[begin 2 of 2, Thank You for Not Smoking]

     "This isn't your apartment," Miss Parker announced as Scully 
uncuffed one of her wrists and tethered her to the refrigerator handle 
with it.

     "You don't think I can afford it?"

     "No -- how would I know what you can afford?  It's much too male.  
You strike me as the throw-pillows and spice-racks type."

     Scully smiled slightly.  "I suppose you prefer naugahyde and 
ceremonial Klingon weaponry."

     "Oh, a *Star Trek* fan."

     "Mulder's influence.  But I must say I've never seen *Buffy the 
Vampire Slayer,* so obviously you have a lot to teach me about quality 
television."

     Once more, the pendulum seemed to have swung.  Miss Parker's eyes 
were glittering in wolfish pleasure.  "Let me guess.  You watch...*Ally 
McBeal.*"

     "Occasionally.  I don't think my career would go very far if I wore 
skirts like hers, however."

     After a puzzled moment, Miss Parker shrugged that away.  "You never 
know.  You must already have some personal privileges -- you know, perks 
of the job?"

     "Perks?  *My* job?  Which perk would that be?  Would that be 
getting run off the road by black government sedans?  Putting up with 
the whole VCU's asinine remarks about my partner's intelligence and/or 
his ass?  I know, I know.  The *perk* would be having my dog eaten by an 
alligator, or perhaps being drugged by vampires and dumped in a 
graveyard."

     "So everyone in your office hangs out in the boss' apartment and 
goes through his cupboards?"
 
     She was going through the cupboards, wasn't she?  "I was...looking 
for coffee.  You think this place is--?"

     "Just a hunch."

     "Well, you're right.  But I don't hang out here.  Actually, I've 
never been here before.  But it is one of the places Mulder and I picked 
out as rendezvous points in case of emergency.  I have no coffee.  I 
have Lipton."

     "Christ.  What kind of faggot do you work for?"

     Scully twitched a smile.  "I'm not familiar with the taxonomy."

     "Really?  You seem like kind of a fag hag.  Snappy dresser, mildly 
funky, in a serious-professional kind of way, but you don't look like 
the type who wants the hassle of drool on your lapels.  You're gorgeous, 
so women all hate you, and straight men are right out.  Of course, that 
means that you're so happy when any woman will even have lunch with you 
that you're willing to give the bisexuality thing a go, and if a 
good-looking man who's seen the inside of a gym and wears matching socks 
smiles at you without a cheap proposition in the first five minutes, 
it's the answer to your prayers.  Too bad he's gay.  It was kind of a 
cutting-edge, touching story in the early eighties, but it's 1998, and 
you're a type.  Don't you hate that?"

     "Duck," Scully said tersely, and threw the freezer door open 
without waiting to see whether or not Miss Parker obeyed.  Miss Parker 
chuckled.  "Speaking of misdiagnoses.  I always pictured Skinner as a 
Rocky Road man."

     "What's he got?  Cookies'n'cream?"

     "Neapolitan."

     "How low the mighty have fallen."

     "Pizza?"

     "Whatever."  Her voice was distant, uninterested.  Even Scully, 
accustomed to Mulder's mood swings, was amazed at the way Miss Parker 
could bait her with one breath and forget her by the next.  She turned 
to look at her, and graduated to a new level of amazement.  Miss Parker 
was concentrating on touching Skinner's hanging light fixture with her 
toe; Scully was a limber person, but her muscles ached in empathy with 
the leg that Miss Parker had extended upward at an improbable angle, 
stretched out to brush the wooden arms of the fixture with her pointed 
toes.  It was rather a beautiful sight to behold, like watching a 
panther at play, and it took Scully the length of a few deep breaths to 
realize why her hand was going numb and remove it from the ice cube pan.  
"You must have made at least a token effort toward that ballerina goal."

     "Twenty years."

     "Twenty *years*?"

     "Started lessons when I was four.  My father barely talked me into 
college; I was ready to run off and start my career.  After I graduated, 
I danced for a year with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.  Then I quit."

     "Were you injured?"

     "No more so than every dancer, no."

     "Then why--"

     "I quit.  I went into business."

     "And look where that got you."

     "Shackled to a major appliance in a Virginia condo as sexual prey 
for a federal agent."

     Scully's eyebrows shot up.  "Somehow I can't picture you as prey.  
I think you just enjoy making a production of everything."

     "I might be in a more sunny mood after another cigarette or three."

     "I somehow doubt that," Scully muttered.  *Thank God.*  Scully 
doubted she'd be half so attracted to this woman if she weren't so 
poisonous.  It was a game, and Scully understood the rules 
instinctively.  Miss Parker would never waste three words on someone she 
didn't find interesting.  She wouldn't play with Scully -- flirt with 
her, specifically -- if they weren't connecting on some level.  And that 
hadn't happened to Scully for a long time.

     She was toying with the ice cubes again; one was half-melted in the 
warm cradle of her palm, the size and shape of a chocolate Easter egg.  
Scully took it like a specimen between two fingers and touched it to 
Miss Parker's earlobe.  "What the fuck?" Miss Parker said, but in a 
messy, fumbling way, not as though it were a question she wanted to ask, 
but more of a stock phrase that came immediately to mind when she wanted 
to say something but had nothing to say.  She sketched down Miss 
Parker's long neck with the ice, loops that started out abstract but 
quickly became a weird vertical kind of cursive writing, a 
stream-of-consciousness essay written in shining water down Miss 
Parker's skin.  *xfiles dana perkey hot foxy mexico love emily doctor 
crystal meredith*  Down her neck, across the hard, ridged texture of her 
collarbone, the slope of her breasts.  Scully had never been good at 
abstract.  She let the thin thumbnail of ice, almost melted away to 
nothing, drop down the front of Miss Parker's catsuit, between her 
breasts.  Miss Parker's hips jerked slightly, and she murmurred, 
"Bitch," in a voice that was casually affectionate.  Sastisfied, Scully 
visualized the ice melting to a thin brook of cold water that traced 
down her abdomen and her pelvis, winding lazily to become lost in the 
marshlands between her legs, where the water was steamy and hidden.  The 
scientist in Scully was unable to shake the knowledge that such a small 
amount of ice would not reduce to enough water to reach all the way to 
Miss Parker's cunt.

     That was the kind of thinking that made most people consider Scully 
something of a professional killjoy.  Mulder was so much more 
interesting.  Speculative, creative, eccentric; even people who thought 
he was insane found Mulder *interesting.*  He was damned interesting 
that he put Scully in the shade, just by being there.

     *Scully.  Scully.  He's not here.  He's not here, is he?  And as 
far as Miss Parker's concerned, he's irrelevant.  You're the only one 
forcing yourself to make these constant comparisons....*  

     She stepped away, and after a moment of silence, followed Miss 
Parker's eyes down to where her fingers were wrapped around Miss 
Parker's forearm, just above the ring of steel.  "I want everything to 
be clear between us," Scully began, in the blankly soothing voice she 
had learned to use at work, half in imitation of Mulder and half in 
defense against him, "in terms of--"

     "I'm hungry.  Are we going to eat that ice cream or not?"

     *Starve.*

     *Pay attention to me.*

     *You started this.*
 
     *I should have taken my day off.*

     "I'm actually not hungry yet.  But you'll be the first to know."  
Scully stalked out of the kitchen in search of a bathroom.

     She found one at the top of the stairs and closed the door, more 
for psychological than physical privacy.  Skinner's bathroom, like the 
rest of Skinner's apartment, had the spartan elegance of a luxury hotel, 
well-stocked but devoid of anything truly personal or revealing.  She 
wondered if Mulder had ever been here, aside from the one time.

     *With Krycek.  Scully, what are you doing here -- honestly?  This 
isn't you.  You can recreate the scene, practically perfect in every 
detail -- the prisoner, the condo, the information, even the attraction 
-- and it won't make you understand what happened to Mulder.  And it 
won't bring the two of you closer, and it won't make any of that Mulder 
magic rub off on you.*

     Scully cast aside her jacket, then crossed her arms over her body 
to pull off the shell underneath.  Caught by the sight of her own 
reflection, Scully ran light, examining fingers over her ribs and 
stomach.  She was so much thinner than she had been six years ago.  Hard 
living, she was tempted to say, but that wasn't the whole story.  Though 
her work was admittedly arduous, and though fear and bottled rage had 
made her train hard ever since Duane Barry, the bulk of the weight loss 
had been over the last year.  The illness or the chemo or something else 
entirely had robbed Scully of the appetite her family used to tease her 
about; even the things that used to be her weaknesses -- barbeque, 
fajitas, fudge, lobster -- left her cold now, and she existed mainly on 
ramen noodles and graham crackers, with only the occasional delivery 
pizza to up her calorie intake.  She was usually hungry, but somehow the 
idea of eating was worse.  Scully had been unaware, until now, how 
plainly it showed in her body; it was a private disorder, something she 
had even underplayed while talking to her doctor.  Maybe, like the 
autopsy nightmare, she enjoyed it on a mysterious level, a Catholic 
inclination toward mortification of the flesh, or the resurfaced pain of 
a bookish, pudgy thirteen-year-old with a willow-thin and 
universally-loved older sister.

     She finished stripping down and turned on the shower.  The first 
thing she did was wash her face.  Stupid, juvenile conceit, to think 
that a trick with makeup could change anything.  Could change who you 
were.  Scully.  Just Scully.  When did she stop being Dana?  Yes, 
obviously she'd adopted the prep-school form of address for Mulder's 
sake, to put them on an even keel, the level field of strong 
partnership.  If he was Mulder, she had to be Scully.  But even in her 
own thoughts?  Had she changed that much to suit Mulder?  No.  Something 
else had happened.

     *Don't call me Fox.  *Miss* Parker.  Scully.*  She wondered what 
exactly the Fox, the Dana, the elusive M-name meant to each owner, what 
the three of them pushed away when they tore their names in half and 
disowned the part that had been carefully, lovingly chosen for them 
individually, retaining only that which was determined by society and 
custom.

     *Three severely unbalanced people.  We truly are.*

     She dried off with the still-damp blue towel on the towel rack.  It 
had a heavy, warm smell to it -- Skinner's.  Scully couldn't help but 
feel a little guilty; this was a definite invasion of her boss' privacy, 
using his shower, his soap, his towels.  As if all of this wasn't an 
invasion of his privacy to begin with; too late now.  Wrapping herself 
in the towel, she crossed the hall and found Walter Skinner's bedroom.

     There was more here that was personal than in the rest of the 
apartment.  Skinner's stereo, and his CD collection -- eclectic, but 
charmingly unfashionable all through -- some old Patsy Cline, Neil 
Diamond, The Mamas & the Papas, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Reba McEntire, Bonnie 
Raitt, They Might Be Giants.  They Might Be Giants?  She smelled one of 
Mulder's infamous Christmas shopping fugues. His bookshelf, fully 
stocked with Civil War nonfiction and what looked to be everything 
Stephen King had ever written, with a little Tom Clancy on the side.  
Scully stopped herself from noticing any further details.  This was 
obviously the heart of what personal life he had; there was trespassing, 
and then there was trespassing.  (Trespassing.  Ha.  Get it?  Perkey, 
West Virginia.  Crystal City.  There was something wonderfully literary 
here, some grand metaphor.  Scully had never liked metaphors.)

     Scully found a navy blue FBI t-shirt in a drawer and put it on; 
though she did genuinely regret the invasion, she had no intention of 
putting her crisp black suit back on, not yet.  If this were Mulder's 
place, she'd borrow a pair of boxers, too (after all, she did mostly buy 
them to begin with; the first time she'd had to stay overnight at 
Mulder's, she realized that his expensive tastes in fashion did not run 
to underwear.  Maybe it was none of her business, but she'd found that 
it bothered her to work alongside him knowing he was wearing ragged 
Hanes that he probably bought in the 1980s.  So she stocked him up on 
tasteful underwear, and renewed the gift every year or so.  It said 
something about Mulder that he seemed to regard that as perfectly 
normal; Scully didn't know what, but she was grateful for it.)  Mulder 
was Mulder, however, and even if she was making free with Skinner's 
personal effects today, that was much too far.

     She knew the number for her own local Papa John's, and she dialed 
it from Skinner's bedside phone and let them transfer her call to the 
branch nearest this condo.  Scully ordered pepperoni, on the vague 
assumption that everyone liked pepperoni, but the choice of crusts 
stumped her.  Scully wanted to laugh at her own consternation; she 
wondered if Mulder and Skinner had ordered pizza for Alex Krycek -- if 
they had all sat around debating the merits of thin versus original 
crust.  She decided on thin.

                                 *

     A knee-jerk paranoiac reaction to the pizza guy made Scully throw a 
five-dollar tip at him and practically shove him out the door -- maybe 
it was the fact that her last pizza had been full of tranquilizers and 
delivered by a vampire, or maybe just the possibility that he would 
venture far enough in to notice the woman handcuffed to the refrigerator 
in the next room and notify the police.

     The woman.  The woman had to be dealt with; Scully couldn't hide 
upstairs forever, listening to "Sweet Home Alabama" and thumbing through 
*Carrie.*  So far, Scully preferred the movie.

     The refrigerator handle at least afforded her some vertical 
mobility; Miss Parker was seated cross-legged on the floor, her arm 
raised in a languid, almost Grecian crescent by the demands of the short 
handcuff chain.  She did not look at Scully as she entered, nor did she 
particularly look away.

     By Miss Parker's free hand, as carefully as if she were dressing an 
altar, Scully laid out the open pizza box, with Miss Parker's cigarettes 
and lighter in the lid.  While Miss Parker hesitated between sustenance 
and nicotine, Scully went to the sink to tear off a few paper towels.  
She heard the lighter behind her and smiled slightly.  If you could 
trust anything in this world, it was the passion with which people 
adhered to their irrationalities.

     Scully sat on the floor, knee-to-knee with her captive, and reached 
for a piece of pizza.  "You changed," Miss Parker commented.

     "Well, since I'm taking a de facto day off...."

     "While we wait for your elusive partner."


     "And your elusive lawyer."

     She made a complex gesture in the air with her cigarette before 
tapping out the ashes into the pizza box.  "Sydney's not actually my 
lawyer.  But he's the only person I...trust."  She said the word 
grudgingly, as though it were a bad habit she had made a tenuous peace 
with.  "What the fuck is it that you do, anyway?  Why is it so crucial 
that I be transfered to you?  Do I look like I need a doctor?"

     "You weren't transfered to me."  Scully wondered if she really 
sounded as bitter as she thought she did.  "You were transfered to 
Mulder.  And he's not a doctor; he just collects conspiracy theories.  
Skinner thought you might have one to share."

     "You do, too.  Think that."

     Scully shrugged.  "I just work here."

     "So that's what your partner does?  He's paranoid professionally?  
Here, finish this for me; I'm starving."

     Scully took the cigarette from her.  "Yes.  He's paranoid 
professionally.  He's a -- an expert on UFO and abduction lore.  We're 
the FBI's parapsychology arm.  Such as it is."

     "All both of you.  How priceless.  What are you, the faith healer?"

     "The skeptic."  Scully blew a thin stream of smoke up at the 
ceiling.  Occasionally, she could see the humor in the whole situation.  
Not often, but occasionally.  "It's on my business cards.  I do parties, 
too.  People hire me out to debunk the magician."

     "All that and you get to carry a gun, too."

     "It's good work.  Pepperoni okay?"

     "Little fucking late now, isn't it?  If you're not going to ask 
before you order it, why bother at all?"  Miss Parker paused to suck the 
tomato sauce off her fingers.  Scully was enchanted by the sight.

     Funny -- she'd brought Miss Parker here on some half-conscious 
attempt to get inside Mulder's head, and now...she was completely on her 
own, and the power was heady and electric.  Mulder had made his choices 
alone, because he'd known they were his choices, not Scully's.  Maybe 
for once in her life Scully could tell herself that she had the right to 
choose something for herself and really believe it.  Not her father's 
choice, or Mulder's, or Skinner's, or Duane Barry's, or even God's.  
Only hers.  God, how she had craved that for the past year -- privacy, 
freedom.  Space.

     It felt good.  It fleshed her out, fed her, and suddenly she was a 
creature of appetites again.  She *wanted* -- wanted the pizza, and 
fudge, and the sooty taste of Miss Parker's mouth.  Wanted everything -- 
or at least too many things, all in a wild jumble, to sort out at once.  
It was, possibly, enough for the moment.  It was a lot to get used to.

     "I have to tell you why I brought you here.  I was trying to hurt 
someone, I think, someone who isn't even here.  Because he had an affair 
that -- that hurt me very much, and you remind me of -- of the man....  
It's a long story.  A ridiculous story, and actually, I'm not even sure 
it had anything to do with...anything.  I have no idea.  But what I've 
been doing, all day today, is not me.  It's not who I am.  All I really 
want is your help, because if your Centre is affiliated with the men who 
abducted me and caused my daughter's death, then I have to know that.  
Please.  We may not be friends, but I want you to consider helping me, 
because I think there's a part of you that wants to very much.  
Just...consider it."

     Scully chose to exit the kitchen on that line, half out of 
calculation and half just because she didn't want to know it yet if she 
was wasting her breath.  She sat down on Skinner's couch and used 
Sunday's paper to catch the ashes she flicked off the end of her 
cigarette.  It was the right decision, the best decision.  Mulder was 
the one who let his desires run away with him in tow, and she was not 
Mulder, and it was her decision.  *Mine, mine, mine.*  She had the 
hunger now, and that was what she had really wanted all along, all her 
life.  Not the satisfaction, particularly.  Just the desire.

     "Dana?"

     Treading carefully, as though through a pile of sleeping snakes, 
she returned to the doorway of the kitchen.  "Yes?" Scully said quietly.

     "I have a question, something I've been thinking about a long time, 
but I didn't know who to ask."  She was firing off words like shrapnel 
now, the hostility impersonal, splattering everything indiscriminately.  
"Look at you -- you're an FBI agent, you obviously work with a dangerous 
lot, swim with the sharks, all that.  So if you care so much, if you 
care about the whole damn world and you put yourself out there to save 
everybody, I just have to ask, *why?*  Why have a child?  It's so 
treacherous -- anyone could turn on you and you'd never see it coming -- 
never have a chance to protect yourself.  Is it just biology, just 
genetics?  Of all people, why do you do it?"

     *I had no choice,* Scully began to say.  But she realized the lie 
concealed in that truth, and she stopped.  "I've always wanted children.  
Yes, it may be biology, in part.  We're equipped with a drive to 
continue the species.  You never wanted children?"

     Her head jerked, denial and recoil.  "Never.  Never.  I think it 
ought to be a *crime.*"

     Scully took a deep breath, obscurely certain that she was standing 
on the edge of Miss Parker's emotional precipice, her own personal 
Skyland Mountain.  "I can't tell you why I wanted a family, before.  But 
I can tell you why I wanted Emily with me, once I had her.  If you want 
to hear the story."  Miss Parker shrugged, her shackled hand balled into 
a tight fist, and Scully sat down on the floor and put out her 
cigarette, while Miss Parker lit one for herself.

     "Several years ago, my older sister Melissa was shot and killed.  
The shooter was there for me; I guess in the dark we must look alike, 
though I certainly can't see much resemblance.  But because of the 
circumstances, I felt very responsible.  Melissa was...a rare, wonderful 
person.  Even as a teenager she was, I don't know, *wise.*  Very 
spiritual, very generous.  Mulder used to call her a fluffy crystal 
bunny, but even he couldn't help liking her.  I used to get annoyed with 
her, because she was always trying to sell me on some new pseudoscience, 
touch therapy or reiki or whatever, but I have to admit, she did have 
all the instincts, the soul, of a healer, maybe more than I do.  She was 
a vast source of love.  She loved everyone, and instead of tiring her 
out, it seemed to energize her.  It was very hard for me, thinking-- 
feeling that I was responsible for taking all that out of the world.  I 
thought Emily was my best chance to restore what I had taken -- if not 
Missy, then all that...amazing Missy warmth and care."

     "Did it work?"  Miss Parker chewed and spat out her words in the 
half-mocking tone of one who knew the answer.

     *Did it work?*  Scully posed the question to herself, with clean, 
laboratory objectivity.  "I learned a lot.  In part, I learned that 
Melissa and I had different purposes in the world.  Giving that much of 
myself was -- hard for me.  I felt infringed upon."  Scully smiled 
thinly.  "I'm better designed for taking care of the whole planet and 
really loving...an extremely limited number of people."

     "I hate you, you know."  Her tone was conversational, a trivia 
voice.  "Nothing personal.  Sydney says I have a lot of misdirected 
guilt, but I think he's full of shit.  He's a quack, a sadist in a good 
suit who raised Jarrod as a lab animal and now wants to be a father 
figure after the fact.  I really do hate everyone but me.  I happen to 
think I deserve better than this miserable fucking reality."

     Scully raised an eyebrow.  "Life is a bitch, and then you die?"

     "I'm not afraid to die.  But I can tell you what won't happen to 
me: I won't be a hero, then leave a child behind when my idealism gets 
me eliminated."

     She moved slowly, honey-slow, knowing that Miss Parker would never 
submit to impulsive affection.  Scully's hand touched her face, slid 
back into her hair.  "You and I.  You and I both.  They can carve it on 
our tombstones: *At least she never set her sights very high.*"

     "I can think of worse epitaphs."

     "Can you?"

     A voice like a collision -- the cry of overtaxed brakes, the 
macabre origami of disfigured metal, the aria of shattering glass and 
bones.  "*Beloved wife and mother.*"

     She kissed Miss Parker as though Scully was in herself the entire 
cast and crew of a death -- the EMT on the scene, the priest bestowing 
extreme unction, the medical examiner making a Y-incision, cracking her 
open....  Not to remove.  To hold the pain jointly, contained in the 
slick, pulsing hollow of their coupled mouths.

     Miss Parker did taste like ash, like soot.  She tasted like saliva, 
meat, breath.  Scully's eyes were sealed shut as she devoured this 
mouth, her fingers dug deeply into Miss Parker's hair and holding her 
in.

     *Melissa had been all grace and charity.  Wide, heart-brimming eyes 
and a slight, fine body -- like Snow White with the poison in her comb 
and her food -- like Rapunzel among the thorns.  Selfless, kind, giving.  
Dana watched her pick over her food and refuse it and she knew, just 
knew, that the saints had all been this way, too. Full of love, with 
thin, neglected, suffering, beautiful bodies.*

     *Saints, princesses, martyrs, angels, heroines.  They gave, like 
Missy.  They denied themselves.  They were not like Dana, and even God 
could not understand or abide her constant hungers, the cravings for 
food, for knowledge, for orgasms, for fame, for revenge, for cigarettes, 
for high speeds, for immortality.  Not of the soul.  Of her ravenous, 
needy, messy, female body.*

     Some emotional ripcord had been pulled, and Scully was rushing in 
two directions, dropping through space even as the air currents caught 
her mind and billowed it, lifting her as she unfurled.  Thought was out 
of the question, and as soon as Scully gave up on it, she realized how 
many memories her body had preserved, hidden discreetly away through the 
years until she should need them again.  She unzipped Miss Parker's 
broken boot and cast it aside, setting her lips to the arch of the foot 
within.  Her stockings were silk, of course.  This was not a nylon 
woman.  Miss Parker made a strangled sound, and her toes popped softly 
as they curled and uncurled.

     *Slowly, day by day, shaving off one self after another.  
Jettisoning her habits, hungers -- allowing only what was required.  
Food could stay, because food was medicinal; sex and fame, luxuries.  
Without purpose, because life could be sustained without them.  Revenge, 
speed, dangerous.  Liabilities.  Two names were excessive, when one 
would serve, could stand for one tight, lithe, *necessary* person, 
powerful in her self-denial.  Scully.*

     She nibbled in the hollow behind Miss Parker's anklebone, and foot 
and ankle turned and dipped with a dancer's urgent poetry.  "Stand up," 
she mumbled, rubbing her face against Miss Parker's leather; she loved 
it, just as she loved Mulder's black leather jacket, because it was 
leather -- organic, arrogant, pleasant to the touch even as it forced 
its wearer to live skin-to-skin with the proof of another animal's 
death.

     Shaky from more than just the lopsided engineering of one bare foot 
and one high heel, Miss Parker stood.  "Get this off me," she ordered, 
rattling the handcuff chain.

     Instead, Scully turned her captive by the shoulders and unzipped 
her jumpsuit at the back.  Her skin looked surprisingly fragile; Scully 
had almost expected Miss Parker to be made of something less...mortal, 
dissectable, vulnerable.  *Breathe, Dana, come on.  It hasn't been that 
long....*  Except that it had.  And she had always loved the sight of a 
woman's bare back, especially today; Miss Parker's back was pale and 
lovely, nestled in a V of opened leather, fringed by the dark hair that 
seemed looser and more touchable now.  Scully put her fingers between 
Miss Parker's shoulderblades; it seemed to Scully, medically, that the 
spine was the true centerpiece of the body, the axis.  She could 
remember Melissa trying to teach her to meditate, saying that the key 
was a straight spine, because kundalini power moved like a snake up the 
spine.  Yeah, Dana had said, that and every electrochemical--  Dana.  
Don't be difficult on purpose.  Sorry.  Snake power, sit up straight, 
okay.

     Missy would have laughed, but Scully could almost feel her fingers 
drawing something up Miss Parker's spine.  Power, serpentine, 
slithering, primitive.  She put her lips on Miss Parker's neck, found it 
flushed and hot, and her silent laugh of pleasure drew hair against her 
nose and mouth, suffocating her.  Scully shook free, and water droplets 
from her own hair splattered Miss Parker's bare shoulder.

     Scully's hand roamed down the gathering wrinkles of Miss Parker's 
sleeve, and came to rest on the steel bracelet on her wrist, her fingers 
curling around it as one pinky brushed the veins on the back of Miss 
Parker's hand.  Her other arm draped over Miss Parker's shoulder.  "I 
want you," Scully murmurred.  She had no doubt that Miss Parker already 
knew this, but it needed to be said.  When had she -- had she *ever* 
actually said that to anyone?  Not that Scully could immediately recall.

     "I will not betray the Centre for sex."

     She hid a smile against Miss Parker's cantering pulse.  "Relax."

     "Relax," Miss Parker repeated, and frowned.  She tried again.  
"Relax.  What do you find relaxing about this?  You're the one who's 
fucked on the highest level if anyone were to find--"

     "That's right.  And if I'm relaxed, you should be, too."  Not that 
Scully was entirely relaxed.  She was exerting long years of discipline 
to control an impulse to fidget, to twitch, rocked by the chemical 
reaction of fear mixing with desire.  She was not concerned with being 
caught; Scully would have wagered her life savings -- was wagering her 
career -- that Skinner would see nothing so cataclysmic about the Parker 
case that he would feel compelled to leave the office early.  But it had 
been a very long time since her sex life had consisted of anything but 
idle fantasies about her best friend, the occasional Saturday morning 
Internet porn wallow, and erotic dreams involving some combination of 
the cast of *Friends.*  This was different.  This was real.

     "What the fuck ever.  Get me out of these goddamn handcuffs."

     Scully smiled, thinking of her earlier refusal to do so.  Wanting 
to be someone else, again.  *Very tenth grade, Dana.  Very tenth grade.  
Don't choose, don't decide.  Just do what you want to do.*  She wanted 
to free Miss Parker from the handcuffs, and did.

     Miss Parker rotated her wrist, testing it, and Scully caught her 
arm and kissed the reddened mark on her wrist.  Miss Parker's hand 
remained curved like talons; there was a certain vulnerability to the 
sensation of Scully laying her soft lips against the bone and stress of 
that hand.  *She's a fighter....*  "What did you do to Officer Volk?"

     "Tried to put my heel through his eye.  Missed.  Ruined my shoe."

     There was a certain vulnerability, come to think of it, to doing 
this at all.  There were no rules now, Mother of God, Mulder had been 
right.  She was sprung from the trap of humanity; Scully no longer 
perceived herself as flesh and organs, but like clear and sparkling 
champagne, like feathers, like incense.  Such undefended substances, 
easily spilled, torn, snuffed by a woman with this strength in her 
hands, this rage in her heart.  Scully placed a slow kiss in Miss 
Parker's palm, but when her fingers moved to close and hold her chin, 
Scully slipped easily away.  Like light, like smoke and champagne, she 
was impossible to grip and hold.  She was bright and alive and though 
she might give herself, she was never to be kept.

     With the advantage of surprise, Scully pulled Miss Parker's arm 
behind her back, holding it bent and pinned between their bodies.  "I am 
not," Scully murmurred, her voice deceptively demure, "someone who will 
use you or harm you.  And I will not be used.  However powerful you 
think you are."

     Miss Parker was as still as a mannequin, and though the muscles in 
her forearm moved subtly, flexing to fight Scully away, she did not.  
She dipped her head slightly, her fingers curling in, and then carefully 
spreading, flat and open.  "Funny.  I didn't figure you for a closet 
dominatrix."

     "I'm not."

     "Then let go of me."

     "Escape."

     Slowly, she shook her head.  "I don't...what is this?  You're 
hurt-- Fuck you!  Let me go!"  But she did not move.

     "This is your game, Margot.  But you can't follow through with it, 
can you?  I think you're much emptier than you want me to believe.  I 
think the anger is just a smokescreen."  She'd known that in the car, 
but Scully had wanted to test her theory.  Now she was sure.  She 
released Miss Parker's wrist, and Miss Parker pulled her arm away 
slowly, as though afraid that any sudden movements would make Scully 
notice that she was escaping.  "No games, and no tricks.  Don't give me 
anything that even you can't believe."

     Miss Parker looked back at Scully over her shoulder, and her dark 
eyes were both respectful and somehow saddened.  "I should have pegged 
you for a control freak."

     Lightly, Scully touched her waist and smiled at her, a mirrored 
reflection of that respect and that regret.  "Probably.  I'm very 
flexible about many things, but not about the truth.  Upstairs."

     Miss Parker's gait, with one shoe gone, was a long-striding, 
self-possessed stagger.  Broken and lopsided, she radiated ability, 
poise.  She was about as handicapped as a dragon with a broken nail.  
Unzipped and disheveled suited Miss Parker, Scully decided as she 
climbed the stairs behind her prisoner.  The juxtaposition of bareness 
and inaccessability.

     At the side of Walter Skinner's bed (a large bed for one man, even 
one large man, Scully's investigative mind noticed; was it the bed he 
used to share with his wife -- did he have company here often, even with 
his brutal schedule -- was it just a personal indulgence -- did he sleep 
restlessly?), Scully put a hand on Miss Parker's shoulder and finished 
lowering the zipper to her waist.

     "This is your boss' apartment?"

     "Yes."

     "He has a picture of you by his bed."

     Scully looked around her at the framed photo Miss Parker was 
reaching for.  "Oh.  That's not a picture of *me.*  That's a picture of 
Mulder."  Her and Mulder, in point of fact.  At the office Christmas 
party -- 1995? Or '96.  God, how the years blurred together.  Scully 
took the picture from Miss Paker's hand.

     It was a decent shot.  Nice.  Scully on a folding office chair, 
looking bemused at her coffee cup.  Mulder with a casual hand low on the 
back of her neck, his lack of a jacket emphasizing the length and sweep 
of his build, clean lines running from ribs to waist to hip down his 
leg.  He was grinning at God knew what, something outside the frame of 
the shot.

     Not 1995.  That winter had been bad for them; she remembered how 
they'd squared off that fall, polarized by the discovery of Dr. 
Ishimaru.  They'd fought about the stigmatic boy, fought about the 
cockroaches, fought about *everything* in New Hampshire.  It had been a 
grey, rainy winter, and though she didn't quite remember Christmas, she 
was sure they wouldn't have looked so easy together.

     1996.  She did remember now.  Mulder had just been given OPC's 
absolution for John Lee Roache, when none of them thought he'd be able 
to survive that one.  The party had been in mid-December, just before 
Betts.  She'd waited until the 28th to see a doctor, waited until after 
the holiday.  That week or so, between Mulder's OPC reviews and her 
first nosebleed...they'd been happy that week.  As happy as they'd ever 
been together.  How fleeting those moments were, their work being what 
it was.  And someone had caught it on film -- Scully playing with the 
idea of a smile, Mulder looking as though he'd just been given the Nobel 
prize instead of having kept his job only by the skin of his teeth.

     Scully laid it carefully back on the nightstand.  "Christmas party, 
'96."

     "So that's Fox Mulder."

     "The same," she said tersely.

     Miss Parker stared at it a minute more and sniffed.  "That's a nose 
you could mine coal with."

     "I guess it's not his nose that interests Skinner."

     "Are they screwing?"

     "Not...that I know of."  Funny response, that.  She knew damn well 
they weren't; if Mulder was bold enough to tell her about Alex Krycek, 
he wouldn't hesitate to tell her that.  Maybe it was a kind of mercy, an 
impulse to soften the *no,* even if Skinner wasn't here to hear it.  
*Poor Skinner.  Always the right song in the wrong key.  His agent about 
to fall into his bed, but the wrong agent.  The right agent here in the 
middle of the night -- except with someone else in tow.*  That had been 
November of '96 -- not long before this photo was taken.  Who would 
know, looking at Mulder's picture?  Even Scully, knowing what she knew 
now, could not see Krycek in Mulder's face, however hard she searched.  
*I know, I know, Mulder.  It's not my place to see it, or understand it.  
Only to love you, with or without it.  I'm trying, Mulder.*

     Her arm closed around Miss Parker's shoulders from behind, Scully's 
lips on her neck.  Here, right here, so solid, a living human who 
intrigued and aroused her.  Someone who would shortly be gone.  With 
neither future nor past, their relationship could be as perfect and 
necessary and temporary as food to the hungry -- or a cigarette to the 
addict, agasint the rules, self-destructive...temporary, necessary, 
perfect.  She rolled with Miss Parker onto the bed.

     The act of stripping away the leather from Miss Parker's warm, 
sweat-moist body felt like curling her fingers under a top layer of skin 
and ripping it back.  Maybe it was because, whether she should or not, 
she had Clarice on the brain, the only other woman Scully had ever made 
love to.  Through that first case, the Buffalo Bill case, Clarice had 
taught Scully everything she knew about looking at a body skinned, 
devoured, mutilated, used and never letting it show in her eyes.  Steel 
on the job, coming home raw and horrified, to scream and sob and break 
their dishes against the wall and fuck Scully with desperate, pleading 
carnality.  Clarice -- how could she not remember now?  How had it been 
so long since she'd thought of her first love?

     *Whose photo will you turn and stare at in the dark, Dana Scully?  
You float like a feather through everyone's life, and even your memories 
of them go up in smoke.  Jack, Clarice -- you thought you loved them, 
until you just...moved on.*  At least Skinner had that much.  One 
picture of one dream that he kept for himself.  

     Though her hands fluttered over the flesh of Miss Parker's breasts 
and nipples, Scully's mouth sought deeper, sought the slickened, hot 
place between them, and the bone underneath.  Human bone, so easily 
broken, all that kept us standing, moving, alive, ourselves.  In 
cultures across the earth and through time, bone had been ornament, 
weapon, tool, relic.  Miss Parker's back arched, and she parted her 
legs, lifting her hips up against Scully's.


     Scully knelt up, her thighs pressing Miss Parker's legs apart 
further, the tailored fabric of her slacks slipping minutely against 
Miss Parker's satin underwear.  "Take off your shirt," Miss Parker 
ordered breathlessly.

     She pondered that a moment before saying, "Thank you for the 
advice, but I'm fine."  More deliberately now than before, Scully took 
one of her nipples, rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger gently.  
Miss Parker threw her head to the side, but Scully slid a hand into her 
hair, turning her face back towards Scully.  She didn't mind if Miss 
Parker wanted to keep her eyes closed, but she liked the tension in that 
lovely, patrician face, the quivering of her mouth, the twitch of her 
stony jaw.  She had a tiny nervous tic, twitching her nose quickly 
before taking a deep breath.  Scully kissed her nose, mostly to see what 
would happen.  Miss Parker made an inarticulate noise, part roar and 
part bark, all annoyance.  Scully chuckled, the noise swirling somewhere 
in her chest, behind her own breastbone. 

     As she bent to lick Miss Parker's nipple, the woman ground hard 
against Scully's thighs, and the broiling desire in Scully sent out a 
gout of flame, straight up from her clit and into her stomach.  She bit 
at the nipple, and Miss Parker cried out, one hand clutching Scully's 
t-shirt near her waist.  Her legs were trembling, and Scully soothed her 
thigh with one hand, silk and garter and skin.  A finger buried 
underneath the garter's elastic and rested there a moment.  Miss Parker 
opened her eyes.  "Waiting for something?"

     "Savoring.  This part is good, don't you think?  Wanting?"

     "Getting's better."

     Like wine, like water, like desire, Scully ran and flowed down the 
bed, and gently bit the flesh of Miss Parker's stomach where there were 
no bones, only tissue and nutrients and motion, dozens of organs moving 
things this way and that, into the woman who might or might not have 
been named Margot Parker, or out of her.  The sacrament of medicine, the 
mystery of sustenance.  Beneath her open mouth, Miss Parker's body 
pulsed and tensed and hungered and aged, turning like graceful, hot, 
visceral clockwork.  It fired Scully's mind as well as her own body; 
though she had no more than a nascent, tentative appreciation for Miss 
Parker as a person, she was hopelessly, eternally in love with her as a 
human, as an example of the species.  So perfectly designed, operating 
lyrically, efficiently -- strong, flexible, fragile, textured, 
commanding and commanded by the hidden hallows of her brain.  Scully 
worshipped her way lower, recalled to the almost religious ecstasy she'd 
first found in those anat & phys textbooks years ago.  *How fine a 
thing.  How precious we are, what works of genius....*

     Her tongue traced the edge of Miss Parker's bare skin, at the 
waistband of her panties.  The look of amazement in Miss Parker's eyes 
seemed almost religious in nature, too, rapturous and doubting at the 
same time.  But to dance for twenty years, surely you would have to have 
a fascination and familiarity with the body just like any true 
physician.  Miss Parker had been in the profession of mastering her own 
body by craft and will, just as Scully was in the profession of 
mastering others'.

     Mastering Miss Parker was amusingly simple.  Each flick of Scully's 
tongue as it pricked and tested its way under the narrow, silky black 
cloth made her twitch, sent a slow ripple down her body like a sound 
wave.

     She, too, was hard to hold, Scully noted, but in a different way.  
For a chain-smoker, Miss Parker was distinctly unsmokelike.  She surged 
with serpent-power gone out of control, not a lazy boa or python, but a 
striking rattler or copperhead.  A fighter, a fanged thing, struggling 
against the hard kiss of Scully's mouth, in full, fiery rebellion 
against the pleasure that Scully could taste, salty between her lips, 
the heat that threatened to melt Scully's now-cautious tongue.  Scully 
wrapped her arms around Miss Parker's hips, trying to hold her still, as 
she would with someone too panicked and in pain to allow necessary 
medical treatment.  Scully kissed deeper, letting her mouth speak words 
as random and meaningless as those she had earlier written on Miss 
Parker's skin.  *Sorry believe yes true body brain you want you want 
you*

     "Yes," Miss Parker said, and though her body was in chaos, her 
voice was preternaturally calm.  Scully closed her mouth, focusing on 
Miss Parker's clit, capturing it and sucking gently -- gently enough 
that Miss Parker's orgasm was not a further explosion of violence, but a 
true release.  Only her throat worked in ceaseless motion, trying and 
failing to produce a sound, or trying and succeeding to suppress one.  
Either way, by the time her climax faded, Miss Parker laid silent and 
passive on the bed.

     Scully sat up, wiping her mouth on the back of her arm, sucking the 
rest off her lips.  It had been so long since she'd brought anyone, male 
or female, to orgasm that way that Scully had forgotten how tiring it 
was.  She felt heavy, lazy, her desire run to low tide, a not-unpleasant 
throb between her legs.  It was in this state, enjoying her lassissitude 
and still riding the slow river of her arousal, that Scully usually fell 
asleep in her own home, before the strange, electrocution energy of a 
climax.  She kissed Miss Parker, pleased to not that Miss Parker seemed 
tired herself, and slow to respond.

     But it was a bad time, the worst time, to drift off.  Reluctantly, 
Scully sat up.  She needed to move around, try the Neapolitan, call 
Mulder.  She had a life to live, after all.

     Miss Parker sat up as well and grabbed the t-shirt at Scully's 

shoulder with graceless fingers.  "Hey."

     Lovely fingers.  Scully couldn't help running one of her own 
fingertips along the bone, from lowest to center knuckle.  The grip on 
Scully's shirt loosened, and Scully could feel the air, the slant of the 
bed, disturbed by motion, and instinctively she raised her own arms to 
protect herself, to block away a touch or embrace.

     The brief confusion of kinetics and confusion ended as quickly as 
it began.  Like ivy up a trellis, Miss Parker's arms wove around 
Scully's, as limber and elegant as Scully's were stiffened and 
defensive.  "You have a lot of problems, don't you?"  Miss Parker seemed 
almost impressed by the idea.

     Scully twisted her wrist, reaching back to cup a hand against the 
mussed back of Miss Parker's hair.  "I don't often give it any thought, 
actually."

     "Are you Catholic?"

     "What?"

     "Or is this a non-sectarian, generic middle America guilt problem?"  
Each word, so close to Scully's ear, wore the shape and texture of Miss 
Parker's tongue -- violated Scully's privacy in the blunt, heavy, 
delicious way that her tongue violated Scully's mouth.  She squirmed 
slightly, neither closer to nor farther away from Miss Parker.  
Suspended, hung between...the smoke and the smoker.

     "God.  My *God.*"  She laughed shakily, drawing one arm in closer 
to her body, and Miss Parker's along with it.  "Do you flirt like this 
with everyone?"

     "Via religious stereotypes?"

     "You know what I mean."

     "Dana, I don't think *you* know what you mean.  Are you really 
having ten conversations simultaneously all the time, or do you just 
sort of come across that way?"

     "Yes.  I find that it's easier to schedule in department meetings 
that way."

     "Come back to the Centre with me.  You can be my trophy wife."

     "Your moll?"  Scully raised an eyebrow, finding herself oddly 
charmed by the idea.

     Miss Parker was almost manic in her splintered good cheer again.  
"I'll let you wear my handcuffs.  You'd miss your work at first, but 
you'd grow to love bridge, and fundraisers for MS and the Humane 
Society.  And there's no law that says I couldn't shoot someone 
occasionally for you to autopsy."

     Her first giggle was more of a hiccup, but after a few false 
starts, Scully realized that she had not entirely left her ability to 
giggle behind in high school.  "I think there may be."

     "Oh, well, there are a lot of laws.  I can't be expected to know 
every single one off the top of my head; that's why we have 
professionals like you."  Amazingly, Scully found herself lolled 
comfortably against Miss Parker's shoulder, indolent and giggling in 
dying fits and chortles.  Maybe she could compare notes with Mulder.  *I 
find that the best part about taking unrepentant criminals to bed is 
their sick sense of humor -- don't you agree?  No, Scully, I'd have to 
say definitely the hot sex.  You would, Mulder.*

     She was aware of the stretch and manuevering of each muscle as 
Scully eased down, lying across Miss Parker's lap.  She was wild again, 
with nerves -- *could I possibly be doing this?* -- and with pride -- 
*it's me she wants, for once it's about me* -- but before and above all 
other things, she was a scientist.  She believed in what was real, and 
measured reality by experience.  Experience becomes reality becomes 
belief becomes truth becomes truth becomes truth.  The only rule.  The 
only thing Scully honored anymore.

     "You have a *tattoo*?" Miss Parker said as she worked the pants off 
Scully's hips.  "I never would have dreamed."

     "Hmmm.  You think you know someone...."

     Those strong fingers probed into Scully without hesitation and 
without weakness.  Bone rode hard over bone, pressing the wet and 
sensitive flesh between the hard planes of Miss Parker's hand and 
Scully's pelvis.  It was remorseless, romanceless, and Scully arched to 
it, craved it.  She had so much hunger, fifteen years of denied and 
discarded wanting.  She needed *getting,* like a transfusion, like food, 
knowledge, cigarettes, pleasure, attention.  Immortality.

     Alive.  It settled into Scully, and at last what had only been 
information became experience.  She was alive, and the cancer no longer 
devoured her.  She had sunk so deeply into the idea of her own death 
that it was an exotic and wonderful thought -- *alive.*  Experience 
became belief, and once she believed it, everything was different.  
Quantum, and incense and champagne.  Scully rose into the casual touch 
of Miss Parker's thumb over her clitoris with a body finally in 
accordance with itself, no longer leashed and muzzled by the idea that 
it was invading and threatening itself.  The sensation rose unobstructed 
through her abdomen and chest and into her skull, and nothing in Scully 
was to be resisted or denied any longer.  That part of her life was 
over.

     Experience became belief became truth.  The orgasm that passed 
through her like a summer thunderstorm was real, and it banished the 
last of Scully's fear that she was choosing this for some strange and 
foreign reason, that it was not *her.*  Nothing could have belonged to 
her any more than this.  Nothing could be more *Scully* than the need 
and desire to lie in bed listening for once to the voice of her own 
body.  Scully's eyes fluttered open, and she watched the eerie serenity 
of Miss Parker's lovely face.  How appropriate, that it would be a 
dancer who brought out in Scully the art of being embodied.  Of 
forgiving your body for ruling and endangering you, for making you both 
hungry and mortal.

     Her hands were no gentler than ever, but Miss Parker put them 
against Scully's hair and smoothed it back from her forehead, a gesture 
that hovered in limbo between clinical and caring.  Scully could smell 
her own juices on Miss Parker's hand.  She returned the favor, pressing 
her fingers into Miss Parker's hair, and this time she did not raise her 
arms to prevent Miss Parker's nearness, but to fold over and around her 
and close her in against Scully's body.  She was half-aware of Miss 
Parker's hands pushing her t-shirt up, stroking her breasts, and the 
touch was so good, so soothing, that at first she could think of nothing 
else, and then she could think of nothing at all.

                                  *

     Scully was too well-trained to do what she longed to do, which was 
to ignore the perky chirrup of her cell phone.  She sat up, and was 
briefly disoriented.  She felt warm and damp and untidy, and she was 
lying diagonally across a bed she did not recognize, but she knew that 
ring, would know it on her deathbed.  Cell phone, which meant work, work 
or Mulder, and usually both.  It was to be obeyed, always.  Even on her 
deathbed.  The image made her smile sleepily -- ninety-nine years old, 
frail and brittle, lifting the phone to her ear and uttering, "Scully," 
as her finally word.

     She sat up, and focused on her suit jacket hanging over the 
doorknob, the source of the ring.  Scully lurched out of bed and 
stumbled for it.  "Scully."

     "Took you long enough."

     "This is a record for you, Mulder.  Waking me up twice in one day."

     "What are you doing sleeping on the job, anyway?"

     In shock, Scully realized that she didn't exactly know.  *Fuck.*  
Her prisoner--  But even as Scully wondered what her options would be if 
Miss Parker had escaped while she slept, other than ritual suicide, she 
saw the prisoner in question.  She was sitting on the top step of 
Skinner's stairway, smoking.  Scully leaned against the doorframe, 
marveling at her good fortune.  On top of everything else, Miss Parker 
had changed from her leather to the only article of clothing Scully 
could think of that she would find equally appealing -- a man's white 
dress shirt, hanging unbuttoned off her shoulders, the hem skimming her 
thighs and the cuffs dragging low on her hand.  "I'm -- I'm not really 
working.  Just watching this woman until we can locate her lawyer.  
Where are you?"  It was hard to tell from the curtained window in 
Skinner's room, but the light seemed uncomfortably heavy, as though many 
hours had passed while Scully slept.  She could only trust that Miss 
Parker would have woken her up if it were nearing time for Skinner to 
return.

     "I have a layover in Atlanta.  I should land up there at 8:15.  I'm 
sorry, Scully, but it was the best I could do on short notice."

     "It's fine.  Come to Crystal City -- we're at Skinner's."

     "You're where?"

     "I'll explain later."  The clock read ten after four; how could she 
have slept so long?  Scully crossed the hall into the bathroom and ran 
some water into the cup by Skinner's sink.  "I've been thinking about 
what you said this morning."

     "Hey, forget it.  I'm paranoid schitzophrenic and you were 
half-asleep.  Hell, I don't even remember what we talked about.  Aztecs 
or something."

     Scully smiled slightly into the mirror.  So like Mulder, to take 
the lion's share of the blame and shunt it off to his much-maligned 
sanity, then go on undisturbed.  "More Krycek than Aztecs."

     There was a long silence.  "Senator, I have no memory of that," he 
joked feebly.

     "Mulder.  You were right."

     "About what I said?" Mulder said dubiously.  "I actually don't 
remember saying anything noticeably right."

     "About what you did."

     She could almost hear his silent, poleaxed shock against the 
ambient noise of the Atlanta airport.  Scully emerged from the bathroom; 
as her eyes settled in pleasure on Miss Parker, she felt what had been 
jealousy of Mulder -- of his charisma, of his divided affections, of the 
fact that he had found an emotional height in the midst of their chaos, 
insane though it was to find it in Alex Krycek, that Scully feared she 
might never find for herself -- transform into sympathy for him.  Her 
temporary, necessary, perfect affair with a darkly ambiguous beauty had 
brought her this sleepy peace, the simple satisfaction of looking at her 
lover and being softly recalled to past pleasures.  His affair had 
carried so much past, and from the very beginning it had been gored on 
the blade of its own future.  "I just wish you'd found something that 
would...make things easier on you, not harder."

     "Scully.  Thanks."  He sounded dazzled, almost drunk on the 
unexpectedness of this.  "What -- what can I say?  You're the queen of 
all things.  I'll be there before nine."

     "Okay.  Skinner's."

     "I'm on it."

     Though she had meant to walk casually across the hall and back into 
the bedroom, Scully found herself ridiculously unable to do so.  She 
stopped halfway and stared at Miss Parker, routine and businesslike 
white cotton draped against her rare, marble beauty.  She wore it with 
the such aggressive confidence, her cool eyes daring Scully to treat her 
any differently than she would if Miss Parker were still wearing a 
catsuit and heels.  "Nice of you to stay."

     Miss Parker looked for a moment as though she'd been caught doing 
something she was somewhat ashamed of, but then she gave a defiant shrug 
with one shoulder.  "This puts a few more pieces on the board, this FBI 
business.  Should make things interesting."

     "You're beautiful," Scully said, the words lurching out of her with 
awkward straightforwardness.

     After a moment's thought about that, Miss Parker shook ashes onto 
Skinner's carpet and took another drag off her cigarette.  "I want 
Chinese for dinner."

     "You're also very demanding."

     "It's because I'm worth it.  Anyway, it's on the taxpayer, right?  
Just take it out of my taxes."

     "Why am I suspicious that you don't pay taxes?"

     "Of course I do.  I think.  You'd have to ask my accountant.  I 
like Kung-Pao chicken."

     "Let's start with the ice cream and work forward from there," 
Scully suggested from just inside the bedroom doorway.  She picked up 
the copy of *Carrie* she had left on the nightstand, and as she returned 
it to its shelf, she noticed a Polaroid camera.  The idea was too 
tempting.

     Miss Parker was lighting a new cigarette just as Scully came out of 
the room.  "Hey."

     She looked up at Scully, and even after the flash went off, it was 
a moment before Miss Parker realized what had happened.  "What the fuck 
is this?"

     "Everyone needs one," Scully said cryptically as she descended the 
stairs.

     In the kitchen, beside the refrigerator with the empty handcuffs 
hanging from its handle, Scully stopped and watched as the picture 
sharpened into focus.  Dark and white, disheveled and sleek, vulnerable 
and unreachable, risky and necessary.  Scully smiled.  One picture of 
one dream, something to lie in bed and watch in the dark, thinking *this 
has always been no one's business but mine, whatever the rules may say.*  
Miss Parker was always meant to be temporary, but in some small way, 
this evidence of her made everything that had happened between them take 
on the sharp, sweet taste of permanence.  It made Miss Parker's strange, 
wicked charm tangible, and though it was no substitute for Miss Parker 
herself, it wasn't really meant to be.  It was what it was, and what 
Scully wanted: a piece of deviance that she would keep, that was real 
and not to be pared down or stripped away in the quest to become 
herself...only less so.

     Scully heard Miss Parker's footsteps on the stairs.  "So where's my 
ice cream?" she said from the doorway.

     She laid the photograph down on the counter and opened the freezer.  
Neapolitan wasn't Scully's favorite, but at the moment she was too 
ravenously hungry to care.  She could start with Neapolitan.  And work 
forward from there.

End.
Hth
hth29@hotmail.com