'From: "Foxsong" <foxsong@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 22:58:20 -0400
Subject: "Mississippi"  (Prologue,  Chs 1-3/26)
Source: direct

"Mississippi"  (Prologue,  Chs 1-3/26)

by Foxsong

Finally, fi-i-i-inally finished on 9-23-01! :-D

Rated R.

Category/Keywords: X, A, MSR/UST. (Yes, MSR. Trust me. Buckle up and come
along for the ride!)

Spoilers: Assumes familiarity with Christmas Carol, Emily, Herrenvolk,
Talitha Cumi, Sein und Zeit/Closure, and makes a passing reference to
Orison.

Feedback to foxsong@earthlink.net.

Archive at will, but please let me know where, and provide a link back to my
site at http://www.trax.to/the_foxsong_files.

Disclaimer: "The X-Files" TM and copyright Fox and its related entities. All
rights reserved. Neither this work of fiction nor its writer is authorized
by Fox.

Author's notes: This story was born, way back when Hollywood AD was just a
rumor on the spoiler boards, from speculation as to what kind of part Téa
Leoni might play in an X-F ep. One day as I was mulling it over I happened
to play the Paula Cole song 'Mississippi,' and it all began to fall into
place. So turn the song up loud, and picture Téa in the starring role. She
was a delight to work with. ;-)

Many thanks and much love to MaybeAmanda and Char Chaffin, who stuck with me
through the whole thing, and who have a halfway decent idea what the story
really means.



Summary: Investigating a series of homicides, Mulder and Scully find that
other lives than their own have been touched by the Consortium; putting
together the pieces of that puzzle, they begin to put together the pieces of
their own.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
- - -





Prologue



She slipped down the hallway in the dark, hugging the wall as if to make
herself less visible. The vinyl soles of the attached slippers on her
flannel pajamas scuffed softly against the hardwood floor. She crouched down
on the landing at the top of the stairs and waited, listening to the men's
voices.

On another night, if she'd been wakeful like this, she would have gone the
other way down the hall and found Mama. Daddy stayed up late, reading his
papers from work, but Mama always went to bed right after tucking her in;
she knew she could always go to Mama and stay with her for a little while.
But Mama was over at Aunt Mary's house tonight. She'd been staying there a
lot these past few months. Mama told her Aunt Mary was very sick and that
she needed Mama's help sometimes.

She hugged her stuffed toy bunny closer to her chest. If Daddy had been
alone, she would have gone down, but the man from work was here with him
again. He had been coming over more and more often on the nights that Mama
was at Aunt Mary's. He and Daddy sat in the living room and talked late into
the night.

She never knew what to make of it when the man from work was there. The way
he and Daddy talked was different from the way other grownups talked when
Mama and Daddy had parties and she would sit on the landing listening to
them. They never turned on the hi-fi and played records. She never heard the
clinking of ice cubes in glasses that meant they were having drinks. There
was no laughter. Their voices were quiet and serious and they used words she
didn't understand.

"It's really only the next logical step, Edward," the man from work was
saying, "and you've certainly understood the necessity from the beginning.
I've never made any pretenses about it. We've all known it would be a road
of sacrifice."

"I know. I know." Her father's voice was grim. "But it's a bad time. What
with Mary sick..."

"Yes," said the visitor. "I was... sorry... to hear she's been taken ill."

"She's dying."

Aunt Mary was...? Her eyes widened. She pressed herself against the wall and
crept a little farther toward the edge of the stairs.

There was a pause before the man spoke. "Not every aspect of the process has
been perfected, Edward. We are working with unknown factors, feeling our way
along -- "

There was a sudden thump, as if one of the men had slapped his hand down
hard on the armrest of his chair. "How is that supposed to reassure me? How
am I supposed to watch her die, and let you take my little girl? You know
Arlene can't have another child. If anything happened to Paula..."

She sat up sharply on the landing at the sound of her name. They were
talking about her. Her! She hugged the bunny tighter and leaned forward,
holding her breath, trying to hear every word.

"It will take, at most, two weeks," the visitor said. "I assure you that she
will be returned unharmed. Perhaps your wife might be persuaded to move into
her sister's home for the duration of the procedure? You might be able to
keep it from her entirely by that means."

Daddy snorted. "Mary lives right across the river. Why would she pack up and
move over there? It's ridiculous."

There was a long silence. She craned her neck, peering anxiously around the
corner of the landing, not wanting to miss anything, but knowing somehow she
must remain unnoticed.

At last the man from work spoke. "Perhaps," he said slowly," there might
arise some... circumstance... that requires her constant presence there,
hmm?"

"You bastard," Daddy swore softly."I should..."

"You should what, Edward? You knew from the beginning this day would come. I
promise you now, as I did then, that your daughter will be returned to you.
She will have no memory of the procedure." He dropped his voice; his tone
became low and confidential. "You know as well as I do that it's the only
way to save her."

Overcome with curiosity, she leaned just a little farther forward and looked
down into the living room. Daddy was leaning over in the armchair, his head
in his hands. The man from work had his back turned to her, and she couldn't
see his face. All she could see was the smoke from his cigarette, rising up
to wreathe his head like a halo in the lamplight.







Chapter One



The clamor of the alarm seemed distant, but after a moment Denny yawned and
stretched and groped out toward the bedside table where it should have been.
When her hand swiped through empty air and came down on the thick plush
carpeting she came awake with a start, her heart thudding in her chest with
the old familiar dread.

Not again. Oh, God, not again.

She fell back against the cushions and choked back a sob; then, more from
force of habit than from any desire to really know, raised her head to
assess the situation.

She was sprawled full length on her living room sofa, still wearing
yesterday's work clothes. Her shoes lay out in the middle of the floor as if
she'd just walked out of them on her way into the apartment.

She took these as good signs. Sometimes she woke half-dressed, the languid
weight of her limbs telling her without doubt what she'd done the night
before. Those were the mornings she might find her pantyhose stuffed
haphazardly into her purse, or not find them at all. Sometimes on those
mornings there was a man's business card in her bag; sometimes there was
just a slip of paper with a phone number and not even a name.

Maybe it was worse when there was nothing concrete at all to give her a
hint. Maybe it was worse when her body had memories of its own that it
refused to share.

Thank God, there was none of that today. She sat up, running a shaky hand
through her blonde hair. The alarm still shrilled, and she rose on her long
legs and went across the apartment to the bedroom and shut it off. One hand
still on the clock, she glanced back toward the living room, feeling the
uncertainty and the fear pooling in the pit of her stomach. She turned back,
her lips pressed together in a tight line, and walked deliberately over to
the answering machine on the desk.

A sheet of paper leaned partially across it, obscuring the panel of tiny
lights at the bottom. Her hand paused for a moment and then snatched it
away. The red light shone steadily -- no blinks. No messages.

A sigh of relief escaped her lips, and she laid both palms flat upon the
desk and leaned against it heavily. No messages. Jim hadn't called. He
wouldn't know she'd been out last night. There would be nothing to explain.
She had no way to explain it to herself; how could she possibly explain it
to him?

Mouthing a silent prayer of thanks, Denny roused herself again and stepped
back from the desk. On the way to the bathroom she shed her blazer. It
smelled like stale cigarette smoke. A bar this time, maybe? But her head was
clear; she didn't think she'd been drinking.

She sighed as she stepped out of her skirt; now she'd have to find time to
drop these things at the cleaner's today, too. She wanted to be a little
early to work -- she wanted to have everything else in the office squared
away by the time those two Bureau people came in a few more days; she had
promised herself she'd keep it together while they were here. It had been
hard enough, even humiliating, to have to leave the Bureau and come back to
Louisiana. Her AD had been understanding, even as he'd relieved her of duty,
but with the blackouts, there hadn't been much of a choice.

Denny shook her head. It was just stress, she told herself; there were too
many things going on, too many things that hit too close to home. The little
Raymon girl had been missing for a week. Now, hard on the heels of that,
there'd been the call from the FBI yesterday. That was more than enough to
trigger this blackout, she reasoned. It seemed, at least, to have been a
minor one. Maybe she would have to talk to Dr. DeMontreaux about adjusting
her medication again.

She reached into the shower and twisted the knob to turn on the water. She
unbuttoned her blouse and as it fell from her shoulders she glanced up into
the mirror and saw the unmistakable, telltale bruises on her throat and
along her collarbone. She froze, staring, and this time the tears spilled
over and ran down her cheeks.







Chapter Two



"Look," Mulder finally addressed the looming silence in the car, "I said I'm
sorry. Can we just skip it?"

"I haven't said a thing about it, Mulder," Scully replied mildly without
looking toward him.

Actually, she hadn't said anything. She hadn't needed to. Her silences were
always as eloquent as speech. She didn't have to spell it out; Mulder knew
she was still smarting from the way he'd taken off last week without a word
to her, with just that hasty message left on her answering machine.

Admittedly, the thing had been a long shot. He'd known full well that Scully
would have brushed it off without hesitation. She'd have made too much
sense, he grudgingly allowed, and he'd been in no mood to be talked out of
it, so he'd left the message rather than trying to talk her into coming
along, and then he'd hopped a flight and spent two days on what really had
turned out to be nothing at all.

Mulder glanced over at her impassive profile, at the brown October landscape
passing behind her outside the window. Yeah, it had turned out to be
nothing, he thought, but ten days later he was still paying for it.

It had been one of his rare miscalculations. For years now he had been
carefully chipping away at Scully's armor, but sometimes he pushed her a
little too hard, took a little bit more of a liberty than she seemed to
think he'd earned. There'd be a sudden flash of fire, and after the flare
she would ice over and freeze him out until she'd settled down again. He
understood by now that she couldn't help it, but between the little ice ages
he always managed to forget how much they hurt.

He had puzzled long and hard over what it could have been that had made
Scully steel her heart the way she had. The things she had let him know
about her life didn't point in any of the obvious directions. He guessed
that she had buried the beginnings of her pain so deeply that even she might
not be able to say anymore.

He sighed. He tried, and failed, to suppress a yawn, and Scully seemed to
take pity on him at last. "We're almost there," she said, gracing him with a
little smile. "Just two more exits."

He marveled anew at the effortless power she held over him. Had he really
been aggravated only a moment ago? He smiled back. "Two more," he echoed,
relieved. "A good night's sleep, and we can dig right in tomorrow morning."

Scully nodded. "You said you'd set up a meeting with the medical examiner?"

"Nine o'clock. She's got the latest guy on ice for you."

"Mmm-hmm." She opened the manila folder in her lap and leafed almost idly
through the pages. "Although I'm not exactly sure what I should be looking
for..."

"You're the only one who might know what to look for, Scully," he answered.
"You're the only one -- the only pathologist, I mean -- that I know of who's
seen anything like this before."

"Well..." she mused, "the manner of death, yes... but, Mulder, there's
nothing here to suggest that any of these men's bodies exuded toxic fumes or
acidic substances when they were stabbed."

"Stabbed in the back of the neck, Scully." He thumped one palm against the
steering wheel for emphasis. "A single stab wound, made with a narrow, sharp
instrument, right into the brain -- through the base of the skull. In the
back of the neck."

"Yes, yes. I know," she said patiently. "It's all right here."

"Sound familiar to you, Scully?" He looked over and met her eyes, and she
sighed and turned away again.

"I know what you're thinking, Mulder. But these were just men, not --
not..." She gestured helplessly. "They were just men," she repeated, closing
the folder and settling her hands upon it.

"Maybe." He nodded slowly, not quite ready to concede the point. "But
Scully, somebody else didn't think so."







Chapter Three



It was still early when Denny turned the grey Jeep into the parking lot. She
headed for her usual parking place, with the small, tidy wooden marker
reserving it for her, but was flustered for a moment to find a car in it.
Jim's pickup truck was already there too, one space over, and she pulled
into the unmarked space just past it. Jim was standing in front of his
truck, talking to a heavyset man. Denny recognized him -- Nathan Raymon, the
missing child's father. She caught her breath, almost daring to hope the
news was good.

She opened her door just as Nathan was shaking Jim's hand. "Thanks,
Sheriff," he was saying.

Jim shook his head a little. "I wish I had more to tell you, Nate."

"I know everybody's doing the best they can," the other man said wearily,
getting into his car. "It's like... it's like I let myself have just a
little bit of hope every morning on the way here. At least it gets me out of
bed for another day."

The car's engine turned over. Jim scored the ground slowly with the heel of
one worn boot in a gesture Denny recognized as frustration; still, his voice
was steady as he said, "My best to Linda."

Raymon nodded, and closed the car door, and backed out of Denny's parking
space and drove away. Jim stood, staring after the car; he didn't seem to
notice as Denny came up beside him.

She reached out and rubbed her hand up and down his back. "Hey," she said.

Jim let out a long sigh and turned toward her, a sad half-smile on his lips.
"Hey yourself." He leaned over to kiss her cheek. "You're early."

"You were here before me." She gestured after Raymon's car. "Does he come by
every morning like that?"

Jim nodded. "Yeah. I think it makes him feel like he's doing more, even
though he's already doing everything he can."

Denny looked away down the road after Nathan Raymon's car. The sun was just
beginning to cast a few direct, pinkish-gold rays across the tarmac; soon
the mist would burn away and you'd be able to see all the way clear down to
the statues at the entrance of the park.

"The longer she's gone," she said, "the worse the odds are that we'll ever
get her back."

Jim put one arm around her shoulders. "Not always. You ought to know that
better than anybody, Den -- you're living proof." He gave her a brief,
reassuring hug. "C'mon. Let's get to it."

She turned with him toward the entrance of the building and hoped he would
write off her sudden shiver to the chill of the October morning.

"Mississippi"  by Foxsong  foxsong@earthlink.net

Full headers in Part 1



Chapter Four



"Denny?" Jim asked, leaning into the open doorway.

She looked up and slowly pushed the papers she'd been pretending to read
away across the desk.

"Your FBI people are here," he said. "You ready?"

She pushed her glasses up into place on her nose. "Yes. Thanks. Would you
send them in?"

"Sure thing."

Denny took a deep breath and rose to her feet. She stepped out from behind
her desk just as Jim showed a tall, dark-haired man and a small redheaded
woman into the office.

She'd have recognized them as Bureau, she thought with a twinge, even if
they'd walked in off the street without any introduction at all. The
conservative dark suits, the long coats that camoflaged their holstered
weapons. The Look, she and her colleagues had called it in Los Angeles, and
kidded each other about it. It had been one of their favorite running jokes.

She smiled carefully. "Good morning."

The man stepped forward and extended his hand. "Fox Mulder," he said as
Denny reached forward to accept the handshake. "My partner, Dr. Dana
Scully."

Denny nodded, turning to the woman. "Paula Dennison," she said, looking from
one to the other. "Nice to meet you." The smaller woman inclined her head in
acknowledgement, but said nothing; her hands remained before her, clasped
around the handle of her bag. Denny took in the details -- the fine cut of
her clothes, the small pearl earrings -- and felt pleased that she herself
had worn her good navy wool, rather than the tweed. This woman would have
noticed the difference, she felt sure.

"I appreciate your agreeing to see us on such short notice," Agent Mulder
said, and Denny shook her head.

"It's no trouble, really." Her smile turned a little rueful. "All in all,
Donaldsonville is a quiet place. I get a car accident now and then, or once
in a while a little old lady that they find after the mailman notices she
hasn't picked up the mail for a few days. These three guys floating into
town are the most excitement we've had all year, other than..." She stopped,
not wanting to think about Jessy Raymon now.

Agent Scully spoke for the first time. "I suppose this would seem very quiet
to you -- you were with the Bureau, weren't you?" She cocked her head a
little to one side and raised an eyebrow. "In California?"

Denny paused. The breath she was taking caught for a moment in her throat.
She'd noticed the unabashed way the redheaded woman had been staring around
the little office since she'd come in; now she noticed the brief flicker of
surprise across the tall man's face, and understood that this Scully had
done some homework she hadn't shared with her partner.

Denny found her breath and willed herself to answer before her composure
could slip. "Yes. I was." She hoped that would be the end of it.

But Scully nodded and continued, "I thought I knew the name. The Mitchell
case -- your work was well done."

"Thank you," Denny said, and felt a flush rise to her cheeks. She turned
deliberately back toward Mulder. "I trust you received the overview of the
cases in good order?"

"Yes, thank you. I did." Denny watched the way he shot another sidelong
glance at his partner even as he was nodding.

"Good. These," she continued, "are the full case files. There are two
copies, one for each of you." She picked up the folders and handed one to
each agent, and leaned back against the edge of the desk, folding her arms
across her chest. She tried hard to look relaxed. There was a moment's pause
as the two agents opened the folders and began to leaf through them.

"No prints lifted from any of the bodies...?" Scully mused aloud, glancing
up at Denny without raising her head. Something in her tone made Denny
wonder whether it might be a challenge.

"No," she returned slowly, "and, really, it's almost impossible to say
whether we have a very careful killer, or whether the bodies were just in
the water too long -- as you can read there, all but the most recent had
been in the river for a number of days."

There was something going on here, she thought, that had very little to do
with the case at hand. Why would that woman mention, of all the Bureau work
Denny had ever done, the Mitchell case? She willed herself to stay calm, and
was glad that both agents were still studying the casefiles instead of
watching her.

As she looked at them, something in the way they stood struck her. They were
a little too close for 'professional' space; this looked more personal. She
noticed the way the tall man inclined just the slightest degree toward his
partner and the way she, in response, shifted her weight onto the foot
nearest him. Playing a hunch, Denny turned her eyes, and let her gaze linger
deliberately on Scully's partner until, with her peripheral vision, she saw
the smaller woman look up and take notice. Denny didn't even need to look
back at her. She could fairly feel the redhead bristling.

Ah! So that was all it was -- they had a 'history,' as one of her old
colleagues used to phrase it. She straightened up and squared her shoulders
as if a weight had been lifted from them. "Agents," she smiled, "shall we
head down to the morgue?" And she led the way from the office without
looking back.

In the basement, she pushed open the door of the morgue, reaching
automatically for the light switch as she entered. It was small, and not so
state-of-the-art as this Agent Scully might be used to, but Denny herself
had seen to every detail in the room, and she was confident that it was
scrupulously clean and excellently equipped. She walked briskly across her
little morgue to the bank of square metal doors and unlatched the one
farthest to the left.

"This is Mr. Charles Vaccaro," she announced, pulling the handle and rolling
the slab out into the room. "Or at least, he was till about a week and a
half ago, as near as we can figure." She looked up coolly across the body at
Scully. "But maybe you'll want to draw your own conclusions."

"I'm sure we'll concur on most of the salient points," the other woman
returned, already looking the body over with a practiced eye. "There are a
few particulars that Agent Mulder would like me to look into. That's all."
Scully glanced toward her partner and their eyes met; they shared a
momentary look that Denny couldn't read, and then the redhead turned away
and began taking off her coat.

"Mulder," she said, hanging the coat on the rack near the door, and
beginning to unfasten the buttons of the smartly-tailored blazer, "why don't
you take this time to go with Sheriff Cormerais and check out those things
you told him you wanted to see? I'll be fine here."

Denny saw the tall man shift his weight hesitantly from one foot to the
other and back again. He watched his partner help herself to one of the
freshly cleaned lab jackets hanging on the next rack over from her coat. As
Scully tore the cleaners' plastic wrap from the jacket and slipped it off
the hanger, he finally said, "You're sure you don't want me to wait, so you
can come with us?"

"I'll do you more good here," she answered shortly, putting her arm into the
first sleeve. Mulder reached out to help her into the jacket, a little
hurriedly, Denny thought, as if he had just realized he should have done it
sooner. The small woman pushed the wad of plastic wrap into his hand and
walked back toward the slab where the corpse lay waiting. Mulder didn't try
to follow; he just gazed after her, at her back. His face was blank.

Denny swung the overhead light around toward the body and turned it on.
Agent Scully was already pulling the stainless-steel surgical cart toward
the table; she seemed to want to start immediately. "There's a tape recorder
in the drawer of the cart," Denny said. "It's ready to go."

"I carry my own. I have it right here in my bag," the smaller woman said,
looking up at Denny and smiling a little for the first time. "But thank
you." She leaned down to open her leather attache, and took the
microcassette recorder out.

"Then you're all set," Denny nodded. "I'll be upstairs whenever you're done.
If you have any other questions, the phone's right over there. My office is
marked on the intercom keys."

"Thank you," Scully said again. "I'm sure everything will be fine." She
looked over at Mulder, still standing by the door, still clutching the
little handful of crumpled plastic wrap. "You'll keep me posted? If I
haven't heard from you by the time I'm done, I'll call you." She didn't wait
for an answer; she began rearranging the instruments on the tray to her
liking.

Mulder's jaw worked just a little; he nodded fractionally. Denny looked from
one agent to the other. Then the tall man spoke, just a few curt words.
"Fine. See you later." He turned and grasped the doorknob, and pulled the
door open.

"Agent," Denny nodded to Scully, taking her leave; the redhead returned the
courtesy. Denny walked through the open doorway and into the hall.

In front of the elevator door, Mulder glanced over curiously at Denny. "I
thought you might want to stick around for that autopsy," he said.

The elevator opened and Denny stepped in, turning to face Mulder as he
followed. "I'm sure your partner and Mr. Vaccaro will have a lovely time all
by themselves," she answered with a wry smile. "I didn't get the impression
she needed any help from me."

Mulder punched the 'up' button on the elevator panel just a little more
emphatically than necessary. "Yeah. I know the feeling," he said, half to
himself. He glanced down at the plastic wrap in his hand as if he'd
forgotten he was still carrying it.

"There's a garbage can over there, on the left," Denny said, pointing, as
the elevator doors opened again. "I'll just take you back to Jim's office,
and then you two can get started, if you like."

"Thanks." Mulder dropped the wad of plastic wrap into the trash can. "That
would be fine."







Chapter Five



Denny turned the key in the ignition of the Cherokee and hardly heard the
engine starting. Deep in thought, she had already made the left turn and
driven half the way toward the bridge across the river into Darrow before
she realized where she was going. She blinked and looked around as if waking
from sleep; she smiled ruefully, but kept driving.

She glanced out at the river rushing under the bridge. Whenever she crossed
it Denny felt as if she'd stepped across a threshold into another place. It
was nothing she could articulate, but she always thought she could feel
herself shaking off one way of being, shouldering another, as she looked
down at the grey water. She knew that water had begun its journey far to the
north in Lake Itasca, had rolled south over the miles, across the prairies,
through the valleys, past farmlands and cities. Now it murmured under the
bridge beneath her, whispering of some of the things it had seen, holding
some of them secret, carrying them away unseen and unspoken to the Gulf of
Mexico.

Denny sighed. The only secrets the river had seen fit to share lately were
those of the three corpses that had washed up against the banks, there on
the hairpin turn between Donaldsonville and Darrow. She glanced at the
bridge in her rearview mirror and pushed down the resentful thought that the
Mississippi had purposefully brought the two FBI agents into her office that
morning, awakening memories she'd tried so hard to leave behind.

She slowed the Jeep as she turned onto the narrow streets of the little
town. Of course, Darrow had grown; but somehow it seemed so much smaller now
than it had when she was a child. The houses had seemed grander then, the
trees taller; the lawns rolled out acres wide in her memory, splashed with
lazy midsummer sunshine. On the rise overlooking the river her father's
house seemed to stand a little apart, as if it understood that it was closed
up and empty, ashamed of its cool darkness as the evening lights came on in
the houses around it.

She should sell it. She really should. She had told herself when she moved
across the river into the apartment in Donaldsonville that she would put it
on the market as soon as her father's estate was cleared up. Now it was
going on three years since he'd died, and she hadn't been able to bring
herself to do it.

She pulled into the driveway and cut the lights. She knew what she would see
if she went inside. Nothing had really been done since her father had died;
the few relatives who had come had taken the things he'd wanted them to
have, and she'd cleaned up the house and covered up the furniture and turned
the key in the lock and walked away. She couldn't stay here alone; still,
she couldn't quite let it go. Maybe, she thought sadly, somewhere in that
house was the secret of where and when and how everything had begun to go
wrong. Maybe that was what kept drawing her back like this.

She wasn't supposed to be back here, wasn't supposed to be stuck in this
little backwoods town she thought she'd gotten away from. She'd finished
near the top of her class at Quantico; she'd been recruited by the Los
Angeles field office. She'd been on the way up. By now she should have been
heading up a forensics division. She should have...

She sighed and bowed her head in resignation. She should have been paying
attention to where she was going just now, that's what she should have been
doing; now she'd have to hurry to be on time to Dr. DeMontreaux's office.
She reached for the light switch and put the Jeep into reverse and backed
out onto the street.







Chapter Six



"But that," Scully asked, tapping her forefinger slowly against the edge of
the laminated menu, "is the *least* deep-fried thing you have?"

"Yes, ma'am." The young waitress was clearly puzzled to meet a customer
whose taste ran to food that was anything other than breaded, deep-fried,
chicken-fried, smothered in cheese, or swimming in bacon fat or thick brown
gravy. "That or, like I said -- a plain house salad, ma'am."

Scully suppressed a sigh. They'd chosen the little diner for lunch because
it met Mulder's First Rule of Road Food: they'd had to hunt for a parking
place around the tractor-trailers that dominated the parking lot. Long-haul
truckers, Mulder insisted, knew all the good places to eat, and Scully had
to admit that the beer-bellied group of drivers up at the counter looked
right at home there.

"I'll have that, then, please." She handed the menu back to the waitress.
"And a Diet Coke."

"Yes, ma'am." She folded up her order pad and tucked it into her apron
pocket. "Be just a few minutes, folks."

Scully frowned, staring after her as she walked away. " 'Ma'am'," she
repeated mournfully. "When did I get to be 'ma'am'?"

Mulder looked up, obviously puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"I was 'miss.' Now I'm 'ma'am'. When did I cross the line?" She picked up
her napkin and began to roll the edge restlessly between her fingertips. The
moment she realized how the gesture gave away the depth of her agitation,
she stilled her hands.

Mulder shrugged. "It's a Southern thing," he said absently, reaching for his
glass of water. "Any woman over a certain age is 'ma'am'."

"But that's what I *mean*." She drew the last word out petulantly. "I'm
*over a certain age* now. When did that happen?"

She watched Mulder realize his mistake. He glanced furtively around as if
for a way to backtrack, and opted to drink some of his water instead.

"Mulder, you're such..." She cast around frustratedly for the right word.
"You're such a *guy* sometimes." She thought he looked vaguely guilty, as if
there ought to have been something he could have done even about so
elemental a thing as his gender, if it had offended her.

"Scully, I'm -- "

"Never mind." She unfolded her napkin and laid it in her lap. "It doesn't
matter."

She spent a lot of time thinking about Mulder these days. To be fair, she
had to admit she had always spent a lot of time thinking about him. It was
the tone of the thought that had changed over the years, so gradually that
she had been surprised when she finally saw the direction it had taken. One
day she had finally had to ask herself whether she was only acting like she
was in love or whether, in fact, she really was.

When had Mulder become the sun? When had her whole life begun to turn around
his? It crossed her mind that this was probably -- no, it was definitely the
longest interpersonal relationship of her adult life, and she couldn't bring
herself to let it go anywhere at all. She wasn't sure what that said about
her. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

She had grown used to this feeling of standing perpetually on the brink of
something. It seemed normal now. She was almost comfortable here. The truth
was that, even though she couldn't quite picture herself with Mulder, she
knew by now that she'd never be able to picture herself with anybody else.

It wasn't that there was anything so wrong with Mulder. The trouble, she
knew, was that she was so resistant to the idea of being in love with
anyone, to the idea of giving anyone that kind of power over her -- and when
that person was Mulder, it was even more complicated.

She might trust Mulder with her life, she thought sadly, but she couldn't
trust her own heart. Deep inside, she was afraid that maybe they hadn't been
drawn together by anything so ordinary as a mutual attraction. Maybe it was
really that the trials of their lives had ruined each of them for anybody
else. No one else would understand; normal people would think either of them
mad. Their shared history had not just brought them close: it had bound them
together, back to back, guns drawn and trained upon a world neither of them
dared to trust.

It was nothing, Scully reflected ruefully, that she had ever imagined basing
a romance on.

"Look at this, Scully." Mulder's voice brought her back from her thoughts.
"You can learn all kinds of trivia while you wait for your food." He ran his
finger across a block of text on the printed paper placemat and read aloud,
" 'Crawfish: From the Ecosystem to Your Plate'."

"You keep that up, Mulder, and I'll go vegan on you," she told him, and
smiled a little at the thought. "I'd love to see you find me something to
eat then."

He winked. "All the more cheeseburgers for me, my dear." He took another sip
of water, and his expression became more serious. "So what do you think,
Scully? See any connection between these three men?"

"Well, the government connection," she shrugged. "ATF. Bureau. State
Department. It's obvious."

"Too obvious." He shook his head warily. "Too broad. Something's got to
narrow it down. I was thinking they might all have some assignment or
project in common."

"I can see how that might be a possibility with the first two, because Ed
Tascone and Robert Frank were close in age, and would have been working at
the same time," Scully answered. "But they both retired almost ten years
ago, just about when Charles Vaccaro was joining the ATF. He wouldn't have
worked with them."

"Unless," Mulder mused, "unless, unless..." He picked up the fork that laid
on his napkin and tapped the tines against the printed placemat. "Unless it
was a long-term project. Something ongoing." He looked up at Scully. "Maybe
still going on right now."

"Then that would explain why Frank and Tascone still held security clearance
even after they'd been retired for so long." She nodded slowly. "They were
still involved."

"You know what else really stood out to me?" Mulder asked. "Even before they
retired, neither of those men had the kind of job that would have required
the high-level clearance they had. They had to be involved in something
else. Something they wouldn't put on their resumes."

She smiled ruefully. "Oh, goody, Mulder," she sighed. "A covert project.
Your favorite."

"What can I say, Scully?" He spread his hands and gave her a winning smile.
"I know how to pick 'em, don't I?"

It must be involuntary, she decided as she looked at him. She'd seen him
trying to charm women on purpose, but this wasn't quite the same thing --
and he wouldn't try it on her, anyway, would he...? She was spared by the
reappearance of the waitress, who set an impressively heaping platter in
front of Mulder.

"Here you go, sir," she said, and added, presenting Scully with her more
modest repast, "ma'am."

"Mississippi" by Foxsong  foxsong@earthlink.net

Full headers in Part 1


  Chapter Seven



  Mulder hated to think of any day as wasted, but this one, he had to allow,
was coming awfully close.

  Their morning spent poking around on the riverbank where Charles Vaccaro's
body had washed up had yielded nothing. Now Cecelia Vaccaro was just showing
them to the door after what had proven to be a largely fruitless interview.
When Mulder's cell phone rang, he said, "Excuse me," and stepped through the
doorway onto the porch, leaving Scully inside.

  "Mulder."

  "Hello, Agent Mulder? Jim Cormerais."

  "Sheriff. What can I do for you?" Mulder stretched his long frame, glad to
be standing again; Mrs. Vaccaro had meant well when she brought out the
coffee and cookies and led them into the living room, but the overstuffed
couches had obviously been designed for people who meant to sink deep into
them and be enveloped, unmoving, for a long evening of channel-surfing. It
had required a conscious effort to unfold himself when he got up.

  "You were in the right place, all right, but your timing's a few hours
off," the sheriff was saying. "I think we've got a new one for you."

  Mulder frowned. "Another victim?"

  "Sure looks that way," Cormerais returned. "Couple of kids playing hooky
from school spotted him -- got themselves good and scared. Anyway, we just
fished him out, and he's got the same kind of stab wound to the back of the
neck."

  "Huh," Mulder said, gesturing to Scully as she came out onto the porch
with Mrs. Vaccaro. "Anything there to see?"

  "No more than last time," the sheriff sighed. "He started somewhere
upriver and just ended up here. Soon as my people are done, we're heading
back to the morgue with him, but of course you can run by here again if you
want."

  Mulder wandered down the stairs. "I'll ask Agent Scully, but she'll
probably just want to come have a look at the body." He turned to look at
her and saw that she was just taking her leave of Mrs. Vaccaro; he
recognized the wave of her hand in his direction and knew she was excusing
him as well. "We'll catch up with you."

  "Well, you know where to find us. We'll see you later. And that dinner
invite still stands, you know."

  "Thank you, Sheriff."

  Scully appeared at his elbow just as he was snapping the phone shut and
replacing it in his pocket. "How's the back?" she asked with a knowing
smile.

  "That wasn't a sofa. It was an upholstered amoeba," Mulder snorted as he
slid into the car. "And here I thought you were just being ladylike when you
perched on the edge of the thing like that."

  "Whereas you, on the other hand, sat down and found yourself engulfed by
its pseudopods." She settled in beside him and reached for her seat belt.
"Who was that on the phone?"

  "It was the sheriff," he said, turning the key in the ignition. "They just
took another one out of the river."

  Scully looked up sharply. "Another victim?"

  Mulder nodded. "They'd just pulled him out when Cormerais called me."

  "Matching the pattern of the other three?"

  "He thought so. As soon as the CSI are done at the scene, they're heading
straight to the morgue with him."

  "Well, there goes dinner," Scully said bleakly. "Nothing against your
beloved truck-stop fare, Mulder, but I was looking forward to this
much-vaunted Cajun food." She folded her hands in her lap. "I guess I can
talk to Dr. Dennison tomorrow," she added, almost under her breath.

  "About the autopsies?"

  "Oh," she said, seeming surprised he'd heard her last words. "No, I concur
with her findings. She was very thorough."

  Mulder glanced over at her. "You said you remembered her name -- from a
case? It wasn't anything of ours."

  She sighed, looking away toward the window, and Mulder wondered for a
moment whether he'd unwittingly committed some kind of faux pas again. "I
mean, I don't remember it, anyway," he ventured.

  "It wasn't ours, exactly," she said. "She wrote a report that I studied at
some length. I thought it might have some bearing on a followup."

  "A followup to...?"

  Scully was quiet for so long that he was almost sure he'd overstepped one
of her unseen boundaries. He risked a sidelong look at her; she so seldom
gave him words to go on at moments like this that he'd become adept at
reading her physical language. She was only gazing down at her folded hands;
her head was tilted to the side, bowed down a little at the end of the
smooth curve of her neck and back, and Mulder breathed a sigh of relief as
he knew he'd escaped an argument this time.

  "Dr. Dennison wrote a short paper," Scully began, "on her unusual findings
in the case of a small girl who was reported missing by her adoptive parents
and who was left by persons unknown, near death, at a hospital emergency
room two weeks later." She raised her head, her eyes focused somewhere on
the dull terrain outside the windshield. "She failed to respond to any kind
of treatment. She died within a week."

  He wasn't sure what he had expected, but it had been nothing like this. He
considered pulling over, but Scully was still staring fixedly ahead, and he
decided maybe she found it easier to recount these horrors without having to
meet his eyes. He kept driving.

  "The child's mother made repeated charges of abuse against the father, but
they were so extravagant and improbable that they proved impossible to
substantiate," she continued. "The father was a high-level medical
researcher involved in a government-sponsored project. The local law
enforcement agencies were very quietly relieved of the case."

  She had adopted the dry, detached tone she reserved for relating the
details of a case to another professional; that, more than anything, told
him how it hurt her just to say it. "Scully..." he murmured, but she shook
her head and went on.

  "Dr. Dennison found evidence of bizarre genetic mutations in her initial
tests on the blood and tissue samples that were collected from the body. She
at first proposed that they were viral in origin, and that they were the
cause of death, but then theorized that the girl's body had been functioning
optimally until that point with the support of certain proteins that her
system had somehow stopped producing."

  "Or that had stopped being provided for her," Mulder said grimly. "What
did the rest of the tests show?"

  "There were no more tests." Scully crossed her forearms around her middle,
wrapping herself in a kind of hug. The gesture was at once so defensive and
so forlorn that it made Mulder heartsick. "Both parents died shortly
afterward in an apparent murder/suicide. All of Dr. Dennison's samples and
lab work were confiscated. ... There were no more tests."

  They drove in silence for a few miles.

  "You never told me about this," Mulder finally said.

  Scully shrugged halfheartedly.

  "Scully, I'm..."

  "I know, Mulder." To his surprise, she reached out and laid her hand over
his and gave it a brief squeeze. "I know." And from the corner of his eye he
watched her sit up straighter in her seat and don her invisible armor again.







  Chapter Eight



  Mulder was waiting in the hotel lobby when he saw the grey Cherokee pull
up outside, and he walked out to meet it. As he came nearer, he saw Dr.
Dennison lean across the seat and push the door open. "Hop in," she called,
smiling.

  "Thanks," he said, settling himself into the seat and closing the door.
Fastening his seat belt, he glanced over at her, and then looked again. She
wasn't wearing the glasses she'd had on earlier at the office, and her hair
was drawn up into a soft French braid. A few gently curling locks had
escaped to trail down her neck. Her dangling earring glittered in a passing
shaft of light.

  "It's just us tonight, I'm afraid. Jim got a call he said he had to take
care of." She braked the Jeep at the edge of the hotel's driveway.

  "Something to do with our case?" Mulder asked.

  "I don't think so," she said, shaking her head and frowning just a little.
"He would've told me if it was."

  "Well, Dr. -- " he began, but she lifted one hand from the wheel and waved
it to stop him.

  "Please -- 'Paula.' For tonight, when I'm out of that office, anyway." She
looked over at him and grinned. "Okay?"

  "Okay. Paula." He nodded. "So. Where does one dine in the exciting urban
mecca that is Donaldsonville?"

  She chuckled. "One doesn't. One drives across the river into Burnside and
goes to a place called the Cabin."

  "You're the tourguide," he said amiably. "The Cabin it is."

  "So," she said after a moment, "any thoughts yet on our fourth swimmer?"

  "Not really. Maybe in the morning, when we have the autopsy reports." He
inhaled carefully, trying to decide if the dark, spicy scent he caught every
now and then was something she was wearing. It was very different from the
one Scully wore, but it was nice.

  Paula interrupted his little reverie. "He's kind of a break in the
pattern, don't you think?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "I mean, he's not government." She tilted her head a little and glanced
toward him before turning her eyes back to the road. "You had ex-Bureau,
ex-State Department, and one ATF. This guy was just some kind of scientist."

  Mulder shook his head. "There'll be a connection, but it won't be that
obvious. Once I know the real relationship between the victims, I'll be able
to understand what's on the killer's mind, what he's getting at. What he's
trying to tell me."

  "What he's trying to tell you?" she repeated.

  "This killer is trying to tell a story," Mulder nodded. "When I learn to
read it, it'll be there -- all of it. What he thinks was done to him to make
him feel this way. The characters from his life that the people he's killing
represent. He's acting out a drama that he can't express in any other way."

  "Hmm," Paula said slowly. "Now that's a little different." Mulder looked
over at her, at the way the lights of the passing cars caught her blonde
hair and set it alight as they went by.

  "You've profiled?" he asked.

  "Not the way you have. I've always been interested, but I've only
dabbled," she shook her head. "That's just intriguing. I've never heard it
put quite that way before."

  "Well, look at it. The bodies aren't disposed of in a way that makes them
difficult to find. He's made no attempt at all to conceal their identities.
He even left this last man's wallet in his pocket with all his ID."

  "So what's he saying? Is it a dare? Or that he can't stop himself, and he
wants someone to stop him?"

  "That's how it strikes me -- that he can't stop. My instincts are usually
pretty good." He sighed. "There's more to this one than I'd expect your
people to see. My partner and I have... We're on familiar ground. I think I
have some idea of what we're looking for."

  Paula was turning the Jeep into the little parking lot in front of an
unassuming building. "It's not fancy," she said, by way of introduction,
"but if you want real Cajun food, this is the place."

  Mulder got out of the Jeep. Paula was tall, and her stride was almost as
long as his; he fell easily into step with her as she led him to the door of
the restaurant. Remembering his manners, he stepped ahead and opened it for
her.

  When they walked in, she made a right and headed for a booth in the bar,
rather than turning left toward the restaurant proper. "It's no-smoking in
there," she said, wrinkling her nose, to his questioning gaze. "Unless you
mind?"

  "No, no," he said, "it's all right." She unbuttoned her coat, and he
reached out to take it as it slipped from her shoulders. She was wearing a
silky dark dress that fit just a little too closely, was just a little too
low-cut at the neckline, to be businesslike. He wouldn't have guessed, from
the suit she'd been wearing yesterday, that she had such a lovely figure.
Mulder found himself staring and hurriedly looked away before she could
catch him.

  He hung her coat on the hook between booths, and put his own next to it.
As they sat down, a waitress approached, and set two menus and two glasses
of water on the table. "Hey, Paula," she said.

  Mulder looked over at Paula. "You're a regular," he said, and she smiled.

  "Maybe," she said with what might have been a teasing lilt. She turned
back to the waitress. "What's good tonight?"

  "The corn and crab bisque is great. So's the catfish couveon. There's a
crawfish etouffee tonight, too."

    "Hmm. It all sounds good," Paula mused. "Give us a minute, would you?"

    "Sure," the waitress said, folding up her notepad. "Drinks?"

    Paula lifted her eyes from the menu to catch Mulder's gaze. "What do
you -- oh, never mind. Tonight you're drinking Hurricanes."

    "Hurricanes?"

    "It's a local thing. It'd be a crime to come all the way down here to
Cajun country and not try a Hurricane."

    "Two?" the waitress asked.

    "Sure, Honey. Thanks," she said, and laughed at Mulder's surprised
expression as the other woman walked away. "That's her name. 'Honey'."

    "You *are* a regular," he said.

    She shrugged, and said "Maybe," again, and this time the way she held
his gaze and smiled made him sure she was teasing him. He found himself
smiling back, and then she dropped her eyes and began to read the menu.

    She really was an attractive woman, he thought idly, watching her over
the edge of the menu he was pretending to study. He'd never been able to
shake his feeling that women were like chameleons, seeming to change
according to their surroundings; sometimes he still felt oddly adrift with
them. He felt that he could never quite understand what was wanted of him,
however hard he tried. Even Scully, as long as he'd known her, still
surprised him from time to time, and not always pleasantly.

    A Hurricane proved to be an orangeish concoction over ice in a tall
glass. It tasted innocuous enough, but Mulder suspected it was the kind of
drink that would sneak up on him if he treated it disrespectfully, so he
sipped cautiously at it over their appetizers.

    At first they talked shop, and his mind turned again and again to the
case Scully had told him about, but he couldn't bring himself to ask Paula
about it. Emily and all the things concerning her had somehow become
Scully's private affair in a way that few other things ever had, and it was
unsettling to think this stranger might have some kind of insight that he
didn't. The feeling was strong enough to make him hold his tongue.

    As the evening grew longer, the conversation drifted to other things.
Somewhere along the line, more of the tall orange drinks appeared, and by
that time Mulder had forgotten his initial distrust of them. He had
discovered that he was having a good time. Paula was pretty and clever, and
she laughed at the right places in all his stories, and she looked at him as
if she wasn't just stuck with him for the evening, but really liked him.

    As the waitress finally set their coffee cups down before them, he said
to Paula, "You used to work with the Bureau. Didn't it suit you? Is that how
you came here?"

    Something changed in her gold-flecked blue eyes, and he thought he'd
made a mistake. She glanced away and tapped the ash from the end of her
cigarette carefully into the ashtray before answering.

    "No, I liked it. I would have stayed." She looked up, but not quite at
him. "My father was dying, and I came back here to take care of him."

    "I'm sorry," Mulder said. "I didn't mean..."

    "No, it's okay," she said, meeting his eyes. "He really didn't have
anyone else. My mom passed away when I was seven. There was a... a family
crisis the year before, and she never got over it. My dad never remarried."
She looked away, and picked up her coffee, and took a sip.

    Paula seemed to be far away, thinking. Mulder didn't know what to say,
so he drank a little of his own coffee, and waited.

    "My dad was the reason I got into the Bureau in the first place," she
finally said. "He was Bureau, and I was an only child, and I was kind of
raised to follow in his footsteps."

    "That sounds like me," Mulder said, nodding. "My father worked for the
State Department. I know how that is."

    Paula looked up from her coffee. "Really. Only child, too?"

    "Well... no, and yes. I had a younger sister, who..." He dropped his
eyes and ran his finger lightly around the rim of his coffee cup. "She was
abducted from our house when she was eight, and they never found her. So..."

    "So when you grew up, you thought you would, and you joined the Bureau,"
Paula said with certainty, and Mulder looked up sharply. She met his gaze
evenly. "Did you?"

    Mulder, surprised, drew a long breath before answering. "I finally found
out what happened to her. It wasn't the same as finding her, but it -- it
helped."

    Paula reached across the table and laid her hand over his. "It's the not
knowing," she said, "that's the worst. Once you know, you can start to go
on." There was an intensity in her eyes and in her words that he didn't know
how to answer, and he was relieved when she withdrew her hand and the moment
passed.

    Looking at her watch a few minutes later, Paula smiled. "Look how late
it's gotten. I'm going to have to take you back before my truck turns into a
pumpkin." She waved him away from the check, handing her credit card to the
waitress. "I can write it off. Don't worry about it." She signed the slip,
and Mulder held her coat out for her, and let his gaze linger again on the
errant golden curls of her hair that lay along her smooth pale skin as he
settled the coat upon her shoulders.

    "You know, I'm just going to swing by my place on the way back," she
said after they'd driven a few miles. "Then you can take some paperwork I
was going to bring to the office tomorrow, and get a head start. We
practically drive right past there anyway; it's not out of the way."

    "Fine," he answered, settling back against the headrest. He didn't want
to admit that he was still feeling those Hurricanes. It was just that he
hardly ever drank, he told himself; he wasn't used to it. The dark forms of
the landscape rolled soothingly past outside the window.

    He must have dozed a little. The Jeep was pulling to a stop in the
gravel driveway of a little house; the crunching sound beneath the tires
brought him awake. "Here we are," Paula said beside him.

    He opened the door, intending to step out and get a breath of the cool
air, but when he did, he heard the murmuring of the water in the quiet of
the night, and looked into the darkness beyond the house. "Is that the
river? Right there?" he asked.

    "That's it," Paula replied. Mulder walked toward it, cautiously at
first, and then more surely as his eyes grew used to the moonlight. He
crossed the yard and came to a low picket fence; perhaps a hundred yards on
the other side, the land fell away steeply toward the riverbank. The moon's
reflection rippled on the broad expanse of moving water.

    "It's beautiful," he murmured. "Peaceful."

    "Tonight, yes," Paula said softly beside him. "But I've seen her wild.
I've seen her climbing these banks like a woman bent on vengeance. ... I've
seen her kill."

    He watched the way the white-gold moonlight shifted on Paula's hair. Her
fingertips grazed his arm. "Come in the house," she said, turning, and he
followed.

    They went inside, and she turned on a dim lamp on a table by the door.
She slipped her coat off and laid it over the back of an overstuffed wing
chair. "I'll be right back," she said, disappearing down the hallway.

    When she returned only a moment later, she was empty-handed. "You know,"
she said, "I don't see those papers here. I guess I brought them to the
office today, after all." But she didn't stop to pick up her coat; she came
past it, came closer to him, smiling mysteriously.

    "I can pick them up in the morning," Mulder offered. Paula nodded,
moving closer still.

    "Silly me," she said, lifting her hands and tracing the edge of his coat
collar with her fingers. "I guess you'll have to." And then one of her hands
was smoothing along his chest, and the other was slipping around the back of
his neck, and she was closing her eyes, tilting her face up toward his, and
drawing him down into her kiss, drawing him down, drowning him as surely as
the river outside would have. As his coat fell from his shoulders, he
reached up to take her into his arms.

    He ought to stop her. He knew he ought to stop her. But, oh, it had been
such a long time, and it was so easy to keep kissing her, so easy to let her
keep loosening his tie, unfastening the buttons of his shirt; it was so
shamefully simple to let his hand slip down to trace the curve of her hip as
she pressed her body even closer to his.

    He ought to pull away, he ought to take his hand -- the one that was,
just at present, cradling her head, holding her near -- he ought to take
that hand and close his fingers around her wrist, and tell her he couldn't,
and ask her to drive him back to the hotel and to Scully. But his
disobedient fingers had already undone the little clip that held the loose
French braid, and they were letting her hair down, weaving themselves gently
through its silky golden length.

    He took his hand from Paula's hair, then, but instead of closing around
her wrist his fingers closed on the zipper at the back of her dress, and
just then he felt the buckle of his belt fall open, and Mulder finally
understood that he wasn't going to stop her, not at all.







    Chapter Nine



    He was standing in front of the mirror, knotting his tie, when he heard
Scully's peremptory rap at the door of his room behind him, and he closed
his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before answering. "It's open."

    In the reflection he saw Scully open the door enough to lean in and
smile at him. "Good morning," she said. "Ready to go?"

    He fussed with the tie another moment, answering her image in the
mirror. "Almost," he said, and then, because he couldn't think of a way to
stall any further, he turned to face her. "Let's go."

    They walked silently down the hallway. "I think I might have found
something last night," Scully said as they stepped into the elevator, and
Mulder's stomach lurched more than it should have from the feeling of the
floor dropping away as they began their descent.

    "Found something?" he asked. His voice sounded odd to his own ears.

    "A break, Mulder," Scully answered, looking up at him quizzically. "On
the case."

    "On the case. Of course." The elevator made him feel claustrophobic. He
was relieved to get out of it. When they came to the cafeteria he picked up
a tray and headed off away from Scully and toward the counter, but though he
lingered there longer than he needed to, looking over all the fruits and
pastries, he couldn't find anything that appealed to him. He took his coffee
and looked around, and Scully's red hair drew his eye like a beacon. She was
making her way to an empty table toward the back of the room.

    By the time he got to the table, Scully was settled in with her
breakfast. She had a generous chunk of canteloupe and one of those
bran-muffin things she liked so much. He wished he could eat.

    She glanced up at him, her eyebrow rising into its familiar arch. "Just
coffee?"

    "I'm... not hungry," he said, sliding into his seat and reaching for the
sugar, avoiding her eyes.

    "Mulder, are you feeling all right?"

    Damn. Why did he ever imagine he could fly below her radar? He didn't
have to look at her to know how she was watching him; her stare was almost
palpable. In his mind's eye he saw the way she would tip her head just that
little bit to the side; he saw the warmth of concern in her expression. He
kept his eyes trained carefully on the coffee as he stirred the spoonful of
sugar into it.

    "I didn't sleep much last night." There: it wasn't a lie, and it wasn't
so unusual, either. Maybe she'd just let it go.

    Looking down at the coffee cup, he didn't see her lift her hand and
reach out toward him, and he flinched when she laid her soft cool fingers
against his forehead.

    She drew her hand back, and said, "Sorry," in a way that made him sure
he'd offended her.

    "I didn't see you. That's all."

    It had been so long since he had really tried to hide anything of
importance from her that he scarcely remembered how. The peculiar alchemy of
it seemed to turn him to glass; he marveled that she didn't just look up and
see right through him to the stain on his heart. If she were to touch him
again he thought he might shatter.

    To his mingled relief and chagrin, when Scully set down her spoon, she
only reached into her bag and pulled out a notepad. Mulder coalesced back
into ordinary flesh and bone as she flipped back the cover and began to leaf
through the densely scribbled pages. "I didn't get far, of course," she
said, "but I've made what I believe to be an important connection.

    "This Plevretes, that I autopsied last night," she went on, her eyes
fixed on the page she was worrying between her fingertips, "had an employee
ID -- a keycard, with a fingerprint scan -- in his wallet from a company
called Crouse-Hinds. It only took one phone call to find out that he was a
microbiologist on staff there, working on gene therapy. But the name of the
place sounded so familiar, and I just couldn't shake it. I couldn't stop
thinking about it the whole time I was working on him."

    She glanced up from the notepad to Mulder's face. He cocked his head in
what he hoped was a casual-enough curious expression, and waited.

    "When I got back to the hotel I got into the Bureau database and did a
little digging. Between a few of our own old reports, and an educated guess,
I put two and two together. Mulder, until just six months ago, the
Crouse-Hinds Corporation was a wholly owned subsidiary of a company called
Transgen."

    Mulder's hand stopped short halfway to his coffee cup. His eyes
narrowed. "Roush," he said, not brave enough to speak the other name.

    "Emily," Scully said softly for him, nodding, closing the notepad.
Mulder released the breath he hadn't been aware he was holding.

    The enormity and the depth of the implications of that simple utterance
of the child's name washed over Mulder, taking away whatever chance he might
have stood of making casual breakfast chat. Instead he sat watching the
precise way Scully scooped out little spoonfuls of melon, working
methodically from one end of the rind to the other, as if it were a source
of unending fascination. She didn't look up, and if she could feel his eyes
on her, she didn't acknowledge it in any way. A little part of his mind was
tempted to assign some dark significance to her silence, but he chided
himself and told himself that he was imagining things.

    At length Scully patted her mouth with her napkin and looked at her
watch. "We should get going, Mulder," she said. "Dr. Dennison told me I
could stop by and pick up some of the lab work first thing this morning."

    "Oh," Mulder said. "Great."



    - - -



    Fifteen minutes later they arrived at the medical examiner's office.
Holding the front door open for Scully, Mulder helplessly remembered holding
the door at the restaurant for Paula last night. He shook his head and
followed Scully down the hallway.

    It occurred to him that he had no idea what the proper protocol might be
these days for greeting the colleague by whom one had been seduced the night
before. Was an ordinary 'good morning' enough? As he was thinking, his hand
absently sought its accustomed place low against Scully's back, and as he
realized what he was doing Mulder snatched it away before it could touch
her.

    Scully knocked briskly at the office door and reached for the knob
without waiting for an answer. "Good morning, Dr. Dennison," she said as she
swept into the room.

    "Good morning, Agents," Paula answered from behind her desk. She hardly
looked like the same woman, he thought with a kind of shock, seeing her
bright hair pulled back again into its demure bun, and her lithe figure
hidden behind the severe lines of her steel-grey suit. Mulder met her eyes
and smiled uncertainly, but the smile he received in return was polite and
professional, and gave no hint of anything that might have stirred beneath
its surface.

    Paula rose from her chair and picked up a large yellow envelope from the
corner of her desk. "Here are your radiographs, Agent Scully," she said
smoothly, holding them out. Mulder watched Scully's right eyebrow rise into
its familiar arch. As Scully took the x-rays, Paula picked up several manila
folders. "And these are your preliminary lab results. The full tox screen
will be in sometime before noon."

    "Thank you very much," Scully said. Mulder looked over at her and saw
that the left eyebrow had joined its sister, softening her whole expression.
"I must admit I really hadn't expected to have all of this so soon this
morning."

    "When I called the lab yesterday afternoon," Paula said, "I just told
them to treat anything of yours the same way they'd handle something of
mine." She sat down behind her desk again, and looked up with a smile that
might have been a little bit smug. Mulder thought it was just as well that
Scully's attention was engrossed in the paperwork and that she missed it.

    "I also took the liberty of doing a little of the legwork on Dr.
Plevretes for you." Paula reached over and took a paper from the tray of her
printer. "He lived alone in Natchez, across the state line in Mississippi,
but his ex-wife is in Port Vincent, a little less than thirty miles from
here. This is her contact info. I imagine you'll want to interview her."

    "Thank you," Mulder murmured, reaching for the paper. As he took it, his
fingers grazed hers, but she didn't even seem to notice. He watched her face
carefully, but as she met his gaze her expression revealed nothing at all.

    "Jim already spoke to her this morning," she went on, "and she's
expecting a call from you either way." She turned to address Scully. "I
could call you when the tox screen comes back, if you'd like," she offered.

    "Don't go out of your way, Dr. Dennison," Scully said with what Mulder
recognized as a genuine smile. "You've been so helpful. Besides, I doubt
we'll be back here till later in the afternoon."

    "Well, if you think you'll be much later than five, give me a call," the
blonde woman said, "and I can have someone drop the file off at your hotel.
That'll save you a few minutes."

    And keep me out of your way, Mulder thought. He was beginning to suspect
that Paula had a lot more practice at this kind of thing than he did.
Looking at her now, it was hard to believe she was the same woman who'd...
Well, best not to go there, he told himself. He folded the paper with Mrs.
Plevretes' contact info, and folded it again, and tucked it into his coat
pocket.

    "Thank you so much," Scully said, still with that smile, and then looked
over at Mulder. "Shall we get moving on this?"

    "Sure," he said, still watching Paula from the corner of his eye.

    "Goodbye, Agents. Good luck," she said.

    "Thanks again, Dr. Dennison," Scully answered, gathering up all her
papers. "We'll be in touch later." Mulder murmured his assent and edged
toward the door.

    He let out a sigh of relief as the door closed behind them. Standing in
that office like nothing had ever happened had been far too surreal for his
liking. The sharp report of Scully's heels on the tile floor was the most
reassuring sound he could imagine.

    "You know, she's good," Scully said suddenly. "Very professional." She
glanced up at Mulder. "She runs a tight ship. I wonder how she ended up out
of the Bureau and in a little backwater like this."

    "She grew up here," Mulder answered, and immediately wished he hadn't.
"She came back when her father was dying." He silently begged Scully not to
ask him anything more.

    "Ah," Scully nodded. "And then she met up with the sheriff?"

    "I, uh... what?" he stammered, caught by surprise.

    "Don't tell me you haven't noticed the way he looks at her," Scully
chuckled. She reached over and patted his arm affectionately. "Mulder.
Please. Wake up."

    His heart sank. If Scully could look at a stranger and read him so
easily, how would he ever be safe? He had to put it from his mind, or he
would never be able to keep up his facade. Paula, he thought sourly,
certainly seemed to have put it from hers.

    He took his cell phone and the paper Paula had given him out of his
pocket. "C'mon, Scully," he said. "Let's go see what we can find out about
Russell Plevretes."


'Mississippi' by Foxsong  foxsong@earthlink.net

See full headers in Part 1.



Chapter Ten

"You mentioned on the phone that it had been a bit of a stressful week
for you," Dr. DeMontreaux said conversationally as Denny sat down. "How
are you holding up?"

"Pretty well, I guess." As Denny settled into the chair, the dark maroon
leather made the funny little low squeaking sound that she always
associated with this office now. "All things considered."

"Ah. 'All things considered,' eh?" Dr. DeMontreaux smiled a little.
"Let's consider them, then. What's been on your mind?"

"Well, I know what it is mostly, right now. It's that little girl who's
missing."

"Yes. I understand that must be very difficult. But you don't deal
directly with the police work involved in the search...?"

"No," Denny shook her head. "But you can't get away from it. It's a
little town and it seems like everybody knows her. If they were
strangers it would be easier." She frowned. "Not easier, but...
different, somehow. But we know these people."

Dr. DeMontreaux nodded. "And because it's close to home, it reminds you
of your own experience, and that makes it more uncomfortable."

"Exactly." Denny looked up with a wry smile. "I mean, I'm a lot better
than I used to be. Did I tell you I used to buy my milk in bottles,
because it was too hard to see the missing kids' faces on the sides of
the milk cartons?"

"Well, you're facing it now, rather than trying to hide it from
yourself, or deny it." Dr. DeMontreaux wrote something quickly on her
notepad. "It's much healthier to face it and come to terms with it."

"I know," Denny sighed. "It's almost like something's trying to *make*
me face it. I just can't get away from it, what with Jessy missing.
People want to ask me about it. Even if they won't say it in so many
words, they'll lead the conversation around that way and then sit there
with this look on their faces like they're waiting for me to say
something nobody's thought of yet. Like they think I'll have an answer,
because it happened to me." She shifted uncomfortably in the chair.
"Last Sunday after church, a woman I know even asked me..."

Denny paused and took a deep breath. Dr. DeMontreaux looked on
expectantly. 

"Well, she writes a column in the Chief. The town paper," Denny went on.
"She actually asked me if I'd talk with her, if she could do a little
piece on how I'd been... on what happened to me." She laughed
mirthlessly. "A human-interest piece, she said. On how I *overcame* it."


"And how did you handle that?" Dr. DeMontreaux asked. "How did it make
you feel?"

"I just told her I'd really rather not. I said it was still difficult
for me to talk about. And I felt... I think I was so surprised I didn't
know how to feel." She shook her head wonderingly, remembering the
surreal feeling of standing in the sun on the front steps of St.
Francis, realizing what the woman had wanted. "I mean, she meant well.
I've known her since we were kids. I guess that's why she thought she
could ask. She has no idea what it's like."

"Yes." Dr. DeMontreaux agreed. "It's very difficult for people who've
had no experience like yours to understand."

"They don't want to understand," Denny said vehemently. "Oh, they say
they do. Maybe they even believe it. But if you try to show it to them,
they're frightened, and they back away. They want to think that when
it's over, it's over. That you pick up your life where you left off and
that everything's fine. They don't want to find out that you're still
screaming inside, somewhere they can't hear. When they find out it's
never really over, they're afraid. And they're afraid of you, because
you're the one it happened to."

She fell silent, a little surprised at her own outburst. Dr. DeMontreaux
waited a moment before speaking.

"And yet," she finally said, "as you've learned, holding it in isn't the
answer."

"Well, I'm here, aren't I?" Denny snorted softly, and then glanced down,
almost ashamed. "I'm sorry. You know what I mean."

"Yes, I do," the older woman nodded reassuringly. "But to be at peace
with yourself, you know you can't save it all for here. That's still a
way of trying to compartmentalize it, and keep it separated from the
rest of your life." She tapped the end of her pen against the blotter of
the desk. "Now, I'm certainly not suggesting that you give that
newspaper interview, but we've said this before -- it's important that
you try to begin placing trust in others." She looked inquiringly at
Denny. "What about your friend Jim? You've told me you feel safer with
him than with anyone else."

"I do," Denny said slowly. "I do. But that makes it harder, too, in a
way -- because he's the most important. His opinion matters more than
anyone else's."

"Start small," Dr. DeMontreaux suggested. "Why, you could even just
mention that you come to see me. That's not such a remarkable thing, and
it would open the door for more as you feel comfortable with it."

"I... I guess so," Denny mused, and then nodded. "Yes. I think I could
do that."

"Don't force yourself," Dr. DeMontreaux said kindly. "You know you tend
to be hard on yourself anyway. But I'm sure there are opportunites for
you to share. You just have to stop letting them all pass you by. Start
using them, little by little, and we'll talk about how that makes you
feel." She made another more lengthy notation on her pad, and then
looked up at Denny again. "How are you doing with your medication?"

"All right, I think," Denny answered. "I mean, it's only been a few days
since we switched it, so you know we can't really say for sure yet."

"Of course. But I know you -- and if it disagreed with you, I know you'd
have noticed something already, however minor," Dr. DeMontreaux said,
and Denny had to smile a little.

"Occupational hazard of a medical background, I suppose," she said. "I
do notice things."

"That's fine, dear. You make my job a little easier," the other woman
chuckled, making another brief note. "Now, you had mentioned those FBI
agents last week. How did that go?"

"Not bad, after all. Actually, they're quite a pair." Denny wrinkled her
nose a little. "At first I just thought the woman was standoffish, but
then I figured out there's something besides work going on between them
-- and that the man is a bit of a wolf. I've caught him looking at me
like he's imagining what's under my dress. I don't know how she deals
with him." She looked up and smiled. "You know, it probably made it a
little easier for me, though. Being aggravated at him kept me from
feeling sorry for myself that I'm not still in the Bureau too."

"Well, that's good, then," Dr. DeMontreaux said, setting down her pen
and leaning back from her desk. "I think you're learning that you're
stronger than you believed you were. Why, a year ago you would have been
much more likely to let all these things gang up on you and make you
very upset. I'm so pleased with your progress. Aren't you?"

"I guess so," Denny answered, and then added more decisively, "Yes. I
am."

"Good for you! You can give yourself a big pat on the back," the older
woman smiled. "Was there anything else on your mind before we finish?"

Denny thought for a moment. "No, not really. There was a lot going on,
but the whole week wasn't as scary as I thought it would be."

"All right, then," Dr. DeMontreaux said confidently, standing up behind
the desk. "And next week you'll come and tell me how well it went when
you found a way to open up a little with your friend Jim."

"Positive thinking," Denny chuckled, rising from the squeaky leather
chair. 

"Yes, indeed," the therapist said as she walked Denny to the door. "We
both know it works. Now you have a wonderful week."

"Thanks. You too," Denny said. "I'll see you next week."



Chapter Eleven

"Mulder." Scully, standing in the hotel hallway outside Mulder's room,
tapped again at the door. "Mulder?"

It was late; he should be there. She frowned and pressed her ear to the
smooth wood of the door. She couldn't hear anything inside. She had
expected at least the low murmur of the muted television that seemed to
be his favorite brand of white noise; she had come to think of it almost
as the soundtrack to the long years of hotel rooms they'd stayed in.

Scully straightened up again and studied the door, her frown deepening.
It was the second time since they'd been here that she hadn't been able
to find him. Even after all these years, she was still never quite sure
how to feel when he dropped out of sight like this. Part of her wanted
to huff back to her room and luxuriate in self-righteous indignation at
being left to pore alone over the information they'd gathered during the
day, but she could never quite shake off the little voice of worry that
insisted he might have gotten himself into some kind of trouble again.

She sighed and turned back across the hall to her own room. Once inside,
she sat down at the little desk in front of the window, fingering the
pages of the yellow legal pad there, not really seeing the notes she'd
taken. She reached out and picked up her cell phone, but her finger
paused above that speed-dial key, and she eyed the phone speculatively.
It was a touchy situation. She didn't want him to think she was keeping
tabs on him. *She* didn't want to think she was keeping tabs on him. The
ice had just melted from that little unannounced excursion of his three
weeks ago.

Maybe, she thought now, she had been a little hard on him over that.
She'd been surprised at the vehemence of her own feelings. When he'd
reappeared in the office on the third morning as if nothing had
happened, she had given full vent to her anger. The wide-eyed, blinking
uncomprehension on his face had only spurred her on. The way she had
slammed the door as she left the office had felt ludicrously satisfying.

Mulder had been wary around her for days afterward. He had cringed
apologetically at the outer edges of her personal space like a dog that
had been kicked. He hadn't even dared to escort her with the familiar
hand at the small of her back until the first morning they'd been here,
walking down the hallway toward the medical examiner's office.

Scully shook her head and pressed the key to dial Mulder's cell phone.
She would tell him she was sorry for that outburst. She knew him better
by now than to think he'd purposefully done it to hurt her. Cradling the
phone between her shoulder and her ear, she began gathering up the
papers on the desk; she found herself smiling a little, waiting to hear
his voice.

Her smile faded as the phone rang on unanswered, and vanished when the
recorded voice clicked on to tell her that the customer she was calling
was out of range, or had turned off the phone. She pressed the dial key
and carefully dialed the number herself, one digit at a time, but the
same thing happened. Hesitantly, she turned the phone back to standby
and set it down. 

She peered out the window and saw that their rented Taurus was still in
the place they'd left it. While she was wondering what to do, the
headlights of a vehicle turning into the driveway two stories below
caught her eye. It seemed familiar, and she looked at it more carefully;
as it pulled up under the front lights of the hotel she saw that it was
a grey Jeep Cherokee, like the one she'd seen that Dr. Dennison driving
yesterday. And after the Jeep had drawn to a halt, the passenger-side
door, the one nearest her view, opened, and Mulder stepped out.

Scully's eyes widened. She reached over and fumbled with the switch of
the lamp, turning out the light so she couldn't be seen. She rose
slowly, unconsciously, to her feet, watching transfixed as Mulder walked
around the front of the Jeep and leaned down to the driver's window. She
watched him saying something, smiling; her mouth dropped open in
astonishment as she saw a graceful, feminine hand reach out of the
window to touch his cheek and to ruffle his hair. When that hand
playfully grasped his tie and drew his head down into the window, out of
her line of sight, she gasped aloud.

He stayed there for what seemed like a very long time, and when he drew
back and straightened up, he was holding Dr. Dennison's outstretched
hand, and as Scully stared he bent his head and kissed the back of that
hand before letting it go. Then the Jeep pulled away into the night, and
Mulder began to walk toward the front door of the hotel.

Scully sank back into her chair, her own hand pressed to her mouth. No
wonder she hadn't been able to find him the other night. No wonder he
had seemed so uncomfortable the next morning. He had been -- he had been
with -- 

She startled to her feet and hurried toward the door. She had already
locked it, of course, but now with trembling fingers she fastened the
little chain as well. She fled to the bed and hastily turned off the
bedside lamp, and hoped that if he couldn't see a sliver of light under
her door, he would walk past without knocking.

It must have worked, for the summons never came. She sat for a long time
in the dark, staring at the red digits of her travel alarm and wondering
how she would be able to pretend that she hadn't seen and didn't know.

 

Chapter Twelve

Afterward, Denny lay quietly for a long while, her head on Jim's
shoulder, her arm thrown loosely around his waist. His fingers smoothed
her hair in long, lazy, soothing strokes. She sighed, her eyes
half-closed; it was always so tempting to fall asleep here, all safe and
warm and loved, so tempting to think of waking beside him. 

She sighed again, resigned. She stirred and lifted her head, pausing to
drop a kiss on that warm shoulder, and slowly sat up. As she swung her
legs over the side of the bed, she felt Jim's hand on her arm.

"Stay," he said softly. 

She didn't answer, but she waited. The mattress shifted beneath her as
he rolled toward her. He slipped his arm around her waist.

"It's after midnight already," she whispered.

"Just a little while, Den. ... Please."

She had wondered a hundred times whether his simple presence might chase
her demons away, whether she might look back some day, years from now,
and mark that first night she'd been brave enough to stay as the
beginning of the time she no longer needed to fear where or how she
might wake to find herself some morning.

She turned to look over her shoulder, and found him propped on one
elbow, watching her steadily. "Just a little while," she said, and he
sat up, and heaped the pillows against the headboard, and leaned back
against them and reached for her. She settled in against him and dared
to half-close her eyes.

"You never stay, Den. You know I wish you would," he murmured against
her hair. "By this time, you should know you're welcome."

She nuzzled closer against his chest in lieu of answering. The hand that
rested upon her shoulder picked up that slow, soothing stroke again.

"Remember back when we were in high school?" he asked, a few minutes
later.

She nodded. "Yeah." Her voice was barely a whisper.

"You know, Denny... when you went away to college, I told myself I'd get
over you, that we'd both find somebody else. Once or twice, I thought I
had." He bent his head and pressed his lips to her temple. 

"Then they told me you were coming back. The minute I saw you I knew I
hadn't gotten over you. Now I know I never will."

She felt the sweet drowsiness creeping over her, and let her eyes slip
the rest of the way shut. Her limbs felt so heavy; in only a few more
minutes it would be impossible to move. Surely she could give in; surely
she was safe here... 

She was almost gone when Jim's voice found her ears again. "Denny...
baby?"

She drew a deep breath, stirring. "Mmm?"

"Den, we..." His voice was soft, almost tentative. "We could get
married." 

Her eyelids fluttered open and she was suddenly, utterly awake again. 

There was so much, too much, that she had never dared to tell him. He
meant too much to her. The risk had always seemed too great. How could
she tell him what had really driven her back to this place? How could
she describe the great missing chunk of her life, the childhood that had
vanished? When Jim reminisced sometimes about how he'd tipped over her
dollhouse and made her cry on the first day of kindergarten, she always
smiled as if she remembered it, too, but it was gone, like everything
else that had happened before the morning she'd found herself standing
at the edge of a sunny forest glade in the July just before her seventh
birthday. 

"There are," she whispered, "... there are things... you don't know."

"You can tell me," he murmured. 

Jim waited, silent, but even over the din of her own racing heart she
could feel how his had quickened its pace beneath her ear. She owed him
this. She owed him more than she could ever give him, really, but this
was a start. Start small, Dr. DeMontreaux had said. The door was open.
She had to step through it.

"You know how, on Tuesdays -- I always leave early. I go and... " She
took a shuddering breath. "I see a doctor."

Jim's arm tightened around her. "You're not -- baby, are you sick?" he
said, and she knew he was thinking of the cancer that had taken her aunt
and her father, spreading by inexorable, inoperable degrees from their
sinuses into their brains.

"No," she answered quickly, "no, no. It's not that. It's... she's a
psychiatrist. I talk to her about... Jim, do you remember when we were
little, when I..." 

Her voice failed her. "It's okay," Jim whispered into the silence. "It's
okay."

"Do you remember..." She closed her eyes, willing away the threatening
tears. "Do you remember when I was taken?"

"Yes, baby," he said soothingly. "Yes."

"Jim, I... I don't."

"Not at all?" he asked, and she could only nod. "Well, I guess that's
not too unusual, is it?" Denny was too relieved and surprised to answer.
Jim's hand kept up the comforting, soft stroking against her shoulder.

"I mean, people block things out all the time. It's just a defense
mechanism," he went on. "And something as scary as that? For a little
kid? ... It's not strange at all."

She let out a long sigh and sagged against him, and he held her quietly
for a while. At last he shifted a little and gently took her chin in his
hand, and turned her face up to his. 

"Baby," he said teasingly, tickling her under the chin, "if your purpose
in bringing this up was to distract me so I'd forget that I just about
proposed to you, it's not working."

His eyes were merry. She found herself smiling back up at him. She
opened her mouth to answer, but he laid his finger across her lips.

"Shh. We don't have to talk about it anymore right now," he said. "All I
want to hear now is that you're going to stay right here for the rest of
the night."

"Right here," she sighed happily, nestling closer against him and
closing her eyes.