Summary: Dana Scully's about to get a rather large shock about the world she lives in. AU

Note: This story was started back in December, so my version of events is a bit off. As well, this was the first story that I ever wrote, so feedback is adored.

Since this is an AU, especially for the X-Men, there's a bit of explaining where certain X-Men are right now... When you're in that line of work, you face a lot of hazards... Okay, let's just say that some of 'em are pushing up daisies, so please don't flame me.

Note 2: And without further ado...

"They all think you're dead, you know."

He looked at her intently, his eyes daring her to deny it, to tell him that she knew how to fix it, to make it all better.

Daring her to chose the easy way out.

She flopped back on the bed (*her bed*, a part of her mind whispered to her). She could feel his eyes still on her, from where he stood by the (*her*) door, waiting on her decision.

Because this was what it all came down to, all of it. She had to choose.

She stared up at the ceiling and wondered how it had come to this.

"I think that you should've called him Fox," Mulder said, bouncing Evan on his knee.

"Please, I'm not that cruel. I'd never condemn a child to the amount of teasing a name like that would incur." Dana Scully smiled as her son waved a hand at her partner and gurgled happily, who's only response was a huge grin. She reclaimed her son from him then, simply for that fact that if Mulder's grin grew any huger, she was afraid that the corners of his mouth would get stuck to his ears.

Mulder protested, of course, he always did. He loved Evan as if he were his own. Doggett did too.

Doggett had turned into an unexpected ally. He'd helped her out throughout the pregnancy, running out of the office at odd hours to get her pickled eggs and ice cream, covering for her when the morning sickness was at its worst, just being there for her when she needed a friend. If it hadn't been for him and Skinner, she didn't know how she would've survived the past year, with Mulder's disappearance on top of her pregnancy.

*Mulder and Doggett and Skinner,* she thought with a slight smile. Her friends. It didn't matter to them that not even she knew who Evan's father was. They'd always be there for her, and for her son.

Mulder was looking at her with those hang dog eyes again.

"Don't you think that you've held him for long enough? You have all day to be with him," he said, doing his best to inject the expression on his face into his words. Scully smiled wryly before handing over her son. Mulder cradled him in his arms, and the expression on his face changed. He lifted him up high, and held Evan's mouth close to his ear. "What's that you say?

You want your Mom?" He quickly passed the boy off to her, and she realized why Mulder had been so eager to hand him over.

"Wuss," she said as she went to go change the child's diaper.

Scully poked around in Evan's room. There had to be a diaper in here somewhere, there just did. She hadn't....no, she'd forgotten to buy diapers last time she was at the store. Evan was making his discomfort known now.

She grabbed one of the cloth diapers that she kept around just in case, and changed him quickly. She'd have to hurry if she wanted to make it to the store before it closed for the night. Mulder poked his head around into the room. Scully opened her mouth to tell him that Evan was fine, he'd just gotten a little cranky.

"You got any sunflower seeds?" Mulder asked, his face full of hope.

"You ate the last of them when you were here the other day."

"You haven't been shopping yet?"

"Well, I'm sorry, but I've been a bit busy lately, and seeing as how you're the only one I know that eats the things, it's not exactly at the top of my list." She was snapping, and she regretted it as soon as she the words had left her mouth, but she just couldn't help herself. She knew that he didn't actually live here, but at times it seemed like it. He wasn't even back at work yet, and he'd returned home from god knows where two months ago, at the same time that Evan had been born. She could respect if he needed time to heal after that, but all he seemed to be doing was eating her food and avoiding having to do work of any sort. Now he was looking at her with those eyes again, not realizing that that expression had really started to wear thin with her.

Maybe a walk would clear her head. "Look, I'm running down to the store to get diapers for Evan. I'll get you some while I'm there."

"You want me to drive you?"

"No, I think I'll walk. It's only a few blocks over, and I'm still trying to drop a few pounds."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, but the store closes at six, so I have to get a move on."

Mulder picked up Evan, then walked with her to the front entrance. He watched her gather up her purse and jacket, and as she slipped out the door, he couldn't help thinking that she'd never looked better.

"That comes to three fifty, ma'am." The shop boy, a freckled teenager, handed a yo-yo and an ice cream bar to the little girl at the front of the line, who solemnly fished out the proper change and lay it down on the counter one coin at a time.

Scully scanned the magazine rack idly. WOMAN SAVED FROM DEADLY FALL BY ANGEL! a headline screamed at her. *Is this all they have?* she wondered.

Looking more closely at the zines on the stand, she did a double take. All she could see was bubble gum, TV Guides, and tabloids. The number of empty spaces told her exactly where all of the respectable magazines were.

Who read that trash anyway? And who was in such serious need of a life that they investigated it? But she looked at the line between her and the check out, and picked it up anyway. She'd be here for awhile. *Express lane my ass.* She thumbed open the cover and settled in for a long haul. BLUE HAIRED ABOMINABLE SNOW MAN SIGHTED WITH WOLF MAN!!!

Hadn't Doggett mentioned something about a case like that a few weeks ago?

She checked the page number for the story and flipped to it, finding it nestled under a story about Darth Vader. Skimming it, she felt her opinion of tabloid journalists drop even lower.

Well, at least now she knew what all of the English students did after they dropped out of university.

The case was starting to gel in her mind, and a good three quarters of the incidents in the article were totally bogus. Doggett had tracked down the men, and there had been a simple explanation. There usually was. This time, like so many others, people had simply reacted badly to what they did not know. The blue man suffered from lycanthropy, a not uncommon disease which caused hair to grow all over a person's body. He had admitted, under her partner's scrutiny, to dying it bright blue for the shock value. The other one was completely normal, at least in every way that they could prove.

Doggett had never been able to figure out what had made other people so unsettled around him. Though, by the sounds of it, he'd been a little put off as well.

The article had made it sound as though they were freaks of nature. Yes, the one had a disease, but nature had caused that. In her experience, nature threw all sorts of things into the mix.

There were no freaks of nature.

*My head hurts.*

When she finally reached the checkout, she had a full out headache, which was rapidly developing into a migraine. By the time she had her bag together and was headed out the door, she was starting to feeling dizzy and completely zoned.

*Why is that little girl just standing in the middle of the road?* The child from the store was stopped dead in the middle of the intersection, licking the ice cream sombrely. Where were her parents? The lass was looking straight at Scully, her eyes never wavering. So far, she'd been lucky, the street had virtually no traffic.

"Hey," Scully called. "Hey, you have to get off of the road. It's dangerous." The girl gave no sign of hearing her, her gaze remaining steady on the agent. Scully quickened her step, and as she reached the the corner, she felt herself start to heave a sigh of relief.

She cut it short. The child was still standing in the middle of the road.

She stepped off of the side walk, despite the fact that the walk light had just clicked off.

A faint zooming sound came to her ear. * Crap, there's a car coming.* She caught site of it out of the corner of her eye.

When she'd been in medical school, one of the cadavers had been a little boy, hit by a car. She knew what a vehicle could do to a person. She still couldn't forget what it (*him*) had looked like. Human bodies just weren't meant to take that much force.

She'd broken into a run, without realizing it. Her grocery bag was lying abandoned by the curb. *Maybe it won't turn,* something whispered. She wasn't at the girl yet. She reached, reached, heard the squeal of tires.

The guy had turned, and he was going way too fast. He wouldn't be able to stop. Lunging, she felt fabric beneath her fingers. She threw her other hand out as well, connecting with the child's back. She saw the girl stumble backward, still clutching the ice cream, her mouth open in a silent scream. She saw the asphalt rushing up at her, saw the shadow she cast on it in the car's headlight, saw the pebbles that were littered on the surface. She caught an impression of chrome and forest green, then a door slammed shut.

"Shhhhh," Mulder said, desperately rocking Evan back and forth. A little while ago, the kid had been perfectly peaceful. Out of nowhere, he'd suddenly started screaming like nothing the man had ever heard. He was just grateful that none of the neighbors had called the police yet.

He offered Evan his bottle. He let the bottle cool down more, then offered it to him again. He changed Evan's diaper, using one from the seemingly huge stack of clothe ones (why Scully had run out, he just didn't see).

While doing this, he poked Evan with a pin. He almost covered his ears as the wailing rose in pitch. *It's not his diaper, he's not hungry, what on earth could he want?* The answer struck him suddenly. He didn't know if it would work, but it was worth a try.

Where was Evan's pacifier? The last time Mulder'd seen it, Evan had been by... by... the toy box?

Mulder was rooting through the pile that surrounded the box, an isolated spot of madness in the otherwise immaculate apartment, when his cell phone started to ring. He ignored it at first, more interested in finding the child's soother. After twenty rings or so, he realized that whoever it was was not going to hang up. He sat on the floor, placing Evan on his lap while the phone continued to peal. He quickly flipped the phone open, then started to dig through the mess one handed, hoping that he'd be able to hear over the child's cries.

Evan fell quiet. Mulder wished that he hadn't. The silence in the room was resounding. He could hear Skinner on the other end of the line too well. He felt his arms stop move, his hand tightening instinctively over whatever it was he'd been touching last.

He slowly closed the phone. The room was doing 360s around him.

It was darker than he could remember it being, before.

Looking down at his full hand, he saw the bright silver of a sunflower seed bag. It was almost half full.

Doggett surveyed the scene in front of him. A kind of silent shock still filled him.

This was wrong.

The reports had called it a battle ground. He'd wondered why the bureau had sent him off on something so cockamanie. It hadn't sounded like an X-File.

He hadn't wanted to come here. When he'd first seen the land, he'd understood.

In one way.

It was completely and utterly senseless. The land was destroyed. It was torn and hurt and scarred in a way he couldn't describe, and he doubted that even a bunch of college freshmen on spring break could wreak this much havoc. I

t had witnessed a war, suffered it. But it wouldn't give up its secrets.

He didn't know why this touched him so much.

He took out the case file, hoping to find something in it that he'd missed all those other times. Locals in the nearby town of Sherwinigan, Nebraska, had first reported loud noises to the police, late the night before last, followed by a localized lightning storm that brought no rain.

Then the really strange stuff had started.

He'd managed to isolate most of the individual effects, but how they tied together still eluded him. The burn marks on the ground were from the lightning, of course, but there seemed to be a few from another source. At least two different sources, actually. He would've thought that the chunks of earth that had been thrown throughout clearing had been kicked up by the lightning, but there hadn't been any scorching by the pitted hollows.

Pacing around the clearing, he stopped suddenly. *I guess maybe it did rain here after all* he thought, as he pulled his foot out of a soggy patch of ground. It would make things so much simpler if there had just been a freak storm. If it had brought splotchy rain, then that would explain why only some of the burn marks remained.

Too bad it didn't explain the blood and bone.

The bone looked like it couldn't belong to any living creature. He'd had it checked. The lab techs couldn't even guess at what it had come from.

He had them running a genetic analysis on it as he stood there. They'd convinced him that at the very least it was a real bone. He'd originally thought that it could have been carved as some sort of weapon, but the techs had also told him that there was no scoring on it indicative of carving, or any sort of shaping.

He wasn't sure if it had been the cause of the blood, but his instincts told him that it hadn't been. The blood was in a splatter pattern that suggested a steady bleeding out from one large wound. The bone would only be useful for sharp, narrow cuts. If a person didn't die pretty well right off the bat, they're recover. They wouldn't lie around and bleed to death slowly.

The blood had pooled around a body, sparing a patch of grass which looked humanoid from the tacky redness that soaked the ground. However, he wasn't sure what, or who, had died.

If anything, or anyone had died at all. He would have like to believe that who ever had been hurt was okay, but he'd checked at the single hospital within reasonable driving distance. No one had been admitted due to heavy blood loss that night, and by the amount of blood on the ground, if they hadn't gotten immediate help, then they would have died. If they hadn't bled out completely already.

The blood had been human, AB positive, but according, again, to the lab techs, there were genetic anomalies. It was beginning to feel like all the lab was good for was creating even more questions.

Doggett crouched by the scene, waving away the flies that had been attracted by the blood. If there had been any showers, they had been both extremely scattered and extremely localized. He tugged at the wrists of his latex gloves as he reached forward. Delicately, he pulled a single hair from redness. It blended in well enough with the grass that he'd missed it earlier, and he wouldn't have found it now if the light hadn't been just right. He held it up, wiping the remains of the blood on the pinky finger of his left hand. He couldn't tell the color, but it was short and coarse. Squinting at the hair again, it still refused to remain any color other than just dark.

Doggett looked up at the sky. Twilight was already starting to paint the world in charcoal. He hadn't realized that he'd been here for that long all ready. There wasn't any use in continuing. It would be too dark to do anything in a little bit, and he still had to walk back to the rental car, which he had left where the nearest road ran out. This even site really was in the middle of no where. His cell phone didn't even get service.

He sighed slightly as he slipped the single hair into an evidence bag and started his trek. When he got back to the hotel, he'd call Scully, ask for her opinion on the bone, and on this whole matter. He could use a fresh perspective. It still amazed him how close the two of them had gotten.

Doggett didn't often make good, close friends. When he did make them, it was over a long period of time, and not with people who threw cups of water into his face the first time that they spoke to him, not with people who seemed to believe in impossible things. Yet, there was Scully, firmly entrenched within his barriers.

He hadn't realized how much he missed having a someone this close. She and Evan were almost like his own family.

When he entered the bar awhile later, the tavern owner waved him over.

Doggett considered pretending that he hadn't seen him, but after a bit of thought, decided it would be best not to antagonize the man, seeing as he also owed the hotel rooms above the saloon, one of which Doggett was staying in, seeing as it was the only accomidation available in the community, and he wasn't all that fond of the idea of sleeping in the car for the next while.

He put on his best face as he sauntered up to the owner, a slightly oily looking man who appeared to have been sampling his own wares for some time now. The man looked at him, his face telling Doggett that he knew exactly what the FBI agent thought of him. He didn't try to make small talk, just bent over and started looking for something on the counter. "A guy called for you while you were out. Name of Skinner. Something 'bout a 'scully'.

He sounded pretty shaken up." Doggett felt an anxiety start to build inside of him. The man continued, "I have the number here somewhere.

Said to call him as soon as you got in."

"Thanks. I know the number already, though."

By the time Doggett had reached his room, the anxiety had grown into a knot in the pit of his stomach. He took the phone off of the hook and dialed up the AD's office. When his secretary answered picked up the line, she sounded haggard.

"Hello, Assistant Director Skinner's office."

"Yeah, I'd like to talk to Skinner, Ms. Wade."

"I'm sorry, he's busy at the minute. Would you like to leave a message?"

"He left a message at my hotel that I should call him back as soon as I got the message, I think that he'd like to talk to me."

There was a pause on the line. Eventually, Ms. Wades' voice came back.

"Is this Agent Doggett?"

"Yes, it is."

"Hold on, I'm putting you right through."

Dana Scully was in a room with the blue man. They were talking about something terribly important, but she couldn't remember what it was. He was teaching her something. It was something that she'd need. Or maybe he wasn't teaching her, as much as telling her how to apply things that she already knew. That was why he'd been waiting for her. They'd been there for a time, he sitting in that same overstuffed ragged chair he had been in when she arrived. He'd been there for awhile already, delaying his journey till she was ready. She didn't like to think of him alone in this pale dark place, not because of her. It was warm, but the warmth couldn't fight the bone deep chill. The chill wasn't too bad though, it came and went.

Often, she didn't even notice it. The room was sparse. There wasn't any clutter, just the two of them, his cozy looking chair, and the red rough cotton couch she was perched on. The walls were featureless, not even a door or window marred them. He noticed that her attention had drifted. He stopped speaking, his kind eyes looking at her with something akin to pity.

"I'm sorry," he spoke, his voice soft. "I'm tiring you. You really do need to rest." She wanted to tell him that she was fine. She wanted him to keep talking, that she didn't remember what he'd said, but that she wanted to try again. But she was feeling strange. The peace that she'd felt at first had changed to something else. A distance had taken over her senses. This place was leaving. She leaned forward to ask him what was going on, to tell him that she was very suddenly afraid. She wanted comfort. But when she moved towards him, she realized where that chill had been coming from. He was radiating it. She started to ask him what was wrong, if he'd had any symptoms, but he interrupted her.

He looked into her eyes in a way no one ever had, searching her. He smiled at her. "You'll do. You'll do very well indeed."

A little miffed that he'd interrupted her like that, when he was obviously not well, she started to retort. The look in his eyes stopped her. He knew what was wrong with him, didn't need her to diagnose him. He spoke again. "You have to go, you know. I've already over stayed, and you're about ready to go."

She found her voice. "How? There aren't any doors."

"The floor is going to drop out from under you, you know. The doors are going to come later. You're going to have too many doors, and none of them lead to everything you want, not right away, anyway." She wasn't sure what he if he was talking about her current situation, or something else. She thought maybe both.

The distance was increasing. She wasn't quite sure if her feet were touching.

The darkness was back. She'd been there before she found this place. She usually didn't mind the dark.

All she wanted was another place but this shadow.

Babbling reached her faintly. Something sub-audible was hitting her head.

A voice broke through, though. She clung onto it like a life line, using it to pull herself into the light.

"I believe she's coming out of it, Professor. I'm reading increased vital signs."

She tried to sort out what was going on, but her head was buzzing. It was a steady buzz, almost mechanical.

*Mechanical?*

Her head felt clearer, but the buzzing hadn't changed its monotone. Come to think of it, it was more of a hum.

"Dis's amazing," another voice added. She couldn't imagine the voice belonging to a man whom others would call Professor. The Cajun voice was a tad too slick.

*Wait a second, _Professor_? *

There was a bone deep ache throughout her entire body, shot through with needle sharp pain. She couldn't pinpoint where the majority of the pain was coming from though. Why she hadn't noticed it as soon as she woke up?

*If I'm awake at all. Why would I be in the care of a Professor? I'm pretty sure that I've been hurt, probably badly, so where's my doctor?

Even if something happened with him, Doggett and Mulder would make sure that I had a real doctor.*

That brought another fear to mind. *Where is Evan?*

*Doggett? Mulder? Skinner?*

Something was seriously wrong here. She could feel it deep inside.

Dana opened her eyes and tried to sit up. A million articulate questions sat on the tip of her tongue.

Two things went wrong. First off, her arms wouldn't obey her commands.

She could open her eyes, but her arms wouldn't lift her.

Still, she started to speak. "What....."

Then she got a good look at where she was. She trailed off. This place was impossible. Machines that bore only the slightest resemblance to any current medical equipment surrounded her. They were the origin of the humming. She couldn't remember how she might've gotten here, and a panic started to fill her.

Where was Evan?

Her unfinished sentence had attracted the attention of the other occupants of the room. The three of them had flocked towards her bed.

She relaxed a bit. This had to be a dream. These people, this room, they weren't real. But the short bald man was looking at her sadly, as if he could hear what she was thinking. His eyes told her that this was real.

But still, they calmed her, pacified her. She took a better look at him and realized that he wasn't actually all that short, he was in a futurist looking wheelchair. He must be the Professor.

She did another double take. It wasn't a wheelchair.

The thing was hovering a few inches off of the ground.

She started to feel the panic again. The other two people moved in closer as if sensing her change in mood. The black woman with the white (White?) hair leaned in and spoke to her softly.

"It's all right, you're safe. No one can hurt you."

The woman's words rang true, though Scully wasn't quite sure why someone would want to hurt her.

She tried to ask the woman where her son was, but she couldn't find the strength. The darkness was creeping into her again, but this time it was a soft darkness, slowly cradling her down into rest.

The woman straightened up, her eyes never leaving Scully's face. The last person in the room, a man who, by process of elimination, had to be the Cajun who'd spoken earlier, turned to the bald man and said, "Looked to me like she was 'bout to blow for a sec dire. Tell me Chuck, why you not work your mumbo jumbo on her?"

Before the man had turned from her, she'd caught a glimpse of pure red in his eyes. He should be the one on this bed. He must have a pretty severe head injury for the eye to be completely full of blood. Through the darkness that was almost complete now, she saw him face her and smile.

"Don't you be worrying' bout me, Chere. I be fine."

She hadn't thought she'd said that outloud. They were all looking at her now.

"I tried, Gambit," *What kind of a name is "Gambit"?* she wondered absently, while the other man spoke tiredly the other man said tiredly, "She rejected it."

The woman lay a hand on Gambit's shoulder. She seemed to have ignored their conversation. "The poor woman. How are we going to tell her? She doesn't deserve any of this."

Gambit spoke again. "Neither did we Stormy, neither did we."

She couldn't ask them to explain it to her, ask them if they were talking about Evan. A deep sleep had claimed her.

Doggett sat staring at the pile of clothes he had pulled out of Scully's closet. His mind still felt numb, despite the time that had past.

He wasn't here gathering up her things.

He'd wake up tomorrow and come here, and they'd talk. She'd complain fondly about Mulder, and he wouldn't tell her that he thought that Mulder really needed to grow up, that she should put him in his place. Instead, he'd tell her about the case that he'd been working on, ask for her input, ask her when she'd be back at work.

He wasn't here gathering up her things.

He'd heard that the first step to acceptance was denial. He didn't want to reach acceptance. He was fine stuck here in the first step. Moving on would mean accepting that this had happened to Scully.

Which was the whole point, but still...

The suits on the bed seemed to mock him.

God, he missed her already.

He punched the wall.

The pain steadied him. As he stared at the indent he'd made in the wall, the disjointedness that had filled him since Dana's funeral seemed to dissipate slightly. Instead, a slow anger started to burn within him. *Why her? Why this way? She deserved better than some stupid driver who didn't even have the courage to stop and see if she was all right after he hit her.*

Not that it would've helped any. The mother of the little girl who his partner had saved had called an ambulance right after it had happened. The woman had been in the grocery store, and had looked turned her back on her child for half a minute. The girl, Patricia, had been given allowance for the first time that afternoon, and, kids being kids, wandered off to blow it on junk. When she couldn't find her mother afterwards, she'd started to make her way home.

When the medical workers had gotten there, they'd inspected the girl. She was physically fine, except for a few scrapes. Doggett thought that this was something that her mind would never fully recover from, though. The ambulance had been to late to help Scully. Patricia had just been sitting on the ground, staring at Dana's body lying on the road in front of her when her mother got there. The woman had seen the entire thing through the window of the grocer.

Patricia hadn't even started to scream until her mother took her up in her arms.

The medics had said that Scully had died instantly, that she hadn't even known what hit her.

He didn't know if the thought of his partner not even knowing that she was going to die comforted him. He was pretty sure that it was the sort of thing that she would've liked to have known, to have had a few seconds, at least, to reflect on.

He looked around the near empty apartment. There wasn't much left for him to pack away. Skinner had been here several times for that express purpose. That was how he was dealing, by being taking responsibility for everything. He'd made the funeral arrangements, seen that everyone who needed to be contacted was, and done so many of the other things that you didn't ever realize someone had to look after till you lost a person who was close to you. Doggett couldn't have done it, and he wasn't sure if Skinner was actually dealing, but he admired the other man for it. There were much worse ways to react.

And then there was Mulder. He'd been throwing everything he was feeling into looking after Evan. Some people, Doggett included, had been worried about him at first, when he'd found that Doggett was Evan's legal guardian.

He seemed to accept it now, something that relieved them, even if it did seem a bit out of character.

Of course, Mulder's reaction had been better than Bill's. The thought of Scully's brother's (*that officious ass's *) reaction to the fact that Doggett was his nephew's legal guardian brought the ghost of a smile to Doggett's face, despite everything. Bill's face had just about turned purple. And had he ever freaked when he saw that Scully had specified that in the event that anything happened to Doggett, Skinner or Mulder were to look after Evan.

What had the man expected, Doggett wondered. They'd basically fallen out of touch. He didn't call, didn't write, and he hadn't exactly been discrete about the fact he wasn't happy that his little sister is a single mother.

Was a single mother.

It all came crashing down on him. It was a little thing, that change of tense. But it changed everything.

Was a single mother. Except she hadn't been, not really. She'd had him and Mulder and Skinner.

Was a single mother.

Evan was never going to know his mother.

He sat down on the coach then, his knees weak. John Doggett was not a man who cried. In fact, he tended to view men who did as sissies. However, sitting on a coach that had belonged to a woman who had been very dear to him, in the apartment where she'd only started to raise her son, he felt slow tears start to wind their way down his cheek. He sat there for a time, thinking of all the things that Dana Scully had been to him in the time that he'd known her.

Then he headed back to Dana's room and the clothes he had pulled out of the closet before he'd attacked the wall. He picked up a shirt, folded it neatly, and placed it in the bag Skinner had started.

God, he was going to miss her.

When Dana Scully first started to drift out of the swamp land of dreamless sleep, she was completely alone in the strange pale room. Had she been aware at the time, she would've noticed one of the machines that sat around her was set to watch her sleep patterns, and it sent an alert through the halls of the building which housed both it and her at the first signs of her awakening. This brought the four people currently within the building's walls hurriedly towards her bedside.

However, she was still in the nether lands between sleep and waking when this took place, so all she knew was that when she opened her eyes, she was somewhere she had never been before, and there were three people that she had never met, yet who seemed vaguely familiar staring anxiously down at her, like figures from a barely remembered dream waiting for her to return from the realms of real life.

"Well, I be darned, Stormy. Da canuck was right," The tall man (Gambit, something in the back of her mind whispered to her) said.

The black woman looked at him reprovingly, then turned her complete attention to Dana. "Ms. Scully, how are you feeling this afternoon?" she asked.

So if that was Storm, and the brown-haired man was Gambit, then the one sitting ever so quietly by her bedside had to be the Professor. Dana was still disoriented, still trying to put things into place. She wondered how long she'd been out. The last thing she remembered was the ground rushing up at her and a squealing filling her ears. But there had been something else. Something important.

*A little girl? *

The man she had pegged as Gambit spoke then, introducing the three of them.

If she'd been paying attention, she would've heard him confirm their names, but the memories were flooding back in. She'd gone to get diapers. She'd walked because she thought that it might cool her down. There'd been a girl in the middle of the road, and a car. Then she'd been dreaming.

Something about a blue man, and then she'd dreamed about these three people, snatches of what was going on around her mixing with her subconscious. After all, wheelchairs don't float, and people with their eyes full of blood don't walk around as if nothing is wrong with them.

"I'm fine. Where's the little girl? Is she all right?"

*Wait a second, did she ask me how I was feeling this afternoon?* It had been evening when she'd left for the store. That would mean that she'd been out for at least a day. There wasn't any natural light in the room, and it felt as if it should be afternoon, but Scully's internal clock told her that it had been much more than a day.

Had she been in a coma?

A sudden wisp of terror filled her. *Do I have brain damage?* But she'd been dreaming, hadn't she? Did people in comas dream? Storm (for some reason, she thought that this woman was Stormy to Gambit alone, and even then only when she wished to be) still hadn't answered her.

"Where's the little girl? Is she all right?" She repeated. "And where is my son?"

Storm looked at her sadly, her softly accented voice full of warmth. "The girl is safe, thanks to you. She had only a few scrapes and bruises. You have no idea the risk you took."

Dana smiled at the other woman. "I appreciate your concern, but I seem to be fine now. I couldn't have been hurt badly." She wasn't just trying to speed things along by saying that. She felt curiously well, somehow more here, and stronger than she could remember in a long while.

Although she didn't remember feeling quite this good, even back when she was younger. If she had been in a coma, it couldn't have been for long.

"Is my son here? Or one of my partners?

"And, by the way, where is here?"

They were all looking at each other then, and their faces were telling Scully something that she didn't think she wanted to know. They were trying to find a way to break bad news to her. The Professor was still sitting quietly by her bedside, his posture reflecting an uneasiness that he had long ago schooled his face to conceal. Gambit was looking at Storm with pleading eyes. Eyes that asked her not to make him be the one to speak.

Eyes that were red and black.

Feeling a little panic creep into her, she glanced back toward the man in the wheel chair, her gaze being drawn downwards, despite a sudden, irrational fear of what she'd see.

She hadn't been dreaming before, or she was still dreaming now. The man wasn't really in a wheel chair. He was floating a few inches about the white tiled floor. Just to make sure that this was real, she pinched herself in the arm once.

Hard.

All she got for her trouble was a sore arm. She scrambled into an upright position. Storm started to reach for the FBI agent, as if to support her, but stopped when Dana showed no signs of weakness. They'd stopped their unspoken discussion, the answer to the question of who was going to break whatever was wrong to her answered when Storm had moved forward to brace her.

Dana surveyed the odd collection of people gathered around her, standing in their broken circle around her bed, waiting for her to make the first move.

She looked Storm right in the eyes (which she noticed, oddly enough, were blue) and asked the only question that she could think of.

"What the hell is going on?"

The professor looked at Storm significantly, and Dana was left with the certainty something unspoken was passing between the two of them. Storm nodded her head slightly at the bald man, then she turned back to Dana and began to speak.

"Miss Scully, what would you say if I told you that for almost every X-File, there was the same explanation?"

"I'd say that you were trying to change the subject."

"humor me Miss Scully. I promise you that this is leading to a full explanation."

Scully took a good hard look at the trio, then sighed. They really believed that this was the quickest way to convey things to her.

Either that, or she was about to get treated to the world's biggest run-around.

"Well, I'd say that you didn't know what you were talking about. There's no way, for example, that a man who claims to see people's deaths has anything to do with another who has X-Ray vision, or some one who can kill people in their dreams."

"That's where you're wrong Ms. Scully. Those people, they're like us.

"They're mutants."

"You do realize that this isn't making things much clearer?"

The Professor broke in then. "If you'd allow Miss Monroe to finish....."

Scully bit her tongue and nodded her assent.

"Mutants are people who's genetic make-up is different from that of normal humans, to the point where they aren't technically considered to be homo sapiens. They're known as homo superior."

"What if I don't buy this?" Scully probably would've continued to protest her disbelief for awhile yet, but something the woman had said a little bit back had just sunk in. "Hold on a second. Did you say like us ?"

There were a few seconds of silence, and Scully was yet again left with the feeling that she was missing some important conversation.

"Ms. Scully, I'm afraid that you were very badly hurt in the accident."

"What are you trying to say here?" Scully heard her voice rising, and she didn't care. She really didn't like where this seemed to be going, and she found herself almost wishing that they'd go back to refusing to talk about the accident.

Almost.

"Chere, what Stormy tryin to tell you is dat everyone thinks dat you're dead," Gambit said.

"Oh." Scully leaned against the wall behind her, the shades of dismay dripping off of her. This was a dream. This wasn't real. People who pinched themselves just didn't always wake up, that's all. He must have seen her eyes go glassy or something, because he continued to speak to her.

"You don't believe what me and Stormy tellin you?" he asked, reaching for something in an interior pocket in his trench coat. "How 'bout I prove da mutant thing to you?" He pulled a deck of cards out.

"You're going to prove it to me with a deck of Tarot cards?"

"Dese aint Tarot cards." He flipped the top open and slid a card out.

They weren't Tarot cards, but a cheap looking deck of regular playing cards.

"Now I really don't get it."

"Just you wait." He closed the box, and slipped it back into his coat. He held the one card out to Scully. "Take a look at it. Make sure enough dat you believe dere aren't no gimmicks in it." Scully took the card, a Jack of Spades, and looked it over. Finding nothing wrong with it, she handed it back to him. He held in his palm where she could see it clearly.

The Professor spoke as if he knew what was to come. "Try not to damage anything."

Gambit only smiled roguishly at the older man. He turned back to Scully.

"Now, watch closely." Scully, intrigued despite of herself, leaned forward.

In Gambit's hand, the card began to glow bright pink.

Scully scrambled back on the bed again. The glow intensified until it hurt her eyes. The others didn't even blink. With a practiced movement, Gambit tossed the card into the air, away from them. At the height of its arc, it exploded. A piece of ash drifted down to land on Scully's hand. It just sat there, a fleck of gray against skin that had grown pale.

They were looking at her expectantly, or at least with some modicum of expectancy in their eyes.

"Nice trick," she said after a second. It was the most likely explanation, and she didn't feel particularly inclined to trust these people right now.

Gambit was reaching for Storm's head even as Scully spoke, and to her confusion, plucked a couple of hairs from the woman's head. Storm merely raised an eyebrow at him.

He held his hand and the hairs towards Scully, gesturing for her to inspect them. She turned his hand over, searching for any sort of wires or contact points, pushed the sleeve of his trench coat up to make sure that nothing was hidden up his sleeve. The hairs, she ignored, because unless they had Storm's entire mane rigged to explode, then there likely was nothing wrong with the hairs themselves.

She released his hand, and he stepped back from her with a smile. She watched as the white hairs took on a pink tinge, and began to glow. Gambit didn't fling them from himself this time, likely due to the fact that a thrown hair doesn't tend to fly strait. He released his grip on them a bare second before the soft bamf that accompanied the flash of light.

Scully could feel the heat from the blast on her skin slightly.

That, of everything, convinced her that this was real. The slap of warmth against her face, her arms.

"Fine," she said, revising her view of the situation a little bit. "You can make things glow pink and explode. I'll give you that, for now. It doesn't make you some higher evolution of the human species."

Someone sighed. Scully wasn't sure who. None of them seemed like a sigher.

"Agent Scully," Storm said. "I have something I would like to try and show you."

Scully sat there in the bed, looking at Storm. When the younger woman was sure she had her attention, she smiled briefly, then her face took on a look of deep concentration. She held her hands out, palm up, and Scully thought she saw a spark. Storm frowned as Scully leaned in closer, and the smell of ozone started to fill the air.

Gambit and the Professor were looking at Storm with a decidedly odd look on their faces, but Scully didn't really spend all that much time concentrating on them, because Storm's hands suddenly burst into light.

Gold danced across her palms, cracking and straining at the air, seeming to ebb and flow around the edges. Scully reached out her hand towards it.

The hair on her arms stood up as she drew closer to the energy, and all of a sudden the light went out, leaving behind only electricity in the air, and the smell of storms.

Storm's hands looked exactly as they had a minute before.

This was starting to get really weird.

Which, when you consider what she did for a living, was quite a feat.

"What was that?" she asked Storm, though she had a sinking suspicion she already knew.

"Controlled lightning."

It was something that was pretty damn well near impossible to fake, in this enclosed a space, affecting Scully when she neared it, but not Storm, who was actually in contact with it.

Taking a deep breath, Scully turned to the Professor. "So we have the Human Torch and Lightning Girl. Don't tell me, you think you're a nuclear furnace."

"Actually child, I'm a telepath," the Professor said. He paused for a second. "As well, the Human Torch would probably resent the reference, and a walking nuclear furnace happens to be residing in another location." He ignored Gambit's indignant glare and continued. "Gambit is capable of storing and creating bio-kinetic energy, and Storm controls all the weather, not merely lightning."

"Oh," Scully said. If these people were lying, they had completely deluded themselves as well, and if they weren't, she was in way over her head. She was leaning towards the later.

Storm spoke again, bringing the subject back to the original path of conversation. "It's interesting that you would have mentioned that man who could see people's deaths. What was it that he said to you?"

The sinking feeling in Scully's stomach intensified. "He told me that I wasn't going to die. But that's impossible. Everyone dies." It didn't seem quite so impossible right now, though. At this exact time, almost anything seemed within the realm of possibility.

"I don't know about that. I've been around longer than we can figure out, and I should've kicked the bucket more times than I could figure out, even if you gave me a calculator." A rough voice came from behind her and to the left, and a short, burly man stalked into the room through a door that she hadn't noticed. Stalked was really the only word for the way he walked. Scully thought that he'd probably been standing there for awhile.

He turned to the others then, and gestured at her. "What did I tell you Chuck?"

The Professor answered him in a low voice. "There was no evidence that she would be waking up, Logan."

Well, at least one of them had a normal name.

"What about what I told you? I could smell it on her. What do you think would have happened if she'd woke up all alone?"

"Why didn't you stay with her then?"

"I was, Chuck, at least until Jubes called. I asked one of you to sit with her till I got back."

Storm placed a placating hand on Logan's arm. Scully expected him to shake it off, but it actually seemed to calm him slightly.

Scully waited a few seconds for them to notice her, then her patience broke. "Excuse me, but I do believe that you people were in the process of explaining to me why everyone thinks that I'm dead, and what whoeverhewas has to do with that."

The tension in the room dissipated slightly, shifting until if was focused on her.

"Miss Scully, I'm going to tell this to you like it is," Logan said. "When you were hit by by the car, it was bad. Your skull was crushed, your brain rearranged. Almost every bone in your body was shattered or broken. Your internal organs were so much soup."

Scully wished that the certainty that this was a dream would take over her again. But it had deserted her, leaving her only a growing nausea at odds with that feeling of curious wellness that she'd been feeling since she woke up. She knew that if her injuries had been as bad as he said, she wouldn't be here now, but she couldn't bring herself to disbelieve him.

"They had a closed casket funeral. Me, Storm, and Gambit were there. Your partner gave a beautiful eulogy. We paid our respects, we stood at the grave site. Then, the next night, we and two of our friends went back, and we dug you up."

Scully just sat there silently, the nausea eating up her stomach and horror clogging her throat with a cold knot.

She felt like the floor had dropped out from underneath her.

"What I'm getting at, Miss Scully, is that you're a mutant, a healer. If you weren't, you really would've died, and if we hadn't been keeping an eye on you, then you'd be waking up in a coffin right now.

"And whoever, when he told you that you weren't going to die, could see that. He was a clairvoyant, although a limited one. It doesn't mean that you're not going to die, it just means that you're probably going to live a lot longer than most people, and he couldn't see beyond that."

"How long has it been since the accident?"

"Over two weeks. There was a lot of damage for your body to repair."

Scully sat there, absorbing everything that had just been thrown at her.

She became aware of an ache at the back of her head, and looking down at herself, she realized that she was sitting on blood red hair. Raising a hand to her head, she discerned that is was, in fact, her hair, although hers was shoulder length and a more washed out orange-y red. Her hair hadn't been this color since she was a very small child. It had faded when she was still an infant.

"It's all right. Hair color often changes when mutations manifest themselves." Storm said, waving absently at her own hair. She'd seen what Scully was thinking in her face. "As for why it's grown, your body has been very busy fixing itself, and a lot of energy has gone to your head, to repair the brain damage. The growth of your hair is just a side effect."

Her hair wasn't really what Scully was most concerned with. "If my body heals itself so well, why did I get cancer when I took that chip out? Why was I rendered infertile? Why have I recovered just like everyone else all the other times that I've been injured?"

"You recovered from your cancer, did you not? Mutations reveal themselves at different times in different people."

"Storm, why don't you find our guest some clothes, then show her to a room?

I think that she'd rather not stay in our medlab, and she's had enough for one day," The Professor said. "She won't need the constant medical supervision, but show her how to use the computer system so that she can contact us if she has any problems."

And despite her best intentions, a fatigue swept over her, making it impossible for her to argue.

Scully followed Storm up the dark hardwood stairs. The medlab had been in the basement of a mansion. Storm, who had told her that her real name was Ororo Munroe, had been giving Scully a tour of the mansion, or at least, the parts of the mansion that were deemed appropriate for new comers. The mansion was known to the public as Xavier's School for Higher Learning, but actually served as home base for Ororo, Logan, Gambit (who's name turned out to be Remy LeBeau), the Professor (the school's namesake, Charles Xavier), and several other mutants.

Scully hadn't been able to drag a full explanation of what exactly the group did out of Ororo, but had managed to extract a promise of a full explanation in the morning. Scully was feeling worn out and drained, and all she wanted was to collapse in a bed. The depth of her exhaustion was over riding everything else.

Ororo stopped outside the door of a room halfway down the hall. She turned to Scully and smiled. "You'll be staying here while you're with us. If this room isn't to your taste, then we'll find you another one tomorrow, but I think that you'll like it."

She opened the door to expose a huge room painted in shades of white and navy-black. Dutch doors led out onto a small balcony which over looked what seemed to be woodlands. A pewter poster bed flanked by ebonwood book cases sat against one wall. Not to say that the room had no color. There were splashes of it scattered throughout the room, made more intense by the simplicity of their backdrop. It didn't resemble Scully's home in the least. She wasn't' sure if she would've done it like this if she was decorating.

She loved it.

She stumbled grateful over to the bed, pulling herself into the cotton pajamas while Storm studied the corner. Scully sank into the bed, wanting nothing more than to bury her head in the pillows and sleep.

"Storm?" she called, stubbornly holding onto the last threads of wakefulness.

The other woman paused in the doorway. "Yes?" she asked.

"What about Evan?"

Storm looked at her kindly, her face full of something that Scully couldn't identify when she was this tired. "We'll discuss Evan in the morning as well, I assure you. You just rest now," Storm said as she flicked off the light in the room.

Her last coherent thought was before drifting off was that Storm and the others also hadn't given her a strait answer about her cancer or her infertility. As Storm closed the door to the room, Scully felt her consciousness drifting away.

She slept, her mind returning to the blue man in the room, while hundreds of miles away, her partner touched the world that had so firmly engulfed her.

Robert Drake, Bobby to almost everyone who wasn't at the time screaming at him for some trick he'd played, sat silently in a tree. He was so still that the animals, who had only just begun returning to the scarred clearing, forgot he was there. From his perch, he could see the entire meadow, but he took in only the small area where grass refused to grow.

Even at that, he wasn't really seeing it as it was now, but as it had been a little over two weeks ago.

Guilt ate him.

John Doggett gathered his briefcase closer under his arm. The walk from the car to the clearing had been longer than he'd remembered.

"I'm getting too old for this," he muttered. "Don't even know why I'm back here in Sherwinigan. It's been almost two weeks, any evidence is long gone by now. I can't possibly do any good." Doggett suddenly stopped short.

The most important question of all had just occurred to him.

"Why am I talking to myself? Next thing I know, they'll be calling me Spooky too." Shrugging his shoulders slightly, Doggett continued on his way. He could almost see the clearing. He caught himself just before he could comment on that fact. He paused when he reached the edge of the meadow where he'd been while Skinner had been trying to contact to tell him about Scully. This case had drawn him back for some reason. Surveying it, he realized a very important fact.

There was someone else in the meadow.

A young blonde Caucasian sat in one of the trees, his eyes fixed on the spot where the blood had been when Doggett had first come out here to investigate. Doggett cleared his throat loudly and waited for a response.

Getting none, he tried again. When he still didn't get as much as a blink, he strode into the clearing and hollered. "Hey, you!"

The man fell out of the tree.

Doggett quickened his step, hurrying over to the young man. "You ok?"

Doggett's concern seemed uncalled for. The man lay on the ground for less than a second before springing up into what looked to Doggett like a kick boxing pose. He seemed to be preparing for a fight, deciding if force would be necessary. Doggett took a few seconds to marvel at the man's reflexes. Most people at least paused after falling out of a tree.

"Who are you?" Doggett asked, hoping that if he got the man talking, he could avoid a potentially tough situation.

"I could ask you the same thing," the man shot. His eyes were hard, harder than the eyes of a boy that age should be. He seemed to pause for a second. "Let me guess. You're Special Agent John Doggett with the FBI."

"You seem to have me at a disadvantage. You see, you know who I am, but I don't know who you are, or how you know me. Or why you were sitting in a tree looking at a crime site.

"Care to fill in the blanks?"

The man looked strait at Doggett. The agent, who now was closer to the boy, could see the boy's eyes had taken on a strange look. He appeared to be in his mid twenties, and he was right now evaluating Doggett, judging him. "My name's Bobby. I know who you are, because I pay attention to what's going on around me. FBI investigations are the kind of thing everyone in these parts would end up knowing about."

"So Mr. Bobby, are you from around these parts?"

The boy paused. "That, Agent, is part of the answer to your last question.

Even though this isn't marked as a crime scene anymore. But this is a story that will take awhile to tell. And just call me Bobby."

Doggett felt a strange wave of compassion sweep over him. A few weeks ago, he would've just sat this kid down and forced the story out of him. But that was then. Everything had been so strange lately. Looking at Bobby again, he saw that the boy's eyes weren't hard, they were numb and sad.

This was someone who was as bereaved as he.

Ah, heck, what's one more strange thing?

"You want to tell me about it over drinks?"

"So Mulder thinks that he should be Evan's guardian. He hasn't said it outright, but I can tell. That kid is everything to him since Scully....."

Doggett trailed off. He still wasn't comfortable saying 'since Scully's death'. Shaking it off, he continued.

"He has Evan right now, while I'm looking after this case. He really loves that kid, I have to give credit, but he's throwing too much into it.

Mulder's always looking for a stop gap solution, something to focus on.

He'll pick one thing that's wrong, and decide that if he can fix that, every thing will be ok. He's done it before, with his sister, with the conspiracy. It never ends, he flits from one obsession to another. When he's made one thing right, and finds out that it hasn't put everything in order, he just finds another fixation. It's always the next thing for Mulder. For now, it's Evan. And with me in the picture, he can't fix him.

"I know what you have to be thinking. What am I so worried about if I know what's going on? I should be able to stop that. I am Evan's legal guardian.

"What I'm worried about is that Mulder doesn't just want to be a glorified babysitter. He wants Evan. I think that he might be planning on taking me to court over my guardianship.

"It's not that I think that he'll win. The courts will take one look at his record and dismiss his claim that Evan would be better off with him, just because he'd known Scully for longer. They'll see the year where he was MIA, not contacting anyone to let them know that he was even alive, they'll see that he can't really bring any people to then to vouch for his character, since he never had much of a life, and no real friends outside of Scully and the Lone Gun Men. That in an of itself will prove to them that this is a man who is totally focussed on his work. He doesn't even have any outside interests.

"On top of that all, he's a single male. These judges are conservatives for the most part. They don't think that a single man is capable of looking after a child, especially not one Evan's age.

"That's what I'm worried about, their bias against the single male. What if they decide that I'm not a suitable guardian either? I'm a single man in a line of work that frequently takes me away from home, and which can be

considered dangerous. Not exactly the ideal enviroment in which to raise a son.

"They could take Evan away from me, put him in a foster home till they decide which member of Scully's family would be most suited to caring for them. They could even award guardianship to Bill, which, believe me, is not something that Scully would've wanted.

"So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, if you'll pardon the cliché.

Mulder's going to go for it, I can see it in the way he looks at Evan, in the way that he looks at me. Maybe not today, but sometime soon, before Evan's been with me for too long. I don't want to say anything for fear of setting him off. I think that it would only make things worse. He's not going to listen to reason on this one. So all I can do is let him look after Evan whenever I need to go out, and hope that spending that much time around the kid will be just what he needs, instead of just convincing him that he needs to have Evan even more.

"I guess that that's probably part of why I'm here. I have no chance of solving this case, not after all this time. I guess that I wanted Mulder to have some time with Evan, without it seeming like I was time sharing the kid. I don't want to get into a court battle, I don't want to take even the slightest risk of loosing Evan. I've lost too much already."

Doggett took a sip of his beer, then made a face. It was warm. Grimacing, he chugged the rest of the thing. He and Bobby had entered the Sherwinigan Tavern and Hotel over an hour ago. They'd sat down in one of the booths.

Doggett had ordered a beer, Bobby a scotch on the rocks. They'd sat in silence for awhile, sipping their drinks. Then, driven by the same impulse that had prompted him to ask the other man for a drink, Doggett had began to talk about Scully. From there, it had moved to Evan, and how everyone was dealing.

"Agent Doggett, you said that that was probably part of why you were here," Bobby said, speaking for the first time since ordering his drink.

He'd just been sitting there, listening, for all the time Doggett had been talking. His Scotch was still in his hand, but it didn't look as if he'd drunk much of it.

Doggett started slightly at that. "I guess I did."

"Agent Doggett," "Just call me Doggett. None of this Agent crap," Doggett interrupted "All right then. Doggett, is it possible that you're really here because this is something that went wrong at the same time that your partner died?

This is something that is bothering you from the same time frame, but you can at least try to fix this. It's intertwined with Scully's death in your subconscious."

Doggett started to refute the younger man's statement, then paused.

*God, I hate pop psychology.*

There was a period of silence, then Bobby began to speak again. "You know, I really admire how well you're dealing. From what you've said, you're still grieving, but it's not taking over your life.

"I could probably take a lesson from you"

Doggett motioned the bar tender over and asked for another beer. When it came, he settled back into the seat, and waited. Bobby stared into the depths of his still almost full first drink for a few seconds, then he started to speak.

"We were both there from the beginning, you know. Back then, we never dreamed that we'd be left after the others were dead or gone.

"Hank's dead now too. I'm the last of the first.

"Mr. Doggett, I can tell that you're itching to ask me who we were, but I didn't talk while you told your tale, so you're not going to interrupt me.

I'll try to make things as clear as possible, but sometimes I'll forget the things that you don't know.

"We were what you'd call a gaggle of X-Files. The Professor brought us together, made us a team. We learned to control that which had brought us to him, and we tried, I guess, to make the world a better place. At the time, it was this grand gesture. It was romantic. We believed in it.

"My friends died for it.

"It's not to say that I'm the only one left. Far from it. We gathered more people over the years. Some came to us, some we sought out. We lost a lot of them too. Hank McCoy and I were the only ones who were steady.

The Professor too, of course, but I don't know if he counts. He's just mentor guy.

"We've been fighting a lot lately. There are other groups like us, and let's just say that we have differences of opinion about very important things.

"We should be allies. Instead, we're enemies. Our rivalry in some cases is older than our team. It goes back to the Professor's younger years. We just kind of got stuck with it. Some sort of warped inheritance.

"But this isn't what we're here to talk about. We're here because you have an incident scene on your hands that defies rational explanation, and you caught me surveying it. You think that I can tell you what happened there.

"Let me just warn you, you're not going to like what I have to say. It's outside your box.

"We were fighting again, this time with Magneto, a man who spent some time on our side. He and the Professor used to be very good friends. Magneto has different friends now. They can give us a run for our money, and they were in on this scuffle.

"Now, I can't even remember what it was about this time. All I remember is the battle itself, and that's beginning to blur. When you fight for long enough, it all starts to seem the same.

"That night, emotions seemed to run deeper than usual. We normally work as a team. We all look out for each other.

"That time it was different. There must have been something in the air.

We were all viscous, out for blood. It was like a bar room brawl almost, every man for himself. We weren't watching out for each other at all.

There were a few times I almost got hit by my own team mates. We fought forever, I think. I mean, I know that it couldn't have been more than forty-five minutes, but it seemed....

"When the dust settled, we saw that we'd won, but that the price was something that we never wanted to pay.

"I look around, and I see Sarah standing over Hank, still ready to fight.

Sarah's technically on our side, but she's not the most trustworthy person.

She claims that she doesn't care about any of us, and usually, we believe her, but she comes through when it counts.

"Hank had gone down hard, not even half way through the fight. He took a blow to the stomach. It didn't kill him right away. Sarah was the only one who saw it, the rest of us were too caught up in our own struggles.

"I was too caught up in my own struggle. Hank and I've always looked out for each other. We count on the other person to watch our backs.

"We counted on each other to watch our backs.

"The last half of the fight, Sarah was making herself vulnerable. She was protecting him, because he was too badly hurt to protect himself. She couldn't move too far away from him, so she lost most of her mobility. She made sure that not even one more blow reached him. That's where that bone came from, by the way. Sarah has a very rare condition which causes bones to grow out of her body.

"But the damage had already been done. Hank was still alive when everything was over. He joked about it, quoted Shakespeare. He was our doctor though. He knew how bad it really was. We were afraid to move him, and he was badly enough off by then that nothing he could tell us to do would help. If it was one of us, he could've saved us, I think.

"He was our only doctor, and he couldn't treat himself. I remember crouching there with Ororo, using Remy's coat to try to stop the bleeding.

He'd lost so much blood. We just sat there till the end, holding his hand.

The others, those who were there, kind of kept their distance. They didn't know what to do, and they found that a bit hard to deal with. When he died, it wasn't anything spectacular. His next breathe just never came.

"We had his funeral the next day. We buried him among our people, right next to Scott, the man who led us in the beginning. Scott's interred beside his wife. We lost her a long time ago.

"I know that he didn't blame me. I know that he wouldn't want me to put myself through this. But the fact of the matter is, I didn't have his back. He needed me and I let him down. If I hadn't been so caught up in my rage.....

"So I come here, and I replay the battle in my mind, trying to pinpoint all the chances I had to change to outcome. It's not as if it's not something that I do anyway, back at the mansion, but I feel closer to him this way.

The others are seriously starting to worry about me. They think that I can't let go, that I'm going to get stuck in the past.

"I've lost so many others, and this is the first time that I've been struck this way.

"I'm the last of the first, Doggett. You have no idea what that means."

He fell silent, his ghosts not eating at him quite as much as they had been earlier.

"I'm going to go home now. There's nothing here for me but reflections of pain."

Bobby looked up out of his glass then. All the time that he'd been speaking, his eyes had never left the whirling of the scotch and ice cubes.

Doggett wanted to think that the man was crazy. Bobby'd left so many things unexplained, and a lot of what he had imparted made no sense at all.

He'd left things blurry.

But still Doggett found himself sympathizing with Bobby. Even if he had made the entire story up, he'd suffered some severe loss. *Either that, or the boy deserves an Oscar. He's suffering.*

Crazy or not, lying or not, he was going to let Bobby go, without questioning him.

*Geez, what's wrong with me?*

The other man spoke again then. "Can I ask you something, Doggett?"

"I guess."

"Just tell me if this is too personal, ok?"

"All right."

"Would you be happier if you found out that Scully was alive, but somewhere from which she couldn't return, never to see her loved ones again? Would the thought that she wasn't dead comfort you, or would the idea of her forever just outside of the reach of the people she cared about bring you more grief?"

Doggett paused before answering. "Well, that one came way out of left field," he said, falling silent again before continuing. "I guess it all depends on whether or not she was with people who cared about her, and would look after her."

The two men sat in silence for another while, both busy with their own thoughts. Bobby smiled at Doggett and threw a bill on the table. "It's been really good talking to you, Doggett."

Doggett nodded in mute companionship. Bobby offered him his hand, and they shook. The young man started to leave, then hesitated. He turned back to Doggett. "If it comes down to a court thing with Mulder, you'll have support. You have my word. And where ever Dana is, she has people watching over her, you have to believe that. You have my word on that as well."

He strode out of the bar then. He was almost at the door before Doggett realized something. He got up and started after him. "Hey! I never told you Scully's first name. How do you know her first name?" Bobby's gait didn't alter, he didn't look back. He just pushed the door open and stepped outside.

When Doggett reached the door, he was fairly sure of himself. The bar was in the middle of an empty street. Bobby hadn't had enough of a head start to have gone far. Opening the door and stepping out into the cool early evening air, he stopped short.

Except for a mongrel dog sniffing at the curb, the street was deserted.

Bobby Drake sat crouched on the roof of the tavern, watching the FBI agent search the street. He wondered if the other man would notice that there was still ice in his glass when he went back in, despite the fact that Doggett had gone through two beers, both of which had ended up warm.

He probably shouldn't have kept his drink cold, but he hated warm scotch.

Then again, he probably shouldn't have talked to the agent at all, and he definitely should have left that last part about Doggett's partner out.

*I can't believe I slipped and called her by her first name. If he was paying attention, he has enough unanswered questions to make him want to try very hard to find out what's really going on, and more than enough information to at least take him a long way towards finding out the truth.* But amongst all the uncertainties, one thing was clear in his mind.

The Professor was going to kill him.

.........

Letonia (5a/10) [X-Files X-Over]

All parts can be found at

http://cherryice.topcities.com/cherry/stories.html

The sound of birds singing woke Scully. Rolling over in bed, she grabbed another pillow and held it over her head.

Wait a second. Birds. Singing. In DC.

A wave of disorientation slammed into her. Sitting up quickly, she opened her eyes. She just as swiftly slammed her eyelids shut. The sunlight streaming in through the window felt as if it had blinded her.

Blinking the after images out of her eyes, she surveyed the room. She remembered where she was now, and what had happened. Strangely enough, she didn't feel even traces of panic. The sunlight didn't seem as intense now.

A pile of new clothes, a towel, and assorted toiletries sat on a stool by a door that seemed to lead into a bathroom.

Sighing, she settled back under the covers, only to find that she was now wide awake. That first beam of light had been more effective than two cups of Bureau coffee. Considering how tired she'd been the other night, she felt surprisingly refreshed.

Taking the hint that her hosts had provided for her, she headed to the bathroom and turned on the shower. First she'd get clean, then she'd deal with the situation that she found herself in. While the water warmed up, she grabbed the pile of effects.

All right. What do we have here? Soap, razors, shaving cream, shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, hand lotion, facial moisturizer. Towel, wash cloth, toothbrush, toothpaste, and some clothes.

Glancing at the clothes, she could tell that they belonged to someone else.

They looked like they'd be a good enough fit though.

Finding what she was looking for, she grabbed the hair brush and dragged it through her now much too long hair. Her hair hadn't grown out evenly. All of it reached at least her waist, but there were hanks of it which went past her hips.

In other words, she really needed a haircut.

The color of it still unnerved her. It wasn't a shade of red naturally found on the outside of humans. It reminded her of nothing so much as fresh blood.

Maybe it was nothing but blood. From the accident. Maybe it'd wash right out.

Testing the water, Dana found it was hot enough now. Turning the cold water on, she adjusted it to where she wanted it, disrobed, and got in.

The water beat down hard on her face. She stopped thinking, and tried to let the water wash away all her problems.

At least this seemed to have gotten rid of the last of her pregnancy weight.

However, thoughts flittered around in her head until she had a fairly comprehensive list of questions that she was going to ask Storm and the others.

It took all of five minutes. That done, she thought that her mind might let her rest in peace, but she kept on going back to her dreams. She'd been with the blue man again. She got the feeling that maybe he'd been with her in that place for the entire time that she'd been unconscious.

She just couldn't remember. It felt like more than a dream, it felt as if it was a part of her life hidden under an amnesic haze, the room a lecture hall, the blue man her professor.

However, she felt that their sessions were drawing to a close. He'd stayed longer that he should have, and it was costing him dearly. He would've moved on awhile ago if it wasn't for her. Now, he was just waiting for someone else to join him. He'd go when they got there.

Now, if she had the slightest idea what she was rambling about, she'd be in a better place.

A sudden though occurred to her, popping out of nowhere.

*I think that if I'd been there all by myself, I would've gone insane.* The idea was disturbing to her to say the least. Despite the heat of the water, she felt goose bumps raise up on her skin. Shaking it off, she reached for the shampoo. She poured some into a pile in her palm, then lathered up her hair. With some trepidation, she help a handful of the lather in front of her face.

There wasn't even a hint of red in it.

When she finally got out of the shower, the first thing that she looked for was a mirror. She was curious to see what the color did for her. Peering through the fog that filled the bathroom, she couldn't see one. There was a double sink on the opposite wall, but no mirror. Taking a closer look, she could see the tell-tale darker square against the wall where a large object had been taken down from.

Shrugging, she grabbed the clothes and the hair brush, and went to go get dressed.

After she'd put on the worn jeans, t-shirt, and bunny hug that had been provided, she looked around again for a mirror, this time to braid her hair in. It was wet, it was long, and she wanted it out of the way. She couldn't find a mirror in the entire room, though she did find another two darker rectangles, one over a hall table by the door, one by a vanity.

It was starting to annoy me. And even though the clothes looked like they were the right size, they were too big. And now it was overcast outside.

Scully gave herself a mental shake. With everything that was wrong, the things that were really bugging her were the absence of mirrors, ill fitting clothes, and the weather? She brushed her hair again, then braided it without a mirror. She pulled the hair tie off the handle of the brush, and secured it in place. It wouldn't pass even for on the city streets, but it would do for now.

Ororo had shown her how to use the mansion's computer system to contact them. Although she hadn't told Scully to call them before leaving the room, she had implied that it would be best for the agent to have a guide when traveling in the mansion. Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was still fairly early. She'd slept barely more than she would in an ordinary night. Seeing the time made her conscious of a hunger gnawing away at her stomach. Considering the time, and the fact that she remembered where the dining room was from her tour the night before, she decided against using it to call for an escort. However, when she walked out of the room, she half expected to see someone outside the door, waiting for her to put in an appearance.

Finding the hallway deserted, she headed in the direction that she remembered leading to the kitchen. As she neared it, she could start to make out voices. The stairs leading down to the dining area were built in such a way that although she wasn't hidden from view, she wasn't exactly noticeable. She was about to call out to let them know that she was there, when she heard her name mentioned by a voice which she didn't recognize.

." . . up? Really? I was starting to worry. She'd been out for so long, with no change that we could identify. It was down right freaky, her lying there, no vital signs, looking like that."

The voice was interrupted by another unfamiliar one. "I'm not surprised most of the others stopped going anywhere near the medlab. I could sense that she was alive, but she looked like...."

Scully stopped where she could see the people below her. Remy, Ororo, the Professor, and Logan were involved in conversation with two people who were mostly still hidden from her view.

"Elisabeth. Bobby. Don't be talkin bout her like dat. She got no control over what happened to her. If you go round thinking bout her like dat, she gonna pick up on it. I don't think I need ta remind you how much we need her," Remy broke in.

There was a pregnant pause. Remy must have touched a nerve. Ororo tried to cover it up by welcoming the male back. Scully wasn't really paying attention to their conversation any more. Everything faded to the peripheral.

Why did they need her?

Lost in reflection, she leaned against the wall.

Had they had something to do with her accident in the first place?

A hand closed on her shoulder, and warm breathe hissed past her ear as a guttural voice whispered "Looky what the cat..."

The voice only got that far however. Scully's body reacted without her willing it to. It remembered some of the patterns that she'd learned in karate as a child. Twisting slightly, she grabbed the arm holding onto her, rolled her hips, and threw the offending person over her shoulder.

They were standing at the top of a landing. Scully's throw sent the unfortunate entity tumbling down the stairs. The (woman?) landed in a pile at the foot of the stairs. She seemed to have some sort of bone spikes growing out of her dusky pink skin. Drawing herself into a crouch, she looked up at Scully and barred her teeth.

The entire incident had taken only a few seconds.

The group standing in the dining room had stopped talking, and were looking at Scully standing there, and the young woman snarling at the foot of the stairs. The two people whom she hadn't seen moved into her sight. No one spoke. The silence stretched out. Clearing her throat, she said the only thing she could think of. "She snuck up on me." Holding her hands behind her back, she waited for someone to call her on being childish. Scully felt like she should apologize to the other woman, but the look on her face forebode any contact. They just looked at each other and shrugged. Scully thought that she saw Storm sigh.

Storm gestured at the woman whom Scully had thrown. "I'd like to introduce you to Sarah." Sarah glared at Ororo. This time, Scully was sure she saw her sigh. "I think that she'd prefer if you just called her Marrow."

Storm took a good look at the agent. "You must be starving. We were just about to eat. Would you care to join us?"

Scully nodded her assent and started down the stairs as Ororo introduced the other two as Bobby Drake and Betsy Braddock. Bobby looked completely normal. Betsy, on the other hand, had a red tattoo over her one eye, and her hair, though it seemed to be by product of die, was purple. The Professor excused himself from their group, claiming that he'd already had breakfast. Logan just stalked off. The rest of them headed towards the kitchen.

Scully felt her eyes being consistently drawn back to Marrow. It wasn't that she was wary of her. Now that she'd had a short space to think about things, she didn't believe that Marrow had intended her any harm.

Her reason was much simpler.

The spines. They didn't disgust her, they intruiged her. She wondered if they hurt. They even looked as if they might be detachable.

This at least answered one of the questions that she had. There were those whos' mutation caused severe physiological change. Remy's eyes were red, yes, but eye color was so changeable.

What must Sarah's parents have thought when this happened to her?

The thought of parents brought a fresh wave of grief back to her. She missed Evan.

She'd figure something out. She was going to make sure that my little boy is safe, no matter what.

She'd get the answers she needed out of these people. If they wouldn't help her, then she'd do it without their help. If their mysterious need for her caused them to try to hinder her, they'd find out what had made her last through medical school, what had sustained her throughout her time at the male dominated bureau, what had helped her put up with Mulder for so long.

But first, she was going to eat.

They'd reached the kitchen. The place was huge. A bakery size stainless steel refrigerator sat next to a huge expanse of cupboards. Marrow was already rummaging through the fridge. She pulled a container of yogurt out, then grabbed a spoon from the drawer. She hopped up on the counter, and dug in. Her expression dared anyone to challenge her claim to it.

Looking at her, she reminded Scully of nothing more than a red, grouchy, Chia Pet. Dana stifled the laugh she felt building within her, and went looking for her own breakfast.

Ororo pointed the bread drawer out to her. She grabbed a bag of bagels out of the it, and hunted through the fridge door until she found the cream cheese.

She sat down at the island next to Ororo, who was munching on a green apple. Feeling like a bit of a pig, she consoled herself with the fact that she hadn't eaten in two weeks. Betsy looked at Bobby with some disgust as he plopped down holding bowl full of dry Captain Crunch. She protectively pulled her toast away from him. "Really, if you're going to eat that stuff, you could at least put some milk on it."

Remy simply grabbed a cold piece of pizza out of the fridge and pulled a chair up. He brought a pitcher of grapefruit juice and a stack of glasses with him. They ate in silence under the inset lights.

Scully finished off the last of the bagels, then reached for an orange out of the fruit bowl which sat in the middle of the island. The others had finished their breakfasts long ago. They seemed to be waiting for her.

She finished off the orange, then drained the last of her juice.

It was raining hard outside now. She wondered why Ororo hadn't just stopped the storm. The woman followed her gaze, and said, "Sometimes nature needs a storm. Without the rain, the plants would die."

They remained quiet for a time more, and Scully was left with the distinct impression that they were waiting on her again. They wanted her to take the first step.

"Ororo. You never did answer me, you know. Last night, when I asked you about my cancer, about how I was rendered infertile. You skipped around it, said something about how mutations show themselves at different times in different people. You were trying to keep me off track.

"You know about my work on the X-Files. You have to know that Mulder is willing to believe pretty well anything, especially when it brings hope that someone he cares about may in fact be alive.

"Why didn't you tell him that I wasn't dead? He would've looked after me.

You didn't have to bring me here. He would've convinced Doggett, and they would've found a way to keep me safe until I was better. From what you've said, all you've done is watch over me while I healed myself. I want to contact my son and my partners, and I want to do it now."

Scully heard her voice rising. She didn't care.

"You seem to know a lot about me, but there's one thing that you missed.

You told me that my hair changed color because of my mutation. If you'd seen any pictures of me when I was really little, you would've know that I was born with hair pretty well this color."

By the end of this, she felt ready to explode. All the tension that she should've been feeling before had added up.

"Now you are going to tell me everything that I want to know, or this is going to go down badly. You could start by telling me exactly who you people are."

Ororo spoke in a tone that was in harmony with the rain beating against the glass doors. "Calm yourself child. Anger will not profit you now."

Scully snapped. "Who are you calling a child? What are you, twenty seven?

I have more than a few years on you."

Silence.

"Why don't you take it easy on Ro, Miss Scully? It's just easy to forget is all." Bobby was obviously trying to be helpful, but it didn't help matters any.

"Forget what?"

Bobby let out a yelp. He hopped out of his chair and rubbed his shin.

"What was that for?" The others just glared at him. He looked closely at Scully's bewildered but still furious face. "Oh. But did you have to kick me so hard? I mean, I haven't been here, how would I know?"

"Dat your own fault, no?"

"Will one of you please tell me what's going on?" Scully broke in.

Betsy looked at Ororo. Ororo looked at Remy. Remy tried to kill Bobby with incessant glowering. Bobby rubbed his shin some more. On the counter, Marrow snickered. "Tell the pretty little thing why don't you?"

When no one volunteered any information, she added, "Or I will."

Ororo reluctantly shifted forward in her seat as if getting ready to tell a story. "Ms. Scully, you are a very powerful healer. When your body was recovering from the accident, it decided that some things could be improved on. It didn't just return itself to normal. I guess that you could say that it upgraded."

"This isn't making things clearer."

"Betsy, could you go get a..." Betsy had already risen from the island.

She was scouring the counters for something. Uttering a small cry of triumph, she grabbed what ever it was that she'd been after. She handed it to Ororo. It looked like an old fashioned mirror, one of the ones with the handle and engraving. Ororo held it face down on her lap. "Ms. Scully, your body put things back to the way that they worked best."

She reverently handed Scully the mirror. Scully held the mirror mirror side down. A great deal of apprehension filled her. This wasn't going to be good. It had to be why they'd taken down all the mirrors in the room she was staying in.

Steeling herself for the worst, she flipped it over.

Peering into it, she saw her face as it had been when she was still in university.

She didn't look more than twenty three or twenty four.

"Oh shit."

The mirror fell from her senseless fingers and shattered on the floor.

Betsy cursed as a piece of the glass bounced up and hit the bottom of her bare foot.

Scully shook her head. That mirror had to have been tricked. Raising a hand to her face, she felt her skin for any sign of the small crows feet which had begun to show around her eyes. Her skin was perfectly smooth.

Her face also felt smaller somehow. She looked down at her legs, encased in the jeans that had looked just the right size, but had turned out to be large.

Betsy produced a silver compact from somewhere, and handed it to Scully.

"Try not to break this one."

Trepidation trying to claw its way out of her throat, she opened the compact. Her own eyes sparkled bluely back at her from under blood red brows. She made a face into it, trying to see if maybe there was a picture already in it. Her reflection mirrored the movement exactly. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, then looked into the compact once more. Her face remained young. Wordlessly, she flipped the mirror closed, and handed it back to Betsy.

"Youth is something that all covet, is it not? We are stronger, more flexible. The ravages of age have yet to touch us." A gust of wind danced by as Ororo spoke, picking up the shards of glass and shoving them into to the corner. Scully looked at Ororo, who smiled. She'd been responsible for the display. "I'll clean it up later, Agent. Right now, we must work on answering your questions.

"We are the X-men."

"Really? You must have had a good surgeon."

Bobby started to chuckle. He stopped when everyone in the room shot him a look.

"We are mutants, the students of Charles Xavier. We're just trying to do more than simply survive, which in and of itself is a feat in this world.

As there are those who believe in the superiority of normals, so are there are those who would like to see a world in which our positions were reversed. We're just trying to keep these forces in check."

"Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that I believe you. I don't know if I do yet, but let's pretend. Explain my cancer to me."

"To impart that, I'm going to need to go back farther. This is a long story, so I would appreciate it if you'd bear with me.

"In your work on the X-Files, you've discovered massive conspiracies. You think that you can see below it, but you've only uncovered the top layer.

The truth of the matter is much worse."

"I find it hard to believe that the truth is worse that what I have come to know."

"Then tell me Scully, what is it that you know?" Betsy's voice was low and challenging, her tone one that had the beginning of contempt in it. Scully rose to the bait.

"That there was a group of men who were willing to sell out the rest of the human race to save their own skins. They struck a bargain with an alien race. In return for their survival, they conducted experiments on men, women, and children, trying to create an alien-human hybrid which would be immune to the effects of a biological organism. They obtained these people by abducting them. Some, like me, were returned with a chip in their neck and rendered infertile. Others never came back, and still more were destroyed by the Faceless Rebels, a different group of extraterrestrials, and the Bounty Hunters. These people, the Syndicate, were very deep in the government for a time. They sold out the human race so that they could live another day, experimented on innocents. I don't see what could be worse than that."

The mutants looked at her keenly, evaluating her. They seemed slightly surprised. Ororo continued. "I won't dispute the existence of the Syndicate. They are a faction we are all too well aware of. Survival is a fairly understandable motive when you think about it. Self preservation is something that we can all identify with, even if we disagree strongly with the length that they would go to.

"What if I were to tell you that these people weren't working for the aliens? I'm not saying that there aren't aliens, just that they are not what you think they are.

"All these genetic experiments, not for the aliens sake. They're trying to find a way to wipe out the part of the genome that creates mutants. The people who they take are, for the most part, ones who were marked with the small pox vaccine. I believe you discovered that the immunization was used to mark those who were inoculated. They continued to vaccinate people with it long after the threat of the disease had passed.

"The small pox vaccine was merely a carrier agent. Piggy backed onto it was the earliest attempts at a reverse genome agent. They were attempting to wipe out mutations before they took hold."

Scully pursed her lips. This was quite the tale. "You do know that there wasn't the technology back then to delve into the human genome?"

"The technology was there, it was just limited to select government agencies. They took it from a Shi'ar ship which crashed in New Mexico back in the forties."

"You're telling that the Roswell crash was real?"

"So much has arisen from rumors surrounding that crash. They aren't little gray men Ms. Scully. Most of them look just like you or me. If you ignore the hair that is. You must have noticed that the technology in our medlab is much beyond what society today has.

"We are in contact with the Shi'ar. They share some of their technology with us. You really must see the danger room sometime."

Mulder would have loved this. Scully wasn't having such a great time.

Something told her that this was going to be one long day.

"Look, Ms. Munroe, this is all very fascinating. I'd love to hear about it some other time. Now I just want you to explain to me what the Syndicate has to do with my current situation."

Ororo started slightly. It was easy to forget that this woman, as much as she had learned, was missing so many key facts. "Forgive me. I do digress at times. As you can tell by looking at Marrow, sometimes mutations can be very obvious. They tracked down all the mutants that they could find.

Once they had them, they ran them through tests until they were certain that they'd located the genes responsible for their mutation. They did this again and again, for they discovered that the genes were different for each person. Then they put all of this together, creating the anti-genome agent which was piggy backed on the small pox vaccine. You said that you were born with hair the color that you currently have.

"Your mutation manifested itself at birth, which is very rare. Usually only the most powerful and the weakest mutations do so. This is going to seem like it comes out of nowhere, but a healing factor is often part of a physical mutation, especially those which mimic animal attributes. If you just take a look at the urban myths surrounding animal people, then you can tell that there have been no shortage of those.

"The vaccination suppressed your healing abilities before they could truly begin to manifest themselves, and marked you as a latent mutant. That's when your hair faded. The vaccine couldn't fully repress your powers, for the basic reason that you were a different sort of healer than those that the tests had been run on.

"What is it that drew you to medicine Ms. Scully? Did part of you long to heal? Could you tell when those around you were suffering? When medical school didn't lead where you sought, you jumped at the opportunity offered to you by the FBI recruiter.

"You didn't know this, but even your entering medical school set off alarms for the MR. The MR is simply the Mutant Registry. This is a department responsible for keeping track of all known mutants, including those who were marked by the vaccine. There's a huge archive somewhere in Washington, listing the name of the citizen, their status, location, and powers. You were showing tendencies related to your mutation. They let it go, even let it slip when you entered the bureau, but when you began work on the X-Files, they became concerned.

"They eventually decided that they needed to make sure that you were completely under control. That's why you were abducted. The abductions are their way of bringing in mutants and suspected mutants to test them.

They went over you, and though they found that the reverse genome therapy was still working for the most part, they came to the conclusion that they should go through the procedure just to make sure. They rendered you infertile to prevent the the possibility of your having children who would likewise be mutants. Part of what they did also included that chip in your neck, which we have removed.

Scully raised a hand to her neck in panic. "You don't understand. Last time that the chip was taken out...."

Ororo smiled reassuringly. "You developed cancer, yes, we know. You do not need to worry over that anymore. Your healing factor will take care of it. You see, that chip served a dual purpose. It kept your healing ability firmly under control, and it released and anticarcigen. The people responsible for your abduction jammed one of your genes responsible for producing natural anticarcigens into the "off" position. The chip and the "off" gene canceled each other out. Without the chip, your mutation had a better chance of developing, but due to the original therapy, your cancer appeared. When you put the chip back in, it resumed producing anticarcigens, but that wouldn't have been enough to return you to health.

The people behind the chip, though, believed that it had cured you.

"In most cases, once the genome therapy has taken hold, it's there to stay, unless you receive intense rehabilitation. Due to the nature of your gifts however, this was not true for you. All this time, you hadn't been seriously enough injured for your body to try to beat the reverse genome therapy. Now, however, your body saw the vaccine as a threat to itself, which it had to get out of the way so that it could get on with the process of destroying your tumour.

"It was a long, hard battle. I don't think that Logan's immune system could have done the same thing given the circumstances. We don't know if replacing the chip helped your remission along, or if the timing was merely a coincidence. We just know that the chip itself could not have healed you.

"After your tumour was not a problem any more, your healing factor was repressed by the chip once again."

"When you were stung by the bee that infected you with that virus, your healing factor tried to reassert itself. You would've survived even without the vaccine. When Fellig shot you, the chip failed almost entirely. The doctors told you that you were making one of the fastest recoveries that they'd ever seen. If you were fully human, you would've died right then. However, after that, your healing factor entered into a battle against the chip. To your body, that thing was now as dangerous as your cancer had been. The chip, however, was designed to fight your specific mutation.

"From then on, while you were going about your normal life, a battle was going on inside of you. As long as you were not badly injured, your healing factor was entirely focused on beating that chip. We don't know exactly when, but your body obviously triumphed. It then reversed the process which made you infertile."

Scully spoke then. "That still doesn't explain Evan. There are certain factors involved in becoming pregnant that I haven't fulfilled in quite awhile, and certainly not in the time frame that I would need to become pregnant."

"What is the most basic biological drive?" Bobby asked.

That one threw Scully for a moment. "To procreate, I guess."

"If your body could do all that, what makes you think that it wouldn't look after the passing down your genes thing?"

"Because it's insane, perhaps?"

"More insane then the idea that you were hit by a car, died, and woke up two weeks later more than ten years younger?"

That threw her for even longer. Finally, she said "Are you telling me that I somehow managed immaculate conception?"

"You mean does Evan have a father? I guess, if you want to get technical, your son's gene's are drawn only from your own. It's not to say that he's a clone of you. I guess the best way to explain it....." Bobby fell silent, thinking. "Hank explained this to me so well....." At the mention of Hank, the room seemed to freeze. The others were just looking at Bobby, watching him carefully. To Scully, it looked like they expected him to explode. Bobby didn't even notice. "It's as if, in a normal birth, the DNA in the sperm happened to be the same as that of the ova. I don't remember what he said the statistical chance of that happening were, but there were a whole bunch of zeros."

Scully just sat there. Now everyone was watching her like they thought she might explode. Evan, just hers. No one else's. It felt right.

She could accept that.

"If the small pox vaccine worked so well, why are you standing here now?"

Storm chuckled. Of all the things that she'd expected from the agent, insightful questions weren't exactly at the top of her list. "Aside from the fact that almost all of here are either from another country or a situation where our shots weren't exactly looked after, there are a lot of mutations which are undetectable, such as telepathy, telekinesis, and many others. The Syndicate didn't luck onto many mutants possing powers such as those. So they continued to pop up, unchecked. Your, Mulder, and Doggett's work on the X-Files was allowed to continue despite the fact that you were starting to come close to the truth.

"Why do you think that was, Ms. Scully?"

Scully didn't even need time to think about that one. "The Syndicate doesn't even see us as a threat most of the time. We're just little guys, who though they may cause large amounts of trouble at times, have proved too hard to get rid of to waste resources on. Plus, there are forces in the government which want the truth to come out, which protect us."

Remy looked at her kindly. Marrow chortled again, a nasty, harsh sound.

She spoke for the first time since the stairs. " Scully, you are being used. They want you to keep working on the X-Files, because you are uncovering mutants for them, confirming if they are worth their trouble to track down and capture. What you thought was the truth is only a facade, though one believed by many members of the Syndicate. These forces which you think want the truth to come out, they're only interested in the number of mutants that you identify for them. The alien abductions, yes, they are attacks by the government on their own people, but they're motivated by their fear of the those of us who are better then them. These are people who took you because you had been marked, and they wanted to make sure that they still had you muzzled. They made you infertile because they didn't want to take the chance that you'd have a kid who was better than them too.

They took your ovaries because nothing finds cures for diseases as fast as human trials. A mutant child they felt that they could experiment on, because although they don't see them as human, they're close enough to work for most medical trials."

"Sarah! That will be quite enough." Ororo's voice was fully of controlled rage. Outside, a huge thunder clap rent the air.

"What, Wind Rider? She deserves to know."

Scully, Bobby, Betsy, and Remy sat uncomfortably, watching the two woman face off. Marrow was the first to drop her eyes. Ororo turned from her.

"That's why you can't go back. The government will know that your mutation has fully surfaced. When your death was reported, a special team was sent to verify it. Even if they didn't already have a file on you, if they hadn't checked you out, your appearance would be a dead give away. You work in an area that is under heavy surveillance by very dangerous men. We could not, in good conscious, leave you in the care of men who knew nothing of what was really going on. If you go back, then they will find a way to dispose of you. You know too much, you're a threat to them. They know what your weakness is too."

"Evan," Scully whispered under her breath.

"They tested him while he was in the hospital, you know. They wanted to see if this child born of a barren mother could grow up to be a danger to them. They have a thing with paranoia. Luckily for him, he's completely human. They checked on you too. They looked far enough to see that your chip was still intact. Their doctors figured that your ability to have children must have been some weird side effect the combination of your natural talents and the gene therapy. You must remember that they are working with a technology that they do not fully understand.

"They think that you are dead. They believe that you died with your healing factor still repressed, and yet they watch your son, just in case you did survive. They know that you would go back for him." Ororo let her words fade into the pattering of rain. Scully just stared out the doors at the brick patio, digesting what she'd been told.

Betsy stood, wincing slightly as she put pressure on the cut on her foot.

"Well Miss Scully, I think we've given you enough to mull over for now."

There was an uncomfortable silence. Scully finally spoke. "You know, I think that maybe I'd like to be by myself for a bit."

"Of course. I'll show you back to your room."

Bobby and Gambit headed out, Bobby muttering something about having to talk to the Professor. Betsy moved to accompany Scully back to her room. They headed up the stairs, leaving Ororo to have words with a still sullen Marrow. When they reached the room, Betsy stopped outside. Scully smiled her thanks, then opened the door. Betsy started to walk away, but stopped at the sound of Scully's voice.

"What Marrow said, about the Syndicate using our work to do to others what had been done to me... Was it true?"

Betsy didn't speak. She didn't need to. The silence and the sadness in her eyes said everything.

"All right. Thank you."

Dana walked into the room, and locked the door.

She leaned back against the cool wood. She hadn't asked all of the right questions yet, she could tell. She could feel it in the sensation of relief that had flowed into the room when she had declared that morning's Q&A session over. These people wouldn't lie to her, but they weren't going to volunteer any information.

She felt something warm sliding down her now oh so perfect face. She raised her hand to her cheek. It came away wet.

Feeling the strength go out of her legs, she slid down the door.

Crouched against the wood, she let herself cry.

For everything.

Scully lay spread eagle on middle of the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

She hadn't moved since she'd unlocked the door at least an hour earlier.

Intricate white on white designs resembling water dragons chased each other around the room. Her damned hair lay spread around her.

Outside, the rain continued to pour. Inside, the hunt raged on.

A hesitant knock came from the door.

When no answer presented itself, the person knocked again, harder, instead of going away like Scully had hoped. Keeping her silence, she hoped who ever it was knew how to take a hint. There wasn't another knock, but Gambit called into the room. "Can I come in chere?"

"I guess."

Gambit poked his head around the door. Taking in Scully's still form, he eased the rest of the way in, and stood uneasily by the foot of the bed.

"The gals were wonderin if you'd like to go shopping with dem," he started. Slightly unnerved by Scully's silence and the fact that she hadn't as much as glanced at him, he paused. "Dey say dat dere's stuff you need, no matter when you leave here."

Silence.

"Look, it'd mean a lot to Stormy if you go with dem. She's worried bout you.

"De Professor and Betsy offered to pay for all your stuff and everything.

Betsy's loaded too."

One of the dragons was about to run into the lighting fixture.

"Sure. Why not?" she asked as she swung her legs over the side of the bed.

Looking at Gambit, she finished, "Tell them that I'll be down in a few minutes."

It wasn't like she had anything better to do.

Smiling at her, he nodded his assent and left the room. She was going to need things for when she left, even for the short time longer she was going to say. There wasn't really anything she could do here, short of hack into their computer system, and she was pretty sure that that wasn't a task she was up to.

There was nothing she could do about her hair until she got it cut. She ran a brush through it, and instinctively went to check her reflection.

She got all of two steps before she remembered that there weren't any mirrors in her room. She bent to pick up the pair of cross trainers which sat by the door. She hoped that she was presentable. If they wanted her to look good, they they'd just have to give her a mirror.

The sneakers didn't fit quite right either.

Scully padded down the stairs, the shoes clunking slightly. She found Betsy and Ororo waiting for her at the front entrance. Ororo handed Scully a coat and collapsed umbrella.

A black car pulled up by the front steps. Logan waved at them to hurry up from the front seat. He didn't look happy.

"Shall we go?" Ororo asked.

"I really do wish that there was a better shopping centre in the area," Betsy sighed as she unfolded her own umbrella, and opened the door. "Not that the Fendor Centre isn't decent, but there really is so much better out there." Storm motioned for Scully to go ahead of her. Scully stepped outside, stopping under the overhang to open her umbrella. She was half way to the car before she noticed that Ororo wasn't holding anything over her head. She was just holding her umbrella by her side.

And that she was perfectly dry.

Scully felt her feet root to the ground. The rain seemed to be falling around the regal woman, as if she were surrounded by an invisible shield.

Logan honked impatiently, startling Scully. She took one last look at Storm, then walked the rest of the way to the car, and collapsed into the rear passenger side seat. Betsy was already sitting shotgun, her face a study in disinterest. Ororo sat gracefully beside her. Scully half expected to see her hands leave wet marks on the pale gray interior.

Before Scully and Ororo had had a chance to buckle up, Logan screeched towards the gate, muttering something under his breath about how rock, paper, scissors was such a childish game, and one should never be held to anything bet over it. He looked wet. Apparently, he'd just run out to the garage to get the car. His hair stuck up from his heads in two dark spikes.

The mall, when they got there, was huge. Logan dropped them off by the front doors. "I'll meet you in the food court at four," he said.

The three dashed into the foyer, not bothering to open the umbrellas for such a short distance.

"Where to first?" Ororo asked Scully.

"Ummm, clothes or shoes would be a good place to start," answered Scully, gesturing towards her not-quite fitting outfit.

"Before we take you anywhere, you're getting a haircut," Betsy told her.

Feeling slightly self conscious, Scully raised a hand to her head. "Sure."

"Come. I know where there's a decent place in this mall."

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Scully asked the hairdresser for the upteenth time. The man ignored her. At first he'd reassured her, but had quickly tired of it. Betsy had dragged them through the mall, ignoring all other stores, before arriving at the Sealan Spa. She'd walked right up to the front desk and asked to speak to the owner, who had happened to be in. A dark haired man had greeted her by name, air kissing her cheeks.

Scully had only heard part of their conversation, she and Ororo had lingered near the entrance, but it seemed to her that Betsy had offered him much more money than a haircut normally cost the FBI agent, and told him to use his best judgment. She'd then headed off to get a massage.

Now, sitting in the dark green chair with locks of her hair lying brightly against the white and black checkered tiles, Scully knew that the extra money had been so that he wouldn't listen to what she wanted him to do.

He'd refused to chop her hair off back to the way that she'd kept it for the last seven years. First, he'd cut it all to one length, then turned her around and spent a great deal of time looking at her. Just before he'd started to really creep her out, he'd spun the chair back so that she was facing the mirror once again. He had then proceeded to cut all of her hair, save the front sections, shorter. That wasn't when she had started to freak though. She'd assumed that he was just going to cut a very deep bangs section.

Then he brought out the bleach and foil.

Answering all of her questions with 'Just wait and see's and 'You'll love it!'s, he proceeded to bleach out the longer pieces of her hair.

Which brought her up to now, sitting in the surprisingly comfortable chair, plotting revenge against Elisabeth Braddock while waiting for the bleach to dry. When he finally removed the foil, she was slightly surprised. He must have used a different sort of bleach.

Rinsing her hair once, he then proceeded to separate the lighter portions into pairs of sections. He knotted each pair around each other, then flicked the tail back over her head. The ends matched up exactly with the rest of her hair. He filled his hands with mouse, and ran them through her hair. He then showed her step by step how to dry it so that it wouldn't fall flat, pouf out, and so the pale streaks would fall evenly throughout the red. Scully was slightly impressed. She never would've though that something like this would look good. It helped that instead of going white or a hideous shade of yellow, her hair was a tawny gold where it had been bleached.

"So, I know what I'm doing after all, no?" Her hairdresser asked with a smile.

Scully smiled back. "I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name."

"Joseph Boscaretti."

"Well then, Joseph Boscaretti, I must say you know your way around a pair of scissors."

"Here's my card. You really should come back some time, you have wonderful hair."

Betsy appeared at Scully's shoulder.

"How was the massage?" Scully asked.

"Very relaxing, thank you," Best replied, flicking her purple hair over her shoulder. It occurred to Scully that the three of them would be very noticeable, just on account of their hair.

Just then Ororo joined them, her nails freshly manicured. "I like your hair, Agent."

*The two of them certainly have good timing*

//What makes you think that timing had anything to do with when we showed up, Miss Scully?// Betsy asked.

Scully jumped slightly. She hadn't said that outloud, had she? Even if she had, Betsy was over there at the till with Joseph, working out the total bill. Had anyone even spoken?

//You were broadcasting, Agent.//

Now Scully was sure that no one was actually talking. It was more of an echo in her head.

Ororo was looking at her with some concern.

//Relax. You look like you're about to blow a gasket.// //You have no idea what's going on?// There was a slight pause. Scully felt a slight tingling low in her skull. When the voice started again, it sounded slightly annoyed. //The Professor did say that you were almost impossible to read. At least now we know you have no trouble receiving.// Scully cautiously thought back. //Sending? Receiving? You're a telepath, like the Professor claimed to be?//

//You know, for someone with your expertise...//

//I don't believe in everything. And the Professor never proved to me that he was a telepath.//

//Your confusion and anxiety, combined with your natural shields, made it impossible for him to contact you. He had tried to calm you, but it didn't work. That's pretty impressive, considering that he's one of the most powerful known telepaths in the world.//

//You don't seem to be having any problems.//

//You're in a much better frame of mind now, but I can still only sense your general mood and the thoughts that you broadcast.// //I don't know when I'm broadcasting. I don't like the idea of people knowing what I'm thinking.//

//Once you've been around telepaths for awhile, you'll build up shields so that you don't do it any more.//

"Ororo, Scully, are you ready to go?" Betsy asked. Scully started. She hadn't even noticed what was going on around her.

//Don't worry, it gets easier with practice.//

//I thought you said you couldn't tell...//

//You jumped a bit. I'm a ninja, I notice these things.// //Ninja?//

//Yes. I'm a ninja. Ororo was a street thief, and she used to be worshipped as an African Goddess. Remy's a sneak thief. Bishop is from the future. Sam's never going to die. Logan is a guinea pig for the Canadian government. He has no idea who he is or where he comes from, even how old he is. Rogue has pieces of everyone that she's touched since she was seventeen floating around inside her head. And you are a dead FBI agent whom the government would give a lot to get their hands on right now.//

//What the... For starters, who are Bishop, Rogue, and Sam?// //Look, you'll meet them later. They should be back late this afternoon.

We can trade life stories then.// "Shall we shop?"

Scully took a big bite of her large chocolate-mandarin frozen yogurt.

Piles upon piles of bags and boxes lay scattered around the food court table. Not all of it was hers, but she had enough stuff to last her a very long time. Of course, that would mean that she wouldn't get to do this again any time soon. It had been forever since she'd gone on a shopping spree. At first, she'd felt a bit guilty about eating up so much of another person's money, but Ororo had convinced her that nothing they could buy today would put as much as a dent in either Xavier's or Betsy's wallet.

The first thing that they'd done was get her an outfit to wear for the rest of the day. At Scully's insistence, it was relatively low key, much resembling her earlier outfit, only fitting. Silver and blue cross trainers, pale khaki cords, a bright blue t-shirt with a logo of some company which she'd never heard of on the front, and a blue-black jean jacket. She had a messenger bag as well. She was using it to carry her smaller purchases, like nail polish, make up, jewellery, and a wallet.

Though why she needed a wallet when she had no money was beyond her.

They'd even gone to the music store, and a handful of CDs, some that she wanted, others which had sounded interesting and were recommended to her by the other two, were tucked firmly inside the bag.

She took a good long look at all of the stuff sitting around their table.

She had no idea how they were going to carry it all out to the car. When they'd been shopping, they'd simply shoved bags into one another, but when they'd sat down, they'd pulled out their purchases to go through again, partly to make sure that they hadn't missed anything important, partly just to look at their stuff again.

Scully felt giddy. She was hyper. She was the stereo typical girl on a shopping spree. She felt kinship with these two women.

And that was very much against her will.

The bags were never going to go back together, she could tell just by looking. Scully now had almost everything that she could need. Shoes, boots, hats, jeans, pants, shirts, underwear, pajamas, sweaters, t-shirts, skirts, dresses, formal wear, semi formal wear, even tank tops.

They hadn't let her buy even one suit though.

And they'd need to get all of it, on top of what Ororo and Betsy had bought, out to the car.

If Logan showed. She glanced at her watch. It was now quarter to seven.

He'd said that he'd be there at four.

*Maybe he got tired of waiting and left. We didn't even get here until a little after six.*

Not that she'd minded waiting here. They'd eaten supper, Scully once again consuming more than she thought humanly possible, and barely feeling full, chatting about nothing. Betsy was just now cracking open her fortune cookie, and Ororo, having finished her pita, was draining the last of her milkshake.

Scully felt the tingling at the base of her skull that she was starting to associate with telepathic activity. "Is Logan coming in now?" she asked Betsy on a hunch.

The other woman looked slightly surprised. "Yes. You heard that?"

"Not exactly. It tickles when you do that. And who else are you going to be contacting but our ride?"

"He'll be here in about five minutes. I told him to leave the car by the doors and come help us drag our stuff out."

Ororo grinned. "I'll bet he was happy about that idea."

"He'll be even happier if he has to wait for me to finish my fro-yo, won't he?"

"You know, Scully, you've only just started that. It wouldn't be good if you ate it too fast and got brain freeze, now would it?"

"My thoughts exactly. You know, this is very good. You guys should have one too."

When they got back to the Mansion, the sun was starting to go down. It had stopped raining while they were in the mall, and the sky was perfectly clear. Red, orange, pink, yellow, and violet radiated through the air, tinting everything with gold. Scully felt the tingling again, and Bobby came out the door when the car pulled up. He headed strait for the trunk and started pulling out bags. Before climbing out of the vehicle, it occurred to Scully that she didn't know what he did. Putting a hand on Ororo's arm, she whispered, "What's his power?"

"Robert can manipulate and create ice."

"Oh. That one I'm going to have to see some time."

"I'm sure that if you ask him..."

"Are you sure that that wouldn't be weird?"

"He won't mind. He loves to show off. Come, let's get our stuff inside."

When all the bags were inside, Remy made an appearance. Ororo shot him a bit of a glare, which he returned with innocent eyes. "How your day go?"

He asked Scully.

"Great. We got everything we needed."

"I'd certainly hope so," he said, gesturing to the piles sitting in the front entrance way.

"Scully, why don't you show them them the thing with those pants with the buckle." Though everyone else was confused at Ororo's words, Scully knew exactly what she was talking about. Feeling slightly like a school girl, she grabbed the right bags and ran up the stairs.

//There's a bathroom you can change in, third door on the left.// Betsy told her. Scully found it without any problem. She switched clothes, pulling on the pants which had a built in belt with a back-pack type buckle, which Betsy had insisted she buy, and buttoned the sheer silver-white shirt over a tank.

She headed back downstairs, wondering why she was this excited over clothes. All of the windows in the house were open, letting in the smell of fresh rain and wet grass. When she reached the stairs, her euphoria started to fade.

Something was wrong. The voices were silent. Now she could see that the front doors were standing wide open, and the piles were unattended.

Standing in the entrance way, she could see another vehicle parked haphazardly outside. Listening carefully, she thought that she could hear sounds of movement from her left.

She walked through the doorway. Moving partway into the room, which seemed to be some sort of living room, she saw everyone gathered around two newcomers. The first one to catch her eye was a huge black man with an M scarred over his one eye. The other was young, blonde, and laying something down on the couch tenderly. His face was strained. Gambit looked like someone had punched him in the solar plexus. Ororo had silent tears running down her face. Scully just stood there, watching. Bobby looked up from whatever lay on the couch, seeing Scully. He moved back.

The others, sensing his movement, glanced up. Of some unspoken accord, they moved back as well, leaving Scully a path to the couch. Gambit alone stayed where he was, crouched on the floor. Scully slowly moved forward in the fiery light, apprehension eating her. There was no hope on any of the faces as she walked. They just wanted something official.

Lying on the couch was the still body of a young woman. Her face was calm and peaceful. Even before she was at the couch, she knew that the girl was dead. Brushing a strand of white-streaked dark brown hair back from her temple, she saw a single bullet hole.

She'd been executed.

A red mark ringed her neck. It looked as if she'd been chained. Looking at the two men who had brought the girl in, she saw a similar bruising pattern on them.

"I'm sorry," Scully said softly, ever so softly.

Gambit, holding one of the girl's gloved hands, didn't make a sound, but something fell over his eyes.

Tenderly, he kissed the girl once on the lips.

Ororo let out a choked sob.

Scully backed out of the circle. She didn't belong there. She headed up to the room that she had been assigned. The chill in the fresh air was at odds with the blazing gold of the sky. Behind her, people who she barely knew mourned for a lost comrad. She must have been close to them. Been an equal partner.

Feeling the strength leave her legs, she sat partway up the stairs and watched the sun set.

Nightfall wasn't long in coming.

The clock face glowed brightly in the dark.

3:08. Scully lay fulled clothed on the bed, her head tilted towards the red numbers.

*And now........*

3:09

She didn't know how long she'd been lying there. She'd only taken to counting the seconds at 2:17. Before that, she'd been sleeping. She'd awoke completely refreshed, despite the depth of weariness she had felt earlier, despite the fact that she'd slept for a few scarce hours, at most.

After she'd pronounced the girl (*Rogue *) dead, things had moved quickly, after the initial period of shock. Storm had just stood there for awhile, crying silently. Logan had finally put an uncomfortable arm around her shoulder. The Professor had looked solemn, not saying anything. Scully wondered if he was blaming himself. Marrow had shrugged her spiny shoulders and stalked out of the room. The young blonde man, who she'd learned was named Sam Guthrie, had watched the girl's body silently, his eyes empty, then bolted outside. The big black man, Bishop, had simply took everything in with the look of one who'd been in this place much too often. Aside from Storm, Remy was the only one who'd shed a tear. A single drop had rolled down his face.

The sunset had been spectacular. Betsy had disappeared while Scully was watching it.

This had to have happened too many times. These people all had a role, knew what they were to do, even if it was simply to get out of the way. Ororo was calling the right people, the Professor making arrangements for a funeral. They didn't even need to talk about it. Everyone had gone their separate ways, looking as if they had a job. Bobby had sat down beside her for a time, then wordlessly escorted her back to the room that they'd lent her.

He looked absolutely numb, worn out. Without thinking about it, she'd lent forward and given him a light hug. Surprise had broken through his mask of weariness, and after a slight pause, he'd lent forward, resting his cold head on her shoulder for the briefest of seconds, then disentangling himself. Shooting him a slight smile, she'd gone into the room and passed out on the bed.

And now she lay here in the darkness of a moonless night. What was the point in getting up and roaming the still house? With the way things had been going for her lately, she'd get hit with some sort of security system, then have to spend time recovering again. It would be longer before she could get out of here, see Evan. She just had to figure out what she was going to do once she'd left.

An off key hum reached Scully's ears. It sounded desolate. She looked around for the source. She finally pinpointed it as coming from outside the balcony. It must have been pretty loud for her to be able to hear it through the glass and curtains. Her curiosity piqued, and having nothing better to do, she rose and walked over to the doors leading outside.

Drawing back the heavy drapes, she opened the door and stepped out.

The sound actually didn't seem any louder. Peering through the darkness, she failed to located the source of the humming. She drew her arms close around her. There was a chill in the air, and she was only wearing the sheer shirt, tank top, and pants from earlier in the night.

Had that only been tonight?

She had just turned to go back inside when she heard the yelp. Spinning quickly, she turned around just in time to see a flash, then a dark clothed figure plummet to the ground below. She ran to the edge. Someone large lay spread-eagled in the pools of shadows cast by the house and the trees.

Glancing up, she saw that the roof was several stories above her. Who ever it was must have fallen at least four stories.

Blink.

The scene below her seemed to be illuminated in perfect relief. She could see the hollows of Remy's face as he lay still and silent in the grass.

Spinning on her heel, she ran through the room and out of the Mansion, all worries of security systems forgotten. Urgency pounded in her head. He didn't have long. When she reached his side, he still wasn't moving. His breath was shallow and shuddering.

He was lying in a pool of blood.

Scully couldn't see anything that could've cause that type of injury. The grass was free of twigs, so there shouldn't have been any puncture wounds.

Leaning in closer to him, she smelt alcohol on his breath. Lots of it.

Taking a closer look around her, she could see a few shards of glass.

Something clicked. He'd been up on the roof trying to drown the pain, and he'd gotten so drunk that he'd fallen off of it. He probably would've walked away from the thing with a concussion and a few broken bones, if he was lucky, but he'd fallen right on the bottle.

Why hadn't she woken the others when she was still inside? She couldn't go back in now, leave him alone. Looking at the amount of blood that stained the grass, she thought that even if she had called for the others, even if they did have advanced medical equipment, that it would probably be too late for them. Listening to his breath, Scully thought that she could hear fluid on his lungs. Never the less, she carefully rolled him off of his stomach, being careful of his neck and back.

If he bled to death, then it really wouldn't matter if he had spinal injuries. Her shirt was mesh, it wouldn't stop any bleeding. She grabbed the tail of his trench coat and ripped it. Mashing it up into a ball, she pressed the makeshift pad over the worst of the wounds, trying to staunch the flow of blood.

A bright flash of pain shot through Remy, bringing him back from the safe, warm place he'd started to drift to. His eyes flew open. Crouched by his head was an angel.

*No, not an angel.*

His angel was gone.

This woman was too strong for that, too smart, too stubborn.

"It's ok," she whispered, trying to calm him. "You're going to be all right." The words sounded weak even to her ears, he could tell.

Remy opened his mouth to tell that it really was okay. He felt fine. She pressed a pale finger to his lips, stopping him from speaking. "Shh, save your strength."

Starlight caught in her silver shirt, covering her in moonshine. Her hair glowed red and gold. Goddess of Night and Day. Letonia. He hadn't even realized that he had spoken out loud until she pressed her one hand a little more firmly over his mouth, her sky eyes glaring at him reprovingly.

Even they were night and day. Hot Summer sky irises, midnight cat's pupils.

Scully sat helplessly as Remy reached towards her. There was too much blood. Those eyes of his, warm beyond what any white eyes could ever convey, searching her. Their gaze filled her with a strange determination.

These people had lost one of theirs all ready today.

She'd be damned if she'd let them loose another.

She loosed her hold on the wad of cloth. Acting totally on instinct, she reached out with her right hand and marked the middle of his forehead with her thumb. She did the same to the hollow of his throat, the spot above the centre of his throat, his hip bones. Placing her hands flat on either side of his stomach, about an inch and a half above his belly button, she reached inside herself, and *pushed*.

It bubbled out of her, silver and gold in her blood. She didn't move until the flow stopped, leaving her more worn out than she could remember ever being. The world wasn't bright anymore. It had gone back shadows, the way that it should be on a moonless night. Scully tried to rise then. Her legs wouldn't cooperate, and she had to catch herself on her arms. Beside her, Remy stirred.

Looking down at himself, he saw his wounds had faded to tiny scrapes, the glass inexplicably gone. There were still holes in his clothes, he hurt like a bugger, and in the morning, he'd have a hang over to remember, but he'd live.

Beside him was a very shaky Dana Scully. Her eyes were back to their normal shape, her skin ashen. He wondered what effect this would have on her.

She was more than any of them had even dreamed, with the possible exception of Logan. She didn't know that, though. She had reference, no way of knowing.

"You all right dere, Miss Scully?" Gambit asked.

"Just give me a minute."

There was an almost comfortable silence.

"Remy."

"Oui, chere?"

"I was thinking... Even the people that I'm closest to call me by my last name. There's not a single person outside of my blood family that I'm on a first name basis with.

"So I was thinking that, if you wanted, you could call me Dana."

"I'd like dat, Dana."

When she finally had her breath back, Scully stood up. She offered Remy a hand, which he refused, instead ponderously pushing himself up onto his knees, then crouching, then finally rising.

The two limped slowly back inside.

Scully woke up that morning slowly, savouring the feel of warm sunlight on her face and fresh air against her skin. She'd managed to change into pajamas before falling asleep again, but had left the doors to the balcony open.

She snuggled back under the duvet, and dozed for awhile longer. Sleeping in was a luxury she rarely afforded herself, but her internal clock had always predisposed her to stay out late and sleep even later.

When she could no longer even pretend to rest, she rolled out of the bed and prepared to face the day.

She grimaced at her freshly scrubbed face as she brushed her teeth. Someone had put all of the mirrors back into the suite while she was out shopping.

It scared her a little how quickly she was adjusting to this world. She was even almost used to the way that she looked.

And worst of all, the events of the other night weren't causing her to obsess.

Had she really only woken up here the day before yesterday?

Rinsing her mouth, she headed down for breakfast.

Remy was sitting at the island wearing a pair of dark glasses and drinking a cup of coffee. Scully almost asked what the glasses were for, then remembered how strong the alcohol had been on his breathe. Ororo, dressed completely in black, was at the stove scrambling eggs. "Good morning," she said quietly. "I was just making myself and Remy breakfast. Would you like an egg too?"

"No thanks, I'll find myself something."

Scully was trying to figure out if Remy had told the others what had happened last night. She looked askance at him, and he shook his head quickly. Satisfied, Scully started to hunt for food. She found just what she was looking for in the freezer. Chocolate chip toaster waffles. High in fat and containing nothing the least bit good for her, they were a treat which she rarely allotted herself. Dropping a pair in the toaster, she watched as Ororo shovelled heaps of scrambled eggs onto Remy's plate. He didn't look interested in them at the least. Scully watched with some amusement as Ororo stood by Remy's shoulder and glared at him until he finally gave in and started to eat. Checking her waffles, she found them not quite done. She grabbed a mug out of the cupboard and poured herself a cup of coffee to pass the time.

It was a good thing that she was standing by the sink. Taking a swig of the coffee black, she immediately turned and spit it all out. "You could chew this stuff."

A low chuckle emanated from behind her. "That's nothing. You should try the stuff that I make." Scully turned to find Logan standing by the entrance way.

"I've been drinking Bureau coffee for years, but I have yet to find coffee as strong as this."

"I'd be willing to bet that if you had a cup of wuss coffee, you'd find it just as disgusting."

"I can hold my coffee."

"I don't doubt that you could hold your coffee, but it looks to me like your body decided that caffeine wasn't good for it. It's pretty smart. If you don't like the way something tastes, you won't drink it."

Scully looked longingly at the toaster and prayed that if this hairy man was right, it only applied to coffee. She didn't know if she could live without chocolate.

Scully munched contentedly on her chocolate chip waffles. Much to her relief, chocolate tasted just the same as it always did. Ororo and Remy were picking at their scrambled eggs and hash browns. Logan seemed to have his appetite though. Since entering the kitchen, he'd been through three eggs, and was now working his way through a package of beer sausage.

"Rogue's funeral is this afternoon," Ororo said quietly, directing it at Scully. The others already obviously knew. Scully was slightly surprised that it had come together this quickly. These people obviously had deep resources. Nodding her head, she continued to eat. She really didn't know what to say.

Scully finished and rinsed her plate off in the sink.

"Ro, I was thinking of taking the girl to the Danger Room this morning," Logan said between bites. Ororo raised an eyebrow at him. "If that's all right with you, that is." Scully glanced at him questioningly, wondering if he was talking about her.

"Did you by any chance ask her if she was interested?" Ororo asked him, reading Scully's face.

Turning to Scully as she dried her hands on a tea towel, he said "You want to go see the Danger Room?"

As tempting as that sounded, she'd been planning on hanging out around the Mansion, keeping an eye on Gambit. Gambit saw her indecision and caught her eye, then inclined his head towards the door and smiled at her. Still hesitating, he said, "Don't hurt him too bad, chere."

Logan grumbled under his breath, then snarled at Remy. "Just be glad that she's not fighting you. I'd think that it would be pretty embarrassing to get your ass kicked by a girl that badly."

"I'm not the one she gonna be beating though."

"Stuff it Gumbo. We'll just have to see."

Feeling giggles build up inside of her, she grabbed Logan's hand and dragged him out of the room.

He led her through the twists and turns that composed the basement of the Mansion. As big as the place looked from the outside, it was larger inside.

She'd imagine that it would be pretty easy for a person to get lost, yet she felt completely oriented. They finally stopped at a huge pair of steel doors. She started towards them, but Logan stopped her. "We have to set the scenario first." They headed up a flight of stairs that Scully had missed seeing at first. Three or so stories up, the stopped at another pair of similar doors. Scully couldn't see any handles. Logan simply walked towards them, and they slid open at his approach.

She didn't know what she'd expected, but this certainly wasn't it. Computer consoles lined the sides of a room larger enough for several people to stand in comfortably. One wall was made entirely of glass, though, and she walked over to see what they were overlooking. Below her a cavernous room plated in silver stood empty. The floor was level with the doors that they'd stopped at before, and the ceiling rose above them for a time. It was easily the depth of a football field and the width of a gym. She found herself wondering why it was so tall.

Maybe Ororo wasn't the only one who could fly.

"What's your favorite place Miss Scully?"

"I actually don't mind the desert. And just call me Scully."

Muttering to himself, Logan plopped down at a chair in front of one of the consoles. He called up a list and scrolled through, using a touch screen.

Finding what he was looking for, he selected an item. "You might want to watch the room while I do this, Scully."

Mystified, she turned to the Danger Room and waited. A beep behind her signaled the start of some program or another, and before her eyes, the silver room winked out of existence. Taking its place was an expanse of white sand, broken by hills in the distance and what appeared to be an oasis.

"I feel like I just stepped into a Star Trek rerun."

"Naw, we just use this for training. Most of the time, we set it to attack us, or program in people to do that, but sometimes we spar among ourselves.

If you want, I'll work with you a bit."

Scully glanced down at herself. She wasn't really dressed to work out.

"Why don't you go change, and I'll meet you back downstairs in fifteen minutes."

"All right."

He was waiting for her when she got back, dressed in something spandex and yellow. She fought to keep a strait face. It was probably very practical and comfortable.

But it was also very yellow.

Scully had been surprised to find in her bags things perfect for working out. She'd bought so much that she didn't remember half of her purchases.

She'd pulled on lightweight wind pants which gave her room to move, not liking the idea of her skin being peeled off of her by the sand if she happened to fall. She couldn't bring herself to wear anything heavier than an oversized t-shirt though. It would be hot in there, she'd thought as she pulled her hair back.

Ororo and Betsy had made sure that she'd gotten something suitable, though she hadn't realized it at the time.

So maybe Logan's asking her to come hadn't been so spontaneous after all.

The thought that they could be manipulating her put her on edge. She had to remember that these weren't people that she knew that she could trust. The though that it was so easy to relax into this place came back to her as she was standing outside the Danger Room. Giving herself a good shake, she tried to grin at Logan. "Before we go, I have one question."

"Shoot."

"What exactly is it that you do?"

"When I get pissed off, big old claws come springing out of the backs of my hands."

Her curiosity once again getting the better of her, she reached out and grabbed one of his hands. She saw him tense as she did so, and realized that maybe it hadn't been such a good idea.

*Too late now anyway. *

Looking closely at his large fist, she though that she could just barely make out three darker lines cutting the back of his hand.

"Could you show me?" she asked. Logan shrugged, and Scully watched as three metal spikes popped out just above his knuckles. "That looks like it hurts," she paused, not sure if she should ask the next question. Giving a mental shrug, she continued. "How long does it take for the holes to heal after you retract them?"

"I heal fast."

Pause.

"Fast like me?"

"Kinda."

Pause. He didn't elaborate, so Scully just let it go.

"Is the metal attached to the bones in your hands?"

"The metal is bonded throughout my entire skeleton."

"You must have been heavy to carry to term.

"I wasn't born like this."

"It developed as you aged? That must have been quite a shock to your system, to suddenly be carrying so much more weight."

"The metal is courtesy of the Canadian government. Or so I think. There's a lot I don't remember."

Scully let go of Logan's hand. She watched as the claws slid back in. Bare seconds later, the only mark on him was the shadow of his claws. "Well. Are you ready to go?"

"Whenever you are."

One thought pounded in Logan's head for the rest of the day.

She was active.

The girl was good. She hadn't had much training in hand to hand, he could tell that from the way that she moved, but she picked up quickly. She saw the exact movements of his body, read them without even knowing it. He doubted that she knew that when she concentrated, her eyes changed. Eagle eyes, not missing anything. She'd done it when examining his hand, she did it when they'd finished working on the moves and started to spar. That alone confirmed his fears. He'd be willing to bet that her hearing was off the scale, that she could smell things clearly.

She was active.

He didn't need to pay much attention to the fact that she was getting strong, that her reflexes couldn't have been this quick when she was with the Bureau, that they'd been exercising hard for more than hour and she hadn't gotten winded. He could've passed these things off on her being in shape, except for the fact she was stronger and faster at the end of the workout than she'd been at the beginning. He could smell her scent as it slowly changed, became more indistinct.

She was active.

She didn't know it, she had no way. You don't tend to look in the mirror when you're concentrating on something else, and while she might notice her improved shape, she had no way of knowing that it wasn't directly related to the fact that she was now ten years younger.

He'd hoped for her sake that her trip to the fountain of youth would be the end of it, that she'd just stay like that, her body keeping her safe from injuries and disease.

But this was just the surface of the well, and none of them had anyway of knowing how deep it went.

Scully flipped her wet hair out her face as she searched through her bags for something to wear to the funeral.

*Probably something that I should've done before I got into the shower * she thought wryly. *You know, if I were to hang this stuff up, then I wouldn't have to paw through all of these bags whenever I wanted to get dressed. * Part of her mind railed from that thought.

Hanging up her clothes would make this too permanent.

She found a black dress in one bag. It was a bit fancy, but if she put a cardigan over it, it would do well enough.

She stood at the back of the crowd of people in the private cemetery, feeling out of place. So many of these people she didn't know. Bobby had told her that they were from various other teams sponsored by Xavier. Most of them looked relatively normal. The government had done a good job at rounding up physical mutations. There was one boy with loose gray skin though, who stood with a group of teenagers, an Irish looking man and a white-blonde haired woman. Save for the Irish man, they seemed a little removed from the proceedings, a little uncomfortable.

From what she'd picked up, Rogue, Sam, and Bishop had been out on a recruiting mission. The Professor had picked up a potential student, and the three had gone to check it out.

Only the boy had been a plant, and a Control team had caught them. They'd used Inhibitor collars, which from the sounds of it neutralized powers, to keep them under control. They'd been placed with other recent capturees.

Rogue and Sam had lead a break out attempt among the prisoners, hoping that they could overwhelm their captors by sheer numbers.

The attempt had been an utter failure. The Controls had guns and weren't afraid to use them on mutants.

They'd fingered Rogue as the instigator. She hadn't even tried to deny it.

Sam had tried to share the blame, but Rogue was a much better example to the other prisoners.

They'd knelt her by a wall, put a gun to her temple, and pulled the trigger.

Without the collar, the bullet would simply have bounced off of her skin.

She was just human with it on.

Sam had lost it.

He'd broken free of the guards holding him and attacked the unit's commander. Trying to prevent the death of another friend, Bishop had waded into the fray.

Scully found it supremely ironic that that was when Sam and Bishop had managed to escape.

She watched as one of the teenagers broke away from the group and ran over to Sam, where he stood even farther from the ceremony than Scully. He blamed himself. The girl looked like she was his sister. She hugged him hard.

"Ashes to ashes," the Minister's voice drifted on the wind. Scully wasn't sure if he was actually a Minister. He was blue, furry, had a tail, and held the bible in a three fingered hand. He'd come with one of the other groups.

They looked after their own.

"Dust to dust," she whispered along with him. The group began to drift apart and together, forming scatter gatherings of friends.

Scully sat on a marble bench next to her blue man, watching as the Minister moved from group to group. "You don't have much longer to wait," she said.

"I'm going to be moving on soon."

"She's coming. It's just a hard thing to leave behind, Hank," she said sadly. She could finally remember his name. Henry. Henry McCoy. If she could just remember what he'd taught her..... A much more fitting legacy than finally recalling his name.

"You'll know when you need to know, Dana. And anything that you don't remember, you'll figure out for yourself. You're smart. That's something you can't teach. And don't ever worry about my legacy. I'm proud of you in a way that I can't remember ever being.

"Do you remember when I said that the floor was going to fall out from under you? You haven't hit ground yet. Just don't land on your head, and you'll be fine. You'll know how to right yourself when the time comes."

She hugged him tightly, feeling tears creep down her face. He tightened his arms around her, and kissed her cheek. Rogue was winding her way through the people, bidding them good bye. They paused as she breezed by them, but didn't seem to notice anything unusual. Dana and Hank stood as she neared them. Hank hugged Dana one last time, and pressed something cold into her palm. Rogue held her hand out to him, and he took it, stepping towards her.

Rogue leaned in close to Dana, and whispered something in her ear.

Rogue and Henry walked slowly away from their friends. Rogue stopped once to look back, and then the sun swallowed them.

Dana pulled her sleeve over her hand, and used her palm to wipe the tears away.

She found Sam sitting on the rooftop. If these people didn't learn to stay inside their houses, their number would start dwindling even more rapidly.

Standing in the open hall window, she wondered if there was any good way out of this.

It had been three days.

Three days of training with Logan, three days of watching helplessly as her body changed around her. Three days watching as the others, with the exception of Remy, Ororo, and Logan, tiptoed around her, as if they expected her to blow and wanted to be ready to avoid the fallout. Three more days without Doggett, without Mulder, without Skinner.

Without Evan.

Three days since the funeral, spent in thought when she wasn't training or going through files.

And now she had to tell them what had been entrusted to her. Not knowing where to start, mulling over what she had to say, she had wandered throughout the house, looking for the right opportunities. And now that she'd found one, she wished that she'd stayed safe in the room.

Scully climbed out onto the rusty slate colored shingles and sat on the roof beside him. She hugged her arms around herself out of habit, but the night air didn't bother her.

"Hi," she said softly. Sam didn't even turn his head. He'd known that she was there, just as she had known where to find him. "Aren't you cold?"

"No more than you are."

Silence.

"How do you like it?" he asked finally. His voice was dull and emotionless. "I guess it never really sunk in for me before. I used to think that immortality was this great gift, that I could use my time to do so much good. I never considered the flip side, that maybe I could be the source of so much pain.

"How do you like it?"

"I'm not quite sure what you mean," she said, the words sounding weak to her ears. He turned his head slightly, his eyes boring into hers.

"Please don't play this game, not now. Ah don't know if I can take it.

Denial doesn't take it away. Trust me, ah know on this one. Denial doesn't do a lot of things. It doesn't bring back the people you've lost, doesn't cure your little sister of pancreatic cancer, doesn't let you correct your mistakes."

He looked out over the woods again. "Is your sister the one that ran over to you at the....."

"Yeah."

They sat in silence for a time, then Sam started to speak. "She's not supposed ta be able to get cancer. I mean, she changes the material her body is made of almost every day. It should be purged from her system when she husks. But no matter how long she stays changed, when she comes back, the tumour is still there. She's been through the equipment at the Academy, Hank checked her out here, the best doctors the Professor and Frost could get a hold of went over her with a fine tooth comb. Guess it was already too late."

Scully winced internally. Her own bout with cancer surfaced. "Did she ever have a chip in her neck?" she asked.

"Ah wish it were that simple. We tried modifying one of those government chips, but the cancer was from a different source. We'd all really hoped that it would work. Hank was pretty broken up when there wasn't any change."

Scully fell silent. Pancreatic cancer was hard to detect. By the time that enough symptoms had surfaced for a diagnosis, it was usually too late to do anything other than make the patient's last days comfortable.

"Who's Frost?"

"She runs one of our sister schools, one for teenagers, up in Boston."

"Okay."

The moonlight reflecting off of the pond was hurting Scully's eyes. "Are you a religious man?" she asked Sam.

"I don't really know any more. I used to be. Look, ah don't mean to be rude, but I came up here for a little perspective."

He raised his hand to his neck, rubbing the mark left by the restraining collar absently. His voice bespoke no curiosity as to the point of her mentioning religion, instead, it dismissed her totally.

"You have to have something to keep you strong, Sam. If you don't have faith in a god, you have to have faith in your friends, in your coworkers.

You can't be a pillar," Scully said as she rose from the roof, brushing the pieces little pieces of roofing tile which always seemed to flake, off of herself. "I've been here for less than a week, and even I can see that you've pulled away. None of them blame you for what happened to Rogue."

She was by the window then, the gauzy drapes billowing slightly in the breeze, brushing against her calfs. "Rogue didn't blame you either, you know."

He continued to stare out over the country side, and when he spoke, his voice had dropped another few degrees. "*You * don't know that. You can't know that. That's the point. Ah can't ask her if she condemns me."

"I asked you if you were a religious man, Sam. I guess that that's not really what I meant, though. What I was going to say wasn't strictly religious." Scully felt the absence of the cross on her own neck deeply just then. It hadn't really bothered her before for some reason. Now she felt naked. "What I was trying to say is that we don't just end when we die. That there's a part of us that survives. Every religion since the dawn of time has theorized it, call it heaven, call it reincarnation, call it karma. People with unfinished business don't go on right away, I think.

I'm still trying to figure all of this out. Some have a purpose left to fulfil, some are just plain stubborn.

"Rogue didn't want to you blame yourself, she didn't hold you responsible."

"What are you, some sort of medium?"

"A few weeks ago, I would've had the same reaction as you. But things are.

. . different now. If you can believe in telepaths and astral projection, why can't you believe in spirits?"

Sam turned to face her then. He'd started to open his mouth to speak, but looking at her, blue and red and gold, eyes glowing slightly in the dark, partially back lit by the interior lights, it didn't seem so impossible.

"Look Sam, you can believe me or not. I don't know if I even believe me, but Rogue didn't want you to suffer over this. She's accepted it.

"Now, if she's the one who's dead, and she's moved on, maybe you should stop being so recalcitrant."

She stepped back inside, leaving Sam to his thoughts. She found Bobby leaning against the wall beside the window. His face was impassive. "The Professor wants to speak to you."

"Why didn't he just call me then?"

"I take it that your mood made your shields too strong."

Bobby led her through the Mansion. She could have told him that she could find her way if he told her where Xavier was, the same way that she knew she could now work all of the equipment in the med lab, how she could name every member of every group associated with the X-Men and their powers, their medical concerns, how she knew every single detail of Hank's research.

The same way that she knew what Bobby was trying to find a way to ask her.

Hank taught her a lot, and what she remembered now seemed to her to be only the tip of the iceberg. He'd been standing outside the window for awhile, waiting for the right time to interrupt. So they just walked in silence, working out a conversation in their heads. They finally drew to a halt in front of the doors of the Professor's private study. Scully could hear faint voices which dropped off after the tickle touched the back of her head.

"Look, Miss Scully..." Bobby began.

"Hank's ok. He may not have been happy about going, but he didn't think that it was something that could've been prevented by your keeping a closer eye on him." She dug through her pocket for the object that Hank had slipped into her hand at the funeral. Finding the cold metal object, she drew it out of her pocket. She reached out and took Bobby's hand, then opened it and gently placed the silver pocket watch in his palm. "He wanted you to have it. Said that he wanted to make sure that you'd be on time for appointments with your new doctor. You were always late for him, and he wanted to make sure you wouldn't piss him or her off. Your doctor is one person you want to be sure likes you."

"I'll try, Miss Scully." He paused for a second. "I have to warn you that I may loose track of time occasionally though." He looked at her critically. "You aren't going to stay, are you?"

"Don't you see? This is exactly why I have to go. There are people I care about grieving for me. They are going through what you are, what Sam is, what Remy is. Even if it wasn't for Evan, I'd have to leave. I can't stand the thought of this much pain. Not over me." Scully felt as if she were betraying Hank's memory in some way.

Robert smiled faintly, his eyes saying that he understood. "I don't suppose you could recommend a doctor we could trust to us? Ro's the only one of us with any sort of medical bent, so she's been doing that stuff, but she'd our leader. We need her to be out in the field. *She* needs to be out in the field."

"Tell you what. If I think of anyone, I'll drop you a line."

Something flashed across Bobby's eyes that she couldn't quite recognize.

He withdrew a few steps from her, and bid her good night. She reached for the dark wood doors, and stepped into the silent room. The tension struck her immediately. It seemed to fit in oddly among the deep brown bookcases which stretch from the forest green carpeted floor to the vaulted ceiling.

The Professor sat behind a desk with a computer off to one side, his chin in his hands, looking pensive. There weren't any electric lights turned on, instead, a fire blazed in a hearth by the windows. Remy was sulking in the shadows. Ororo sat on the raised stones by the grate with crossed arms, her normally serene demeanor gone. Logan was picking at an antique looking chair with one claw.

The Professor spoke. "Miss Scully, there is something that we must discuss." Scully felt her heart sink. She had a hunch as to what that look from Bobby when she'd mentioned writing to him had meant.

"Let me guess. I'm too hot for you. You want me out of here before I bring the government down on all of your heads."

"Child, don't jump to conclusions. That can only hurt all of us."

"But that is basically what you were going to say Chuck," Logan almost spat.

"No. I don't want her to leave, you know that. We are in extreme need of a doctor."

"Fine, then you were going to try to convince her to stay, but tell her that if she chooses to go, you don't ever want to hear from her again."

Ororo was by his side by then, her hand on his arm. This time though, she seemed more to be backing him up than restraining him. Something clicked for Scully, and she felt a slight smile tug at her lips, but the drew herself back to the matter at hand.

"It's not that simple Logan, and you know that, as well."

"Really? Seems pretty clear cut to me."

"Hello? The object of your conversation is standing right here, and she's decided that she would like to hear the full story," Scully broke in. That stopped them. "Why don't you start at the beginning, and pretend that I never said anything."

Scully sat herself down at a chair where she could see everyone, and waited. Xavier composed himself, then began to speak. "Miss Scully, there's something that you need to know, before we get into anything else.

Your healing powers are active."

"What exactly do you mean by that?" She thought that she might all ready know, but she wanted it spelled out for her.

"Logan's abilities, for example, are reactive. When he is hurt, his healing factor kicks in, putting things back to the way that they were before. You, on the other hand...

"Your body is playing the survival of the fittest game. It's always changing. Anything that could give you a higher chance of survival you are likely to acquire. It's almost as if your healing factor is rewriting your DNA to suit your enviroment. So far, it's only heightened reflexes and senses, and incredibly strong telepathic shields, on top of your set of healing abilities and age regression, but it's not going to stop there.

Your X-Factor only really started to strongly assert itself less than a month ago, and look at what's all ready happened."

"Oh," Scully said quietly. She'd half suspected something of the sort, but not to this extent. "Wait a second, did you say set of healing abilities?"

Gambit shrunk farther into the shadows, staring down at his feet then at the line of books even with his eyes. He hadn't spoken once, and continued his silence even now.

"Dana," Ororo started. Scully glanced over a the use of her first name, then waited for Ororo to continue to speak. "He didn't tell us. I was concerned when I found a patch of grass covered with dried blood and shards of glass. I asked Remy if he'd heard anything in the night, and he was acting suspiciously. I guessed it all on my own. He even denied it once I'd figured it out."

Remy still wouldn't meet Scully's eyes.

"What Ororo was getting at Miss Scully," the Professor continued, "Was that you were able to do that when you needed to. You didn't even think about it, did you? Realize consciously what you were doing? If you were in trouble, how do you know that without training, you would do the same thing in reverse, destroying the body of your attacker, or someone who'd just made you mad? If you wanted with all your heart for them to shut up, would their voice box quit working? You don't know what you are capable of. We could teach you, help you control it as it developed."

"It seems to me, Professor, that if what you say is accurate, if you were to be scared of anything, it would be what I'm capable of, not my presence attracting the government. In fact, my being here probably wouldn't create a greater risk of that, since they think that I'm dead, and your activities would attract more attention than my being here ever could."

"This place is a school for mutants, Miss Scully. We try to teach them to control their powers. I've never turned down a student because I believe that they would be dangerous to us. They'd be an even greater danger out in society with no influence over what they can do.

"It's not your presence right now that we causes me concern. You are completely right in saying that the government believes you dead. They probably wouldn't connect any reports of you now with Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, save for your name. But if you go back, you all most certainly will be discovered, and they will figure it out. They watch your son still, though not as closely. They keep an eye on your partners and friends, due to their involvement in the X-Files. If you attempt to contact anyone from before, they will figure it out. Not right away perhaps, as you are younger, but you are still a very distinctive figure.

When you leave DC again, as you will have to, with or without Evan, they will use all of their resources to track you. Is there anyone that they are unaware of who will take you in? As much I wish that we could, I would not be able to take you back in. We cannot afford that. Our cover is not that good. Even if it was, they might still destroy us out of spite."

"I'm going to need some time on this one."

Scully looked around the room. Xavier looked disheartened but convicted.

Logan looked ready to kill someone. Ororo seemed to have some of Logan's anger, but tempered it with a deep sadness.

Remy still wouldn't look at her.

She could understand where Xavier was coming from. He had a responsibility to these people. Fine. She had a responsibility to Evan.

She remained seated, lost in thought. Xavier excused himself and left the room. Remy skulked out in his wake. She didn't notice this, so when she drew herself back up into the world, she found herself alone with Logan and Ororo. Ororo fed another log into the fire, then sat down on the hearth beside Logan.

"So," Scully asked. "How long have the two of you been together?"

Ororo started. Logan simply looked up at her, then returned to his inspection of the green carpetting, picking at the loops with one claw.

"How did you..." Ororo paused. "About a year and a half."

"It'll be 18 months in three weeks, darlin," Logan told Storm. He looked almost hurt by her surprised expression. Almost. "What? You didn't really think that I'd forget, did you?"

"Is really it that obvious?" Storm asked.

"I am... I was a Federal Agent. It's what I did for a long time. Plus, I think that maybe it's more noticable from the outside. The little nuances that your teammates are all used to... They all know the two of you, know what they think that they should expect. Sometimes you just end up seeing what you have come to expect."

"You won't tell them, will you?" Ororo asked. Scully thought she saw Logan grimace resignedly at that. This was a tired old conversation between them.

"I know how to keep my mouth shut. I don't think that any of the others have figured it out. Which might be something that you'd want to worry about when you're talking about Xavier and Betsy, if they really are all that they say they are."

"It's just that as team leader, I can't seem to be playing favorites.

This is a major conflict of interest issue."

"Don't worry, your secret is safe with me. Have a nice anniversary." With that, she rose from the chair and headed back to the room. Pausing at the door, she turned to them and said, "I appreciate that the two of you haven't been avoiding me. I know that a few of the others seem to be a little hesistant to be around me, as if they're afraid that I'm going to snap. I don't think that the thought ever crossed your mind, Ororo, and I wanted to say that you're good people, and that no matter what happens, you have a place in my heart. Logan, you've always seemed ready to jump away.

I think you have a good idea exactly what the risks were, but you stuck it out anyway. It takes a strong person... Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you, both of you."

Scully closed the heavy oak doors behind her, then started back to the room. She found Remy leaning against the wall by the entrance of her room.

"Hi," she said. He continued to stare at the area rug which covered the hall floor.

"Look, chere, Gambit didn't mean to," he started.

"It's all right, really. None of this is your fault. You're as caught up in this as I am, as we all are. They would've found out sooner or later anyway. It's actually good that we got this out in the open before I left.

And I know that you didn't tell them. Ororo knew the same way that you know about her and Logan." She pushed the door open, and stepped inside. Gambit started to follow her, his face still dark. She stopped dead in her tracks as she caught site of her reflection in the mirrow. It was still a little bit of a surprise to her, but the bigger shock was always how normal it was to her.

Remy stood in the doorway, silohetted against the hall lights.

"Dey all think you're dead, you know."

He looked at her intently, his eyes daring her to deny it, to tell him that she knew how to fix, to make it all better.

Daring her to chose the easy way out.

She flopped back on the bed (*her bed*, a part of her mind whispered to her). She could feel his eyes still on her, from where he stood by the (*her*) door, waiting on her decision.

Because this was what it all came down to, all of it. She had to choose.

She stared up at the ceiling and wondered how it had come to this.

The room was dark, but Scully's internal clock told her that it was late afternoon. She's dozed off just as the sun started to come up. It certainly hadn't been her intention. Someone had closed the drapes for her, and tucked a blanket around her. Waiting for her eyes to adjust, she lay there, luxuriating in the cool air circulating throughout the room.

It was the only thing that she was going to enjoy about the day. Dragging herself out of bed, she padded silently through the room. She didn't want to open the blinds just yet. From the strength of the air conditioner, it was going to be a scorcher of a day, and she thought it considerate to keep the room cool for the others. They'd be moving her things out soon enough, and she didn't want to make it uncomfortable for them.

She looked through the bags of clothes for something practical and comfortable. She didn't know how long she'd be in what ever she put on.

She finally settled on a two layer box neck tank top with a pale yellow sheer layer over a white fabric, and dark board shorts. She'd be hot when she went outside today, but the nights were still cool, and the air conditioning prevented it from becoming too warm in here. She set aside a tan pea coat and dark jeans that looked like they could take the wear, feeling slightly guilty. She'd take them with her too. She didn't know what she'd end up needing.

Pulling the tank down over her head, she stopped as she caught site of herself in the mirror. She tugged the shirt the rest of the way down, then walked in close to the glass.

"Oh crap," she muttered under her breath. Her eyes were slit like an eagle's. She couldn't remember if there was a pair of sunglasses among her things. This would certainly make her more noticeable.

Taking a deep breath, she calmed herself.

Maybe....

She took another deep breath, and braced herself against the wall table below the mirror. Looking deep into her eyes, she concentrated. Thought of darkness. Slowly, her pupils returned to normal, and the shadows in the room deepened. Letting go, she let her eyes return to a cat's. This time, the change back to normal was faster. Feeling her confidence rise, she repeated the process several more times, then finally did it without the mirror. She did it until she could tell by her vision what her eyes would look like to someone else.

Satisfied, she headed to the door. *Xavier didn't know what he was talking about,* she assured herself. *Look at exactly how much time it took me to get that under control.*

*Of course,* that voice whispered, *Exactly how serious is what your eyes look like? *

*Shut up. I can do this.*

Then she opened the door, and bright sunlight hit her eyes, penetrating to the base of her brain. Letting out a little shriek, she covered her face with her hands and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms.

*Stupid, stupid, stupid. Eyes accustomed to the dark, pupils as big as they get, and you walk out into the sun filled hallway. You really are the bright one now, aren't you?*

She felt hands on her shoulders as she bent over double. Someone was asking her if she was all right. Trying to blink the brilliance from her sight, she couldn't see the face of her well wisher. She thought that she could recognize Remy's voice though. He sounded confused and sleepy.

The last of the spots fading from sight, and she looked up into Gambit's confused face. He really didn't look quite awake. "You all right chere?"

He asked.

Glancing around, she saw his trench coat wadded into a pillow on the floor.

Seeing where her eyes rested, he merely shrugged. For some reason she could see him there, propped up against the wall while she slept. He had to have been the one who closed the drapes and covered her.

"I just got some sun in my eyes. I'm fine."

He looked at her strangely, but let it slide. "What you want to do today Dana? Remy be your guide," he said, flashing her his brightest smile.

Smiling sadly, she tried to gently deflect him. "I think that I know where every thing is." Which was truer than he could know. "Plus, I just woke up, and I usually spend some time by myself after manage to drag myself out of bed."

Gambit scrutinized her carefully, maybe looking for signs that if he left her alone, what had afflicted her after she came out of the room would trouble her again. Looking unsure of himself, he nodded slightly.

"I thought that I might take a walk, if that's all right. I promise not to destroy any expensive imported flora. Scout's honor."

"Why is it dat I don't think you were ever a Boy Scout?"

"FBI Agent's honor, then."

"Look, Chere, about last night, you have to understand dat da Professor, he," Remy started.

"It's all right, really. I do understand. Maybe even more than you do."

Bidding him good bye, she headed downstairs. She didn't see anyone else.

The mansion seemed deserted. Maybe the others were off training in the Danger Room. Stopping in the kitchen, she grabbed some fruit and a muffin from the fridge. She'd missed breakfast and lunch. She padded outside, digging her bare toes into the soft, warm grass. She wandered a bit. The lands inside the fence were huge, much bigger than they appeared from the outside. *I guess when you occasionally have to crash land a jet....* She sat down by a pool to eat, dangling her feet in the water.

Her strategy was very simple. Avoid everyone until she was ready to go.

These people, this place, they all ready had too strong a hold on her. It was harder to let go every time she saw Bobby pull a prank, Bishop sigh dramatically, Logan shoot Ororo a sidelong glance when he thought no one was looking, every time she spent time with Remy and Ro, even when Betsy rolled her eyes in exasperation. Finishing up the muffin, she glanced around. She was still too close to the house.

Without any direction from her mind, her feet wandered into the woods. The pine needles and fallen leaves were cool against her soles, the ground itself soft and dry. Glancing at her skin the light that filtered in through the canopy, she saw that despite the fact that she'd been out in the sun for more than an hour, she didn't have even the faintest signs of a tan, let alone a burn.

She wandered aimlessly for a time, exploring the woods. Hank had loved it here, and she could see what it had looked like from his tree top perches.

It was slightly disorienting, almost like being in two places at once. She liked to imagine that she could feel him striding beside her, but it was only his memories.

Without consciously realizing it, her feet found their way to the graveyard, which was on the property. So it was a surprise to her when she found herself standing in the last of the trees, looking into a cemetery which wasn't quite uninhabited. A single figure stood by the fresh grave.

This was one that Scully didn't recognize, but something else inside of her called out in recognition.

"You're trespassing," she called. When the figure, a man, dropped into a fighting stance, she continued. "This is private property. It doesn't mean that I'm going to shoot you, you know."

The man didn't say a word, nor did his bearing change. His eyes reminded Scully of the Bounty Hunter's for some reason. Maybe it was just the fact that he hadn't made a single sound yet, that that same eerie quiet seemed to cloak him. Then the other familiarity stirred again, the one from inside her other recollections. The man didn't move, his eyes still locked on Scully. She forged on, hoping for something concrete to surface.

"Look, it's all right, but you might want to get out of here before the others find out. They tend to be a bit touchy about their privacy."

He spoke finally, but his voice was sing songy and melodious. "You're new."

Scully felt shivers shoot up and down her body, despite the fact that she had just stepped back out into the sun. The sound was more than slightly scary. It edged on insanity. "Yeah, I am." *What am I getting myself into?* she wondered as she cautiously moved forward, drawn by some strange attraction.

The man seemed to be guarding Rogue's grave. "They let her die, you know.

They seduced her to their side with their pretty words and fancy toys, and they let her die."

The man's face shimmered slightly.

*Mystique. Raven. * The recollections finally offered up. The man was a woman, and she was losing control of her form. As Scully was thinking that, Mystique shimmered again, and snapped back to her natural body. Blue skinned and dark eyed, the illusion of sanity seemed slightly thinner now.

"That's not how it was, Raven."

"Really, pretty one. Tell me how it was. Tell me how a girl I raised as my daughter abandoned me. Tell me how she died. Tell me *why* she died.

"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you where you stand."

Taking a deep breath, she hoped that what she was about to say wouldn't get her strangled. Or worse. "She died for what she believed in. It was how she wanted to go, you know that. Her only regret was that she'd had to turn on you to follow her path. This was her home. She's at peace now, more than she found in life."

"Is that supposed to comfort me?"

The silence was broken by the chirping of squirrel, which immediately fell silent as if it knew what it was intruding on.

"No. It's just how it is."

And gathering all the courage she had ever had, she turned her back on a killer and padded slowly back into the trees. She could feel Mystique's eyes at the base of her spine. She kept on waiting for a flash of pain, the coldness of steel, a blur of movement preceding blackness. And she kept her path steady, her back strait.

She wouldn't let Mystique see her fear.

She felt the dancing eyes leave her as she disappeared into the forest.

Not daring to hope that she'd gotten away that easily, she glanced back furtively.

The clearing was empty.

When she returned to the Mansion, the heat was just starting to leave the day. The sun was no longer high in the sky.

She headed in the back entrance and walked up to her (*The*) room. Opening the door, she stopped dead. All of her things were gone, save for the coat and jeans she had set aside earlier, and a pair of cross trainers and socks. A hollow ache filled her. Yes, she had expected this, but she'd thought that they would've waited at least until she had gone. She would have thought that they'd wait to see what had happened to her, then pack up. She hadn't even told them that she was going to sneak into Doggett's grab Evan, and figure things out from there. She'd tell Doggett, of course, so that the search for her son was not quite to brutal, but she'd figure things out from there. Scully was reasonably sure that she could get in without being seen.

But the room was empty and impersonal once again.

She hadn't even told them that she was leaving.

Stuffing the lump of betrayal back down into her throat, she changed clothes quickly, not wanting to remain in the empty room for any longer than necessary. Why did she feel so wronged? It was only logical, their reaction. It wasn't like she really meant anything to them.

She was slightly surprised that she didn't meet anyone throughout the house. Usually, it seemed to be crawling with people. Now not a single step ghosted through the corridors. Feeling suddenly alone and wondering what she was going to do for transportation, she headed down the steps for the last time, trailing her fingers on the railing.

Pushing open the heavy front doors, she stepped out into the recently picked up wind, her hair flipping behind her. This certainly was a week of contrary weather. The fact that a weather witch lived on premisis probably had something to do with it.

The scene in front of her didn't make sense at first. She could see a non-descript blue sedan with Montana plates parked on the asphalt by the curb. Remy was just finishing dropping the last of a series of bags into the trunk. Ororo sat on the front hood of the car. Raising an eyebrow at Scully, she said "Enjoy your walk?"

Scully could recognize one of the bags in the trunk as definitely being one she'd brought back from the mall days ago. Feet rooted half way down the stairs, she gaped.

"Well petite, you coming or no?" Gambit asked as he slid open the door to the rear seat.

Ororo smiled at the look on Scully's face. "Did you really believe that we would leave you high and dry?"

Feeling some of her hope return, Scully climbed into the shotgun position, and Gambit grumbled something about being made to sit in the back. Ororo got in gracefully, then pulled the car out towards the highway, heading back to DC.

"You didn't have to do this," she said finally, breaking the silence.

"You would have us cast you out leave you nothing?" Storm replied "I've already imposed on you enough."

"You aint been no trouble, Dana," Remy told her. "In fact, I be dead if it weren't for you."

"There was no need to drive out with me, at the very least. You could even be putting your friends at risk. If I'm spotted and you're with me, it could bring the government down on you."

"I'm afraid we can't go with you all the way, for that very reason," Ororo continued. "We must leave you a few blocks before your partner's. We're merely here for moral support."

"One, how are you planning on getting back, and two, how did you know where I was going to go?"

"You are risking this for your son. Where else would you go?

"As for the second, I can fly high enough to not be noticeable to human eyes."

They drove in practical silence for the rest of the trip. By the time that they reached DC, the sun was going down.

The sunset was magnificent that night. The sun was a huge scarlet ball hanging low in the sky, bathing everything in a rosy glow. Maybe it was because of this that they didn't notice the fire until they were almost at Doggett's. The harsh light from the blaze was lost in the setting light.

Scully smelled it before anything, carbon and ozone and rubber, and something sickly sweet that she didn't want to think about. Her senses alerted, she searched the horizon. She finally saw telltale licks of flame touching the red sky.

It looked like it was coming from Doggett's neighborhood.

"Shit," she whispered, not quite under her breath. Ororo and Remy followed her gaze, and she saw Ororo's eyes go white, as if she were checking something. She stepped on the gas, weaving through the light traffic, heedless of being seen by any Syndicate Agents. She pulled right up to the street. The three clambered out, quickly taking in the destruction. The fire had consumes half of the block, and was working its way through the back alleys.

Why wasn't the fire department there?

A young woman carrying a child bumped dazedly into Scully. "Are they coming?" she asked, her voice thick with smoke. "I called ten minutes ago, but the trucks aren't here yet. Why aren't the trucks here?" The child in her arms coughed weakly. Scully reached out without a thought, and draped clarity through the both of them, minimizing the damage that the paramedics would have to look after. She thought that she recognized the woman. She was one of Doggett's neighbors. Rain began to fall, hammering into the pavement, sizzling in the fire. Storm's eyes were white as she stood in the middle of the street, her arms upraised towards the sky. The rain intensified, but the fire was out of control. Gambit was helping some of the people wandering the street to the relative shelter of a bus stop at the far corner of the street.

Scully concentrated on the girl. "Listen to me. This is very important.

Do you know if Agent Doggett was home when this started?" The girl, sobbing quietly, nodded her head. Scully scanned for him or Evan, but the downpour made it impossible for her to make out features. The girl started shuddering, clutching the babe tight to her chest. Scully was starting to panic.

She could feel Evan now. He was hot and afraid. There was a lot of smoke and a pressure on top of him.

Evan and Doggett were still inside. Running down the street, her footsteps were lost in the crackling and showers, giving her the odd feeling that the fire was more than it seemed, that maybe it had eaten everyone but her and Doggett and Evan, and it was starting in on them.

Doggett's house was in the process of being consumed by fire. The front door was too hot for to even consider using it, but the back one was only partially blocked. She threw herself through, and then the heat hit her.

She ran through the kitchen. They weren't in the living room, or any of the downstairs bedrooms. She stared in apprehension at the stairs, consumed by flames as she doubled over coughing in the smoke.

The were upstairs. She knew it.

Steeling herself, telling herself that it was a short flight, that it would heal, that they needed her, she dashed up the stairs, managing to avoid the worst of the flames. She felt her skin begin to sizzle.

She found Doggett passed out from smoke inhalation part way down the hall.

Evan's still form was partially under him, shielded from the worst of the smoke and heat. She could hear her son's weak screams. Doggett was starting to come around a little, from being under the smoke level. It was a miracle that the blaze had taken so long in eating its way down this hall. Counting her blessings, she tried to revive him a little. When he was roused enough to move, she grabbed his hand, pulling him farther down the hall, Evan clutched tightly under her other arm.

She couldn't take them down the stairs, not now.

Doggett wasn't much help. He was barely conscious, and had no idea what was going on.

The porch roof out back was probably their best bet. She found her way arduously to the supply room, keeping low. She closed the door tightly behind them, cursing as the heat of the metal nob bit into her palm.

Searching the small, cramped room with her eyes, she found what she was looking for. She grabbed an old mop propped up against some shelving and used it to break the window open. The fresh air coming in seemed to revive Doggett a little, and at Evan's increased wail, he reached almost frantically for the child. He still didn't recognize her, though. His eyes were probably completely blurred. She turned his head to the window and he nodded in understanding. They crawled out onto the roof, and then she headed as quickly as she could over the hot, steaming tiles to the edge. She handed Evan to Doggett and ignoring the pain that lanced through her fingers, she grabbed onto the gutter and flipped over the edge, then dropped the remaining few feet to the ground. Doggett lay down on his stomach and passed Evan into her waiting hands. He then attempted to perform the same move as she had, but his arms gave out on him and he came crashing down to the ground.

Part of his sleeve was on fire. Scully beat it out desperately, feeling the stifling heat growing.

The seconds had cost them. The fire almost completely cut the backyard off from the street. Scully had forgotten that it was raining. It didn't seem to be doing much good, in any case. The fire was closing in on them, hungry fingers reaching out to pluck at their hair and clothes. The rain hit the wall of fire separating them from the street with a vengeance, intensifying until it pushed to the side slightly. Scully could see the toll the intense volley was taking on Storm. The rain elsewhere had slackened slightly. Grabbing Doggett and holding Evan closer to her chest, she plunged through the small opening and out into the street.

Almost the entire block was burning.

Ororo was flagging. Remy had almost everyone away.

Where were the fire trucks? The ambulances? Why the hell were they taking so long?

She practically dragged Doggett and Evan to safety, feeling herself start to grow stronger with each step. When they were far enough away, she let Doggett lie down, and placed Evan in his arms. She started to hear the sirens approaching. Leaning forward, she pushed the energy into Evan.

When he was almost completely well, she cut off, starting in on Doggett.

She was very afraid for him.

He'd been in there so long.

She felt him start to leave the woods when a hand closed on her shoulder, pulling her away from him. She hit the ground hard several feet away, the pavement taking the skin off of the burns on her hands which had only just begun to heal. A man clothed all in black with a headset on aimed a gun at her head. Acting on instinct alone, she threw herself to the right, farther away from Doggett and her son. A shot slammed into the ground where she had been mere seconds before, sending water and slivers of asphalt flying.

"Mutie freak," he hissed, his face twisted with hate.

Scully knew all of a sudden why the fire department and ambulances had taken so long to get here. Playing for time, she asked him, "Why?"

"Like you deserve an explanation." But his hatred was mixed with a desire to rub what had happened in. "There was a chemical got into the water.

They thought it might make more abominations like you. Already had, actually. They had to wipe out the danger. Cull the herd." She read the tension in his body, and darted off again just before he fired again. She was around the corner in a flash, hoping that he'd focus on her.

The sirens were close now. She headed down a back alley, away from the open. It was too late before she realized that this was a dead end. A high brick wall closed off the gap between the apartment buildings. She turned around and saw the man pacing slowly towards her.

He was enjoying this. She could see it in his eyes, in the way he handled the gun, never quite bringing it to bear on her. Then he smiled that ugly smile, and brought the gun to a bead on her forehead. She stared into his eyes. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her cringe. A shot rang out, and she winced back in reflex, despite all of her best intentions. Feeling a sort of shock as no pain tore its way through her head, she watched as the man in black toppled over. When he hit the ground, she could see Krycek standing behind him, his gun still pointed to where the other man had been standing mere seconds before. She waited for her turn, but the shot never came. Instead, he holstered his weapon and walked towards her, shouting over the pouring rain. "....ggett and Evan, one of the ambulances. Heading to St. Mary's. They'll be fine." When he stood beside her, she contemplated killing him. Just the fact that he'd recognized her was a bad sign. He'd report back to them, no matter that he had just saved her life. She must be worth more at the moment alive than dead. It would be so easy, just reach out and stop the flow of energy to his throat, effectively strangling him. It would look like a double murder. Unaware of the train of her thoughts, he stopped talking for a second, as if out of air, and rubbed his throat uncomfortably, gulping in oxygen.

Gulping for air.

Horror filled her. She'd been contemplating murder. She could've killed him without even trying. Reaching out, she let go of her unconscious hold.

Krycek looked at her strangely. Looking deep into his eyes, she thought that it would be in his own best interest to never mention this to anyone.

He'd just killed one of his own men.

He had to know that.

Surviving was what Krycek did best.

Brushing past him, she headed for the hospital at a run.

The journey was mostly a blur to her. She remembered dodging the cops on patrol. At one time, she stopped to take inventory of herself. The rain had washed away the soot, and her burns were almost completely healed. The jacket was a loss, but the fact that it had been done up had protected her shirt for the most part. She'd leave the coat on for now, because she would attract more attention in just a tank top, but when she got the hospital, she'd have to ditch it.

In the confusion caused by the great number of new patients, Scully managed to sneak into the hospital and get a look at the charts. Evan was up in the children's ward. Dropping the jacket behind a potted plant, she worked her way through the white corridors.

Evan's room had a window in it. She could see Doggett in a wheelchair beside Evan's crib. His eyes looked like hell. It would be awhile before they finally healed. She wished that she could help, but she couldn't touch him. Mulder was pacing furiously, angry that Doggett had put Evan in danger. Skinner was calming him down.

Evan looked so small, so fragile.

Doggett was hovering over him.

What would it be like for him to grow up on the run, never having a permanent home? Never trusting anyone, moving every few years, if indeed they could stay even that long? Always hunted, never safe, never being able to let down your guard?

What kind of life was that?

Scully leaned against the glass, the coolness welcome against her forehead.

She reached out her hands to him, but the glass held her back.

If they looked over and saw her, she'd stay. She wanted to cry out for them to turn around, to see her.

But life stood still in that room, even as it slowly revolved around that child. Her child.

She kissed her finger tips, and touched the glass by each of their heads.

John Doggett looked up from Evan. Something called in the back of his head, demanding his attention. He looked at Skinner and Mulder, not bickering anymore, then turned his blurred gaze to the window. A flash of red and gold skittered out of the edge of his vision. Mulder saw his eyes strain.

"What? What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing. I just thought I saw someone for a moment." Doggett replied.

Mulder studied him for a few seconds, then bolted from the room and into the hall. He scanned the people milling, looking for any sign of her. A flash of flame, an overheard sarcastic comment, anything.

Finding nothing, he pushed himself farther and farther away, searching.

Doggett remained in the room with Skinner. He watched as Mulder started his search again.

Then he turned back to Evan, stroking the boy's fine red hair.

He had his peace.

Dana managed to walk evenly to the back set of hospital doors. She pushed outside and felt suddenly weak. She leaned back against the wall, feeling the roughness of the bricks against her bare arms. All of the strength flowed out of her legs, and she slid slowly down to the ground. She watched the rain flow in torrents over the overhang. It was bright against the night, but it obscured what lay ahead.

Wetness trickled down her face slowly.

Without looking up, she could tell that Remy and Ororo stood beside her.

They'd probably been driving themselves crazy looking for her. Ororo finally crouched down beside her, and put an arm around Dana's shoulders.

"Shhh, it's all right. It's good to cry. Just let it out," she whispered.

Dana felt a wracking sob come up from deep within her, and she clutched onto the other woman as if she were a child. She cried for what could have been an hour or a minute or a day, and after a time, Remy put an arm around her too. When she'd used all her tears, she let out a single sniffle. One arm on the wall, she stood up, and started forwards. Remy wrapped his long coat around her without a comment, the warmth helping subdue the shudders that coursed through her.

She paused at the curtain of rain, glancing back to the hospital, with its bright lights and familiar warmth. People she knew, people she loved, were inside. It wasn't too late to turn back. She looked a the sheet of rain, trying to discern what lay beyond it, but the images were shadowed and strange.

She took a deep breath and started forward, Ororo and Remy at her side, then stepped through the curtain and into the world. The rain washed over her, chilling her to the core, stripping away the residual heat, but she kept going.

She knew that some where up ahead there was warmth.

Fin

It's come to my attention that I forgot to do the thanks on the X-Files lists, so; Thanks to, in no particular order: Craig, BGirl, SK850, AJ, Jenny, McGarry, Lindy and Quantos, Pokey, Char, Chelle, Kappa, and Kaydee, all of whom have, at one time or another, beta'd, helped me out with this story, or my writing in general.