much and she was aware that Skinner, of course, knew it contents but she read aloud anyway:

""Vehicle registered to Fox Mulder found abandoned just off "I-90" approximately four A.M. this morning..." She closed her sky-blue eyes and opened them again. "No signs of forced entry, but passenger-side door ajar. Identification, cellular and weapon discovered in glove compartment. Exterior and interior dusted, no prints found other than owners. Overnight bag in trunk.."."

She looked back to her boss. "There's nothing here indicating robbery? No blood found, no trace evidence, nothing indicating that anything of a violent nature occurred?"

"No." He shook his head. "But his car was found with the engine running. No witnesses to his prior activities," he finished paraphrasing the report for her. "No other tire tracks on the shoulder, no "suspicious activities" seen by anyone on the road that night. No calls made from his cellular since Friday evening, and that one was to his mother in Chilmark."

"She knows he's missing?"

"Yes but she can't tell us anything. From his call to her, he was on his way there. She expected him around ten P.M., only he didn't arrive."

"And knowing his mother, she wouldn't worry right away. Um,...Mulder's been known not to keep appointments."

Skinner sniffed in agreement, having himself butted heads with the Agent in question. Mulder was the most talented, most risk-taking, most bullet-prone and altogether most frustrating agent in his department. Had he been a road sign, it would have said: "WARNING! HAZARD!"

"As far as local police and the Department are able to determine, Mulder went straight from work to home and then we assume on to his mothers. If you can offer us any insight into this, Agent Scully, anywhere he might have gone, his habits outside of work, the Bureau is all ears. They have the official investigation and I myself will do everything possible but I'm leaving the un-official inquiries up to you. You'll have full access to the case."

Scully winced. Mulder had been reduced from valued partner to "the case".

Skinner was still speaking. "You know more about him than anyone."

Scully peered across the desk of her boss. What he meant was that he knew she was worried and that she had leave to do what was necessary to find him, but not necessarily the obligation to let him in on the details.

She was grateful for his between-the-lines encouragement. Walter Skinner sometimes - often - came across as a stern and uncompromising man in his glasses and starched, white shirts stretched tight over military shoulders.

But where strangers might see only a stiff disciplinarian, she saw much more. *Had* seen it, often. Firmness and by the book attitude - yes - Skinner was a master at that. But A.D. Skinner, behind his gold-rimmed glasses and pursed lips, showed genuine concern and consideration for those under his orders. He worried about his agents, he cared about them. And for that, almost to a man, he inspired loyalty. His agents respected him. More than that, they liked him.

"Yes, sir, thank-you. I'll do my best. I think I'd like to start by visiting the spot where his car was discovered."

Skinner dropped his official face for a moment and rubbed the bridge of his nose, nodding. "I am sorry Agent Scully. I'm sure something will turn up soon." He thought *Sometimes Mulder's a thorn in my ass but he's MY thorn and it's MY ass!*, but what he said was: "I hope Mulder's all right."

"Yes, sir, so do I."

But the spot was just a spot on a gravel road about two hundred feet off the highway. Just a road by a hill where bushes quivered in the afternoon breeze.

Later, checking out the forensic team's results on his car, she learned they had found nothing further, no clue to his whereabouts or why he'd left his car behind. Or (another idea and the more likely hypotheses, she'd decided) why "they" had taken him, leaving the car.

Disappearing without a trace was not scientific but, thus far, it applied.

Scully kept up the investigative inquiries, pursuing all angles, every possibility, anything. She even enlisted the talents of Byers, Langly and Frohike, Mulder's weird but endearing friends and publishers of The Magic Bullet, a little back-alley rag that spouted the latest C.I.A. conspiracies, U.F.O hot-spots and what-not.

Their inspirations turned up nothing.

Trouble had always hung around Mulder like a bad odor, yet, even their forays into danger she began to miss. A good, frustrating, convoluted case had with few exceptions brought out the best in both of them. A few adrenaline pumping almost-being-killed's thrown in? Even better.

Death, faced together, they conquered.

Disaster had been their best friend and their worst enemy.

But now the enemy was unknown. Days added up into weeks and then months.

Two enemies: the UNSUBS

And time.

As one of her colleagues assigned to "the Mulder case" had elaborated, "Time's a killer," then, callously disregarding that she was within earshot, "the longer Spooky's missing, the more likely it is he's dead."

Before long, summer had left.

Fall came and went.

Then winter with its inevitable drizzle drifted in, depressing her in its insistence on smearing everything in grey. She loathed its proclamation because it matched her spirits.

When another new Spring arrived the fresh growth mocked her because she could not share the beauty of it with him. Could not, while on a case with him, stop the car and enjoy a few moments smelling the breeze beside the road as they stretched their cramped legs.

They could no longer park at a roadside gas-station restaurant, sip bitter coffee and watch each other eat. She especially missed seeing him struggle with the white powdered sugar that coated his chin after he wolfed down two or three donuts.

Could no longer fall asleep in a seedy motor-Inn, knowing he was just a door away. Couldn't look forward to breakfast and his morning highs, his mouth moving too fast for her to follow as he summed up what he'd been thinking about all night over their current case.

Couldn't watch him spill coffee on his tie.

The good stuff.

Summer came around again but to her it was ugly and infuriating. She didn't think anything should be colorful or pretty or alive because it was like a betrayal. The world didn't miss him and it should have.

She missed him.

Missed almost everything about him.

Had never told him.

They had each, rarely, ever broached the subject of their mutual respect and, even less so, their trusted partnership. Their valued friendship, jointly cherished, had not once been spoken of openly. They had sort of taken each other matter-of-factly. He was her partner and she was his. They fought for each other, protected each other, cared about each other. Nothing had needed to be said.

Certainly not the unspoken, stronger feelings because that was an un-chartered deeply running current. At least in her.

It had remained, in the end, untouched.

He had given her signals, more than once. She had chosen not to respond. So as not to, she had thought, endanger the working bond they shared, the professional chemistry that had made them a superb team. Not responded to his small sometimes two-meanings touches with any of her own however much she'd wanted to.

In fact, sometimes she'd played cool and amused. Always he had laughed it all off as part of their little clown act.

It even sounded like they belonged in a troupe. "Scully N' Mulder".

Jokes.

Sometimes his eyes, though, would be thoughtful afterward. Unsteady. Puzzled. Worried.

Hurt.

Scully thought, not for the first time since he'd vanished, that Regret was a living, stabbing bitch and she was sticking it to Dana Scully but good.

She remained with the X-Files with regular forays into pathology at Quantico.

Eventually, most of her week was spent there. But she made sure that at least one full day and several evenings were taken up with the X-Files. Not that there was much to do there. Fewer and fewer cases of the paranormal flavor came across her desk.

A few she solved. None about abductions.

Mostly missing persons where the circumstances seemed unusual. She requested 302's and usually got them. Traveled a little but not like before. Kept expenses to a minimum and generally pursued her cases as she saw fit.

Nobody bitched.

Certainly the tiny basement office was no expenditure to the Bureau since she was already on the Quantico payroll.

Spooky's old domain wasn't exactly up for grabs.

Days became routine.

She kept the X-Files department active but she suspected Skinner allowed it out of indulgence to her and her value as a versatile agent and not because he believed, as she did, that Mulder would be returning.

After the fire, the place had been redecorated. Whatever had been salvageable had been rescued and re-filed, re-stacked, repainted.

New desk.

New department head.

It was lunch hour and she seated herself at her usual spot. A table by the window at a quaint little bagel nosher (not where she and Mulder used to go), within walking distance to work. It was where she occasionally met her mother on weekends unless she was away on a case which was happening less and less.

The waiter (the place employed waiters in cute little bow ties and shiny shoes) brought coffee.

Scully's thanked him absentmindedly, her thoughts on a case just weeks prior to Mulder's disappearance.

<*"Scully, you're my one in five billion."*>

Mulder had said that to her. Lying in a psyche ward, strapped down, at the mercy of an unknown, unseen killer. Some monster that had terrified him. Frightened him enough that he began to pursue it. Believed it enough that he had risked chasing that belief as far as right into the A.D.'s office, screaming out his accusations of "It" hiding in the light and infecting the innocent.

No one else had believed him.

Certainly not the Assistant Director, bruised from having to have pinned Mulder to his desk. Certainly not the EMT's who were summoned to come and strap Mulder down on their roll-away, plastic sheets gurney.

Certainly not his partner, Scully thought. But it, Mulder, the whole thing, had sounded so totally OUT THERE. His claims, the ravings of a genius mind finally spiraling down into madness. SHE hadn't believed him. Not for a minute.

*Not this!* she had thought and, later, was forced to ask herself: why not?

All those other cases with Mulder threading together some bizarre theory of human sized sucker worms, moth-men, vampires, pituitary gland sucking voo-doo spirits...Scully had a quite a list tucked away in her brain. Some of the strange she'd seen with her own eyes and had no better theories to account for them. No way to validate their existance yet no evidence to invalidate Mulder's conclusions.

But a zombie-making, mind-controlling monster-man right out of Stephen Kings closet of BOO's?

But along "It" had come.

A monster, (disguised as a man of course), working for - of all things - a vinyl siding company. A monster that "hid in the light", chomping on its employees necks, turning them into zombie slaves and mastering them through mental telepathy.

*Whoa-whoaWHOA! Mulder???*, had been her first thought.

In the face of his Mulder-normal voice and paper-thin circumstantial evidence, he had scared the shit out of her.

So, *Holy shit! is he kidding or is he (my god) losing it?*, had been her second thought.

Didn't believe him. At first, didn't even consider it.

Her partner of five years, labeled as a delusional schizophrenic, had been held down, sedated, and transported away in a quiet ambulance while half of his peers had watched, shaking their heads and whispering among themselves "See? I told you so.", "I knew he was NUTS, but geez....", "Didja hear? Ol' "Spooky" just did a swan dive off the deep end.".

Days prior to his undignified exit from Skinner's office, Mulder had come to her, his partner, for assistance, for her medical expertise. His request, said calmly, rationally, even nicely. <"If this is, as you say, all in my mind, I would really appreciate you helping me prove that.">

Spoken quietly or not, it had been a plea.

And what had she said or done?

Nothing.

Well, not NOTHING...

She had dismissed his claims as the work of an overworked mind, one that had fallen under the empathic spell and insistence of a lunatic.

The other nothing she had done was to adamantly refuse to help him prove or even disprove the claims of his own eyes by performing a simple autopsy, even when, two days previous, he had in their shared office, so calmly, begged her to help him.

Begged her.

<"If this is all in my mind,...">

Later staring down at him in a psyche ward, seeing firsthand his desperation, she had mouthed some patronizing garbage, expressing her hope that he'd "come out of it".

Helpless to help himself, laying there, restrained and drugged, he'd pleaded for her help again. After five years together, she had stood there with her arms crossed, knee-deep in his humiliation...

...and then had said NO!

"I'm ashamed." Scully said to the room, empty of her partner but still full of his life. She'd driven all the way to work on a Saturday. And this room had him written all over it.

But there was no absolution here.

But, of course, he had forgiven her immediately. Hadn't even mentioned it.

At least she could take some comfort in that she had come through for him in the end.

Just short of too late.

Even that day when she'd refused him, his eyes had not accused.

She missed those eyes, whether wide-eyed at a light in the sky or still and sleeping. Eyes that could be so terribly sad and then, in seconds, playful.

She missed it all.

His chewed up pencils still littered the office. If she used her imagination, she could picture him sitting at his desk, reading, chewing his lip with his gleaming white, slightly crooked incisors inside that long angle of jaw.

Nature was frivolous.

She knew of male agents, some with whom she occasionally consulted, who spent hours in the gym, on the track and in front of the mirror trying vainly to achieve what her partner had been given by genetics.

Ironically, Mulder had on occasion used his various charms to woo a difficult witness of the female persuasion when it suited his ends.

Or use those same good looks and charm to piss them royally off if THAT suited his purpose; if it meant getting at the truth.

And he was good at it.

Nothing like a sexy, handsome man staring down at you and speaking to you in a tone of voice that said you were beneath him. Like you were nothing special.

Like your tits were too small and your hole too loose.

Like, under any other circumstances, he wouldn't have given you the time of day never mind a roll in the dark. It almost never failed to make the woman hiss and bare her claws.

And sometimes such tactics brought out the truth.

Mulder was a psychologist, after all. Anger often made people say exactly what was on their mind.

But it depended on the witness and what he needed from them.

If you were a victim, he was gentleness itself. Sometimes he didn't want anything except to ease their hurt.

Scully's thoughts left the psychological for the physical.

She realized that now and then he must have given in to his bodies biological urges and had company overnight in his infrequently slept-in bed or spent a night away from home in someone else's. When, where, how often or with who she had not known nor had she wanted to, private speculations aside. (Bar pick-ups perhaps?) But to her knowledge Mulder had never resorted to prowling for a streetwalker in order to satisfy whatever were his sexual aches. It hadn't fit the Mulder she knew.

He simply would NOT HAVE DONE.

Mulder, with his "Yes Ma'am"'s, and "No Ma'am"'s, his "Yes, please"'s and "thank-you"'s, and his, in that unaffected, natural grace, standing whenever a lady, young or old, entered a room all bespoke breeding and manners not customarily found among the fruit of his generation. Mulder had picked up some of his male graces during his Oxford days, but Scully knew that was not the whole story. And good manners could certainly not have been beaten into him, no matter how hard his father had tried.

Part of his tenderness must have come from endurance. Abused kids often grow up to be abusers themselves. Not so in Mulder's case. Quite the opposite. She'd known him as a gentle spirit though Scully suspected that underneath had existed a steel core, forged under fists and angry words, which had finally emerged with a determination to be anything BUT hard and impenetrable. NOT like father, like son.

No. Mulder was a born gentleman. And a humanitarian. People always came first. Innocents were cleared, victims comforted, THEN justice met out upon the evil-doers.

All that and good looks too despite a nose rather too large, teeth a little bit over bitten, chin a wee bit receding, hair the slightest bit unruly, forehead a touch too high. Somehow out of that cauldron of slight imperfections, nature had cooked up a face that stopped women in their tracks in order to take a second and then a *third* look.

Then, just to top it off, it had dolled him six feet-one inch of lithely molded, tight masculinity that just made women gooey.

Drop-dead gorgeous had sprung from mish-mash.

He'd known of his affect on women and even of the jealousy his looks had incited among his male peers. She knew he had been well aware of it, in fact. But the thing was, he just hadn't cared. He'd been far too mind-focused and driven by his perpetual work to have taken any of it seriously. Of what he had not been aware, she mused, were the hungry looks from certain male associates who'd stared after him, their eyes resting upon his back a trifle too long to have accounted for mere "Spooky" curiosity. Wistful visual touches that spoke their disappointment in the common knowledge of Mulder's heterosexual preferences.

No, Mulder would never have had to resort to a prostitute. There had been plenty of available sex-partners at the Bureau all too happy to have accommodated him. Women, at least, who'd had no reservations about making their interests crystal clear. But beyond a tolerant wink, Mulder had never shown the slightest inclination to accept.

Scully disciplined her thoughts. They kept drifting into past tenses.

Despite his video collection of unspeakables, Mulder was old-fashioned.

Consumed by his work.

And, despite persistent gossip to the contrary, too much of a professional to romantically entangled himself with a workmate. Too risky in his view. Such liaisons could interfere with his time sucking workload and his personal quests, the sole focus of his life.

Each partner with no entanglements. Each busy with work.

With each other.

But one warm evening, on their last case together before his disappearance, all her set assumptions regarding her deep water partner had been dashed to little pieces.

Before the vision of his hand been held in the tenderness of another's, she had stood stunned. For a second only but long enough to have tipped her from her foundations.

Her mental Mulder files had lay scattered at her feet all because of one moment and a name from the past:

Diana Fowley.

What had she been to him? And what was he becoming to her now?

Mulder, who wore his heart out in the open for all to see, who had shown tolerance even to those who had hurt him, who so endearingly wanted things to be right in the world, had suddenly been captured by an old love out to rekindle his old flame, which fire was not burning for Scully.

In a split second, the length of time it had taken her to keep walking down that cool hallway and not disturb them, Scully had felt like she was losing the part of her life that suddenly was too precious to lose. The part she'd had, up to that point, taken for granted.

Except for those atrocious ties.

****************

Margaret Scully was worried.

"Dana, I want you to talk someone."

It was Sunday.

Bagel Bistro Brunch day. It was their interpretation of "New England".

Dana Scully played with her half-eaten peach crepe. Kippers were gross.

"Mom, don't."

Margaret leaned across the table, forcing her only daughter to look at her. "I know how things were. I'm not blind. I wasn't to Fox and certainly not to you. This isn't healthy. What if-"

"There are no what-if's yet. We don't know anything."

"I know. Dana, I know."

Dana sighed heavily at her mother's worried expression. "Mom, why couldn't things have been simpler than this?"

Why couldn't she be out in the world and feeling all of it? Instead of inside this transparent bubble that went everywhere she did. It kept out the freshness of life.

If she tried...if she stretched out her arm, her finger-tips almost brushed the inner edge of it. Almost. Not quite.

Like being with her mother. Just so far. No farther.

"What did you mean, Mom?"

"About...?"

"About being not blind to him?"

"You're so smart, Dana, but somehow it escaped you. It was there on his face every time I saw him look at you, and in his voice. I knew the day you disappeared."

"Mom, Mulder cared about so much. He fought for everyone who was close to him. It only makes sense he would fight for me and-"

"Dana," she took her hand, "he was *insane* with grief." She slipped a cardboard business card across the table to her daughter. "I want you to promise me you'll go."

Dana understood the unspoken message. Margaret didn't want her daughter going that same road.

She took the card and read the name. Another therapist. She had half a dozen others just like it in her purse. Concerned colleagues, sincere friends, all trying to help.

She didn't want help. She wanted to keep her own counsel and if that meant crying every night in the shower and eye drops afterward, well then, leave her the fuck alone.

But this was her mother, who had cared for and respected her partner. Who cared for her.

"Okay. But I won't promise to continue."

At least the shrink was one not connected to the Bureau.

What the hell.

He record would be remain spic' and span.

******

"I see by your file that during your time assisting Agent Mulder in the X-Files Division, you've been through a great deal. The loss of family members, your life threatened on more than one occasion...."

"Yes."

"And now Agent Mulder has disappeared."

"Yes." Scully shifted as her private therapist adjusted her bifocals.

"Do you think Dana?...is it possible that you're feeling anger towards your partner?"

"Anger? No, why would I be?"

"From things you said to me on your first visit. Because he's gone. Whatever the circumstances, he's effectively exited from your life. Very suddenly. It can be like a death, Dana. Sometimes, it can be harder, the not knowing."

"I understand what you're saying, but I'm not feeling anger towards him. Not at all."

"Tell me what you are feeling. What brought you to me today?"

"I'm feeling...um, I think it's f-fear."

"Why?"

"I don't mean fright but,.. I don't blame Mulder. I don't blame him at all, whatever's happened to him, it wasn't his choice, I know that for a fact." She avoided a direct answer.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I know him, Doctor Bryant. We worked together for five years. He has occasionally gone off without a word, but not for this long and...and never like this. There was no message from him on my computer."

"Is that what he usually did when he knew he would be away for an unusual time?"

She nodded. "Or when he was embarking on something a bit dangerous and wanted to protect me, which he sometimes did."

"I see."

Scully thought that she did not see. Not really.

"Describe this fear. What do you mean by that? What kind of fear?"

Scully swallowed and took a breath, steeling herself.

"Mulder helped me through...things. We supported each other. I've made my own choices and have lived with the consequences of those choices, but...I - he, now, I don't - ." she wavered, halted.

"It sounds like you had an especially close partnership. From what you've described, am I correct in saying you were more like family than workmates?"

"Yes. I feel like I've lost another member of my family and the fear is...that I won't be able to handle it. I feel," she tried to find the right word, "unstable, somehow and not just because he's missing. I'm a strong person, doctor, but, I suppose I just learned to rely on him." She looked at her folded hands. "More than anyone."

"Now you feel...?"

"I don't know. I am angry that, after a year of intensive investigation, we still know nothing."

"How would you describe your relationship with Agent Mulder, other than in the work environment?"

The doctor listened to the half answer.

"Friends. Mulder - whenever my ship was sinking, he was my life-boat, helping me to...back to shore so, for me, the missing is easier than the knowing."

Liar.

"Are you sure about that?"

No! It was harder. God - how hard it was! to wait and know nothing. So this is what it's like.

Twenty-five years. That's how long Mulder (before he became among the missing yet hoped for himself) had waited for Samantha; how long he'd kept the candle for her burning in his heart; the lantern to his road.

The hope.

Hope was being a prisoner. It was chains to the past and one tiny window to the future. It was everything in ones world reduced to Someday.

And it was so cold.

That was the hardest of all, the most painful, keeping the hope warm and the heart from turning into a tiny, painful block of ice.

She'd always thought that, though he'd been brave to have continued waiting and hoping, he'd also been unwise. Better to put it behind oneself and move on, she'd always silently believed.

Presumptuousness. Now she understood all too well what it was like to have a treasure - a loved human being - taken from ones life; vanish without words or warning.

Samantha had been missing for twenty-five years and he had still believed.

Things like these, she realized, cannot be left behind. They are precious cargo, carried forward, willingly, desperately, under bowed shoulders and aching back. Though they become heavier, they are kept close, perpetually embraced while hurting like fucking hell.

Melissa, her own murdered sister, had been dead for three years. But at least she could go and place flowers at Melissa's grave and weed around the head- stone. Scully had had an ending. She'd had anger and acceptance. Grief then closure. All those things in which she'd been able to indulge, those movements that enable the survivor to live on and find equilibrium again. A struggle, yes. But mostly good memories now.

Mulder had been less fortunate. His sister, at the time of his own disappearance, had still been just a hope for him. A twenty-five year old ache. He'd been much stronger than she had given him credit for. So very, very strong to have carried the pain all that time. Despite all the promises she'd made to herself in that regard, she felt unequal to the burden.

Scully came back to the doctor's office and realized she hadn't answered. Put her hand to her mouth, spoke through it. "I don't know if I can stand to lose him too,..." Her fingers trembled. Very softly, "...especially him."

The grand-mother-turned-doctor nodded her white head. Said kindly, "It's been over a year. Have you considered the possibility that he might be - "

"- Dead?" I can't believe that. Not yet. I still have hope, of a form."

"I wonder: have you gone on with other aspects of your life?"

"I'm not sure what you mean. I have the work."

"The X-Files?"

"Yes."

"But what about your personal life?"

Had things turned out differently, she might have enjoyed that. But a woman named Diana Fowley had suddenly, without warning, been shot like an arrow back into her partner's life, passing through her like she wasn't even there, metaphorically ripping her heart to pieces.

After the first day, after the first shock of learning about their previous relationship and after seeing them working in tangent sans any sign of renewed spark, her worry had almost faded right away. Almost.

But it had bothered her to find out that Mulder had a past; one other than College days Phoebe Green. She felt stupid that she had thought that way. *Of course he has a past, she'd mused, you've been with him only five years. Prior to that the man had lived most of his life without knowledge of your existence.*

Then another shock.

The sight of Agent Diana Fowley holding Mulder's hand in both of hers so tenderly, so much as if she had a right to do that, as if he somehow still belonged there, had left her in a kind of limbo. The "I'm angry, scared and hurt and I don't know why" kind of paralysis.

But she'd quite quickly figured out why. Quite thoroughly why. And that had been another kind of shock.

Somewhere along the line, unconsciously maybe and un-acknowledged, where before had lived in her respect, friendship, admiration, caring and professionalism, now dwelled contentment, comfortable possession, emotional intimacy, desire.

Tender feelings.

Love.

Deep inside her.

The sudden surfacing of those intense feelings had left her confused.

Until that day, she'd been cuddled inside the complacency of what they had, forgetting that he was a separate being who had a past and future and both might not include her. The stark sight of Mulder with someone else, someone who just could, eventually, replace her in his life center, which is where she'd always assumed she sat, had left her mute. In mental shock. Not only from seeing his one hand buried inside Diana Flowley's two, but by her own overwhelming emotions.

None of this she could articulate to the soft spoken doctor across from her. Because she still had never spoken of it openly. And she wanted it to be him who heard it first. Only it was too late. Maybe.

"It's become the same." she finally offered.

"How so?"

"When I first joined his Division, I came because it was my assignment and I stayed out of duty. I was still somewhat "green" in the Bureau and I stayed because I was determined to do the job I was given and to do it to the best of my ability. Soon, I stayed because I found the work fascinating," She smiled at memories too impossible to share with the psychologist sitting opposite her, "albeit a little out-of-the-ordinary. We worked well together and the work became ours."

Scully paused.

The doctor could see the hesitation. "Everything you say here is strictly confidential, it stays in this room."

Scully nodded, hesitated, then decided and continued. "Then I stayed because of him."

"But now? *Now* - why do you stay?"

Scully was glad the doctor had blipped over that last bit of confession. "If I didn't, it would be like giving up on him. I can't do that. I won't."

"You're keeping the X-Files alive for the day he comes back, is that it?"

"I suppose so. It sounds irrational, but I've exhausted every lead, there's been no word - it's all I can think of to do now. I owe him that."

"It's not irrational." The doc scribbled on the notepad on her lap. "The official investigation is closed, is that right?"

"Yes, but I've continued unofficially since then."

"Were you and your partner intimate?"

So the doc hadn't blipped over it. From her first session with Doctor Bryant, Scully had learned that the doc liked to spring tough questions when she wasn't looking, to catch her off guard and get at the truth. Scully's heart beat loudly. She was sure Bryant could hear it.

"No."

"Were - *are* - your feelings for him still strictly professional?"

"He's my partner."

Where Scully had said "partner", the doctor had heard something else, something that spoke of desperate hope and terrible regret.

"If Agent Mulder had not gone missing, do you think it would have become something more than that?"

Scully looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. "No. Um - I don't know, I can only speak for myself,...I, I can't answer that."

"That's all right. I was wondering because of the depth of your mourning." She held up a hand at her patient's start. "*Even* if he is merely missing, you are displaying textbook mourning processes and its intensity indicates to me that you were *extremely* close to each other. A depth of feeling that you haven't spoken of, at least to me. So close, Dana, that it has left you in a very vulnerable state. My concern is how you are coping and will cope should Agent Mulder not return or should the worst occur and it's discovered that he has died."

Scully paled at the suggestion. "He's not dead." Saying it to re-enforce her own belief. To make it real.

"Here's why I'm concerned Dana. What will you do if he, indeed, never returns? It is something you might have to face. Have you even considered the possibility?" Her patients answer would determine if the Agent Scully would require short or long term therapy.

Licking her lips, "I plan to..." Scully looked out the window. Yellow afternoon sun stopped at the pane and refused to warm her or obey the doctors desire to color her spirit with anything other than greyness. Inside her, cold black and white remained.

"...for now I plan to keep faith."

Doctor Bryant nodded to herself. Long-term. *****

One year became two, three, then four, speeding by faster and faster.

And before Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully MD., could count them off:

Eight years.

She had tried to be practical about it but then realized that was just another kind of weakness. What did her partners disappearance have to do with practical? For that matter, what did Mulder?

She tried to grieve and couldn't. He was not dead, she told herself. But her resolve was weakening whether she would ever discover what happened or where he was.

If she would ever see him again.

But she did keep her faith those first years that something would materialize to show her the way to a discovery and, finally, to bringing him home.

Something that would rewind time so his absence and her heart-sickening failure would all reverse, traveling backwards and backwards until it all the years of no Mulder ceased to be. Until she could laugh at his stupid jokes again in while he propped his big feet up on the desk.

She kept the faith but no dark, handsome partner appeared in answer to her call to God. No new information jumped out at her from her e-mail, no anonymous phone calls woke her from slumber with a mysterious tip to lead her to him. No one had stumbled upon any remains or bones that proved to be his. As terrible an end as that would be, at least she could feel like she'd done something other than fail him. At least she - they - could lay him to rest, cry for a last time and get on with the guilty business of living.

No trace.

Faith, being the assured expectations of things hoped for though unseen, was a fragile thing.

Both Mulder children were gone now, disappearing twenty- nine years apart. The sudden tearing away of them had left aching, frayed holes in the lives of some.

"Presumed dead" began to be uttered during the seventh year of his absence, each time cutting another wedge out of her heart. But, once spoken, it had accelerated the weakening of her faith, fading it throughout that eighth year until it, too, disappeared. Quietly. Until it died.

That year, though faith was forsaken, she hoped that maybe brother and sister had been rejoined, somehow, somewhere in life.

Or in death.

She hoped they were happy.

*****